240: Your Fight Against Inertia--A Body At Rest Tends To Stay At Rest. Combat Lessons 2, with Dave Berke.
Jocko Podcast- 1,240 views
- 29 Jul 2020
0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:43 - Combat Lessons Book 2. 2:06:20 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:08:47 - How to stay on THE PATH.
This is JoCo podcast number 240 with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink, Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight, once again, Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening.
All right. Last podcast, which was podcast two thirty nine. In case you couldn't subtract one from 240. And I suppose we should give out some kind of shout out to the 240 Gulf. I don't know why, but we should shout out to all your machine gunners out there that that that ran that 240 Gulf last podcast to thirty nine. We covered the first edition of Combat Lessons, Rank and file in combat, what they do and how they do it.
That was number one.
And, you know, to be honest, when I got done with that one, I said, yeah, that's cool, but there's more of them. And I kind of thought to myself, you know, well, how many combat lessons are there?
Right. That I remember this is two hundred and forty podcast worth of combat lessons.
But I was leaning towards, hey, probably not going to cover more of these things because there are more of them.
And then I started reading number two and as I read number to kind of out of the gate section one, which is called leadership, and you just get you just start reading it. And before I knew it, I couldn't stop. And there's more lessons, more perspectives, more angles, more knowledge to make us better. And I was really coming at this one. I was really thinking about life a lot. Yeah. All aspects of life. And I think it's the opening of this that gave me that sort of mindset going through it.
I was thinking about life. The parallels are everywhere. All right. Let's let's go to the book.
And I think Dave, coming out of the gate, you're going to realize where why I got so sucked into this thing just out of the gate. So the first section, like I said, it's called leadership.
And then and then the first subsection is leaders versus inertia.
I was already I was you had me at inertia, as they say.
Lieutenant Colonel R e O'Brien, cavalry observer with the 5th Army in Italy.
Here's what he says. In spite of the fact that I observed many interesting things in practice, in the practice of tactics and technique. Still, the one lesson that stands out in my mind above all others is the one that is so well known by military men that its statement here amounts to little more than a platitude. I mentioned it, however, because it had such a profound effect upon me. That lesson is the importance of and need for adequate leadership.
So cool.
I got through that fine. I wasn't quite there yet. And then I read this. The effect on most men of the impact of battle is to cause them to want to do nothing.
A determined effort must be exerted to accomplish even simple tasks, and men are likely to neglect duties which they know must be performed.
So think about that right out of the gate right there. The effect of men in battle is that you're going to want to do nothing. And again, this is why I was talking about how this started, making me think about life a lot. Think about that when it comes to life, how many people are just drawn towards the easy path, not doing what you're supposed to do, duties that you know must be performed, but you neglect them?
Yeah, that's that's the difference between success and failure in life. By the way, did you guys stay in the Marine Corps y?
Why stand if you can sit where I sit, if you can lay down. Did you guys say that the Marine Corps similar? Would you guys say, I'm trying to think of the phrase, but it's the same alignment of like, why do this when you can just do that? I never exactly said. But when you said as soon as you said that, you were saying I was a little thrown off by the title because you said leadership versus inertia.
And I was thinking myself. Leadership kind of creates inertia. And when he's saying and the people who follow, like Newtonian physics, are going to laugh me out of the building, but seems like what he's describing is the opposite of inertia, sitting there doing nothing rather than moving in a direction. Yeah, yeah. Or it's the you're fighting to keep it going. Keep the inertia moving. Yeah. He says there is no force other than a driving leadership to overcome this inertia.
Yeah. So he talks about inertia as the static being not moving this tendency to carelessness and to infuse a determination to succeed in the minds of the individual men.
When this spark of leadership is present, the individual knows that others feel it too, and that his effort is not alone.
However, I was not a leader in this campaign, so I will quote an officer who is a successful commander in an infantry regiment, the wearer of a Silver Star, an officer who has a fine reputation in his division. And here's what this officer says.
Tell your people when you return that the hardest job they will have here is getting things done.
My men know their weapons and tactics thoroughly. My effort is simply to require them to do the things they know must be done, posting security, dispatching patrols, seeking a field of fire, retaining their equipment and making sure that it is in working order.
You have to check all the time.
I believe it was Payton that said 90 percent of your job as a leader is making sure that the orders get executed, making sure that the things actually get done, so that opening right there is what kind of made me just say we need to talk about this because it's it's applicable so directly to us as human beings.
And, you know, I was talk about the, um, the gravitational pull. You ever seen the chart of the gravitational pull of when the space shuttle or something launches? I guess it's not the space shuttle.
It's space explorer SpaceX, Elon kicking those things up into space. But they use whatever some massive amount of their power is to get the first whatever mile up. That's where they use 50 percent of I don't know what the percentages are, but it's a massive percentage of the power is to break free of the gravitational pull of the earth. Once they're free of it and once they're moving, they're OK. Like so much of the effort of a leader is just to get things to go, get things to move.
And we're going to get to this.
There's definitely some things here. And we're we're about to roll into a moment where it talks about, you know, so much reliance on the leadership and in certain situations, you can see them leaning towards. A micromanagement, you know, a hey, if I don't make this happen, but in other parts of this book, they start talking about how the way that you're going to win is through individual efforts and individual leadership. So you get into decentralized command a little bit later.
But but I think it's one of those dichotomies. I think it's one of those dichotomies. In a matter of fact, I know it's a dichotomy that sometimes the phrase I used to use a lot and I use it a lot in this podcast was the force of will. Right. You know, as a leader, I'm just going to make this happen. There is going to be a force. Well, we are going to win this thing. We're going to go this I'm going to make this happen.
And that's what he's talking about here. This force of will that you have to exert to make things happen, even things that people know they should do next.
S. discipline. So right out of the gate, we're talking leadership and discipline. I was I was in there. The keys to success in combat, the key to success in combat. Commanding general in a personal letter to Lieutenant General McNair. I would like to mention a few things I consider important in getting any prospective units ready for duty in southwest Pacific. The first of all requisites is discipline with a capital D..
I refer to discipline in all its phases water discipline, malaria discipline, personal appearance, military courtesy, the wearing of the uniform, personal and collective sanitation, carrying out orders in general assumption and proper discharge of responsibility throughout the chain of command, et cetera. There is an inclination for men, as well as some officers to go native in the tropics to let down mentally on material and spiritual values. So discipline is especially needed here. Needless to say, I consider an aggressive, offensive spirit always goes hand in hand with good discipline.
So that's that's one of those things where, you know, we're talking about impose discipline, in some ways they're right. You make sure your weapons are clean, make sure you're cleaning your. There's a there's a whole list of things. Make sure your drinking water. Make sure you're cleaning your feet. Isn't that a weird one?
Have you ever been in the water, in the water or in the bush long enough to get, like, really bad feet?
No, I got I got a minor case of trench foot. And when the guy who is my swim buddy during this particularly long Cinar operation where we are to manpower out there, just a training operation. But he got actual transport. He got he went to medical and they're like, oh, yes, you have trench foot.
It's weird that things like that, you know, when you see talk to guys about Vietnam, one of the main things that the officers would do is check guys feet because they wouldn't check on themselves.
So even something that seems so obvious, like you'd want to take care of your feet. People will not make that little extra effort, the inertia for them is to say, you know what, I'm just going to go to sleep with my boots on. They're wet. I'm not going to dry out my feet.
And by the way, you can sleep with your boots on. I did. We would we would sleep with our boots on in the field. But we take our socks off. We'd unlace our boots so our feet are in there just kind of loose so they can kind of dry out a little bit, hang your socks on a little tree or something nearby, but you don't want to get rolled up. Echoes Looking puzzled, you want to get rolled up in the field without your boots on.
OK, that makes the rolled up in the field without your boots on.
You got some problems to deal with, like the btf, Tony. You know, you take one boot off, you fix whatever. You got to fix that.
You put that boot back on, then you don't take both of them off.
You're just sitting there, John McClane style, basically naked. Oh, yeah. That's a movie. Die Hard. The first he runs on the glass. Yes. He wound up running over glass. And how come he hasn't got a car without his boots on?
Because when he arrived at Nakatomi Plaza, he at a request, not request a recommendation from a friend, take off your shoes and you make fists in the carpet with your toes.
It distresses you. So that's what he was doing in the middle of this hijacking scenario.
Interesting. You know, see there I was thinking that this book had knowledge in it.
Next, Lieutenant Colonel Clifton F. Kahn. Seventy Seventh Field Artillery in Italy. The great stress placed upon discipline and the chain of command is not an overemphasis and never can be. We found again and again that the highest standards of discipline are absolutely necessary in and out of combat. In no other way can you be assured that the individual soldier will carry out orders without supervision and in combat.
This is essential. So again, we're talking about very stringent discipline and we're talking about impose discipline.
I mean, we are. Let's call it like it is. Yeah, but the connection he's making is is what I was thinking. As you're talking about last passage, it's that connection to the imposed discipline that I'm going to start with that's going to get you to recognize over time this what you need to do, the self-discipline you need to create. And if your plan is like I'm just going to make my folks self disciplined, you're actually going to skip the part where they learn why you have to do it.
And sometimes that starts with you're going to do this, you could you explain it. But you asked me if I ever had emergen footage, but I never spent enough time in the right environment to have to deal with that. But I'll tell you, my very first Forche forced March, which is a five mile forced march, like a very short forced march at officer candidate school in 1991. We stopped 15 minutes into it. We all change our socks.
That's what we did. And so that's one example of. But it was totally imposed on us. But I was able to make that connection from these other people. And so you're telling the story about people that were non combat ready because of that. But those lessons are all over the place in the military and it's all starts the same way, which is sit down, take your boots off, change your socks, and then over time, you make the connection of, oh, I understand what I need to do this.
So, no, I never had it, but I was taught that lesson very early on.
Yeah. There's some sort of obvious religious overtones to of right. Of like taking care of your men's feet. Right. That's just a powerful thing.
Next to the bases of good discipline.
One of our problems has been to get junior officers and young into sufficiently hard boiled to exact from their subordinates a meticulous obedience to every order. We must ingrain in all ranks the realization that orders are not to be treated as suggestions, but as concrete facts calling for the utmost effort until they have been carried out.
So many people seem to feel that orders which are inconvenient or unpopular are to be disregarded. And this is this is one of those things is hard for me to read this, because we're always telling people, look, the military is not this thing.
We're just someone barks orders at you and everyone just obeys, which it's not.
This state of mind is a disease and must be eliminated. So what this section says or what this individual is saying, and I don't know if this is the same guy talking because it's not broken out, but then it says this, then it says this on the other hand.
So we got dichotomy. And elimination presupposes that all commanding officers and staffs take care, that the orders they issue are consistent, correct and capable of being carried out.
So so that that's a very a very discrete way of saying if you give me an order that's not consistent, not correct and not capable of being carried out, I'm not going to follow it.
That's what that says they do in a very roundabout way. They're very cautious about how they said that because they know they had Colonel Pogue in the room. They were right. And Colonel Pogue said, bending to listen.
Because Colonel Pogue comes up with the best plan every time, master your job, Lieutenant General Walter Krueger discipline and the leadership of small units are the things which require constant emphasis.
The enlisted man or officer who does not follow instructions and orders implicitly during training or prior to reaching combat.
Areas and who cannot do everything every member of his unit might have to do is not properly qualified, the squad leader must know exactly what each member of his squad should do in each type of operation. The platoon leader should have the same knowledge concerning his squads and the company commander of his platoons. Officers must not start worrying about the big picture until they have mastered all the details of the little one.
It's an interesting one. I can tell you right now that. It would be impossible to know everything that the sniper knows would be possible to know everything that the radio man knows, it would be impossible, know everything that the point man knows. It would be impossible to know everything that the preacher knows. Do you need to understand them? Yes. Should you be able to set up that breeching charge and clock it off if you have to? Absolutely.
Should you be able to pick up that radio and make CALM's, if you have to, where it might take the community? It might take the radio. Man Four seconds. Do it. It might take you three minutes. Should you be able not to do it? Yes.
At some point, if you're worrying about the details of the little picture, you might be doing a disservice by thinking too much about the little picture, not enough about the big picture. So I think officers should start thinking about the big picture from day one and understanding how things fit together. Now, you can't get lost in that, but you got to you got to start thinking about it early.
Otherwise, your habit is just worry about the little things your focus becomes looking down at it instead of up and out. So little that one's too strong for me, too strong for me, and I talked about that leadership strategy and tactics like you got to know what to do.
But there's a there's like a very discreet place in the military where you go from being tactical. They call it operation. But when you start being strategic in in the Marine Corps, it's called being a company great officer, which is like a junior officer, brandnew lieutenant to a field officer. Yeah. And all of a sudden there's this magical moment that when you get promoted from in the Marine Corps as captain to major, it's in the Navy from lieutenant to lieutenant commander.
Well, all of a sudden overnight, you are now a field grade officer and you're supposed to think strategically. And this transition point actually is a big source of friction for a lot of folks. And the people that struggled the most going from company get to feel great are the ones who have never thought about the big picture before. And it's not to say that as a second lieutenant that I've been in the Marine Corps for six months. I need to walk into the CEO's office and start talking strategy.
But you have to start thinking very early on about the impacts of what you do to the big picture. And the sooner you can make the connection, the easier that transition is and the longer you hold on it, because there's just kind of like this cool bravado of like I'm a tactician and it sounds really cool and I just want to fly the airplane and I only care about the big picture. Well, when the time comes, you get promoted and you probably will.
It was really clear the ones who never really thought about what they were doing and how that fit in the larger world.
When you made that promotion, they all of a sudden you actually became highly incompetent at being a field officer because that's when you were starting and you were being outmaneuvered by guys who had been doing it since they were brand new officers.
Yeah, you know, what's really interesting about that is there are some people that have a personality and or skill set that is more suited to be a tactical officer. And there's some people that have a personality and skill set that is more suited to be a field grade officer or a strategic thinker that's actually causing companies to.
