This is JoCo podcast number two forty nine with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening.

Good evening. One SEAL KiOR is inbound to Camp Ramadi. Khaya. Killed in action. When the call came over, the radio from the Army company commander who was supporting my SEALs in the field, I felt instantly nauseous. I wanted to throw up.

But I knew I had to remain calm, I had to keep my emotions in check as the commander of SEAL Team Three tasking at Bruiser, I knew the whole tactical operation center and my entire task unit would be watching my reaction to this. So I took a breath and did my best to seem composed and in control.

Beyond that, I wasn't quite sure how to react or what to say or what to do, this SEAL soon reported as Marc Alan Lee, the first seal killed in Iraq.

He was shot and killed while assaulting a building in south central Ramadi on August 2nd, two thousand six. Ahero. Young and full of love and life and spirit, and now in an instant. Gonne.

SEALs had been fighting in Iraq for more than three years at this point, there had been some casualties, but no SEALs had been killed and no SEAL from SEAL Team three, which was formed in nineteen eighty three, had ever been killed in action.

While other seals from other teams had been lost in Afghanistan, no one above me in the immediate chain of command had ever been in sustained intense combat, much less suffered their men being killed.

Even though we had drilled the tactical mechanics of how to react when a man was lost, we had never trained for how to handle death from a leadership perspective. No one had ever even discussed it with me. There was no guidance from my senior officers on the matter. I had to get my guidance from somewhere else. So I turn to a man who had offered me so much valuable advice about war and about leadership.

I turn to Colonel David Hackworth and his book About Face. In its well-worn pages, I found the council I needed quote, The fact is generally there's no time out for mourning on the battlefield. But it's really no different than the father of 10 who comes home to find his house on fire with all of his kids sleeping inside. He doesn't stop and cry over the first child he finds dead. To do so would be to sign a death warrant for the other nine.

A commanding officer is often in the same situation, to do anything but continue on would be complete dereliction of duty and in the larger picture could possibly lead to even worse carnage among his troops. So you do what you have to do and only later, when things settle down, do you allow yourself to grieve and quote.

Like I had many times before I followed the guidance of Colonel Hackworth. The battle of Ramadi was not going to stop. There were still missions that needed to be conducted, still enemy that needed to be killed.

I told the task unit that we would do the only thing we could do, the only thing we should do, and the only thing Mark would want us to do.

Put on our gear, lock and load our weapons and go back to work, do our duty. The men understood this seemingly harsh course of action. And that was exactly what we did. Everyone accepted this direction for me, not because of my rank or my position, but because they knew something fundamental about me, that despite my hardened demeanor and my measured emotions, they knew I cared about them more than anything else in the world.

This feeling came to me instinctively, but it had been reinforced over and over again by what I had read in the pages of About Face.

Colonel Hackworth, commitment to his men was one of the primary reasons I related to his book.

He wrote, quote, The thing was, you had to look after your soldiers, it was true that a commanding officers first priority was the mission, but a conflicting requirement was the welfare of the men.

It was true that the whole purpose of the military establishment was to get a DDO foot eyeball to eyeball with the enemy, and it was equally true that the troops were the ones who paid the price in blood for an objective secured. These facts made and make an infantry commanding officer, a hanging judge. He has incredible power over the lives and deaths, not only of a faceless enemy, but of his men. Sometimes that power causes a leader to become hardened.

He stopped seeing his troops as human beings, they become faceless assets to him. He becomes afraid to get close or feel, instead constructing a concrete barrier in his head to keep out the guilt and pain of lives lost at his behest.

In the process, he forgets that though he may give the orders, it is the soldier who makes them happen. Or doesn't? He forgets that if you want one hundred percent from a trooper, you have to give him two hundred percent as a commander. End quote, That was Hackworth standard, you had to give two hundred percent to your men, you had to give them everything you had. I strive for that standard my whole career. I had spent my entire adult life in the SEAL teams like Colonel Hackworth, I'd come up through the ranks spending my first eight years as an enlisted seal before eventually being selected for a commissioning program and becoming a SEAL officer.

I worked hard. But that was in the nineteen nineties, there was no war to fight, so we trained and trained and trained even more when we deployed around the globe.

We trained other countries troops, but we didn't fight.

September 11th, 2001, changed all that, the war kicked off in Afghanistan in 2001, and by 2003, the focus has shifted to Iraq.

My first combat deployment was as a SEAL platoon commander in Baghdad from the autumn of twenty three into the spring of 2004. My platoon conducted dynamic direct action missions and captured killed scores of enemy personnel. We were also ambushed a few times and shot at with RPGs and machine guns. We returned fire at suspected enemy positions or a muzzle flash, as we saw in darkened alleyways, windows or doorways. During that deployment, only one seal on patrol with me was wounded, shot in the head.

Luckily, it was just a ricochet that had enough energy to puncture his skin, but not enough to puncture his skull. It left nothing but a minor wound.

In the end, Baghdad felt more like an exciting adventure for me and my platoon than a war. I returned from that deployment feeling as if we had done our share. I even felt some arrogance starting to creep into my head as if we had tamed war. But that arrogance was kept in check by a reminder that lived in another corner of my mind, yes, we had done our job. Yes, we had executed our missions. Yes, we had been to war.

But it was not the same as the wars I had read about over the years, being a SEAL and a professional military man, I had read many books about war.

Those books reminded me that what we had been through in Baghdad was no Omaha Beach or Guadalcanal. It wasn't the chosen reservoir or the Inchon landing. It was no I Drang Valley or Battle of Wei City.

Nothing I experienced on my first deployment to Iraq was even close to the level of combat detailed in the books I had read.

Of course, technically, what I had been through was classified as war. But for my SEAL platoon, Baghdad, in 2003 and 2004, conducting short and simple operations with a huge tactical advantage over a disorganized and untrained enemy, our experience was as forgiving and benign as war could be.

I was lucky. But my next deployment to the capital city of Al Anbar Province, a city known as Al Ramadi, was different when we arrived in the spring of 2006.

It was a complete war zone. Vehicles mangled by roadside bombs littered the streets.

Many buildings were reduced to rubble, and almost every building was pockmarked with machine gun bullet holes.

But the clearest indicator of the level of violence in Ramadi was the casualties.

Every day, American soldiers or Marines were wounded or killed. Every single day. I spent almost 16 years training and preparing for this deployment to Ramadi, first I had completed the basic SEAL training course known as Buddz, or basic underwater demolition SEAL training. But that training was simply a weeding out process to get rid of the men who didn't really want to be there. Almost no tactical lessons are learned there other than to suffer in silence. After Buddz, I went through Celal Tactical Training, or S-T, which later became known as Scutti or the SEAL qualification training, during that training, I began to learn the individual tactical skills I needed to perform my duties as a SEAL.

Once I completed that training, I was assigned to a SEAL platoon where my real learning began. I finally became part of a team where working together was the only way to achieve mission success. We learned how to fire and maneuver. We learned the fundamental tactics of gunfighting. We learn how to conduct ambushes and raids and assaults on buildings in oil platforms and ships at sea.

Surprisingly, unlike in the Army or the Marine Corps, where there are written instructions on how to do almost anything in the SEAL teams, most of what we learned was not taught from a book or a field manual. It was passed down by word of mouth, just as it had been for decades by more experienced platoon members and the SEAL instructor, Kadry.

I was lucky enough to learn from some of the older Vietnam era seals, but by that time, the early 90s, most of the Vietnam veterans were gone and with them almost all the real world combat experience was gone as well.

So while the training was good, there were some disconnects between the simulated training combat we conducted and what war was actually like. In the 12 years prior to my deployment to Baghdad, I had done multiple training cycles and deployments and had even served as an instructor cadet myself, teaching the skills I had learned all those years of experience prepared me as well as they could have for my deployment as a platoon commander to Baghdad upon my return to America. After that deployment, I did another training cycle to prepare to deploy back to Iraq, this time to Ramadi, in charge of two SEAL platoons that made up TASC unit Bruiser.

Surprisingly, during all those years of training, I had received very little leadership instruction, there was no SEAL doctrine about leadership. We attended no classes on the subject, nor did we follow any specific leadership protocol.

We were simply expected to learn it through OJT on the job training passed on by word of mouth, the same way we acquired our bulk of tactical knowledge.

We also learned very little about war beyond straightforward tactical knowledge how to shoot, move and communicate inside a SEAL platoon.

Sure, we learned the mechanics of battlefield maneuvers, but we didn't talk about fear and stress.

We didn't learn about the psychological impact of combat or the emotional shock of the horrors of war.

No one counseled me on the human capacity for evil or the human capacity for good. I was never taught about human nature, which is revealed in its rawest form on the battlefield. And while I didn't know what I didn't know, I could sense there was a gap between what we learned about tactics and what I truly needed to know in order to effectively lead men into combat.

I tried to close that gap in knowledge by reading, I read everything I could get my hands on about war, but I didn't concentrate on the broad strategic and political aspects of war. Sure, I studied why heads of states made decisions.

I read about presidents and prime ministers and four star generals and admirals, but I focused most intently on first person accounts, the actual experiences of those front line men who did the fighting, then the junior and non-commissioned officers who led them, the men storming the beaches, assaulting enemy machine gun nests and patrolling through jungles laced with booby traps.

What they did, how they did it, what they felt.

I read and read and read.

The authors of these books became my teachers.

At some point, and I can't remember exactly when it was I stumbled upon a book that changed the way I thought about war and leadership and life, in fact, it changed the way I thought about everything.

That book was about face by David Hackworth, a retired colonel who had joined the Army just after World War Two was battlefield commissioned in Korea, served multiple tours in Vietnam, and who became one of the most highly decorated soldiers of all time.

By the time he retired, he was a master tactician. He understood battlefield terrain. He knew how to maneuver combat elements on the battlefield. But more important than any of those accolades, awards and skills, Colonel David Hackworth knew people and he knew how to lead. When I take stock of everything that I've learned in my life about war, about strategy and tactics, about human nature and about leadership, it is Colonel Hackworth book that is the clear wellspring for so much of that knowledge.

And of all the warriors, heroes and leaders who I have known and who have mentored me over the years, it is this man, Colonel David Hackworth, a man whom I've never met that provided me with the most guidance and was always there to coach, train, mentor me through the words he wrote an about face.

I read this book at every opportunity during the battle of Ramadi in its pages, I found the instruction I needed. It was next to my cot in camp.

And if I wasn't in the field, the end of every day was spent learning from this book.

I could open the book to any section, read a few pages and relate what I read to what I was living leadership in the harshest environment, without question, my leadership style, my tactical knowledge, the decisions I've made and my view of the world has been shaped through the lens of this book.

Colonel Hackworth did not only affect my life and career in the military. After leaving the Navy, I started a leadership consulting company, have authored many books of my own, speak regularly about leadership, have a popular leadership podcast and continue to teach leadership.

Let there be no doubt everything I've written and all the leadership lessons I espouse are all rooted in about face.

What makes that fact even more interesting is that about face is not meant to be a leadership book, it was not written for the purpose of teaching leadership. It is an autobiography. It simply tells the story of Colonel Hackworth life and experiences.

But wrapped in that story and those experiences is a complete manifesto on leadership and human nature. But even with all those powerful lessons to teach, Colonel Hackworth was not always the easiest mentor to follow. When I first started to speak of him to fellow service members, he was not viewed in a universally positive way. In the Navy, among many senior officers that I encountered, Colonel Hackworth was viewed with a strong sense of disdain.

In nineteen ninety six, Hackworth wrote an article about then chief of naval operations, Admiral J. Borda, charging the admiral with wearing a medal on his uniform that he did not rate a Navy Commendation Medal with the combat distinguishing device also known as the Combat V.

The Combat V is awarded only when there is direct combat with the enemy. While Admiral Boorda did serve honorably aboard a US Navy warship during the Vietnam War, he was never in direct combat. When Admiral Boorda committed suicide in the aftermath of the investigation, some blamed Colonel Hackworth for the admiral's death.

Well, I understood the grief around the admiral's death. I also saw Harcourts perspective. For Colonel Hackworth, the combat infantryman was sacred. He had watched men on the front lines serve and sacrificed life and limb in two wars to Colonel Hackworth, the admiral, wearing an award he did not merit was an affront to every man that had ever seen close combat with the enemy. Hackworth could not and would not let that stand. But the fallout from the article Colonel Hackworth wrote left a small tribe of senior naval officers with a strong aversion to Hackworth and his perspective's.

Some Army leadership also disliked Hackworth and disparaged him when I brought up his name. While they wouldn't quite call him a turncoat, some Army soldiers viewed the end of Hacker's career in the service and his subsequent participation in the antinuclear movement, a slap in the face of the US Army, the US military and America. His parting shot while on active duty was an interview with ABC News correspondent Howard Tucker for the show Issues and Answers, in which Colonel Hackworth skewered much of the civilian and military leadership, their understanding of strategy and tactics and their gross misconduct of the war.

He bluntly put the blood of American servicemen on the senior leaders hands, quote, I don't feel that too many division commanders or even separate brigade commanders really understood the name of the game, he said.

Did you did this mean more US casualties, this misunderstanding of the name of the game, as you put it? Mr. Tucker asked. Absolutely, absolutely, Hackworth responded. It is easy for many to see this as insubordination, to view Hackworth as a rebellious mutineer, trying to denigrate the military system. But I saw something different, I saw a man who had dedicated his entire life to the service of his country and to his army, a man who cared deeply about the men in his charge and every man who wore the cloth of the nation, a man who had seen too many of those men fed into the meat grinder.

That was the war in Vietnam. And for what?

He failed to see any progress in the Vietnam War. And he failed to see any way to achieve victory as long as the military continued with the same ineffective strategies and tactics.

He could not stand to watch the suffering and needless death any more. It wasn't at all that he hated the army, the military or the country, it was that he loved them all too much. So we spoke the truth. But the sting of this interview and of his attitude after he was shuffled out of the army left a mark, a mark of resentment that was passed on to the army and the military and a resentment that was alive and well when I discovered Hackworth and about face.

So it was not always a pleasant task to carry the flag and be a follower of Hackworth. Fortunately, Hackworth lessons stand the test of time against any naysayer, and this book is absolutely filled with his lessons. But the lessons are not only about war, while the subtitle of A Bout faces The Odyssey of an American Warrior. It could also be aptly subtitled Comprehensive Lessons in Leadership, Battlefield Tactics, Strategy, Command and Control and the Essence of Human Nature.

Well, it might seem impossible that any book could contain so much knowledge about face does just that. Every page is dense with lessons that provide guidance on leadership, combat, human interaction and just about every other aspect of life.

And I followed that guidance. In fact, I often say that much of what I learned to teach as a leader, I stole from Colonel Hackworth. When Hackworth took over Fox Company in Korea, he immediately changed its name from Fox Company to fighter company, quote, Fox Company was dead.

I told them from this moment on, we were fighter. The troops got a charge out of it and quote, He did the same thing as a battalion commander in Vietnam when he took command of the Four Thirty Ninth Battalion. It had no unit identity. He promptly changed its name to the hard core and began to call the troops Recon Doce. I followed his example when I became a task unit commander at SEAL Team three in the spring of 2005, my task unit was assigned the generic title Bravo, a name simply taken from the phonetic alphabet to designate us as the second of three task units at SEAL Team three, the other two being Alpha and Charlie.

In our first meeting as a task unit, I let everyone know that we were no longer task unit Bravo. We were TASC unit bruiser. I saw faces change almost before my eyes as we began to take on the personality of our namesake like Colonel Hackworth had taught me, the troops got a charge out of it. I also knew that Colonel Hackworth had a methodology around building relationships, he knew that too much familiarity out of the gate with the troops could cause problems in the chain of command.

He ensured that the first impression he made with new men was that the mission and the business of soldiering and leading was paramount.

So he showed no signs of friendliness when he first met his troops, quote, for the first month I was with the unit, I refused to crack a smile, said Hackworth, joining his battalion in Vietnam. I did the same thing with asking a bruiser. There were no smiles from me when we first formed up the menu from the beginning that the business of war came first. These were some of the these were some of the countless leadership techniques I took from Colonel Hackworth.

Hackworth was also a champion of discipline. He kept his uniform squared away and wore a high and tight haircut. I always kept my dress uniforms pristine and my hair inspection ready.

Colonel Hackworth was an avid supporter of snipers. He invested heavily in them in his battalion in Vietnam and understood their impact. I did the same thing in Ramadi, utilizing our SEAL snipers to flip the script and turn my troops into the hunters instead of the hunted. I also followed his lead when it came to training troops, quote, I wanted each unit trained so well that a PFC could take a platoon and run it, wrote Colonel Hackworth, about training.