You know, I've worked with companies where the CEO that got that company from whatever position, you know, got got them to go public or got them perched or poised to go public.
As soon as they're going public, that guy's out of there or maybe even before they go public, because this guy, he's good at making things happy, dynamic, but he's not polished. He's not clean. He can't brief up the chain of command. Well, he doesn't articulate himself at the next level because some people can flow from talking to a platoon like, listen, Ed, this was going on like you can be in that mode and you can walk, turn around and talk to give the general a brief on what the impact on the cultural moment or the civilian population and all those things some people can do.
Both some people do want, some people do the other. And it's very interesting.
It's very interesting because you might not make it to field grade officer, even though you might be you might be good at it, but you just don't have the you just don't have it, you know, you just don't have it. So think about that when you're working with, you know, when you when you got people, subordinates that you're working with, you might have somebody that's not maybe the best tactical leader.
Are they can they do the job? You know what I mean? Look, they might not be able to do. They might not be the best at it, but maybe they can get through that job and they can do a good job as that at the next level up.
And some people, they might be incredible at getting after it in the field, and you can't let them brief the brief, the boss, because they're going to mess it up, you know, so so the good thing is if you're if you're one of these humans out there, if you're one of these potential leaders, think about where you are and think about modulating your personality, depending.
I can promise you if you watched me debrief a SEAL platoon. And then you watch me brief the secretary of the Navy, the those two guys, like the Venn diagram overlap was pretty small.
If you were just to take the words that I said, just a manuscript or whatever transcript of what I said, the core things that I said, the the I wasn't saying anything different.
I wasn't saying I wasn't giving I wasn't lying to the big boss and I wasn't lying to the troops.
But the the method of delivery was different because talking to a different audience who understands things differently. Good thing to think about and do a couple of these here trial by fire. Trial by fire. There's there's incredible stories inside these books about what men do and they're definitely worth look at this is another one from where we read one from this last time. This is from the the battle of the A2 Island, which is those Aleutian Islands up in Alaska fighting the Japanese.
This is a citation.
The company, led by Captain Thomas B. O'Donnell, was thrown into confusion by the strafing of hostile airplanes while it was forming to attack under heavy enemy ground, small arms fire. Seeing the immediate need, Captain O'Donnell moved from his squad from squad to squad, restoring order, and then led his men to the assault during which he received a severe wound in the neck and shoulder and was evacuated three days later, upon hearing that his company was again scheduled to make an attack, he insisted upon returning to the fight, although weak and suffering severe pain from his wounds.
He led his company in attacks on the enemy until five days later, when he was mortally wounded while moving about in advance positions encouraging his men.
One of the one of the one of the lessons that I taught specifically, I taught it to a whole bunch of people, but the first time I remember teaching it, someone was to was to Seth Stone, the Delta platoon commander, who, you know, when you're doing immediate action drills, there's there's standard operating procedures and you follow you follow those standard operating procedures.
And he would you know, he would follow what the rules were.
And if that meant that he was going to his next position that he was supposed to go to, according to the standard operating procedures, was behind a berm where he couldn't see anything. That's where he was going.
And, you know, I just said, hey, man, why are you going there? You know, because this is where we're supposed to go. I said, can you see anything?
No. Can you make a call? No. Can you can you lead your men? No. OK, move. Move around. Go see what you've got to see. You can move around you.
You don't hit you don't you can't break the soapies. There's a difference. Right. You can't break the stops, but you don't have to follow them perfectly. So there's a big difference.
Breaking the stops means you get out of your lane and now you can get shot by friendly fire. Not following the stops means you're staying within the confines of the rules, but you're still moving around and telling people what to do. And you can imagine this is a perfect example of what this whole thing started off with, which is, look, this guy, in order to get his troops to go, he had to personally get out there. And and, you know, why would you risk your life doing to if that's what it says, encourages men, why would you risk your life to encourage your men?
You know why? Because if you don't do that, your men are going anywhere. That's the breaking the inertia you talked about at the beginning. If you don't do that as a leader, you're going to sit there and you're going to you're going to eventually you're going to get rolled. You're all going to die in that position. You cannot stay there. But the path of least resistance that human nature is, I like this foxhole. It's going to hang out down here.
This is good for me. And he's like, no, we can't stay here. And leadership is the only thing that gets people to see that. That that is that those are the times you have to lead from the front. You've got to make things happen, doubling in brass and I have no idea I don't know if there's some weird 1940s idiom that I don't know about.
But this the title section is doubling in Brass Citation 37, Division New Georgia, while Private Blair F. Herts was performing his duties with the maintenance section in the vicinity of the unit ration dump, they were attacked by Japs who had surrounded them. He grabbed a bar and advanced on a Jap machine gun that was delivering intense, accurate and extremely effective fire into the dump. Private Hertz was able to silence this machine gun and then continue to aid aggressively in the defense of the position until reinforcements arrived.
Just getting after it, just in the rear, getting after it won. The citation starts with a private, you know you know, this is going to be a good one. You know, he got some. Yeah. You know, what's too bad is, you know, in the Navy, you have rates where you can tell what the guy's job was. This guy's just a private. But, you know, his job was probably, you know, while he says his duties with the maintenance section.
So this guy was changing oil in vehicles or something. And then all of a sudden he's grabbing a bar and just getting some.
Here we go. Dichotomy of leadership. Oh, no, sorry. The section called that. It's called something else. It's called Be Brave Intelligently.
This is a weird one to read. Lieutenant Colonel R.E. O'Brien, cavalry observer with the Fifth Army in Italy, a prisoner of war, a German light machine gunner asked an interrogator whether Americans took stimulants to make them foolishly brave. When asked to explain what he meant, he stated that he and an assistant gunner were in position with a good field of fire.
One afternoon, when a group of American soldiers was observed approaching, he fired several short bursts and began preparation to displace to the rear when he saw the American soldiers rise to full height and start charging toward his position. Over one hundred yards away, he reloaded his gun and opened fire, killing 11 men.
He then withdrew because he was sure the charge was made to conceal an envelopment, but none was made.
Unit commanders found it necessary to direct their men to make full use of concealment and covert approach, continued emphasis on the necessity for dispersion and the use of cover and concealment is essential. So this is what we don't want to have happen. We don't want people to be so brave that you charge over an open area, a machine gun nest. And the comment here says, In the interest of efficiency, bravery must be supplemented by brain work.
Dead heroes are of little further use to their units, aggressive fighting men trained to apply the most efficient technique to combat problems, willing to accept any necessary risks and conscientiously avoiding unnecessary risks are the backbone of the army.
Got to be brave, but you've got to be smart.
There's the dichotomy, who's the original original statement on that was brave but foolhardy, brave enough foolhardy combat in towns as major campaigns develop in Western Europe, combat in towns assumes increasing importance.
Cities, towns and villages control the established road network, which must be open for the movement of guns, heavy equipment and supplies necessary to support the advance of infantry combat in towns will often be the key not only to our successful advance but to successful defensive actions.
Just talking about Mount in 1944.
Attack of towns. Captain Harrison Harrison, Parachute Infantry, Italy, the theory of attack of a small town or village is to work groups around the flanks, cut the retreat and move in with patrols in this country. However, we have found that where there is any high ground behind the town which dominates both the town and the line of retreat, the best way is to work the entire force around the town undercover, seize the high ground in the rear and firmly establish ourselves with 60 millimeter mortars on that dominating high ground.
We take enough food and ammunition for the last 24 hours and the Germans usually pull out during this time. From our position, we can prevent reinforcement and inflict heavy losses on them during their withdrawal. So we're flanking people and we're taking highground. I didn't think of anything new. I didn't think of anything new. Lieutenant Colonel L.G. Frieman, Parachute Infantry Battalion commander in Italy, we learned at Alta Vista to avoid the direct attack of towns, it's too costly.
We now work around to the rear with a large force and sees the dominating ground in the rear. We did this at Kallo Muchea Fanelli and several other places, the names of which I've forgotten. I like you just forgetting major battles that you've had. It worked every time you get yourself within 60 millimeter mortar range of the town on dominating terrain in or near it, the Germans won't stay in it.
And then it says this here's the comment, I like these comments, the fact that the Germans have been known to withdraw without a fight from towns in the rear of which we hold the dominating terrain does not necessarily mean that such will invariably be the rule.
However, this possibility, plus the fact the seizure of such high ground will greatly facilitate any subsequent attack on the town proper suggests that commanders should give serious consideration to these tactics where the terrain permits and also should be remembered that if such high ground is held by the enemy, our attack on the town proper will invariably be costly and the town itself untenable.
That's how important high ground is. And planning the attack of a town proper, the following considerations should be borne in mind, one reduced observation and limited fields of fire in place.
Of heavier stress on close combat, so you are going to get some too controlling of attacking troops will be difficult and much depends on individual initiative and aggressiveness of small unit leaders.
So there you go.
Where we we we opened up talking about how you better follow all these orders. And now we're on page eight and we're talking about, hey, you know what? It depends on the initiative of initiative and aggressiveness of small unit leaders making things happen where possible town should be bypassed, isolated and attacked from the flanks or the rear.
Why are we even attacking this position if we don't have to roll around it?
Imagine if you made that part of your everyday sort of scheme of maneuver. I can beat my head against this wall or I can walk around it. It seems like a good idea. At least it seems like a good idea to me, I don't know, echos over there shaking his head. I can tell you a lot of times when you say every, you know, you use those what you call those words that are real, like real permanent.
Yeah, I like to do that in every thing. You know, every time you say that, I think it's triggered.
I did I took some I took some heat off of it by saying it seems like, yeah, that would be a good thing to do. And part of your everyday plan.
Yeah. Yeah. Then that's what kind of triggered me though to think like of all the things that it probably maybe wouldn't work. Yeah, I don't know.
Would you treat your workouts like that when you sidestep this workout, maybe flank it.
You're on dangerous ground right now is going at it. You're potentially right about about then.
I'm just saying usually when it comes to workouts, I'm going to smash the workout. Let's face it.
You know, I'm gonna go head on full frontal assault. Yes, sir.
Well, I would think so anyway. Unless let me guess, it depends on what you mean by flank. Like, I guess you could flank your initial feelings about the income and workout if you don't feel like doing it, you know, you could maybe maneuver that way. Maybe, but yeah, maybe. Maybe not.
I don't know, maybe just direct assault, workout, smash it, get it done. I like it. There are times, there are times.
So maybe not everything in life, you know, maybe not everything.
Yeah. But maybe if you're dealing with other people it's a good call. That could be the case of this section here.
Start talking about like how you actually clear towns that it goes through and then it gets to a point where it starts just telling the comments about the story. So I'm not going to dump into the story. You're not going to go deep into the story here, but just some of the comments here about the defense of a town, the defense of a town must be prepared to meet the methods of attack which may be employed by the enemy, since this must include the possibility of flanking attacks and encirclement.
It follows that an all around defense must be the rule. The following points not covered in the experience quoted above, which is the one that I didn't read, which why you should read these things yourself should be borne in mind in planning the defense of a town.
One, avoid, if possible, placing principle centers of resistance close to landmarks or at the edge of a town where the enemy adjustment of artillery or mortar fire will be facilitated, positions either outside or within the town should be chosen.
And I read this whole section to to read this. And it's something that we talked about the other day on Heff online. And I know you were if you were on the call and I talked about don't give away your position. Yes. Yeah, totally.
I went into the whole a whole explanation of not giving away your position.
And it's it's a weird thing to talk about because it seems real sneaky, right?
It seems real like. Oh, it seems real sneaky, especially when people love so much to talk about, like being transparent.
Yeah, but here's the deal. If you have an idea, Dave and I have my own idea.
If I just put my stake in the ground and say my idea is this, I'm giving away my position now, if we were going to go attack a an enemy outpost, I would do everything I possibly could to avoid giving away my position because once I give away my position.
Well, now you know where to attack me on. So what I would rather do is listen to what you have to say here.
Let let me understand what your position is, because then it allows me to maneuver and change my position.
And also, if you're on offensive person and your ego is out of control, as soon as you see my position, get to guess what you're going to do, attack it. So I gave you my position. Now you're going to attack it. Now, what do I do then? Dig in now.
What do we have? A standoff. We have extra casualties we don't need. So why am I giving away my position when I'm having a conversation?
And this is it's one of those things.
It sounds so manipulative. Right.
But then I took a little bit further on the phone line. I said, this is the fax.
The reason I don't give away my position is because I don't actually have one.
I'm not rolling in there thinking that I know everything.
I'm thinking I may have some ideas that could be you might be able to calculate an estimate, approximate where I am, but I'm not going to go in there and say, Dave, I believe this because not just because I want to hide it from you.
That's not why. It's because I actually question my own beliefs. I actually am not looking at you thinking I know the best thing to do. I've got some ideas, but you can't lock down my position because I'm not going to stay there. I'm not taking it.
Being transparent about this authenticity doesn't have to be in opposition to what we just described, either being transparent could be, hey, I'm going to I'm going have a conversation to tell you a whole bunch of things that I'm thinking about that are things for you to consider as well.
For me, maybe thinking what I don't want to do is sit here and go, hey, you've mentioned three things that I really feel like I want to give you feedback on, but I don't want to tell you those things. For whatever reason, being transparent is not the same as digging your heels in those. The authenticity of that.
There's this you would know this echo. Sure. There's the social media thing where like somebody says some statement, it's like a meme. And then it says, prove me wrong. It'll say, like Martians colonize the moon, prove me wrong or louder with crowd or whatever.
I don't I should know more about it. I know enough. But there's this little thing. What kind of underneath that is this idea? Like, you're not going to change my mind. I know that you are not going to change my mind. I'm being fully transparent here. This idea of transparency doesn't have to be the opposite of what you just described. You can be fully transparent.
And if I actually my relationship is strong enough with you, you know what you're going to do when I'm being transparent, you're going to listen to me and then you're going to come back with some things. Oh, that's a good point. And then actually together, what will happen is we'll come up with the right plan and then we'll go execute.