I strive for the same goal. And I often had my junior men run training operations.

He also wrote, quote, I'd have one platoon aggress against another and then reverse them until they were masters of both attack and defence procedures, end quote. In the SEAL teams, we called this force on force training.

And because of Hackworth, I made that type of training paramount for my troops and my final years in the SEAL teams, I caught a fly. The essential elements of what I'd learned into what I ended up calling the laws of combat cover and move simple prioritize and execute and decentralize command.

Those four laws became part of the SEAL leadership doctrine. They also became the basis of the principles I teach to leaders in business and other organizations around the world. Those principles are all rooted in lessons I learned from about face. The first law of combat is cover and move in a gunfight, this means one person or squad or platoon shooting at the enemy to keep the enemy's heads down, which is known as suppressive fire. So the other person or squad or platoon can maneuver.

Hackworth cites this principle again and again with statements like, quote, While the others laid down a good base of fire or tying down the enemy while providing a base of fire and one man providing covering fires, the other edge close enough to flip in a frag. Statements like that repeated throughout about face made me realize that the number one law of combat was that people have to cover and move from one another. To be alone on the battlefield was to die alone.

But this law does not only apply to the battlefield, it applies to any team or organization, teams have to work together to support one another. Cover and move means teamwork, and it is critical for the success of any team.

The second law of combat is simple plans must be simple and straightforward so that every person on the team understands the plan and knows how to execute it. Simple plans will also hold up. Under the chaos and stress of combat, complex plans will fall apart. Colonel Hackworth believed in keeping things simple while planning a mission to destroy an enemy supply depot that consisted of caves deep behind enemy lines that heavy artillery and air power failed to eliminate. Colonel Hackworth, new keeping things simple was a necessity.

Quote, During an aerial recon, I found the simplest way to make the raid. We'd weighed up the center of that creek. It would cover any noise and simplify navigation and quote, Not only do plans need to be simple, but communication needs to be simple as well. If a leader gives direction in complicated and convoluted language, the direction will not be understood. Simple, clear, concise language is required. So team members understand. Colonel Hackworth knew this while preparing to lead an operation into Vietnam's mountainous highland terrain.

He knew it would be disastrous for his men to carry too much gear and equipment. So we let the men know what was most important, quote, the single order was a simple one, lighten up, end quote.

Keeping things simple is an age old military maxim that applies to any organization in any arena. Colonel Hackworth knew this to be the truth.

Keep it simple. The third law of combat is prioritize and execute, there will be multiple problems on the battlefield.

If a leader tries to solve all those problems at once, his resources will be spread too thin and he will fail at solving any of them. So a leader has to prioritize what the biggest problem is and then execute on solving that problem first before moving on to the next biggest problem. One of the most obvious examples of this is tending the wounded men. As Colonel Hackworth advises, quote, In a hot firefight, a rifle platoon can take 10 casualties before you can cry medic.

And if you multiply by 10, the one rifleman who falls out to look after his buddy, suddenly you've lost the guts of the platoon's firepower. A leader cannot give the enemy the initiative by allowing his unit to become ineffective as a result of care for the wounded becoming the first priority. Any other course carried not only the risk of failure to accomplish the mission, but also the loss of a hell of a lot more men than necessary, end quote.

The idea of prioritize and execute does not only apply to the battlefield, it also applies to business and life. Taking on too many projects or trying to multitask across a wide number of undertakings simultaneously will result in failure. Leaders cannot allow that to happen. Instead, a leader must do as Colonel Hackworth did, prioritize and execute. The last leg of combat is decentralized command, allowing subordinate leaders to lead. This is fundamental to the success of any military unit or team.

Subordinate leaders need to understand the mission, the goal, the end state, the parameters they are allowed to work within, what the overall intent of the mission is and most importantly, why they are doing what they are doing. Then they have to be given the authority and the autonomy to go and execute. A failure to work with this mentality is disastrous. As Hackworth explains an about face quote in this, The third year of the war, whether or not to hold a pimple of a hill became an issue for the eighth army, the Pentagon and sometimes the president.

The only problem was that while those guys hemmed and hawed over whether to withdraw, reinforce down at the cutting edge, American soldiers died. It will become known as centralization and quote. Centralisation does not work, not on the battlefield, not in business, not in life. Leaders cannot hold the reins of command too tight.

Leaders have to let their people lead. These were not the only lessons I learned from Colonel Hackworth. He taught me about discipline and fear, building relationships, playing the game, when to break the rules. The list goes on and on. Colonel Hackworth also taught me about things that I shouldn't do from areas where he fell short. Sometimes he lost his temper or let his ego drive his actions, sometimes he lashed out at people when he should have kept his mouth shut.

Sometimes he broke rules that he shouldn't have broken. His family life while he was on active duty was less than ideal, but even when Colonel Hackworth wasn't right, he was humble and honest about it, which meant I could still learn from him. Even in his mistakes. He mentored me. Over time, although I knew he wasn't perfect, I put Colonel Hackworth on a pedestal, but as he taught me, I was always questioning both myself and others.

I didn't want to fall victim to what he said. An about face was among the biggest mistakes of the war, which was that, quote, Politicians only listen to these generals and these generals only listen to themselves, end quote. So I always wondered what the people who actually knew and worked with Colonel Hackworth really thought of him. I was lucky to be able to have that question answered when I had the honor of interviewing retired Brigadier General James H.

Fukuyama for an episode of my podcast, General Fukuyama had an incredible career, one of the highlights of which was serving as a company commander for Colonel Hackworth in Vietnam. This was my chance to find out if Colonel Hackworth deserved the reverence and respect I felt for him. General Fukuyama had been a young captain when Colonel Hackworth reported to Fort Lewis, Washington, as a new battalion commander. I asked the general if he knew who Colonel Hackworth was before he met him.

General Muka Yaama replied, quote, Of course, we all knew Haak was a legend, everybody knew who he was. He was Mr. Infantry, end quote. I asked how everybody knew of Colonel Hackworth.

General Muka Yama explained, quote, It wasn't only his reputation, it was his appearance. His neck was the size of my waist. His hair was an eighth of an inch, razor sharp sides and all that. It was the way he carried himself.

His philosophy was that you were either a dud or a stud. And there was nothing in between. When he came to a unit and found some guys that weren't cutting it, they were gone, especially in combat and quote. General Fukuyama also told me that Colonel Hackworth, quote, never did things for personal gain, he always did things for the unit. And for the soldiers, end quote. For the soldiers. It is that underlying theme that permeates about face and is that underlying theme that stuck with me as a leader.

But people's strengths are often their weaknesses and perhaps doing things for the soldiers, was Colonel Hackworth undoing?

In his interview with issues and answers, when Howard Tucker asked if he had become too emotionally involved in Vietnam, he responded, quote, One couldn't see the number of young studs die or be terribly wounded without becoming emotionally involved. I just have seen the American nation spend so much of its wonderful, great young men in this country, I've seen our national wealth being drained away. I see the nation being split apart and almost being split asunder because of this war.

And I'm wondering to what end it is all going to lead, end quote.

From that emotional feeling about the cost of war came Colonel Hackworth, metaphorical about face, his turn away from the war, away from the army and away from America. But he could not turn his back forever. His heart was too connected, his soul to caring. That's why Colonel David Hackworth wrote this book, and it's why he dedicated it quote, to all the Doughboy's, the ground pounders, the grunts, the American infantrymen past, present.

And especially future, end quote. Well, Hack, if I may be so presumptuous as to call you what your friends called you, your dedication.

Has hit home and your lessons have not been forgotten. This book captures the lessons you learned in blood and passes them on. I use them on the battlefield with my SEALs as we served alongside soldiers and Marines in fierce fighting during the battle of Ramadi.

I pass them on to the next generation of SEALs when I ran training for SEAL platoons and troops deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. I have talked about them at our service academies and I've shared them with leaders and future leaders at every level and in every branch of the military.

Your service to the infantrymen carries on. But I will also tell you, Hack, that your impact does not stop at your cherished infantryman. Your leadership, philosophies, strategies and tactics can be applied by any leader at any level, in any situation, just as you found when you applied them to the civilian world yourself and ran highly profitable and successful businesses. I've taught your principles to countless civilian leaders in every industry imaginable and have seen them applied over and over again with extraordinary outcomes.

So. Thank you, Jack. Thank you for writing this book. Thank you for being my mentor. Thank you for your service and sacrifice to our great nation. And. Even now that you have passed. Thank you for taking care of your beloved soldiers. We will follow your lead. Djoko Willink January 20 20. And. That is the forward for a new release of the book about Face, which is now available and obviously.

No, it was just an absolute honor to be able to write this thing, and it's it seems it seems I know this word might be a little bit much it seems a little bit surreal, you know, to have had this book, had this huge impact on me, and then to be able to to be able to write the foreword is just to have my name on this book with, you know, this guy that has had this massive influence on me is crazy.

Yet it's surreal for me and I me the.

Yeah, when you like what episode was when you first covered that this is the first book we covered on the podcast episode to episode. One of this podcast was, Hey, this is what we're doing and answer some questions. Episode two is about Face. And I knew that. I mean, when we started episode one already knew we were we knew what we were doing next. So and that's kind of what happened.

So what happened was I first mentioned the book when I was on Tim Ferriss podcast, which was the first interview I ever did. Yeah. And no one had any idea who I would. Why why would they know who I was or whatever.

But he asked that he has you know, he asks the same bulk of questions most of the time. And so one of the questions that he asks is, what's the book that you most gifted? And for me, there's not a that's a very easy question, because, you know, I don't, first of all, give many gifts, but second of all, I'd only ever give anyone any book ever.

And it was this book I gave actually. I gave a copy to laugh. I gave a copy to Seth Stone. That's who got this book. So.

That was pretty easy, and so I kind of mentioned it there, you know, maybe some people got their interest piqued about the book then. But then we started the podcast, this podcast a couple of months later, and this was the first book we covered. And then, of course, I refer to it all the time, not only on this podcast, but someone else will ask me that question. Pretty common question. Right. Which what's a great book or what book?

Yeah.

And so through all this through all these mentions of the book and talking about the book, it started to sell. So the book, the original book came out in nineteen eighty nine.

Yeah. So it started to sell and it actually started to sell a lot like a lot of copies which doesn't happen. There's very few books that basically get brought back from the dead. Right. When a book's over, it's over and it's outdated and they're moving on to the next book. So it's very seldom that they have and there's some name for it. I don't know.

In the publishing world, there's a name for for what happens with a book basically rises from the dead.

And so the publishers have to reprint these books and they're kind they're stoked, obviously, because they're just making money now. And someone in their department, you know, in whatever they have a department is it's like archived books or so there's some name for these type of old books if they come back. And so someone started pulling the string and doing the research and trying to figure out where this was all coming from, why they're selling this book that hasn't sold in, you know, in 30 years or close to 40 years.

Thirty five years it hasn't you know, hasn't been a huge seller. It was a New York Times bestseller when it came out. But, you know, you get that doesn't normally happen that they come back. So they pulled the string on it and investigated and eventually found me and said, hey, you know, we're we're going to reissue this book.

Would you like to do a blurb for the back meeting, a little quote in the back of the book saying, you know something, this is a great book and me being give me an inch and I'm going to try and take a mile. I said, never mind a blurb. I said, I'll write a full forward for this thing. And they were all stoked about it.

And so so here it is. The book is out. The new version of About Face by Colonel David Hackworth, forward by Jonquil Willink. That's me. That's crazy to say.

That is, you know, like all this thing where you kind of kind of go back in time. In a way.

It's not like remembering a certain time. It's not just remembering, but remembering and then also remembering your mindset and how you were thinking and what you were kind of feeling generally in that time frame, you know, kind of think your values.

And also you kind of put yourself in that exact mindset as you were back then. Right.

So it's like one of these things where you think back to episode two one, when are you going to before that and how it's such this massive part of your way and, you know, your favorite book, all this stuff. And then to think back then. Now, yeah, in a few years, I'm going to be writing the forward to a rerelease of this book right here. It's like that part kind of makes it surreal even for like me, you know, it's crazy.

You know, it was, you know, Jordan Peterson and I talked to him about this because he wrote a new forward of the rerelease of the Gulag Archipelago and the same thing that was kind of a dead book.

And all of a sudden this popular guy comes and starts talking about it and then they rereleased it and who wrote the foreword? And so I talked to Jordan about it. You know, I said I said, hey, how was that process? And it but it's probably pretty similar feeling for him, you know, of this book that he really he got a lot of his thought from this book and then they rereleased it and he wrote the foreword.

And so when I talk to him about I was kind of telling him the same thing about what was going on.

So I think we had a similar level of Stoke. You play on that. But, you know, we talked about it. We talked about in episode two.

We talked about it with when when Jim Fukuyama, General Fukuyama was on Muk, coolest guy, you know, when he was on and I read all the sections, you know, that he was kind of involved in and that was awesome.

But I wanted to cover some more of the book right now. And look, the book is massive. You know, it's eight hundred and something pages, so.

It's a big book, but I wanted to read a little bit more of it just because, look, haven't read and I just spent, whatever, 40 minutes reading my words, but my words pale in comparison to the man himself.

So here we go. Let's jump into the book about Face six February nineteen fifty one.

When I first saw them about a thousand yards to our front, the enemy looked like little black ants racing from the village toward snow covered hills. It was clear cloudless morning. The temperature hovered around zero as the tanks kept rolling, closing on the ants and the hills sat astride the road, dead ahead.

My squad was piggy back on the lead tank.

Fighting in this frigid temperature. Is it think about it, you're trying to manipulate your weapon any time you stop, you're freezing. I don't know.

I like the cold better than the heat, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. You probably like the heat better than the cold.

I don't know under circum certain circumstances. Yeah. And no, I mean, I remember at UAH we jump in the ice baths for like 20 minutes ago or whatever when you get out of there.

Yeah. You can't move like you can't move your fingers like you do. Yeah. You can do that kind of stuff. So I don't know man. The heat can I mean if you have water but you don't always have water apparently. Yeah. I don't know man. The health pretty pretty jammed up. I don't.

Yeah. That's a good point. The good point is it's either way it sucks but certainly the cold is going to suck. I wash my back. The book my squired squad was riding piggyback on the lead tank. It was no longer it was no honor being. First, in the grim parade, we'd already ravaged the tanks toolbox and knocked off some rations to eat on the way. And now our only comfort was the motor of the M forty six, which belts some welcome heat over our near frozen bodies.

There you go. How are you going to stay warm? Just get by tank exhaust fumes.

The tank commander relaid. Lieutenant Lanz ordered a dismount. I got the guys off like a shot and hit the ground running as the tank rolled on beside us. When I looked beside me, when I look behind me, I saw the rest of 3rd Platoon had not dismounted. Maybe I heard wrong. Maybe I was just overeager. But it's damn near impossible for infantrymen to reboard a moving tank, so there was no choice but to keep running and hope I hadn't blown it too badly with the lieutenant.

I didn't see the answer again for what seemed like a lifetime, but I sure as hell knew where they were in an instant, the familiar roar of the tanks was drowned out by the deafening sound of incoming machine gun, mortar, artillery and self-propelled anti-tank A-T fire. Like a buzz saw, the deadly crossfire was cutting into my platoon.

There was at least a dozen enemy machine guns on the high ground and on both sides of the road.

HighGround, it's like all these when I read these things, all these little things, they just they just seeped into my mind over time.

HighGround like this is that that word is in this book. All HighGround. HighGround Oh, they got the highground. We got the highground. My guy is still running alongside our manoeuvering tank. We're totally shielded. The other squads on the exposed decks of their tanks were hit hard by the time we made it to the side of the rice paddy wall and set up a base of fire. Most of what was left of 3rd Platoon was scattered across the frozen ground.

The tanks pulled off the road and rolled into position online. Once there, they froze.

Earlier in the assembly area, a tank commander had told me his unit, the Sixty Fourth Tank Battalion, hadn't seen much hard combat. I believed him. As soon as they were fired upon, these tankers became paralyzed. They plumb forgot all their training and just sat there in those great big armored holes while the enemy went on throwing everything at us.

But the mess hall walk, I jumped on the back of the platoon leader's tank and thumped on the hatch with the butt of my rifle. The lieutenant opened the hatch a crack.

Hey, Lieutenant, I yelled, get some fire going at the enemy. Get the big gun going. Get the machine guns going.

What's he asking for? Three is asking for cover fire. Like we're stuck. You got a freakin tank open fire.