It would be awesome. Yeah. The idea of not giving away your position, you don't give it away, not because you can't because you're hiding it. It's because you truly don't know. You don't lock yourself into it. Yeah. So I'm not walking into conversations. I know I know what to do, not doing that.
And if if you're in a leadership role, if you're in an actual leadership role, how much do you think your people really want to engage with you? If you announce your position out of the gate, you're like, what's the chances of them giving you great feedback?
Transparent. Yeah. What's yeah. How does that encourage transparency from the troops answer.
It doesn't. Well and if it does. Hey Dave, that sounds like a great idea. I fully support your idea.
You're so smart. Yeah. Which is the last thing you want as a leader to be told how smart you are by your subordinates. You want to be told, hey, I don't agree with you.
Oh, great. Tell me why. Where practicable form salience by organizing outlying buildings to cover perimeter of town with flanking and enfilade fire, I had to look up the word salience because I didn't know what it meant.
It's like a little projection that's sticking out of the battle line to you in order to get a little better cover. You can you can take an outlying building and you can set up a kind of a fort there.
The noun assailant.
Yeah, form salience because there's a word salient, right? Yeah. It means like significant or what does that mean.
I think it's like a clear point. Yeah. Which is the other is the same thing. Right.
A clear point. Well here I am making this attack a project is a point, something that sticks out. That was the salient point. Meaning. Oh yeah.
That was a good point. I understand what you said. Oh we built a salian out there.
It's a little point where we've got the solid coverage, kind of like monolithic kind of thing. Do Yeah. I guess kind of kind of the same deal.
Like it isn't a monolith, which is the noun version of a monolithic kind of thing.
Yes, there are all kinds of words that are based on other words, hey, I'm just trying to understand the whole deal and everyone's while Echo says something.
And then once he says that, he writes down a little note and that means he's going to go back and edit himself out, I don't know if that made the list. I think he's going to hold and I think he's going strong.
No way that it'll probably help some people as far as far as salient and salience goes.
Yeah. And also help people realize that there are multiple versions of the same words in the world. Yes, it's true.
I'm a jerk.
That too, in addition to a central reserve within the town, provide, if possible, for a concealed mobile reserve, preferably strong in armor to be held outside the town to counter enemy flanking maneuver. And once again, what is the route of that right there? Don't give away your position. The route of it is, hey, hide this element, which is smart, keep it mobile.
Wherever adjacent terrain features dominate the town, they should be secured. Obviously, this use of high ground may be key to successful defense. That's funny. They say dominant terrain and they just call it high ground within the town. The construction of street obstacles or barricades to impede enemy movements and the organization of groups of buildings into strong points should be carried out as extensively as time available will permit strengthen your defenses in delaying actions. The defensive use of towns will prevent the attacker from determining the strength of the opposing of the forces opposing him.
It is not normally advisable to organize a town as an isolated, strong point except under terrain conditions which prevent the enemy bypassing it. So don't stick a town out there on its own. Don't stick anyone out there on their own unless the terrain allows it.
So then there's a I didn't cover one of these one of these sections, but this one, when I started reading it and as I read through it, I said to myself, this is such a great example of simplicity and the way this this battalion attack happens and then the way it gets debriefed is all very interesting.
So I'm going to burn through this real quick mission. Is the battalion attack in Italy mission? Lieutenant Colonel Earl Taylor, Infantry Battalion commander in Italy all October. On 11 October, my battalion was ordered to make a night march passed through the 2nd Battalion, which was about three miles east of the Italian town of Guardia, north of the Columbia River, and seize the high ground in the vicinity of Gardea. We were then to continue the advance.
Contact as we approach Guardia, our leading company, made contact with the enemy at a and there's a sketch that they go through this they developed with one platoon was stopped by heavy machine gun and direct 88 millimeter fire from point F d and was unable to advance. I immediately moved to the high ground. So basically they get into a big gunfight and they can't they can't move forward. And here's here's what I like. I immediately moved to the high ground two hundred yards north where I could observe the enemy position.
So right now we have observed happening getting on the high ground. Love that. Observe. What's he doing? Why is he observing? Well, because he's got to figure out what to do now. He gets up in this observation position and he says the enemy had all of the high ground to the front. And I could see it would be impossible to advance frontally. So what does that mean now he's orienting himself to the situation or the enemy's got all this high ground up here?
I can't advance friendly, so I'm willing to do so.
I decided to make a double envelopment sending Company I over the hill to the right and communicate on a wide left. Envelopment contact was to be maintained visually. So there's the action. It's actually happening.
So he goes through the loop in like four sentences, which is totally legit to base of fire.
Five tanks were available for the attack, realizing that the tanks could not move down the road to Guardia, which is the only tank approach due to the streams and high mountains. And because the enemy had AIDS in armored cars, that if I decided to place the tanks along with my eight heavy machine guns and six 81 millimeter mortars as shown in the sketch results, the attack was successful by order.
The tanks and other supporting weapons opened fire five minutes before company Al started its advance. That is called cover and move. We got tanks in and supporting weapons firing and then company Al starts their move. After five minutes, 15 prisoners were captured. Twenty five enemy killed.
Our casualties were approximate, 10 killed and 15 wounded.
Which when you think about the assault on a you know, in an urban environment, you're going to take some casualties. And those are certainly certainly some casualties. But those are. Not as bad as you might imagine going into a city when you consider the fact that if you don't know anything about urban combat, one enemy with a machine gun can kill dozens and dozens of troops. The enemy strength as determined from prisoners, was to rifle companies, each reinforced, supported by tanks, armored cars and eighty-eight along the road, these prisoners stated that their force was so completely disorganized and demoralized by our volume of fire, that scheme of attack that was impossible for them to make a counterattack and regain their positions planning.
It took about two hours to make plans for this attack, which was very carefully studied, planned and coordinated. It's funny, sometimes the U.S. military spends months making plans for an attack. And and he saying this took two hours, but it was carefully studied, planned and coordinated. That's what he needed was a solid two hours. It effectively you do not realize the terrain features. Every weapon available to the battalion was used in such an attack. Maps must be prearrange with critical points and phase lines.
Once the attack has started, the basic plan cannot be changed. It must succeed. That's an interesting statement and the word that I understand was basic. You're nodding your head, Dave, like, yeah, my immediate reaction is must not be change.
I get the sense that, like, well, that's that. But yeah, you're right, the basic plan base, it doesn't say we can't change. So rather than sort of get all excited that he says he can't change, the thing is to. He's right. Yeah. Especially at night.
And when you look at this whole situation, you actually want to limit the amount of replanning a record. You want to limit a lot of things now, not the individual actions of the teams of maneuvering and things like that, and let them make the adjustments. But you don't want one element to go. You know what? Let's cancel the envelopment and just do something different and abandon your part of the plan. You actually can't do that. So you actually need to keep the basic plan that that clarity actually made a lot of sense.
Yeah, that one word.
Yeah, that one word makes a big difference when you start thinking about what they're doing, you've got, what is it, eight heavy machine guns since those guys are doing a fire, a fire mission on this town for five minutes before you enter the town. That's coordination. You can't start thinking, well, you know, I think I'm going to go earlier.
Whatever it is, your basic plan, you got to stick with that basic. But then I this is something that I lived by.
If I if it was possible to stick with the basic plan, I was sticking with the basic plan, like it would have to be something really now we would have a contingency plan. Hey, but if I could avoid using the contingency plan, I would stick with the basic plan that we had. We rehearsed and we would rehearse the contingency, too. But people expect what they're going to be doing. We had the exact same philosophy. We had contingency plans.
But the part of that that made that possible is our plans were usually really fluid, some key limits.
You had some limiting decisions inside there, but our plans weren't hyper detailed and super down to the. So you could stick to the basic plan. We used just a joke. Stick to the plan. That was what we always said. Like, what did you have to stick to the plan? That didn't mean you don't think you don't make changes. But the idea that what we planned and how we coordinated stick to that and then make smart decisions along the way to reinforce that as opposed to you get halfway there and then, hey, you know, we should do we should come up with a new plan, like there's no time to come up with any plan.
Once you cross the line of departure, you kind of need to stick to the plan. The basic plan, which also drove our plans to be basic. We had very basic big picture plans. Yeah, simple and flexible.
If, you know, if the three of us were going to go and take down a building and we say, OK, here's the way it's going to go, once we get to the front door echo, you're going to open the door, Dave. You're going to go left. I'm going to go right. And then I go, you're going to go left. And we go, OK. And we rehearse that ten times.
I promise you that as we approach that building, there's going to be a civilian in the front yard that is going to have to deal with. And all of a sudden the whole plan is out the window.
So you can't go to that level of detail and you definitely need to have flexibility there. But the basic plan of how we're going to approach a building, totally, that's not going to change because we know where the fire support is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Estimating the situation and planning should be emphasized in training comment, and this is what I found this interesting to this account is a good example of Ffion movement on the battalion.
I have no idea. I guess I guess I got it from Roger Heyden. Why I why I used the term cover move instead of fire and movement because of the same thing. But I same thing. Cover, move and find movement are the same thing. This account, at least as far as I know it is. Am I, am I missing something. I don't think so. We use the term fire maneuver. Yeah, that was the one element mouz one element covers and I think it's anonymous.
Yeah. Yeah.
However, it should be pointed out that a double envelopment is a rather ambitious scheme of maneuver for a single battalion and should be used with caution.
And I loved seeing that because what you're talking about, Echo Charles, is you're talking about a double involvement. You're basically surrounding a target, which means you got good guys on the flanks of bad guys. And if you start shooting at the bad guys in the middle, you can shoot yourself. And it's really problematic. The thing about this, and there would be occasional SEAL platoons, it would go, yeah, we're to we're going to just surround the target.
It works when nothing goes wrong. It works when the enemy doesn't start shooting. It works if you have on the positive side, it works. If you have a terrain feature that prevents friendly fire, which is possible, you can have a ravine that allows you to be in a certain position.
But when you when you do these battalion sized operations, you're actually getting out of the you should be moving outside the range of your own weapons, which is what the goal is. Right. You know, we're really far away. And and as long as we are shooting our weapons at the enemy, there's a very small chance that our weapons are going to hit our friendly forces.
So be very careful about double envelopment. And same thing with go into an enemy's rear. Like, if you're going to do that, well, then you've got to pay attention to how that's going to work out. It is a lot harder than it looks.
No mention is made of the constitution of a reserve force. Such a reserve must be retained under the control of the commander to enable to counter unforeseen enemy reaction as the attack progresses. Troops committed to a plan of action cannot be considered as available for this purpose.
The division of the battalion into into approximately three equal attack forces is open to criticism, but it worked. In this case.
A scheme of maneuver should include a determined determination of the direction of the main effort, and the preponderance of the force should be available to support this effort. Here's an interesting story.
So one of the great tactical lessons learned of my life, which I learned in training when you were so we would set up, you know, to to do target assaults. Typical is any Army manual, any any Marine Corps manual for how you do a targeted assault. You know, you set up a base element and a maneuver element. So the base element is going to engage the target. It gets in position and it shoots at the target. Once it's shot at the target for a certain amount of time, the assault element then gets up and maneuvers towards the target.
When they get to a certain point, the people shooting at the target shift fire off the target, but they keep shooting and eventually they move. The assault team moves through the target. And I was watching a young junior officer. I was in training at SEAL Team one and he he said, OK, what we're going to do is for our base element that's going to do all the shooting at the target area. What we're going to do is we're going to take our machine gunners from the other from the assault element who has to move where to move the machine gunners into the base.
I'm going to take some of the rifleman and put them in the assault element so they can move easier. They can get through the target. And I said I was thinking to myself, that's pretty smart. Smart guy is going to get a really strong base element.
Vietnam vet said, what are you doing? He said, well, you know, you know, Master Chief, I'm going to go ahead and put heavier, stronger base over here and the machine gun down and put on my machine guns over in the base helmet. And I'm like, I can already tell, I'm glad I wasn't coming up with this plan, but why is that? You know, he says, well, because I want to have more machine guns.
I want have more firepower in my base element. And then the machine in one question said, what happens if the assault element gets compromised on the way in? End of discussion, because now we don't have any machine guns, and by the way, what should happen is if we have machine guns and the assault element, the assault element just became the base element. That's what just happened.
So and the thing that the other lesson that I learned from that was that what you really get to do, the other benefit, which I actually would say is an even bigger benefit, is we have unit integrity, which I love, unit integrity, that squad or that platoons always working together, the machine gunners there, they can break off, they can assault things.
They can do they can do all kinds of things where when you pull those machine gunners out, they're not they're way less capable.
So apply that to your business, to your team. How do we keep the teams together? How do we keep the teams together? How do we keep them both? How do we keep the most capable?
That's what we want to do. Setting up a little specialty moments is a risky call, factors contributing to the success in this attack were prompt estimate of the situation by the commander, including a study the terrain based on personal reconnaissance, development of a definite plan of maneuver, based on the seizure of key terrain and outflanking enemy positions, detailed planning of specific orders, utilisation of maximum firepower where available, maintenance of control over the elements.
A little section here on fighting in wooded terrain, Lieutenant Colonel F.L. Walker, Infantry Battalion Commander Eataly, the area in which my battalion operated, was covered in thick scrub trees and fruit orchards, interspersed with frequent farmhouses, many stone walls, six to eight feet in height and numerous sunken roads. Field of fire was greatly restricted. Average observation was only 50 to 100 yards. Enemy delaying groups with machine guns were widely scattered and impossible to locate until arrival within one hundred yards or less.
It was found necessary to place heavy weapons out in the front line or very close up to avoid hitting our troops after encountering hostile fire. It was found very effective to spray the entire woods ahead with a massive concentration of mortar machine gunfire for about one minute, followed by a rapid advance of rifle platoons under assault fire to cover all the trees and house windows where snipers might be hiding. In each case, Germans pulled out rapidly, leaving weapons and ammunition behind, although we had been unable to locate them previously.
However, the tendency of troops is to wait for definitely located targets before they will open fire, which results in allowing very small groups of enemy to shift position frequently and keep up a demoralizing rate of machine gun fire to cause a great delay. The continuous rapid fire delivered by our heavy machine guns had a particularly demoralizing effect on the Germans. The remarks of this battalion commander emphasized the importance of Biraj covering fire, the firepower of available weapons in this instance substitute for an artillery barrage, but the principle remains the same.
Cover and move losses will be minimized by following closely the massed fires of available weapons delivered in areas from which enemy fire is expected. I think the enemy might be there on putting rounds into it.
And isn't it interesting how that one dynamic think about that learned that lesson, learned of realizing, hey, what we need to do is lay down heavy fire wherever we think there might be enemy and push forward as quickly as we can.
Think about that, let's think about the first time it happens, the first time it happened. Where are they? Where are they? No one shooting.
And then someone goes, hey, put down a fire and advance a guy start laying down fire and they start laying down fire, whether you think there's enemy and then that allows you to get the enemy's heads down because they are somewhere out there and you get their heads down and now you're maneuvering. And when you're maneuvering, they're not and now you win. But can you imagine that that's a little bit off of our instinct, right? As a human, if you don't if you don't if you don't get trained that way, your instinct is not, hey, I'm just going to shoot where I think there's bad guys.
I'm going to shoot in that little dark corner over there. I'm going to shoot that window over there. I'm going to shoot near that stone wall over there. You haven't seen one enemy, but that's where you're shooting. And now you have a whole company of soldiers doing that. That's a lot of firepower going downrange.
And it allows you to move because somewhere in one of those positions, there was enemy. But think about what it took to learn that lesson and how valuable that lesson right there is to be able to tell people. And it also talks about the importance of speed, which is the next note, regimental commander, infantry, Sicily. I believe that the individual soldier now realizes that a relentless, steady advance saves casualties and that he is now imbued with the knowledge of the importance of speed.
Every man in this regiment is firmly convinced that the speed of our recent operations saved us from huge losses down to the lowest private. The feeling exists that we would still be at Casady.
If we had not pushed the enemy off balance and kept them that way. You know, how often are we sitting there waiting for the perfect plan, the perfect whatever, when what we should be doing is moving? Right, you you want to just bring this down to working out Echo Charles, since that seems to be your main topic for the day. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So but let's look at two options.
One. All right. One of you is I'm going to go research on the Internet. You know what the Mac's name under load I need to do for this particular workout. Right. Or time under tension. All right. But come up with my periodic periodicity for me, period.
Is the Asian popularisation for my workouts. Right. All these things that you could spend two hours researching and then writing and mapping out or you could go do a bunch of cleaning jerks, just go.
There is an advantage to doing green on jerks. Look, I'm not saying you got to be an idiot. No, no.
But there are some some positive things to just going and keeping moving and firing where you think it might.
Hey, I don't know about the the. The. The internal bicep had or whatever, the brachial head of the bicep, which I know you probably got some little high tuned exercise in short hand.
Yeah, there you go. So you do certain types of curls with the easy bar to hit that target, right? Yeah. Whereas you could just say, hey, let's face it, go do some curls, right? Yeah.
Yeah, actually you're right. I actually agree with you. Hundred percent. I agree with that philosophy in working out. Yeah. I mean there's a couple of things you want to know otherwise you just kind of, you know, moving around with no specific direction which, you know, teach their own.
But yeah, I think that actually is a very good analogy. You know, you sort out what am I trying to do here? Um, get a few basic methods, try, you know, how to achieve it in this goal, especially when you start coupling that attitude with the fact that we don't want to move in the first place.
Right. That inertia is we're just trying to stay still. And now we can we can we can focus on that by just doing a bunch of planning.
Like, I'm just waiting to see the bad guys are just waiting.
No freaking lay down fire. That's that's the way you wake up in the morning. You wake up in the morning saying, I'm going to put down fire.
That's what I do. It's a good plan. Yeah, very good plan.
Yeah, you're right about that too. You you're like, oh, wait, wait, wait. Let me try to remember what I was going to do today and be like, well, I should maybe I should do this because tomorrow I'm going to do this. So maybe I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't do it that hard or in, you know, and you've spent all this time and then it's like, well, shoot, if I do the whole workout now shoot.
Dinner's like in like forty five minutes. So maybe I should. I don't know, it just depends on when you work out I guess you know, not in your case for sure. I gave you breakfast or whatever but yeah.
Then you're like oh that's forty five minutes. That only gives me like ten minutes to like or one minute to warm up and maybe mean I might as well just do this tomorrow. That way I could get the whole thing done. You said. I'm saying then. Yeah but all that planning not only did it, not a lot of that not mattered.
While weakness is winning in your body, meanwhile Ignis is winning men and then there's that to avoid. Yeah.
Is that I think it was you who talked about, I don't know, whatever but yeah when you let the weakness creep in you give that weakness a precedent, you know. So the, the weakness is sort of like oh yeah. I approved my, my, my, my presents kind of thing.
I was talking about this on the F on line the other day. I, I've been doing this lately in my head so and I haven't quite figured out what this means, but I know it's been very functional when you have like an option of doing a bad thing or just not doing the bad thing.
That reaction of just not doing the bad thing isn't strong enough. I've actually been trying to do something good. Does that make sense?
I think let me explain to get an example. Oh, there's a doughnut over there. You know what? I'm not going to eat the doughnut.
That's not strong enough. Not only am I not going to eat the doughnut, I'm actually going to go and do 20 Barbies. Yeah. And know it doesn't even have to be extreme because guess what, you're working or whatever you guys want to have. No, no, no. I'm not going to eat that doughnut. And I'm going to do I'm going to go and get my desk cleared off right now, kind of stop doing something actually proactive to crush to crush that weakness.
Just weakness that's wanting to grab it.
Just it's like if you it's like, you know, if I says, hey, I go hecho you you you want to you want to come by my house and and grill up some steaks and let's say you don't really feel like doing it until you're like, well you know what I mean, I'm going to pressure you.
But if you're like negative I'm already doing something. I'm like, OK, that case closed. Right. Case closed. You already won. So I'm just saying going a little bit harder at the weakness. Yeah, a little trend I'm in right now.
Yeah. And that and that works. I mean, it depends what you mean by works, but that's a good move. That's like, you know, like yeah.
I'm about to like OK, have, I have burping at the end of this workout I finish the work a workout with Honeydripper.
We'll say I'll be like man now workout is pretty solid. You know, I don't know about this, but, you know, we'll do this work is another time.
We're going to skip the burping is what we're going to do. Then it comes time to skip the party like, you know, hundred fifty or two hundred number just for thinking that, you know, you're going hard on weakness. Yes, that's a positive. I think you're right. I'm going to start like this. This ties in for me. I'm gonna start laying down fire.
If I start being even more proactive, I start seeing weakness. I'm laying down fire. I'm putting my foot in some mortar rounds of that stuff immediately. Would you write down, Dave?
I think we went so far away from whatever I'm sure I can bring us back. We're talking about burping and bisexuals, bro.
You talked about bias before, so actually it might be a connection if we think about it for second. You were talking about well, you actually weren't talking about bias.
I had the word bias in my mind when we had a plan. Hey, we're going to go in the building. You're gonna go to the east stairwell, you're going to go to the west. And, hey, we that might happen. We might have to do something different.
We used to brief going on missions, these general missions, like, hey, all things being equal, I want you to bias to the south.
And if we get additional pressure, you're going to be that element of bias is to the south. Now, look, something may come up or you can't do that. And that's fine. You may go to the north. Gordon, let me know. But our plan is that all things being equal, we're going to bias in this direction, which allows me to keep my plans. Like, really, General?
Yeah, that's about as general as it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's great and it's but it's, it's not completely like out in nowhere where you don't have some idea, but it's like these are the things we are anticipating and all things being equal.
I want you were, you were we were talking about the, the inertia thing which is kind of bugged me from the beginning. But I actually was thinking about as you were saying, it is you know, he's talking about like the laws of physics, whereas objects at rest tend to stay at rest and objects in motion tend to stay in motion. And the hard part is getting the the staying at rest and getting it to the motion. Like once you get the motion going, actually, it's not that hard to keep it going.
It's the friction of doing nothing. And it's that connection, you know, like you said, I know he didn't invent it, but this idea of default aggressive, this bias for doing something is the hardest thing to get, which is the natural bias of doing something. And when you made that comment about when I see weakness, where I feel weakness, the natural bias is, oh, no, I'm not going to give in to that weakness.
I'm going to do nothing, which everyone is like, that's the win. And you're like, no, actually, that's not the win. The win is not to do nothing.
Now, is it better than eating a donut? Yes, but we're not here to just not eat donuts. That's not the game we're playing over here. The game we're playing is just not to eat the donuts. And he started the very first thing is leadership versus inertia. It's that how hard is it to get the movement to do something? But once you have that bias, that bias to maneuver and that starts, it's not that hard. It's actually gets easier every single time.
So that's my connection to things you were saying. And yeah, I'm going to let you guys talk about what it is you talk about. But that's what I was thinking about. Is that what that bias really means to tie back to the very first thing that I kind of thought about was like what they talk about, because I just thinking inertia is movement. Inertia is not movement. It's just the state that you're in. Inertia could be doing nothing.
And that's what is breaking out of that. And the bias to. Move, which is the most challenging thing? Yeah, I talk about pushing a train, you know, and animals like a if you're going to push your train, the first getting that thing to start moving is the hardest part. And you start pushing, you push, you push, and it eventually starts to move a little bit. And then you get to a point. If you keep pushing that thing where you can actually, like, grab onto the railing and hang on for a second, it's just going to keep going.
You started it when you were talking about blasting a rocket ship out of here. Exactly. You can actually use 90 percent of your effort to get that in your you don't need nine percent. You can coast the rest of the way once you break free of that gravitational force of like, literally.
I'm just going to I'm just on the train now. Yeah. Now, look, if you can just jump on a speeding train, go for it. But most of us most people have to actually get that train from a dead stop and move it. Yeah.
You ever see those guys roll up a frying pan like a like a piece of paper kind of thing?
I think that's like the the method, really. Yeah. Like, you hit it like real hard of that initial and then it like heats up the molecules.
So it becomes more yeah. I'm not mistaken, unless I got tricked or something like that. It's one big trick.
But I'm pretty sure that the because it's always a strong man right there in it, like the weekend rolling up a frying pan. I'll tell you that. It's usually like a feat of strength.
I wonder if it's like you're seeming to bring it to some sort of molecular level.
We're not sure about the explanation for there. Like, this is the trick. This is how you do it.
You know what? I do not know if you're right and I do not know if you are wrong.
I'm going to just leave it hanging and people will let us know and we will get someone with a frying pan posting it and telling us, hey, I got Charles is one hundred percent right or Echo Charles, some of the most likely outcome of this is either of those it's Broo Echo talking about frying pans.
When we're talking about combat, that's the most likely concept and it's everywhere. There's only so much I can do to keep us on topic here. I'm just saying, if you can work with a frying pan, it's good and rocket ships and whatnot, it can work with like everyday stuff.
And I actually think Echo is the premier example in the world, premier example of in the world. In the entire world of.
If you know the way broadly you see it in all things, you're seeing combat in a frying pan.
Ideas are everywhere, but there is as far as feats of strength go, there's the ripping the phone book one. Right. I think there's a little trick. There's got to like unban Schumer bunch. But I think to your point is that that initial the initial break is the hard part is our energy source. We use technique real well.
OK, how it went was the curt, the rolling up of the frying pan, how how it's explained is you hit it with that first force of the rolling action, but you just can't like you can't hit one and then regroup and hit another one. It's not like that. You got to hit it once and just keep keep going.
Don't let the momentum stop because the molecules are still heated up for that moment, makes it more malleable or whatever.
That's how it was explained to me. We're going to look.
You're going out on a limb. I like it. You're like you got no problem taking risk. I like the way you will. Next one, the herd instinct. Major Robert Wilson, observer with the X Division. They don't name the division in Italy. Our troops echoes taking a note. Maybe he's concerned that's getting edited.
Oh, you're going strong. No good.
Our troops showed a decided tendency to bunch up under fire. This was observed on several occasions. One prisoner of war, a German forward observer for an eighty eight millimeter battery, was interrogated concerning his technique of adjustment. It seems he had been told that American troops congregated when under fire. When he saw American troops advancing, he would call for one or two rounds in their vicinity and observe the area where they congregated. Fire was then shifted to that area.
The prisoner stated that he conducted very effective firing this way in several occasions on it.
Italy don't bunch up, don't bunch up leadership strategy and tactics. Talked about this from a leadership perspective. Let the leader lead. You don't need to jump in there and crowd the leader. Everyone, let me tell you my opinion.
Let's listen to what the mass has to say. If you want some suggestions, give it to him. Don't crowd. Don't want up. Base of fire. Lieutenant Colonel Jam, fan infantry battalion commander. It was found that so long as Japs could keep us ducking from aimed fire, their position remained secure. But once the Jap was made to keep his head down, the Americans could get to his feet.
And attack was merely a matter of walking up to the position and tossing grenades to make this possible required the coordination of fires down to and including the rifleman. It is important that commanders and leaders realize this. Otherwise troops will remain down when it is not necessary. It's so amazing, it's so amazing cover moving teamwork down to the lowest level, yeah, and I just said teamwork and guess what?
The next section is called. And I did not look at this. The next section is teamwork. We would have a rifleman point down a pillbox using tracer ammunition than a thirty seven millimeter gun would take them under fire with high explosives. Oftentimes, a pillbox would attempt to evacuate to a safer place in the light machine gun would mow them down.
Isn't it interesting when we talk about teamwork and we talk about cover move, the reason that it is such an incredible metaphor is because if you don't cover and move, you don't win.
It's as simple as that.