Lt was not with it. It seemed as though he had no comprehension of the fix we were in. Slug's were splatting hard on the side of the tank. The self-propelled at fire, which was screaming down the valley, dug deep furrows all around us. And yet the tanks still sat there silently like big fat clay ducks at a shooting gallery.

Sergeant, the lieutenant finally said in a shell shocked kind of daze, Look, look you see out there on the ice. Yes, I saw it. It was a pile cap, a little fur ball on the ice amid my platoon's dead and wounded. The bullets and the blood, that's my cap. He said, Would you get it for me? So what do you learn from that right there you are learning that people are not going to be able to handle certain situations and they might be focused on something that they shouldn't be focused on.

I mean, this is an extreme example, but if you've never been to combat before and you're in a leadership position, you might need to learn a lesson from that, that you might get guys that aren't going to act the way you would expect them to act.

What does he do? Back to the book. I considered shooting the sorry son of a bitch. Then they're climbing inside his tank and taking command. Fortunately, reason prevailed. I grabbed him and shook him until he looked as if he was back to the real world. Then I instructed him to have three tanks concentrate on the self-propelled at fire to our front and use the others to start placing machine gun fire on the hills. To give him a bit of encouragement, I manned the tanks, 50 caliber gun and blasted one of the hills myself until I'd used up all the ammo and the commander got his men into action.

What does that tell you? What do you do when people don't do that's a lead from the front scenario. You know, in leadership strategy and tactics, I went through this whole. The book, the book, Leadership, Strategy and Tactics, I went through this whole section talking about leading from the rear and how, you know, you want to let your you want to let your leaders lead. You want to let your subordinates lead. You want to let them step up.

If you're always leading from the front there, they're always following and you don't want that. But I also make a case for, hey, there are absolutely times when you've got to lead from the front.

This is one of those times once the back of the book, once the 90 millimeter guns got going, we were on our way to gaining fire superiority. The amount of incoming decreased as the tanker started to remember why they were there. But the tank commanders stayed buttoned up inside their turrets. No one was using the 50 calibers. So to explain this a little bit, tank as like the big gun that you think of a tank. But then on top of it, they have a machine gun, a 50 caliber machine gun, which is a big giant machine gun.

And basically you sit up out of the turret of the tanks or you're exposed, but then you can shoot that 50 cal wherever you want to shoot it. And all these guys were buttoned up inside their tanks, not using that weapon. Now, they also have a weapon. Usually that's a machine gun that's coordinated. It's called a coaxial gun. So it's a machine gun. So you got the big machine gun, which is what you think of when you see a tank.

But next to that is an actual machine gun that they can fire from inside the tank. And it's just a machine gun that's pointing in the same direction as that big gun. But then in addition to that, they have this 50 caliber turret mounted gun that you can get up out of the weapon, out of the tank, and you can shoot from it's a common thing. The 50 cal. Yes. Yeah, it's weird. I never I don't know if I didn't notice it or what.

Not that I'm sitting around looking at tanks all the time. Nothing but. Huh. You got three guns on a tank essentially. Yeah. I seen main gun. Mike, my main gun, Mike Bimah. He's a he's a tank fanatic. Sure.

But but you know, he he used all those weapons, the coaxial machine gun, his main gun and his turret mounted 50 cal get some. So what is there to the three guys in the tank or what?

I don't I forget how many people are in the tank. There's a driver. There's a gunner.

I want to say there's three or four people in there. Huh. Interesting. Yeah, it's tight quarters. It's hot.

Well, God bless them.

So back to the book, once the 90 millimeter guns got going, we were on our way to gaining fire superiority, the amount of incoming decreased as this tanker starting to remember why they were there. But the tank commander stayed buttoned up inside their turrets. No one was using their 50 calibers. I just couldn't believe it. Eight inches of steel between them and the chaos outside. Yet they didn't have it in them to help the sun come out for the guys stopping slugs with their field jackets.

I went from tank to tank, pounding on the hatches and blasting away on each of their fifties until all the ammo was exhausted.

This little exercise had its effect. The tank commanders got the word and started doing what they should have been doing all along. When no further spoonfeeding was required, I returned to my platoon. So again, that's just taking action, letting people see you have to lead from the front. Sometimes lesson learned.

There were dead and wounded everywhere. Slugs were ricocheting off the ice. We could see sparks where they hit. Jim Parker's second platoon had successfully silenced an enemy machine gun to our left. So the pressure was off us. So the pressure was off enough for us to get our wounded behind the protection of the tanks and patty walls where they could be patched up, our progress was hampered, though, because the tank crews kept moving their tanks. They didn't stop to think they were exposing our wounded all over again.

They were too busy trying to save their own armour coated skins. I told the tank lieutenant, who might come to view and treat accordingly as a recruit at Fort Knox that the next time a tank moved, it exposed our guys. I'd fire a three point five bazooka right up his ass.

There was no more movement.

I saw soldier prone on the ice. He'd been there a long time. I thought he was dead. But then I saw movement and rushed out to get him. My God, I thought it's the Bouwer. Private Henry C. de Boer had been with George Company since early in the war. He was one of the few survivors from the original 3rd Platoon, basically because in those first hard months of combat, he had not seen one good firefight. He had an uncanny sixth sense.

He could always tell when the platoon was in for a major bloodletting and invariably he'd find an excuse to be somewhere else.

Normally that excuse was going on sick call, which by regulation he was allowed to do, and you couldn't stop him even though you knew the only thing that was wrong with him was a chronic case of cowardice.

DeBoer himself even admitted he was a coward and we hated him for it. He was an outcast from the platoon and we even had a little song about him, which we'd all sing in unison. Quote, Out of the dark, dreary Korean countryside comes the call of the day bowerbird. Sick call, sick call, sick call and quote. He pulled this stunt only yesterday as we were saddling up for this very operation.

He'd sensed the bloodletting all right, but hadn't figured that the foggy overcast covering the battlefield would not lift. Then the attack would be postponed. He'd return from the dock last night with a clean bill of health. Most surprised to see us.

The rest of the platoon took great pleasure in the fact that his malingering little ass would be in the thick of things in the morning.

Now, Deborah was ashen faced, hit in the chest or gut, I didn't know there was a lot of blood and well into shock. I knew he wasn't going to make it. Come on, Deborah, you're going to be fine. You'll be all right.

I said, giving him the old pep talk as I grabbed his jacket collar and started sliding him across the ice.

But to Brewer said, no, sarge, just leave me, you're going to get hit, just leave me, Sarge. Then suddenly he groaned, Sarge, I just shit my pants. And that was it. He was going. I left him and ran back. Deborah INDEF became one of the great heroes of our outfit. It was true he'd never been anything in his army life but a coward.

But he died, right? He died like a man. He didn't say take care of me, he said, leave me, take care of yourself. And when I told the other guys the story all day, Bouwer became a legend in the platoon. You know, when I whenever I read things like this, you know. Or not, whenever, but sometimes I just kind of get curious so you can Google the Internet interweb and, you know, you you do do Google Henry Cederbaum and there it is, Korean War six February nineteen fifty one from Newport News, Virginia.

Son of Margaret Boer didn't find much else besides that, but the story behind every one of those names back to the book, The Road ran north south and we were on the east side of it.

The balance of company was on attack manoeuvring to secure the high ground to the north and to the west. There it is again, high ground. Do you think that somewhere where we read four pages or talk about high ground, do you think that might be an important thing in the world?

My platoon or what was left of it was the thick some element trying to tie down the enemy while providing a base of fire for Parkers and Gilchrist platoons. What does that mean? It means cover. Move means in the cover position. The other elements are moving. Maybe that's important. Do you think it is? We've never been in combat before. And you hear this guy keep saying put down cover fire. Yes. After we got organized, I had a moment to look around.

I saw my platoon leader, Lieutenant Land, sort of crouched down, leaning against a rice paddy wall, observing the whole action. John Land was a good man, a World War Two vet and former company NCO, he was one of the few battlefield commissions in the twenty seventh. Isn't he a cool customer, I thought to myself now, just watching this whole thing and taking it all in. Because really, that was about the only thing you could do in a time like this.

Stay cool, stay down and establish fire superiority as best you could.

Do you think that's an important lesson, to stay cool, stay calm, stay down, get fire, spirochete.

I examined what we had left in terms of a fighting force, Tennessee Mitchell, Robert, Delbert Bell and old the Bouwer, there were seven dead altogether and about a dozen wounded. The platoon sergeant was gone and the assistant platoon sergeant was nowhere in sight. It seemed that all was left of 3rd Platoon was the balance of my squad, bits and pieces of the other two and a light machine gun team.