If you don't have one element that's shooting at the Japanese while the other element is walking up. And if you don't do that, you lose. That's what happens. You lose. If you do that, you win. If you work together as a team, you win. Here's Lieutenant Colonel T.F. Bogarde, infantry officer Eataly, one night in the vicinity of Avelino, the battalion established an outpost line around the high ground to the northeast. The city patrols were ordered up, several roads leading out of the city.
All company commanders were informed of the dispositions. The patrols went out before the outposts were posted. A few hours later, firing was heard at the Battalion KTP, which increased in tempo and kept up most of the night. Soon, reports were sent that sent in that German patrols were operating in front of the outposts.
I'm sure you all know what's coming. Next morning, it became apparent that our own patrols had been fired on as they attempted to return to the outpost line comment. The constant recurrence of such reports indicates the necessity for closer coordination of patrol activity.
With the outpost of with the outpost system, positive steps must be taken to ensure that the roots of returning patrols are known to the outposts and that recognition signals are arranged blue on blue.
No one thinks it's going to happen. No one thinks it's going to happen. I never, never even thought about blue on blue, so it was like such a it seemed like such a I shouldn't say we never thought about it, but it seemed like such a foreign idea. You think, how could that ever happen the way no one ever thinks it's going to happen to them?
Well, they always know what happens, but it always happens to somebody else, some other teams, too. So it never happens to them.
I mean, even that comment is like the common occurrence or the common de-brief that we got on this thing, whatever he said, like how often they heard that same exact story. Notes from other arms, there's another one about just staying off the skyline, right, don't give away your position.
I just had to highlight this section about what it was like when they had anti-aircraft versus when they didn't have it. And the title of the section is Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder.
And what it was like and what he says in here is that the rarely with the anti-aircraft actually hit a German aircraft that was strafing them. You rarely happen. But when the anti-aircraft wasn't there, the German aircraft would just come down and just hammer free range.
Radio discipline, First Lieutenant C plays Air Corps Sicily, flyers coming into the combat zone had no conception of radio discipline. Dave.
Knew pilots use the radio indiscriminately. Men returning from missions use the interplaying radio unnecessarily, which jammed up the band for other planes still on a mission. Comment failure to observe radio discipline is a major problem for both air and ground units in combat, each individual believes his case is a special one, not bound by established rules. This tendency must be discouraged by positive action. Radio discipline is established to facilitate essential communications during combat and is not a peacetime plaything to be discarded when action is joined.
And this is this is task unit Bruiser. We were freaking awesome at radio discipline. We did not talk on the radio. In fact, there would be operations where some some task units might use two or even three separate radio nets to coordinate.
And in tasking a bruiser, we would use one and it would be almost completely silent.
So, yeah. And how does this translate into regular life? It's talking all the time. It's not having discipline.
What the hell you say? I'm just feeling like you got to throw in your two cents all the time. And yes, for those of you that aren't seeing this, I'm looking right at my friend Dacko Charles. Whatever.
Brautigan You know, when I talk, I think you anyway. I don't know. I could be wrong here. Maybe I'm trying to just support the point, you know, bring it down to the everyday level. Right on.
So I'm saying I think you have a lot of supporters out there, at least at this level. Yeah. Yeah. The radio discipline thing. Isn't it weird to this this idea that everyone in combat, each individual, believes his case is a special one? That's such a derogatory statement. And you know what's funny about that derogatory statement?
Everyone that hears it thinks they're talking about someone else, like that's not me, but it is you, you are talking and no one wants to hear you. And what you have to say isn't that important, that kind of like talking about your dreams with you?
I have no idea. You ever like to ever get your friend, but I guess tell you that I'm about to have an idea. Know if I could, you know, when your friend is like, hey, I had this dream last night and it was about and it's not about you or nothing, but it's is just the weirdest dream. Aren't you like, bro, who cares, you know? But if you ever find yourself telling whoever your dream, it's Oscar.
Yeah, it seems like it's so interesting. It was just so bizarre and all a stuff.
Meanwhile, the person is like to be quiet, you know, radio silence, resounding metaphore, complete and.
Captured documents, big section about. Upon searching the bodies, they found a map of the second lieutenant and dispatched immediately to the regimental command post by a runner. Next day, the translation of this map was returned to 1st Battalion that showed the Japanese defensive plan and proved very effective in eliminating Japanese from that area when they attacked.
It not only marked maps, but also documents of less apparent importance may furnish the key to enemy plans. When combined with other information, the necessity for prompt forwarding to higher headquarters of all captured documents must be impressed on all ranks.
And I'll tell you why I wanted to bring that up, because this is something we get told about Intel all the time is, you know, hey, look, you might find a piece of paper that's got the word purple on it and you bring that, you know, hey, this is what I found on target.
That could be some code word that you didn't know about it and you don't know.
So whenever you think you know you're wrong, whenever you think, oh, that doesn't mean anything, you're wrong. And so when someone is talking to you and you think, you know you're wrong, you don't know.
They've got some perspective that you don't know. So listen to it. Listen to it. I have to put myself in check sometimes when I'll get ask a question like working with a client and someone will give me a question, and I'm telling you, I have you I know you have to experience this to Dave. Someone someone raise their hand. Hey, I want to know when it comes to cover move. If I'm working with another department and they don't, we already know where that question is going.
Right. There's like a ninety eight percent chance that we know that they're going to say, hey, this other department doesn't care about me and they don't really support us. So what am I supposed to do then. Just keep what we've heard that question. We hear that question a lot. I always have to put myself in check because just because I think that's what they're going to say doesn't mean that's what they're going to say. It doesn't mean that there's not some nuance to it.
It doesn't mean that I can spit out some module about how you, you know.
Well, you continue to support. No, no, listen to what they're saying. Don't stop them from talking.
The minute I see this in group dynamics, you know, there's a discussion going on and someone's talking and someone else, someone else in the group will cut them off.
And this is another thing I talked about on phone online.
Think about how disrespectful it is to cut someone off, right, like you might not say anything to me, but if you're talking and I just jump in, cut you off and just just without regard, just to start, you cut you off. Think about how do you consider that disrespectful?
Yes, I do. Most people recognize that that is disrespectful. And so they try to stop themselves from doing it. They can't always control their egos.
They can't always, like, let it continue.
And I'll tell you, I think being on podcasts, have you ever noticed when two people that have podcasts are on the same podcast, they'll let the other person talk? And it's sort of let the person complete thoughts, because podcast is sort of an amplified version of if all of a sudden we're talking over each other, it's just painful to listen to. But then if you get someone that's not really a podcast type person or haven't hasn't done a lot of fun, they'll be jumping in and wanting to talk to and it makes it hard to listen to, so.
To me, I think that's that's enhanced my my my listening, right, because I if I have a guest on here and they want to talk, it's like, OK, I'm going to let them complete their sentence. And what I've realized over the years is that when I let someone do that, there's usually some nuggets in there that I didn't know about. So I'm actually going to listen to what you have to say.
And the minute when I hear someone at work will be working with the company and you'll hear someone say, you know, someone's midsentence and boom gets cut off and overrun.
And here's what I was explaining on AEF online the other day.
We all recognize that as disrespectful, but it's seldom that we recognize the opposite, which is when I'm listening to you, I am showing you respect.
And you subconsciously know that like the other person that you're talking to, when you listen to them, they subconsciously feel respected, which is a good which is a great thing because we're trying to build a relationship. We're trying to build trust.
And it's incredible how this tool of listening is so powerful in increasing the trust in relationships that we can work to better together as a team. And yet it's neglected all the time because I think, oh, I already know what Dave is going to say.
So I'm just going to butt in and start to tell him what I think. Well, I am disrespecting Dave. Contrary, if Dave is talking and I listen to him and I nod my head and say, yup, I hear what you're saying, and I let him complete his thoughts, not only am I not disrespecting him, I am respecting him. And damn, if you don't see some just mayhem, go watch the news. It's insanity. It's total insanity.
Not just the newscasters themselves or the guests that they have come on for three minutes to yell at each other. But go watch some, you know, two people in this day and age or five people or one hundred people arguing with each other. No one's listening to anybody. Why jump into that bar fight? Right. This is a verbal bar fight, which obviously you can escalate into real fights and real problems. Nowadays, we're seeing all kinds of mayhem out in the streets.
And that mayhem is being caused by the fact that no one's listening to each other. And it starts with the disrespect of I'm not going to listen to you.
And by the way, when you when I cut you off and then you try and cut me off back, what's my response?
I get louder and then you get louder and now we're escalating.
Next thing you know, we're throwing punches. Next thing you know, we're hawking bottles and bricks and shoot and tear gas.
And we got a real freaking problem because we don't listen to each other.
You know, the a lot of times, though, when well, when I witnessed that or see it or whatever, I think, you know, it comes not necessarily overtly disrespect, but it's almost like an absence of respect because more like they're just distracted or maybe just focused on their own, like what they have to say or their own significance or whatever. Right. So you said, yeah, because if I think I know what Dave's going to say, I'm going to cut him off.
And that's true.
And even if it's subconscious, it's true, you know, because if I don't know what you're going to say and I'm kind of curious, I'm going to I'm going to wait to hear it, you know, but a lot of times people there either think they know what they're going to say or they're too eager about what they want to say. Right. So it's kind of a lot of times it comes back to like what kind of person you are, you know?
So if you're like, hey, everything that comes out of my mouth, my mouth is just go.
You're probably interrupt people more like I tend to see that kind of pattern, you know, for sure.
And. There's I will say the main time when I jump in on somebody is like, I've got something flashing through my brain and I don't want to lose it.
Yeah, you don't forget there. Is that to you? And yeah, that actually seems like a legitimate reason to interrupt sometimes.
Yeah. But it's one of those things that I think, like you said a couple of times where it's like, oh yeah, I might must not have been that important or whatever, you know, if you forget it. But here's the thing, though. There's a little dichotomy on that one too.
What if is over here talking like so much he said so many things that, like straight have required me to interrupt and be like, hey, I got to stop you there, you know, like that kind or is like, hey, I got to stop you there, you know, kind of thing. But I didn't I just let them go. Meanwhile, he left me with forty seven things that require my rebuttal or whatever, and I didn't interrupt them.
It's kind of like, yeah, that's a challenge.
But at the end of the day, big picture, you might as well just be like, well at least I listen to Dave and everything he had to say.
I mean obviously we could break down, sort of break down the social dynamics of situations where, you know, you'll have some disagreement with you. Now, I will tell you, I am much better off if Dave is saying something that I disagree with. I am much better off most of the time, letting him say what it is that I disagree with rather than just jumping in and being like that, that look, it's it's disrespectful.
I'm clearly not listening to you.
Right. I'm cutting you off.
Yeah. So why am I behaving that way?
It's not good. Look, if you if Dave wants to talk for seven minutes and rattle off, you know, like you said, forty seven points, maybe at some point I go, you know, maybe at some point I say, hey, can I just can we can we kind of address these things one at a time? Because you've just said three different things. And I'm going to I'm going to get lost in what you're saying. And and I want to talk about that first thing.
I think you could do that respectfully.
Yeah. Like, you got to put effort into the respectful part of, you know, like, I can respectfully interrupt, really. But if you're just throwing out interruptions. Yes. Disrespectful.
There's certainly different modalities of interruption that are that are wildly different from.
And you know what's cool? What's interesting is when you are face to face with somebody, you can tell when the person wants to say something. Right. You can just look at the face and they they get a face and they have a nonverbal communication telling you, I got something to say right now. And if you if I'm if Dave's giving me that look.
My my respect to him is to go he's got something to say, the time to give him a moment yet.
And the I think while I'm speaking from experience and I don't have much, but. Well, actually, no, I do have a lot of experience listening to people talk.
But if you if you have a situation where the person is talking and they're saying all crazy stuff.
Right. That kind of requires some correction or some interruption. Right. Or some discussion at a minimum.
Yeah. So unless you guys are actively working on solving a specific problem, we can which can happen like in work or in a family or whatever. But, you know, some people, they just like to talk and we're just having a friendly conversation or whatever, and they're just blabbing at the mouth saying things that are just some are true, some are not true.
And they're just going on and on like they're all correct. Right. And then won't be quiet.
You might as well just not say anything, because at the end of the day, it it does you better to just listen to everything they said. And, you know, what a you know, the old saying like, yeah, you don't want to talk, you want to listen because now you know everything you already know and then you know what they know kind of thing though.
Yeah. That's that's from this podcast as a matter of fact. Oh there you go.
So so it's like that kind of situation, you know, like you're not you're not tasked necessarily to to effectively change someone's mind every single time. So you might as well just keep your mouth shut little.
I mean, let's face it, if you're going to have a discussion with someone to try and try and consolidate your ideas together, to become to come up with a the strongest idea, then you have to converse with them. And whether they're a subordinate or a superior or a peer, at some point, you know, in order to progress ideas, you have to converse with them. And just sitting there and remaining silent when people are saying things that you totally disagree with or to put in a better way, you don't fully understand their perspective, then we have to uncover that perspective a little bit.
And you do that by asking questions and trying to figure out where they are coming from.
Yeah, you know, I'm totally recalling a very specific situation recently where I was in the middle of this straight up argument, debate, social situation about political causes. I political things.
And I just witnessed just mayhem going back and forth. I didn't say anything.
And I was like, oh, yeah, that's just jumping into a bar fight that you're not.
Yeah, but I'm thinking like, hey, either one of you guys could easily just be quiet and listen and not say anything for the rest of the whole time or whatever.
And this whole like we'd all be better off.
It's kind of like one of those situations.
So I'm totally projecting that right now on t this situation, what are you right out there?
There's a lot there's a lot in what you just said.
You're thing that you're just talking about when you're sitting there watching these other two people and when you're watching these other two people have what is kind of like a ridiculous conversation where they're arguing you're just sort of the news or whatever, and we're all just sitting there as observers. And it looks completely ridiculous to us as observers. You see it escalating. You see it going nowhere. You see people digging in. And when you're just watching it, it's obvious how completely ridiculous it is.
The comment earlier is like that feeling that when we have something to say, it's different. And this needs to be said. Remember that when you're about to open your mouth, somebody else going to watch it and you're going to look every bit as ridiculous to them as they did to you. When you're talking about listening and I have learned this in my life, I have learned to have a bias, to not talk. I learn that skill. I wasn't born with that skill.
I don't think anybody would accuse twenty year old Dave of having a bias for listening. That's a learned thing that I have done in my life. The trick there is what you have said a thousand times is you actually have to listen because of what you said before, which is if I'm talking and you're letting me talk and I think you're listening to me, I'll talk. I'll keep doing nothing. But the second I catch you, the eye roll, like the heavy breeze or whatever you're going to do and like did this guy isn't listening to me.
You actually have to listen.
And the only way you will truly listen to what the other person says is if in your mind you believe that you might get something out of it.
Because if you think you're like, oh, dude, here he goes, Echo, he's going to just go do what he does and it's going to be a complete waste of time. The minute I do that, I'm going to miss something and.
The actual listening part is a lot harder than it sounds, because the conversation having your head, which is I know I'm right, all these points wrong, all these things are saying are just complete waste. The active listening piece better come from a place of authenticity or you don't get found out in a second because your body line is going to give the whole thing away and then you might as well just cut them off right there because they're not listening, because he knows you're not listening to me.
Yeah, there's a lot with that.
And as simple as it sounds to listen, if it was so easy, we wouldn't have to say it over and over again. You're fighting the urge.
Like to. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, I can check. A little section here about just just fraternization with the prisoners and and they could not do that, which is the reason the reason I said that is because here these guys are trying to kill you. For me, this is just shows you the.
The predominant spirit spirit of the American servicemen, it says here it was necessary repeatedly to warn the troops against incorrect practice of fraternizing with prisoners and giving them cigarettes, which interfered with the proper interrogation. Troops had to be warned not to remove PAYBOX from the prisoners because these books first a check to the interrogation officer of the prisoners statements in regard to his organization and previous services.
Just these you wouldn't think that after these guys are trying to kill you that you'd want to give them a cigarette. Right. And yet.
Respect. Speed marching. Commanding general, 3rd Division, Sicily, the importance of physical condition cannot be overemphasized, speed marching proved of great value in developing physical condition, eliminating the unfit and instilling confidence and pride in the individual as a general training objective. All units prepared for landing on defended beaches and in advance inland of about five mile speed march and continued each unit being required to complete five miles in one hour, eight miles in two hours and 20 miles and five hours once a week.
This training was largely responsible for the speed with which the assault of this division was executed.
There you go. Physical conditioning it, he points out this, and this is so obvious, instilling confidence and pride. I mean, what a factor, what a factor, weigh the Warrior Kid books, you know, get a kid that doesn't can't do a pull up, right. And all of a sudden you can do a pull up. You can lift your own weight. You can stand up a little straighter. And get your team working out, so I'm saying writing messages, reports and messages, Major Robert Wilson, Field Artillery, Italy, the who, what, when, where and why were often not contained in reports both oral and written battalion, regimental stews and the men themselves indicated that during maneuvers and in training problems, they had thought that this subject had been mastered, but that in combat it was ignored or forgotten.
As to clarity, the axiom of a message can be understood. It will be missed. If a message can be misunderstood, it will be misunderstood was well proven. The comment here writing messages during a unit training program is one thing. Writing clear, specifically worded messages and orders under combat conditions is quite another. Theoretical training and message writing must be supplemented by constant practice and supervision in the field that.
Why was an English major so I could learn how to write a section here on dirt breeding infection, half the evacuations from the battalion was due to infection caused by minor scratches. And to that, I would say get yourself some for your kids soap so you could stay.
Oh, come on. This is another one of those life ones. A foxhole in time saves lives.
Lieutenant Colonel Bogarde Infantry, 5th Army, Italy. Although the average American soldier will dig a foxhole or slit trench when the artillery or mortar shells are falling in his vicinity, only a few of those I saw would dig them prior to that time.
When they did dig them, they were usually quite shallow. It was always very easy to tell a German foxhole from the American. The former were always much deeper. Many casualties occurred from Shell Fire, which I believe would have been avoided had proper foxholes or slit trench been dug in. And this is, you know, the code, the evaluation, the protocol.
Are you prepared for life emergencies? Are you prepared for emergency situations? We as Americans, I totally agree with this. We don't like to worry about anything until it collapses in the face. In fact, in the SEAL teams, I used to tell my leadership no one worries about anything until they get slapped in the face with it. Like no one's really concerned about that until you get hit with it and all of a sudden you got to execute that mission and you don't have the gear that you need.
So let's get the gear we need. Let's get do the rehearsals we're supposed to do. Be proactive. I can kind of go for little things to over one hundred percent goes to little things. Well, yeah, so these and these little things.
So the other night I'm at home bedtime. Go sleep right in the middle of the night here.
You know what that is? No idea.
It's your perimeter security detector, your fire detector with the nine volt battery that's dead. That's dying exactly right in your sight.
You think you can if you don't have nine volt batteries at, what, 3:00 a.m. and know where they are and where they are?
Yeah, but listen, you don't have them straight. I mean, let's face it. Just have random nine volt batteries in your in your house.
Yes, I know exactly where they are. I have two for each fire detector in my house. Here's the thing.
I'm a father now. So so do I. Oh yes. So do I. But I'll tell you this.
Before I had kids, before I had a thing life, whatever that smoke detectors, I didn't have nine volt batteries just hanging out. I didn't have didn't even think about it years. Oh yeah. 100 percent.
I guess my wife, when she was growing up, they, they didn't have batteries like, you know, the her mom and dad just batteries weren't on the list.
Yeah. And so my wife is a battery. Hauger and stockpile. You want a nine volt. You want a triple double. What do you want to open up. That's cabinet. They're in there. They're ready for.
Oh I'm with you. My wife's the exact she gets a little bit excited when the batteries run out on something.
So, you know, it's like, hey, the battery's out on this thing. Oh, hold on.
And she goes and digs out a c e two, three to five for my watch. Actually, I think my watch is a thirty to thirty two. Yeah.
This is going to say that the C three that one. I think that's a scale you put that and one of those little scales it might be.
Well I don't know either way. Yeah I don't know either. But I do know that I did have a nine ball battery that night, but I was thinking to myself, what if I didn't have a normal battery? But we're not sleeping tonight. You're only you're not sleeping then that and it doesn't have to do just that night. Now you got the whole next day got to contend with.
See, I'm saying a really very this is because you're paranoid, know, a fire or that beep is bothering you. The beep is going to keep you up when I'm with you, man. That's that's the.
Because I'll tell you what happens. It turns out that that fire detector that beeps every 60 seconds can't be destroyed.
Yeah. You could take a sledgehammer to it. And breaking into that, it will still beep. So what you're talking about, that's the slap in the face, which is totally unprepared for the situation. You're up all night. You think you solve the problem the second you get the bed lights out covers. Baby, I got a beep and then you're up again.
So I'm with you. It's true.
I learned this lesson 30 ish years ago, so I've got those nine volts at the ready.
Yes, sir. Yeah. In in one time. You know how I found that out that you can't you can't stop that thing. I was like, OK, say yes, no problem. Like I'll just take out the battery. How can it be with no power. Simply can't be can happen for like, you know, where does it get the power to beep from. Where does that come from.
Apparently they thought ahead, you know, in the case of a real emergency, it's one of those things and a little bit more important than your sleep that night if you're unprepared, you know, so it made sense when I kind of thought through it. But nonetheless, I still faced with this problem like this. Beeping Lucky it wasn't in the middle of the night, but whatever.
So I got to go. Oh, it had a real problem that day, but I had to put it in the drawer. You could still hear, but it was just way more quiet.
So then he got a battery or whatever later on. Yeah, it can't be disabled.
That's the whole reason it can be destroyed. Cannot can't be bargained with either. But Yemen nonetheless. That's the point.
It can go for small things to see. I'm saying they just be prepared. How about this. How about just keep some nine nine volt batteries.
All good leaves. Three a.m.. Three p.m. whenever yorkhill batteries batteries low.
You know, we good over there.
I got Charles with that. All right, let's move on. Section three mountain operations.
They go through a big battalion attack here, go into a lot of detail. It's another another from another perspective on the battle on the Atta Island. And there's there's some detail of some maps and charts, and you should go check it out online so you can kind of get the full benefit of that. But I just want to get a couple highlights. And going back to communications here, a rather elaborate system of communications was established to enable the battalion commander to control the fire of supporting weapons in furtherance of tactical plans.
The artillery rated radio, as well as telephone, was set up at the battalion commanders OP on top of the hog back, which is one of these little terrain features. A sound power telephone was run from the mortar op back to the battalion commander. Likewise one from the seventy five. The telephone was also run from the OP to the officer in charge of all thirty seven millimeter firing radio and telephone. All was run to all companies in the battalion, so the reason I highlight that, that's a lot of communications.
And if we're counting on all those communications, we may not get what we we we might not get what we want. Goes into this year, they get into contact, we saw the first one at zero four thirty in the morning, he was a century and we were then 50 yards of him. He stood up against the skyline and was shaking out a grass mat. Lieutenant Brown motioned to us to get up a little under the ledge to our front, and then he shot the Jap.
The shot must have awakened others. As we worked up over the ledge, a Jap machine gunner began firing at us. We stayed down until the first excited bursts had gone over. Then we raised up and return fire. Several Japs had holes near the edge of the ledge we were under, and they began to throw grenades over by the hill below so steep that most of the grenades rolled down and exploded out of range below us. The machine gun was firing again, but several of our men were close enough to to the ledge to lob grenades over.
The machine gun itself was out of grenade range, but some of the Japs near the edge caught hell from the grenades. Are you feeling lucky when the people that are throwing grenades at you, they, like, bounce over your position and don't hurt you? I think that might have been my whole point there. The radio fails. So this is why I get concerned about. About communications, and as a former radio man, it definitely freaks me out, Lieutenant Brown tried again and again to contact battalion headquarters or the artillery, and I'm fast forwarding a little bit or the artillery with the radio.
But the Senate refused to function. The radio man worked with it and tried again, but failed. The platoon was reorganized and we started up again there assaulting the cell. We got as high as the ledge once more and had started over the top on the table above when the Jap opened up with machine guns again. We needed artillery and needed it bad. Every time we stuck our noses up, a hailstorm of bullets cracked across them. The radio man was trying frantically to contact anybody in the valley below us, but the set remained silent.
Several men had crawled around to the left and threw grenades at the Japs near the edge of the table. But the machine guns remained out of range. Our men were driven back to the cover of the ledge with several wounds artillery. If we only had artillery, we could observe the fire. We knew where the guns were. If we could only get some fire, we'd walk over the damn mountains. The radioman was desperate. He tried to set again, but it was silent in a rage.
He threw it down the hill.
Yeah, so there's a bunch of things to think about there, just, you know, your communications cannot be relied upon. You have to have some kind of backup plan.
And if you're if you're expecting, you can be able to make communications when when they're really going to be needed. That is the time they're going to fail.
That is Murphy's Law. If you say, OK, Dave, here's what's going to happen. We have this whole complicated plan. And then when you get to this point, radio me and that's when we'll execute. That radio call has a four percent chance of making communications if everything hinges upon one call, the weight of that hinge just just has Kamkar Matic, is that a word, a karmic karmic impact on that communication system?
And it's not going to work great. So. Their attack gets repulsed. He says, he said, we heard the guns in the valley begin firing. The attack was on, we had failed and we felt bad about it, about it. They had the drop on us to go in through the main attack.
The Japs were holding the pass on the high ground on both sides of the front to the ones on the right could fire into the backs of the attackers of the left and vice versa. It was rough going, Lieutenant Cleeves.
Got beat up and we went around the second section to get them started up the hill, the attack was going OK, but it was an awfully tough one. Bullets were flying all over the hillside. Just uphill from the second section was a Jap thirty seven millimeter. We had watched them fire from that position several days before and we knew there were Japs in that trench. The main attack was moving around to the left as we started up the hill. Finally, the fire got so heavy that the machine gun squad took cover in a little drawer until we grenade the trench above us to clean it out.
Then they were to come on up, Sergeant Tom Kovik, Private First Class William Marshall and I started up with Lieutenant Clipse. We had crawled on our bellies to within twenty five yards of the trench when a sniper raised up and shot Marshall in the year we shot at the sniper, we threw grenades into the trench. We crawled up rapidly, then ready to move in behind our grenades. And another sniper popped his head up out of the hole just above us.
Lieutenant Clipse fired his carbine just as the Jap fire lieutenant toppled over a little bank and lay still. He was dead. I was just bringing up the rifle is the jet my rifle? As the Jap ducked. Then from across the valley, the Japs spotted us and they gave us hell. Machine guns, rifles and thirty seven millimeter began pounding the area. Finally, the intense shelling slowed down and we dashed for the open end of the trench. We had grenades at the trench, led around to the point of the hill.
We crawled down the trench and found where the Japs were located. When we stuck our heads right up in the face of a burst of machine gun fire, some men from company had come over to help us. But we're stymied. We couldn't raise up long enough to fire. We couldn't get close enough to throw grenades. Finally, we decided to see if we could get some mortar fire on the position in some way. Corporal Alford Hayman started back up to check on the mortar possibilities.
And while we waited and rested, the Jap position was slightly below us. And about one hundred yards further into the past, they were firing almost constantly at the troops we could see moving out in the valley. And on the opposite side of the pass, we were quite high up on the side of Cold Mountain. After nearly two hours of lying in the trench and waiting, we heard one of the men behind Holer here, Heman up here. He and a man from company the infantry were caught crawling up along a little ravine, laying wire.
They had found a company, a mortar, and had a line right to it. The big fight up on the mountain had almost gotten to the top, but the forces across the pass were getting help from the guns below us. We got the phone all set up and carefully poked a little dirt in a little hole in the dirt side of the trench, so weak so that one man could see the whole Jap position below. Then we called mortar and the fun started.