I ran over to the lieutenant to ask for instructions. When I got there, I realized the reason Lieutenant Land was so cool was that he was also dead. He'd call it a slug right between the eyes, the blood had poured down his face and chest, filled up the pieces of his binoculars and frozen their. I took the binoculars and slipped the radio from his dead radio operators back, I called Captain Mike Lee.

Our company commander and gave him the situation report. He said I was now in charge, that we were to continue tying down the enemy and get the wounded out in that order of priority.

Hmmm, isn't that interesting, you've got the leader giving you two things to do and telling you that one of them is the priority. Lieutenant Gilchrist, first platoon was having a hell of a time, their attack was being held up by fire from a hornet's nest of well concealed enemy, automatic weapons positioned just as we've gotten the wounded under control. One of our guys had been doing some scouting, spotted North Korean fighting positions on the other side of the dike.

First platoon was attacking. He motion me over to have a look. Sure enough, at least a platoon was dug in there almost in the shadow of the tanks. They were so close to the tanks, men, guns, couldn't depressed low enough to hit them not. Nor could their anti-tank weapons hit our tanks.

It was a Mexican standoff, but not for long. So you have tanks.

They can only lower their weapons so much. And so you've got the enemy so close and in a depressed position that you can't even shoot them.

So you got a little Mexican standoff and then, all right, who's going with me? I asked. So what is what is what is Hackworth do? He gets default degressive. He's going to take action. He's going to take action.

So he says, all right, who's going with me? I will set VanMeter, our platoon medic, instead of a guy who had a great reputation as a fighter, as he did as an as a doc, while the others laid down a good base of fire, the doc and I threw to frag grenades over the dyke. What is that? That's cover move. You lay down fire. I'm going to hot grenades.

When they exploded, we leaped through the smoke landing front and center of the enemy. It was eyeball to eyeball, the two of us facing at least 30 dazed, wounded or dead communists, the enemy appeared to be leaderless. They were certainly in a state of shock. And we clean them up and we cleaned up the position with ease using rifles and bayonets. You don't think too much of about bayonet fighting in the Korean War, but apparently you're getting after it.

The two more then two more enemy soldiers appeared out of the smoke and confusing, dragging a fifty seven caliber anti-tank buffalo gun. We were no more than 10 feet apart. I leveled my M1 one was about to shoot them. When I looked down and saw that the bolt was back, my weapon was empty and it wasn't exactly the time for reloading. I lunged forward with the bayonet at on guard shouting Tousling. The enemy threw up their hands. The Chinese word for surrender was probably the only one I knew.

I'd filed it away in my brain when we were up north. I must admit it learned.

I must admit I learned it thinking that someone would be saying it to me, but it didn't matter. Now there they stood with guns still hanging around their necks, a buffalo gun at their feet, and me with an empty rifle. The funny thing was that these guys were Korean, not Chinese. And the chances that they had understood what I said then the chances and the chances were they hadn't understood what I had said anyway. On the other hand, in combination with that long, razor sharp bayonet pointed at them, they probably would have surrendered if I had given the order in Swahili.

In any event, we took their weapons and turned that over to our men on the other side of the dike. Then the doc and I continued mopping up in numbers and in firepower. These guys certainly should have outgun what was left of 3rd Platoon from the number of bodies, buffalo guns and other weapons we found. We conclude that we knocked off an anti-tank platoon that had been as green, as scared as our tankers. The only difference was, of course, that these North Koreans would never tell the story of their baptism of fire.

By the time we rejoin the platoon, my guys had looted to the two prisoners, the only real treasure was a US made Waltham pocketwatch, which the guys gave to me. It became my six February souvenir. None of us spoke Korean. So I asked PFC Charles to take the bus back to Captain Mike Lee for interrogation. I was really pleased we'd nailed him. Prisoners are the best source of battlefield information. Pretty pertinent fact. And with the fighting still going on full tilt all around us, it'd be useful to find out what the hell was happening in the enemy camp.

The first and second platoons of George were fighting hard to take the high ground.

Navy corsairs were working with the enemy over, working the enemy over with napalm and strafing runs cut off between mine and Gilchrist's platoon were an enemy who'd been bypassed. So I took a half a dozen of our guys and went up the hill to do some hunting.

Once again, taking action, taking the high ground.

The North Koreans were cleverly concealed, well dug bunkers stuffed with straw for warmth.

The pine covered hill was a maze of seemingly unrelated positions, which we slowly worked through in two man teams. Fire in the hole was shouted again and again as we urinated bunker after bunker, one man providing cover fire as the other edged close enough to flip in a frag.

Hmm. Laws of combat covering the enemy did not fight back. They stayed in the bottom of their holes looking like trapped moles. It didn't take long before we ran out of frag grenades. A field expedient was quickly devised. We stripped our tracer slugs from the machine gun belt and clipped them for R.M. Ones with one man covering, his partner would slip up to the hole and snap off a treif tracer to into the position the red hot slugs would ignite the straw inside.

And when the defender came up coughing, he'd be shot between the horns.

Gary Cooper wiped out a dozen dozens of German soldiers in Sergeant York by lowering them out with a Turkey call, that it was good enough for Sergeant York and Hollywood. It was good enough for us. On six February nineteen fifty one, we moved from whole the whole systematically burning the enemy out until the hilltop above us suddenly exploded with gunfire.

The reds were counterattacking as Gilchrist's platoon fought them off. Only six feet from the crest of the hill, we beat feet back to the safety of our rice paddy wall. Patty Walls, whose purpose in more peaceful times was irrigation control, where dirt walls about a foot thick and about three feet high, a perfect cover for most direct fire weapons. Infantrymen love them. Now leaning against my safe patty wall, even as first platoon fought off another counterattack with the help of 2nd, which could observe the forward slope of Gilchrist Hill and provide warning of the enemy's intention.

I realized I was starving. I opened a can of see rations with my trusty P thirty eight and dug right in. I started at the top of the can big chunks of congealed fat under which lay beef and potatoes frozen rock hard. About this time, an enemy sniper started firing along the top of the rice paddy wall. It was harassing fire. Only no one got hurt. But it got on all of our nerves, far more even than the largest battle still going on around us.

I just gotten down to the meat and was about to take my first bite when zip a slug creased the furrow in the top of the wall right above my head and showered my rations with debris.

I scooped it out. I was about to try another bite and zip another slug. Same place did the same thing by the third time. That was it. I was pissed off. I'm going to get that sniper who's with me, Ray Wells, an ace machine gunner in good old country. Boy from West Virginia, volunteered. We followed the patte wall to a drainage ditch that took us behind the North Korean anti-tank positions. The plan was simple to get right to the rear of the sniper, shoot the son of a bitch and go back and finish my sees.

The ditch had an L shaped turn. We stopped just shy of it, where I inched forward to have a quick peek. Three Koreans manning a machine gun were lying in the prone position about ten feet away, not looking our direction. I slipped back to Welles, whispering that I take the first guy, he take the third and we double up on the gunner in the middle. We stepped out of the ditch. The North Koreans looked up at Wells and I were the last thing they ever saw.

I knew they were dead. They were so close that I could hear the slugs thumping home in their padded jackets. We jumped over them and continued on our way. With Wells covering my ass, I came up behind a little tree at the top of the ditch, ideal concealment for a quick look, see? After a few second scan, I spotted the sniper on the Hill, he was in a bunker about 100 hundred yards away on my left, and I could clearly see the side of his head and his Soviet escapes rifle.

I ducked down. I didn't want to take a chance on Kentucky windage, so I adjusted my M1 rifle sights down four klicks and got into a firing position. I had the snipers head sitting right at the top of my front site. But just as I was about to squeeze the trigger, I heard machine gun slug snapping over my head. Then the weapons report. The weapons report. Oh shit. I thought someone seen me. For all I knew, it could have been one of our tankers.

The slugs were coming from that direction. Maybe they hadn't gotten the word that we were out here. So I started to go down. But as I went down, I felt the top of my head explode. I'd caught a slug. So what do we have here? Well, we have a potential blue on blue scenario, I guess we we don't know where that round's coming from, but it's coming from the general position of his tanks. So how is that happening?

Well, that people don't know where he is, how important it is to know where each other on the battlefield. It's the most important piece of information you have.