We were only about one hundred yards from where the shells were striking in the ground shook. They fired several rounds close, and then they began to drop right in the position. Finally, we called and told them we were moving in and not to fire. The position was like a big wheel was a big wheel, like a fair with holes all around it and the spokes connecting the trenches with a big center installation in the hub. Two Japanese machine guns in the thirty seven millimeter that had fired at us during the previous week were captured and destroyed there.
We tossed six dead Japs out the hole and brought them brought up our guns up and set them in the Japanese. We there we sat that night just daring the little so and so's to come up, man. What positions they had.
One. Little fight within a battle, you know, one little tiny fight within a battle and think of all those decisions that got made and all those actions that took place and the mistakes that had to be covered for and the initiative that had to be shown and the bravery and courage.
I mean, it's just. It's leadership that's that's what it is.
It's leadership, they go through a bunch of this information continuing on, they there's another group that takes another point. And again.
Look, these guys I can pretty much guarantee are no longer alive, but this is these are quotes, these are what these guys are saying happened, you know, things like Lieutenant Walzak saying, check your bayonets as they get ready to do this assault.
And there's just there's some there's some some other little battles with and fights with and battles that they cover, and then it gets into this comment section. These accounts bring out some of the characteristics of mountain warfare in which success depends more upon proper adaptation of available means to the terrain then upon their power. So the the way you adapt is more important. It continues maneuver of small units and the initiative and leadership of subordinate commanders are of the highest importance in mountain warfare.
The actions of small, semi-independent units in seizing or defending heights in or in fighting to seize or block passes become of increasing importance.
So once again, even though this book starts off with the extreme dichotomy of discipline, of following orders, it comes back always to decentralized command and individual initiative by subordinate leaders to make things happen.
He's talking about modern warfare there and and getting to this idea of of I mean, that's it. That's leadership, right? Its leadership is going to be the deciding factor here because the terrain is so. It's so impossible to predict there's so many different things and places in outcroppings and all these different and even tell the story, what great position they had in that previous example with the Japanese life is more like mountain warfare than it is going to be. This big open fields of your life can just reveal themselves and you're going to plan your moved out down the road.
There are so many things that are popping up when we're talking to companies right now. They're describing that same terrain in their business lives of all these unpredicted and unexpected things. And it isn't the strength of their brand and it isn't, you know, the it's the leadership. It's navigating these companies through. And we're talking about the terrain of mountain warfare. That's what life is, it's not just this easy straight road from A to B, and you just march down and everything is clean and how crazy that has to be that at every single turn something comes up and the tool, the only tool that you have to get past that is leadership.
And you know what I like also about this analogy and the way it ties into the entire concept of yes.
Of leadership, but really even more specifically to ownership and extreme ownership. And and that is this this is what's so beautiful about this.
You can't move those mountains. You cannot do that, you cannot. Those mountains are what they are. And that's what that's what is what triggered that thought. My mind was you said there's all these variables. But what's interesting is you're looking at them, you know, for days. You understand. You can see it on the map. You can look at it. There's this mountain. And you know what? You can't move that mountain and what you have to do is you have to move yourself.
And this is you know, we talk about this in jujitsu, which someone's across the side on you. I can bench press you an inch, you know, maybe two inches. I don't care if you have a five hundred pound bench press when you've got a person that's mobile and they're they're securing you and they've got your chest compressed, but you can't bench press them off of you, you can move them just enough, then you have to move.
It's incumbent upon you. And so we can't move mountains. What we have to do is adapt.
What we have to do is figure out how to utilize those things and what the important thing is, even though we can't move those mountains, the person that figures out how to utilize that terrain is the one that's going to win.
You utilize the terrain. It's something that I have no control over, but I control how I interact with that mountain and I know where I need to be. And I know I understand the angles and I understand what ravine will give me cover and I understand where it exposes me, where even he's talking about, hey, that's the way the Japanese were set up.
I was like, oh, they can hit these guys here in the flank and they can shoot these guys in the back. That's the position that they have. That's a freaking horrible situation to be rolling into, horrible situation to be rolling into. So when you look at things, instead of sitting there and going and saying, I wish the market was different, I wish the competitor would do something different, I wish my employees would act in a different way.
These are all things that you can look at. You can wish all day long, just like you can wish that Mt. moves. But that mountain's not going anywhere.
So you need to maneuver. You need to take ownership of that situation to make things happen. There's a whole bunch of sections here, engineer operations, tanks, infantry notes and jungle operations.
One, one s. your Japanese centers of resistance were bypassed and isolated again. How often do we say, Oh, Dave doesn't like this part of my plan, so I'm going to attack him on that instead of saying, OK, Dave is going to dig in right there. Cool. I'll maneuver around it. Right bypass. I'm gonna start thinking about that a little bit more often in my daily life. How can I bypass? Maybe not when it comes to working out, because Echo Charles point out that might not be the best plan, but if it's things that I don't want to engage in, why am I engaging in them if I don't have to?
If I can isolate and bypass and not make it part of my gig, that's fine.
Frontal attacks were uniformly successful when assisted by a flank attack and on many occasions the flank attack preceded the frontal attack coming into Japanese positions from the rear and completely disrupting their defense plans. In almost all cases, the maneuver used by units of all sizes, from division to squad, was the envelopment of one or both flanks.
The resistance was made by resistance, was bypassed, encircled and reduced later. So the frontal assault works when it's not actually a frontal assault. It's also a frontal assault works when you're doing something else as well.
Yes, that's Sulligent section on section on automatic weapons, night operations, security measures, security at night, lines of communication patrol reports.
In general, the distance covered by the patrols was much less than expected of them. The difficulties of terrain caused by many patrol leaders to feel that they had covered two or three times as much ground than they had actually covered. This must be taken to account when evaluating patrol reports. These are people that think that they know, like I was there then that crazy. You could be looking at me totally convinced that you went two kilometers. And it turns out when we retrace your steps, you went, whatever, 700 yards, 700 meters.
One last section to cover here. Yeah, this last section is very interesting, evacuation methods, informal report, Solomon Islands evacuation of casualties was by hand, carry litter bearers, cable litter slings across jungle gullies, improvised sleds or drags down steep inclines, improvised litter racks on quarter ton jeeps, small boats on mountain streams or along the coast, and finally by field ambulances to clearing stations or hospitals. How's that for a nightmare when you when you were in Phalen, did you were you ever down pilot?
Yeah, yeah. Did you get carried out on litters? Yeah. You go out in the helicopter, you stage there, and then they come out and getting like the metal is like a metal basket, basically the litter.
Did you ever get carried by a SEAL platoon like eight kilometers?
No, I know exactly what you're talking about. I was never I was never the downed air crew that got actually physically pulled. Right.
It's not fun when you're getting carried because you're getting dropped, you're getting slammed, you're all over the place. And usually we would stick guys with IVs, you know, like we would try and do some medical training on them as well, but.
Good Lord, I want you to think about everything that I just said and carry cable litters across jungle gullies, improvised sleds drags down steep. So you're wounded and what's the method of doing? OK, we're going to drag you down a steep incline, improvised litter on a on a quarter ton jeep. Imagine nothing bouncing around small boats. Think about a nightmare.
And this is where you start to realize what a nightmare I'm talking about, evacuation by litter bearers was difficult, tiring, time consuming and involved distances averaging two or three miles and five to six miles.
In some instances, many more litter bearers had to be utilized than under ordinary conditions.
Litter carry in many cases required as high as 16 carriers per patient over almost impassable terrain and can be counted as least efficient.
So it takes 16 people to evacuate somebody two miles or three miles. Where evacuation by letter was necessary, bearer's worked in relay's eight or even 16 men accompanying each litter, relieving one another in litter and in cutting narrow pass through the dense jungle. 16 people to move a wounded man. I mean, that's just crazy and obviously it wasn't all of them, but they're saying, hey, sometimes it was eight and I'll tell you the reason I was asking you if you'd ever been in that position.
Number one, you get beat up. But, you know, when we would do desert training, when I was running desert training men, those guys would do some down man carries. And I'm sure some of the guys that are here and me saying that or smiling with pleasant memories of going eight kilometers through the Imperial Valley Desert, carrying and eventually, like the first you know, if we had a troop that hadn't been through before or didn't have any experience, say, oh, yeah, hey, which you know what, your casualty evacuation plan is going to put two guys on him.
And we're going to do I forget the name of some name? There's a couple carries. You know, there's a standard fireman's carry all wheel just going to fireman's carry. OK, cool. See how that see how that works out for you.
You can't I mean it's, it's you can do it for one hundred meters.
Two hundred meters, three hundred meters, 400 meters.
You're on night vision, you're in the worst freaking terrain, rocks, shale rocks all over the place. And it was great because as we would do these drills and as guys realized what a traumatic impact it was when you took casualties and how you had to adjust what you thought you'd be able to do, because you can't just freaking Rambo, you can Rambo somebody up. I mean, I've done it like, OK, grab a guy and I'm going to carry him one hundred and fifty meters.
Two hundred meters. By the time you get to that 200 meter mark like you're when you get to the spot, you're just falling down with the guy. Three hundred meters, you're just falling down and you're exhausted and you've lost your weapon and your night vision and his gear is gone. It's a disaster. Until you figure out, OK, when this happens, here's here's some procedures that we need to do. Talks about the improvised ambulance's talks about evacuation by water.
Physical fitness, the arduous and fatiguing litter carrying, demonstrated the need for physical fitness on the part of medical department personnel, which should correct the impression that physically impaired individuals can be utilized throughout medical department activities.
So this idea that you can have a bunch of, you know, guy that's injured or hurt and have him working in medical, being a stretcher bearer is completely and utterly wrong.
And that's well, that's a wrap on the highlights that I had from this.
And, you know, I don't know when I think about this whole thing and we've been referring back to the whole time, the. So many good lessons, but the the the the key takeaway for me is that whole idea of leader versus inertia. And, you know, as soon as I said that today, Dave, I looked at you and I saw you at about a thousand thoughts going through your mind on what that means and how many ways that we can apply that.
It's like the world is conspiring against us. And it's human nature to neglect our duties, and I know that sounds crazy and sure, there are some outliers out there that are proactive going to make things happen. But you've got to assess as a leader that human nature.
Is to be lazy and to be careless, and you need to definitely look in the mirror because it's not always just going to be the people that you lead. It's going to be you.
And that section where they talk about the hardest job that you have as a leader is getting things done, getting things done by people who know that they're supposed to do them and even in some cases know that those things could cost them their lives. Failure to do things. Failure to take action. So don't allow that to be on the lookout. How nice is it sometimes when you make the connection between something that's there that you've always known was there, but you never did it?
And by that echo, I mean positively identified, like, hey, I know now everyone, let's listen to this. Today now knows.
That that's a problem and look, we all kind of knew it, right? I'm not talking about it just because we don't feel that way or we're going to want to move. That's that's a real thing. I get it. We all kind of get it.
But how about the I.D. on it? And now when it starts happening, either with you or with your team or with your family or with your friends, you can be idea and then you can address it properly and you can start with yourself. You can start by making things happen. Speaking of making things happen, Echo Charles, just how can we do what we're supposed to do, what we know we should do on top of it?
We did it all day. Yeah, same thing with complaining, right? We did that a long time ago.
Complaining, blaming another one.
Those are two. Those are two good things. Once you recognize once you did those things, man, that blame one.
Oh yeah. Because if you don't pin the blame it'll like sneak in and sort of get away with it. Do really. It's great. Oh yeah. You can be like yeah. Yeah. I really shouldn't have done that. You know, I could have helped, you know, if you were to give me a heads up or whatever. But you're right, I should and shouldn't have done that.
You see, the blame, like all that stupid mountain was totally blocking our position. Yeah.
Kind of make it makes it kind of harder. But no, you're right. I should have done it. You seem to see me taking ownership, but slipping in the blame.
When you put the blame, you can see it is what I'm saying anyway. So don't do that when you're working out which.
OK, so I worked out today, actually, I thought about working out today, but then I got into this deep conversation with my wife about some important stuff.
The window closed, the window totally closed. Oh, it closed it straight up close. Yeah. Because the conversation went long. I had to come here, you see, I'm saying yeah, I had a window closing last night.
It was I had something my wife was making dinner.
I was like, I can fit in a run right now before dinner or late work. No, just a run I already worked out.
So runs a lot of work up so late night. So my wife was cooking dinner. I had like a 40 minute window. My wife says, oh by the way, someone's coming over to grab something. I'm like, OK, the runs not happening now. The window's just I'm kind of I'm kind of shrugging off like, oh, well, you know, window closed, you know, not run.
But then I did it and I said, you know what? I ate dinner, which I hate. I ate dinner.
And then I ran out and punish myself. I pulled one of those before. That's so true. Right there. So that right there. Well, you just did what you went what you what you experienced.
Same deal, right?
You got the 40 minute window for running, right. Because you got it all planned on your head. It goes beyond the run. It goes like the stuff you did before is in your mind, stuff you're going to do after the run dinner. All this other stuff and the stuff after that in your mind does not include the run because the run is already done.
That's it. This all formula right there in your mind. Yeah. So now that little window closed, boomers that run going to fit in. I already know in my mind what I'm going to do after dinner, which is after the run, which already happened. Right. What I'm doing the run there. No, it's already occupied in your brain, Susan.
But the thing is, it doesn't work like that. You put it there as as essentially like an excuse. Yeah.
You know what's crazy? So as I was running, so now I'm running.
Twenty minutes after I get done, I don't think I've run on a full stomach for.
15 years, think about that, 15 years, I don't think and I don't think I'll run on a full stomach again for another 15 years because it felt freakin awful. And I don't roll I don't work out on an on a full stomach. I don't like doing any of that. I can get away with, like, a workout, depending on the workout, not squatting on a full stomach because that's just not good. But maybe I can do some pull ups on a full.