Lots of serratia, I mean, you know, an MRI is right. Yeah, so that's the old school MRI. But they came in Kans, not in the plastic pouches that the modern MRI comes in.

So they say it's like Serre. Is that the letter C, Rashon or C, a rash. They write with a C. As just the legislature, just the but I don't know where the origination maybe it's canned rations, that might be it. I don't think it's like these are meant for naval vessels at the sea because they because they they wouldn't use them out there because on ships, they have big refrigerators and kitchens and stuff.

I'm sure we'll find out when this comes out. People will let us know. Yeah. Canned, I'm guessing. Canned. That makes sense. Yeah. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the truth.

Yes.

Like most good wolfhounds, I wasn't wearing a helmet. Helmets were a pain in the ass unless there was a lot of artillery and mortar fire coming in, in which case they became as essential as air the slug rip through my fur pile cap and propelled me from the top of the ditch as though I'd been poleaxed by Paul Bunyan.

I don't know if I lost consciousness or not, but I do know I was stunned with four alarm sirens ringing in my ears. Well, thought I was dead and took off down the ditch. I couldn't blame him. He thought he was all alone and behind enemy lines. Meanwhile, I tried to focus on what had happened, so that sucks.

By the time you get shot and you come to you see your buddy leaving you for dead and you can't even blame him because you just got shot.

And that blood, really thick was pumping out of my head. The first thing I did was ask myself my name, rank and serial number. David Hackworth, David Hasselhoff, Hackworth, Sergeant, are a one nine two four two nine zero seven. That's pretty funny. He's he's been in the military so like institutionalized that first thing he asked his name, rank and serial number of himself. That's just beautiful.

That came the automatic response, which made me decide that my head must still be OK even if my ass was the worst crack ever. I started crawling down the ditch. I had to crawl because the North Koreans on the high ground knew they had an intruder in their midst. I stayed low on the enemy side. Slugs were spraying the ditch fast and furious, but thumping up against the other wall. I crawled until I reached the machine gun crew. Wells and I had knocked off.

Now I was faced with a dilemma.

If I jumped over them, I'd become exposed to the enemy fire coming from the hill. If I crawled over them, one of them might still be alive. And the longer I looked, the more my confused head convinced me to see that one of them was alive and he'd kill me.

I couldn't shoot them because when I got hit, I dropped my rifle.

So I just stared at them like a dumb recruit, wondering what to do.

I pulled my trench knife out of my boot very, very carefully. I crawled over one of them waiting for him to move. I crawled over the next one, waiting for him to move. Then I crawled over the third guy the same way and slipped on like a snake down the ditch until it was high enough for me to crouch, then high enough for me to stand up and run the whole time I was singing. Whoever said there aren't any atheists on the battlefield was dead, right?

Often when we'd be sitting around our little fires, one of the guys in the platoon would play his guitar and we would sing the songs were all religious ones, like Down by the Riverside, where we'd be laying down our swords and shields or please, dear Jesus, hear my plea just a little closer. Walk with the.

But they were also songs of great comradeship and the most magic feeling would always pour out when we sang a feeling that 3rd Platoon or Platoon was our family our whole life. And somehow between God and our brothers, we were going to make it through. So as I pounded down this ditch. I was singing Just a closer walk with thee, with deep feeling, Ella Fitzgerald, look out. To my mind, I was really talking to God, I was talking to the man.

So I'm singing and running, blood's pouring out of my head, and then I remember I didn't have my rifle. What a rotten example I had set. Good, Nassios, don't screw up like that, only a dumb shit of a soldier loses his rifle. So I stopped singing and started chewing my ass as I ran down that ditch. Maybe it was because I was thinking about my lack of professionalism, maybe it was just second nature thing from my training, or maybe it was a sixth sense, I don't know.

But seconds before I was home free, just a few feet more, I told myself just around the corner, I stopped.

Hey, third platoon, it's Hackworth, I shouted, I'm coming in. Then I turn the corner, I found myself looking down the throat of Corporal Wesley Morgan's mean looking Browning automatic rifle.

Man, you were so loud coming down that ditch, I thought at least a platoon of gooks was on the march. Wells told me you got it. If you hadn't called out, I would have mowed you down. So we have another potential blue on blue scenario there.

And, you know, I'm calling out all these little examples in this book, and this book is just.

It just it just it just filled with them, it's filled with them over and over again, and we'll get into more of it. This is a long book.

We could I could talk about this book forever, I think, because I've read it so many times. And every time I read it, I find something new, something different. You know, I've got here's my here's my original copy. This is the first copy I ever got. Right here is old one. It's all beat up.

I sent Tim Ferriss a copy and he sent me a note back and he said I said, hey, here's here's about Face. This is the book I mentioned. And I said him like an old hardcover because I have a bunch of copies and I've got a bunch of signed copies.

And he felt bad because it was a it was an older looking book. He said, wait a second, is this like because we had talked about it even off the podcast, he goes, wait a second, is this like the book that you had in Iraq?

And I go, No, no, no, no. It's just no, it's just a copy. But it's a it's an older copy. Yeah.

There's just so many lessons. And like I said, the book is eight hundred and thirty pages long with small writing.

And also what's cool about it is you can open it up. You don't have to read the whole thing. You can open up anywhere. You can start reading. If you know the general story, you can start reading it anywhere. And that's that makes it beneficial. And actually, life was telling me the other day, and I remember doing this one slave was telling me he would like, you know, we'd be talking about something.

I have it down in the tactical operations, like sitting on my deck desk and, you know, there'd be some something in there.

I'd read it to him, you know, be like, hey, listen to this. You know, him and his assistant platoon commander, whatever. I'd read it to him and, you know, say, what does that remind you of in the same situation, the exact situation that we were going through, you know? And so, yeah, even life remembers how much I relied on this book.

But, you know, the other thing about this book. I think. Is that this book started to get me to see the way in all things, it was the first book.

I started I bet you could do a good video over, like layering things. Like all the little examples I just pointed out is can you imagine those words like HighGround starting to really, like, come like seeing it and seeing like, oh, that's the cover that's important.

High ground that's important. People doing things leading from the front, all those things starting to just sort of appear as their level of importance and the connectivity to what I was going through and what I would see.

So it's like this book, even though I had already been to college and I have to give credit to when I was when I had it, when I was when I studied Shakespeare in college, I was an English major major. So I had to study Shakespeare.

And when we covered Henry the Fifth on podcast 15, I was talking about the fact that you don't you you have to really read Shakespeare.

You have to look up the words. You don't know. You have to you have to decipher it this.

And so that was one level of my ability to comprehend what I was reading.

But this was like the next level of of realizing that what you're reading can be overlaid and it can be that you can it can add context and it can be instituted into your own context of your own experience.

Yeah, like kind of like the Bible, almost. Yeah.

You know, like you'll tell a story and then the like the story, the significance, the stories, the like the lesson. Right. And then so yeah. If you approach the book that it is this. It is. I'm reading this book for the lesson as it applies to me today, you know, so you can kind of look to it for guidance. Yeah.

Other I look I mean we've covered the first the podcast, the books that we cover on this podcast. A lot of those books I read, by the way, before we started the podcast. But like when I would read those books, I would basically be reading a, quote, cool war story.

Right. This was the first book where I started going, wait a second, I see the connection. I see the connection. Not just like all of a sudden I started drawing those same connections in all these other books that I would read. But it started with this one, which is I don't know why.

Maybe it's because it's wrong and maybe it's because it's it repeats those same lessons over and over again.

But, yeah, I got to it's really the first time I got to utilize someone else's knowledge in a way to help me, not just to help my knowledge, but really to add to my own experience. And this book, this book did it for me, so we'll cover more of it. We'll cover more in the future, but that out, this is out, this is available, we have it on the website, as you know.

Yeah. Hey, there are there are two versions.

So there's the old there's the old version.

And you actually have to go specifically and we'll put the link. Yeah, you have to go specifically to the new version of it to get the the one that has that forward that I read. Yeah. If you want to check out this book and yeah.

That's the thing, don't be intimidated because it's eight hundred and thirty four pages because you can read it three pages at a time. That's the other thing. That's cool. It's not like a book where you've got to read 20 pages to be like get something out of it. You can read four pages of this, then you'll get something out of it.