But yeah, I was running on a full stomach. I want to do that again. I would say next time because I wanted it, you know, like eat with my family, you know, that like let's eat time. I would have eaten one fork full of food and not eaten and put it in and then go for it and hang with the family, go for a run, come back.
Yeah, that would be a power move.
And that's actually one of many power moves, really. The other power moves. How about this. Yeah. Good for you. You know, running on a full stomach in fifteen years free can run on a full stomach. Oh I did it. That's what I'm saying though. You know, I'm saying like there's all kinds of things that you can just push through and still get it in.
It's what I'm saying, even all the way down to, hey, who cares if you're there if this person is coming over?
Yeah, that's right. That's the end of the world. If you're not there, you know, not the end of the world, but maybe not the best move at that time.
OK, then we shift to the full stomach situation, didn't you know, or maybe the half stomach. You know, I'm just saying the opportunity is always there.
This was in line with sort of this evolving attitude that I have now of of of kind of a going hard against the weakness. Yeah, I was like, it's not only am I going to run still, I'm going to run on a full stomach. I just want to puke frequently because that's how, you know.
So but I did the same exact thing. But it was it was less complex for sure, but it was like the window was closing, like, I can't get my full workout now because dinner time I could do, you know, I'm going to eat dinner with you ever just do something super short and psycho, though, if you let the window closed.
But but you don't want to let it shut. So you're like, OK, cool. Oh you want to be like that. Cool. Yeah. Don't go in here and do like mayhem. Eighteen minutes. Yeah. Because you can't get a freaking good workout in there minutes. Yeah.
It's probably not going to be the plan to workout in my but yeah. Yeah I'll do that if he don't that a few times when I had to like come here somewhere where if I'm late it kind of affects other people, you know, it's like it's my fault anyway you know.
So Oh yeah. I'll do that kind of stuff for sure. But I did it with the dinner thing and I did a Mac con on a full stomach and I even told you about it the next day. I was like I was doing anyway. It's a long story, but yeah.
Well, speaking of timelines, let's rock and roll. Yes, sir.
All right. OK, look, we're doing workouts. We're not doing excuses. We're not fighting against this punishing we. Yes.
Weakness thoughts were punishing ourselves for those thoughts or considerations. But when you do that, you know, you join your body, take a beating specifically your joints from time to time. OK, JoCo is supplementation for that.
So supplements are a few joint warfare free joints, super krill oil for your joints, vitamin D.
Super vitamin D. We'll just say it's pretty good, solid, say, Sopot. Yeah, super super is not called super vitamin D. Maybe we need your help with branding on that one. Like you helped us with Supergirl.
I didn't help you. Kind of funny.
Either way, it's vitamin D, none the less.
I'm going to change the name to super vitamin D all day.
Yeah. For one hundred percent so you don't get on now.
And also Cold War wasn't called like some cold killer or something. Yeah, you can't say that.
Can I say that because it kills colds. You can't see it and can't say that that's a. Bad advertising, what's the word like I'm making some kind of medical claim, the medical claim, so we can't say that, but we can't go to war against colds.
Yes, missile defense tank will deliver the tank, the Cold War, missile defense system. Cold War missile defense.
Yes, sir. Would say that I do all day.
I fight the war against colds every day if should, and also discipline regular discipline and the supplementation discipline, cans, powder, pills, whatever need whatever your mentality, that little.
Yeah. Big time little psychological hitter. A little bit of a little bit of go.
Jocko Palmer taking the lead. Sorry. Is it taking the lead. It it's leading right now.
It's leading. I agree. Yeah I agree. First flavour's go here. I had the long drive to Montana. Sure. 17 hours drive.
All one go. One go, one go.
No, I mean I stopped for gas. Fuel of course. Yes sir. But the cool thing was just kind of I for your research in the future to discipline go cance just this one at about.
One at about. Midnight, maybe one o'clock in the morning, and I had another one at like two. Or three, that's that's kind of that's the that's once the sun's coming up, your good once the sun coming up a rock and roll. But there's I guess is maybe around four o'clock in the morning, like you don't see, as soon as you start seeing sun, your body goes, oh, cool. We're awake now. Yeah.
It's, it's that three thirty four, four thirty where your body thinks you should be asleep right freakin now. Yeah.
Get that heater boy. 17 hour drive. So in what time it like when do you leave. Like nighttime essentially.
Yep. Yeah. You host a dinner departure. Yeah.
OK, I dig it. I don't think I've ever driven 17 hours ever ever go. I'm not sure how valuable that information is, but I do know how valuable.
Yeah. So, Mark, don't forget about Molk. Don't forget about you probably need extra protein item milk before I came here today just because I have doms. Sure. And I was like, meaning delayed onset muscle soreness or little heavy on squats yesterday. And I have a lot of domme so I just kicked down some milk, a little extra protein. Plus I was in the mood for dessert even though I didn't have any lunch.
So anyway, all this stuff, white kids, kids, warrior kid milk, you can all the stuff, the Vitamin Shoppe we also make at or it all. Also you can get an oxygen main dotcom if you want to support this podcast, if you want to support America in general, which if you want to support American general, good on you, you get yourself some quality items. You know, get yourself a GI for your jujitsu, get yourself a rash guard for your jiujitsu t shirts, jeans, jeans, American denim boots.
You guys have the Delta 68, then the what's the regular one called the the factory jeans.
Factory jeans. Is there like another what do you call it, a model.
No, that's the two models right now. Factory jeans, heavier, delta jeans, lighter, which I know this is a little strange, but you know.
No, I dig it.
Delta Sixty in Montana was wearing a lightweight hoodie, not, you know, on me. But they told me like to tell you that they supported approved there in Montana, by the way, which is surprising. You can't argue with the people.
I mean, it's just, you know, it goes against your whole thing, you know. You know. Yes.
Or Maine dotcom. That's where all this stuff exists. It's something American made fully.
Also is called JoCo Store Dotcom. This is where you can get disciplined equals freedom deathcore good.
With all deathcore.
Technically, technically.
Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, discipline is a hoodie's schertz. Hats. Lightweight hoodies or rash guards, for sure, lots of new stuff, new stuff. Oh, you've been collating all kinds of stuff over there.
We have a few new things. Really good stuff. Utility and. More utility, we we have a shirt coming that may become sort of like the shirt.
I'm not making any predictions just for me personally. It might become the shirt that I end up wearing a lot.
You literally won't wear anything. It'll be like, remember back in the day when you still always wear Victor even before the podcast. Like I look at all the old pictures of myself through your shirt as long as you've known me. Yeah. It's like you can't even recognize me if you don't have the victory shirt on. If even a picture like that even exists, which I don't think it does, is going to be one of those where we've had victory for ten years.
So, yeah. And so for a long time and we've been doing the podcast for five, something like that coming up on five. So that means for five complete years before this podcast, the the one free T-shirt I had, which I had a lot of them actually, John Zogby asked me out there the we're up in Montana like the the fifth day in a row. I posted up in a victory T-shirt.
He said, Do you just wear that or Washita, you have a thousand of my go. Not in a thousand, but I got ten.
Well, if we have the light one and the dark one, either way, that's why you have the light went on the dark one of this new shirt.
I'll let you make it. You know, I'll let you.
What do you call it. Oh, roll it out. As it were. They reveal it anyway.
Reveal is juncos jam big time anyway. JoCo store dotcom. That's where you can get your that's where you can get your stuff to represent while you're on the path. Put it that way.
Some new stuff. So keep that in mind. Look, if you want to know about new stuff or how I want to know about new stuff Dave.
What sure does that. This is a def core shirt, but it's available. It's absolutely available.
It's called ops. You have black ops, you wear it. And he has no I have like one declassified the classified version.
But here's the deal. The difference in a white shirt and a black shirt in the California sun is extreme. Yes, sir. So I like to wear a white shirt. I don't have this one echo, Charles. Yeah, I see. Yeah. Things that must suck, really. But hey, man, you know, I know I and maybe we'll get you one.
Yeah. Yeah.
So yes, if you want a deathcore black ops or declassified talk will start out with declassified.
Yes I like it, I like it when you sort of mingle with military service, the giant swings and you say you have is you know, if you're a suspect you contact me. Yeah. Say Hey, what would this be a correct usage of the word whatever. Yeah. Or yeah. Yeah. Oftentimes I say yeah, not really. Yeah.
There is one thing I did and I think yeah it was, you know, the high speed, low drag. I was going to use that in some it wasn't a shirt but it was in some other stuff I was doing.
And you're like, hey, don't do that, don't do that one. Because it wasn't like appropriate.
Yeah, I forget what it was because high speed, low drag is definitely a term. Yes. And it has a meaning. I forget the way you used it.
I used it in a more serious way than it should be. Oh yeah. That's not a serious term. Yeah. It's kind of like that guy is high speed.
Oh yeah. Like for real. It's kind of like you might say about a pair of Gucci looking shooting asses.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I learned. Oh yeah. So anyway, back to what I was saying. Hey, if you want to get be in the know we have an email list on JoCo store if you wanna be in the know about some stuff, I don't abuse this list at all. In fact are underutilised.
Actually I tried my best to save it for important stuff, the stuff that I think it's important. So if you want to know about a new product.
Some new board shorts that may or may not be on the way or something like this, if you're on the email list, you will get notified for everybody. I'm not saying our stuff sells out.
What if you have important work? What if you have important information about rolling frying pans? Well, you know, hey, look, does that make the list usually stuff like that? No. Thank you, though, for inquiring. I mean, we do have to clarify, I guess. And so that's correct.
But important information about the store. Sign up for that email list. Hey, we'll get that info to you and you'll have it before everybody else. And boom, won't feel good.
We put the new t shirt on there. Yes. Well, you said that was mine to announce. Yeah. That might be yours to announce. Or you just send the email. How about that?
OK, I'll send an email out with a new shirt is at least subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. We also have some other podcasts. We have the new podcast, which is isn't on its own channel yet. It's called The Unraveling. It was called The Thread. We had to change the name. We also the grounded podcast. We also have the Warrior Kid podcast. We have a YouTube channel, by the way, we have a YouTube channel that has all these podcasts on them, you can see us except for the first seven, because the first seven, there was no video involved.
It's just voice. Even though we did the first podcast on, like some kind of live stream, if you tried to.
Yeah, you is if I remember we were having some trouble technical.
Yeah. So anyways, or and then also some of these are there are some excerpts in there as well. Yeah. And there's also some things that echo Charles experiments with random and very over the top, not over special effects.
They're on on just normal videos and he'll put ninety eight special effects into a two minute video.
But this video right here, which is going to be three hours and 40 minutes long, there will be no no excitement other than just watching me crack up at my own jokes at the end of this podcast.
No additional excitement needed in my opinion so far.
There could be so many good little X like extra additions and Easter eggs or whatever you call them in this particular podcast, Outflanking People Mortar's thirty seven mm. Eighty eight grenade's. I just think of all the cool stuff that could be flying around in here. It's blowing up anyway.
Also JoCo has or we have an album with tracks called Psychological Warfare.
You know, if you don't know what this is, don't worry.
This, this is going to help you. It helps us. So we're talking about inertia, right?
Object that is instict rest, stays at rest, tends to stay at rest. And if if it's in motion. So anyway, if you're battling to get into motion when you're currently at rest, it's hard. Sometimes it's hard. I got this will help. That is what I'm saying. Psychological warfare.
OK, JoCo telling you what to do, not necessarily what to do, but why you should do what you should do. It's about accurate. Yeah, that's available wherever you can get MP 3s also, if you want a visual representation of those types of messages, go to flip side canvas dotcom.
My brother to go to Mires makes stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books. The code, the evaluation, the protocol, leadership strategy and tactics.
Field Manual Way. The Warrior Kid one, two and three. Michy in the Dragon's Disciplinary Freedom Field Manual. Extreme Ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. You can get those books pretty much anywhere. Books are sold. We have a consulting agency for leadership. And what we do is we solve problems through leadership, go to Echelon front dot com for details. If you can't get with us live, that's fine. Go to Heff online dot com where we get.
Granular with these things on a regular basis where you want to talk to me, you want to interact with me, go to your phone line, Dotcom, you will you will ask me questions me on a Zoome call. You want to talk to Dave? You want to ask him something, go to F on line dot com. You will interact with him. You will ask him questions. He will give you answers. That's what we do on that channel was a bunch of training on that channel.
There's a forum on that channel. So go to F. On F. Online dot com for that, we also have the master coming up in Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th. And then Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th, check extreme extreme ownership dotcom for details, we've we're going to be doing these looks like with social distancing. So they're going to be less seats available, which means I'm going to sell out faster. We have F Overwatch, which is our placement firm, where we're taking people from the military and placing them into businesses.
So if you are a vet looking for work or you are a company looking for leaders to come to your company that understand the principles that we talk about here, go to f overwatched dot com. If you want to help out veterans around the world, service members around the world go to America's Mighty Warriors dot org. That is Mark Leighs mom mumbly. Helping all service people out.
You can go there and you can either donate or you can get involved, and if you just can't get enough of my interminable tirades.
Or you need a little bit more of Echo Charles's preposterous postulations, or maybe you just like to hear one more of Dave's jangling juxtapositions, then you can find us on the interweb, on Twitter, Instagram and on Facebook.
Dave is at David Burke, David R. Burke, B-R, key, EKOS adequate. Charles, non-magical we like and of course, thanks to all the men and women in uniform who allow us to live our lives the way we want to. And that is in glorious freedom. And to the police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service, thanks to all of you for.
Protecting us and for keeping our nation a nation of law and order, not a nation of chaos and anarchy. And to everyone else out there. Just just remember that the effect on most men of the impact of battle is to cause them to want to do nothing.
And it's the same thing with the slings and arrows of life, we get pushed toward inaction and inactivity and indolence.
And the solution to that is that a determined effort must be exerted. To accomplish things, to accomplish tasks, and that is on you. And you know what that means. It means get out there. And get after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and JoCo.