Yeah, yeah. Some and yes, some books are cool like that where you can kind of see, especially if you just know the general store where you write, you open up wherever and you're like, OK, and you can get the you know, like some of them you're like, oh shoot, I shouldn't read this part because not only will it might, it might not make sense, but I you know, you kind of should read the beginning first, you know, otherwise would it be spoilers or whatever?

And, you know, what else will go into at some point? You know, I always on this podcast, the few times that I've read from this book, I'm only I only talk about the war part. But there's massive sections of his career between the Korean War and the Vietnam War where he was.

He was a soldier in a peacetime environment, so what he was doing was he was doing maneuvering and he was building relationships, he was doing all these things, all these leadership things that you have to do as a leader in order to build relationships and make good decisions and no one to like all that stuff. So it's not it's not all war, even though a lot of it is.

But he covers all these different dynamics of human relationships and human nature.

And it's just. It's just good, so I I like I said, I'm honored I got to write the foreword. I'm honored. I've been able to share this book with a bunch of people. So Haak.

Thank you. Thank you for the knowledge and passing it on. And with that echo, speaking of knowledge, do you have any knowledge you want to share with us, sir? Well, we are on the path.

This is how to stay on the path. This whole deal.

OK, we'll we'll discuss it with that. So we're working out. We are. Are you injured right now? No, I got I got some I got some small cuts, but I don't really consider those injuries, small scrapes, cuts or whatnot from branches. No, the reef there there's been some waves here in Southern California, basically, to your reference there, I was, as we know, hunting in the wilderness, in the wilderness, in the wild.

And while I was hunting, actually didn't receive any note, no cuts, no scrapes. There's always that possibility, especially, you know, when it's dark and you can fall. Sure. But fall, you know, and you don't wear NOD's night vision goggles.

Always nice to a clear. That's not a tip. So it's a little it's a little easier for once it gets dark.

Where were you? I was in Utah. Mm hmm.

So what what do we what. It's cold there. It's cold or warm or whatever the temperature was.

Absolutely.

When it was warm, it was a little too warm. It was it was comfortable. I was absolutely comfortable. But the problem is it's too warm. It needs to be colder for the type of hunt that I was doing because it was like art, like you guys were traveling.

You know, it's just the animals elk. Yeah. They like it to be colder and they're more active when it's cold. So when it's hot, they kind of sleep and it's harder to find them. And you're trekking through the mountains on a certain course, or is it like the kind you're just looking for elk and looking for elk and what have you ever seen an elk bugle before?

So elk do something called bugling, which is a completely animalistic dinosaur, crazy screeching, howling noise and they go nuts doing it.

And so you hear that and then you try and go to it. Except for the crazy thing is they're they're so fast. Yeah.

It's they're they're just the way they move through the wilderness. Yeah. You know, when you run hills. Sure. Hills and you know, let's say you're running up a decent hill like I don't care who you are when you sprint up a hill, you're going to be tired. But an elk does not care.

It's no factor whether they're just they're going up hills as if you're just walking across the sidewalk.

You're not even breathing hard at the top. The you know, when you watch. National Geographic or something like this, where you see these animals and, you know, like, yeah, you see the obvious big ones, the elephant and the buffalo, you're like, oh, yeah, that's big.

But men, a wild animal, even if it's kind of the smaller like them quite. There's these little goats, right?

These goats that cruise on the mountains and stuff and from far away, like, oh, look at that goat. But you start to get I mean, I haven't been right up to one, a wild one. But as you kind of can see them closely, if you like, man, that thing's kind of intimidating, just how capable it is, you know, like so these looks like they get kind of big. Yeah.

It's not like a little deer like unlink.

You know, when you watch like Bambi, these years are just so, so, like, fragile.

These things ain't bad. There's not. And they fight each other.

They fight each other and they just throw down. It's crazy to watch. It's crazy. And, you know, it's it's an awesome experience for sure.

It's just like, you know, like when you think of like who you know, these people or whatever kids, they're like, yeah, I'm a tiger or I'm a lion. And it's like obvious, you know, lines are ferocious. Sure.

But in real life, like a wild animal, like an elk, for example, when you go up to you, like that thing is ferocious.

You know, like you don't realize that you see it on a YouTube video or something like that every once in a while, maybe like if they're, you know, involved in certain actions. But.

Well, you know how strong like, let's say a lizard, like, you know, and you grab a lizard or just a small animal like how strong a small animal is compared to a human right for like pound for pound. Yeah.

So then you think, what's that like when this thing weighs eight hundred pounds, you know, because they're exponentially stronger than we humans. Yeah. Let's face it was weak as a as a animal.

We're, we're just kind of pathetic as an animal, you know, compared to what the average elk could sprint up a hill like.

It's nothing like it's nothing. And by the way, it can ram its freaking head into stuff. They kill each other. They kill each other.

We saw we saw bodies on the ground, elk bodies on the ground from fights. Yeah. And the other elk aren't super concerned about it because it's just kind of a thing, you know, you're going to get there's going to be some casualties out there.

That's that's life in these scenarios. That's death.

And what is out there. What, no cell phone, no nothing or yet service or what like what kind of very limited service. Spotty. Yeah, I mean very like we there was one little hill we'd go over and at the top you might catch a bar. Yeah.

I'd get seventy eight texts. Yeah. And then I just look at it and go I'm just going to keep walking until my service goes away.

I got or I sent you a picture of something and you know, like when you send a picture somebody else they delivered, you know, didn't say that for like a long time. Like later that day I looked in there because I went over the top of that hill chasing an elk somewhere. But awesome experience. Good man.

Well, no empty, even empty handed. I was gonna say awesome experiences, but I also have to add empty handed.

But knock on TV. Yeah, right. I follow them. And there was a picture early on. Yeah. Of in Elk Lake close. Yeah. Up and with that scenario.

Well so where we are hunting you have to take elk that are of a certain age and if they're not old enough you don't shoot them. Yeah. And so I ran into quite a few elk like that. I was very, very unlucky.

And look look. Is it OK? Am I saying I, I just didn't get lucky. I'm telling you I twitch. I tried my hardest man. So, you know, I tried my hardest man. We spent a lot of time out there. We did everything we could. Dudley's an amazing hunter. We had a guide with this amazing hunter. And, you know, the scenario that you're put into is as good of a scenario as you can get, really for for elk hunting.

But it's still not a guarantee, man.

And we spent, you know, many, many, many hours and hiked very far and wide as long as we could, you know, to try and get it done.

And it doesn't happen.

So the you know what you what you get out of I got a lot of experience out of it, obviously hanging out with a bunch of great guys up there, just a bunch of great people. And so that's that's awesome. But it's also humbling. You know, it's humbling. You don't always win, man. And if it bums you out that you don't win, find a different thing to do because you're not always going to win. It's like jujitsu in that way.

Like if you just want to win in jujitsu, you don't train because you're not just going to win. You know, it's not going to happen.

Yeah. In fact, you kind of I mean, especially the whole journey you lose, especially on your way up. You're losing way more than you're winning in any capacity. Oh, yeah, for sure, and I feel like in this scenario to where man is kind of like if you get one that's like a that's like a big deal, you know, it's a huge deal. Yeah, it's a huge deal. Like you not getting one. And I don't even know about accounting, by the way.

But you're not getting one. I wasn't like, oh, that's surprising. I was like, well, that makes sense to me. Well, you can go for weeks. Yeah.

And there's the scenario that I'm hunting in is a very it's the best scenario you can put into all. Most people that hunt are going out what they call a public land hunt, where you're just going out in the Wild West.

I'm in a more controlled environment where there's where there's they have a better sense of of the number of elk that are there.

And that's why it's controlled like that.

So but like I said, hey, even with all those things stacked in my favor, it ain't no guarantee. You know, it ain't no guarantee.

And I'm living proof of that because we tried, man, we tried that.

I, I appreciate everyone's help. You know, that, you know, I mean, just the training and learning how to shoot you. Just good just good people trying to trying to make it happen. But it's.

Yeah. And that's like a crazy feeling too. When I was young I used to make slingshots get cut. The quality the why part for sure. He cut it for me. I used to skin it and sand didn't want to make it look cool.

But what would you write on their Terminator anyway.

So what was that weapon you used and somebody threw the spreader spreader. Yeah. Yeah you did. You write spread out anyway.

You put out a Yeah. The guava tree and then you cut it, then you put surgical tubing. That's different. Oh bro. I mean I made slingshots to talk.

You deal. Yeah.

Anyway, so you go out and you're trying to like hunt little birds and stuff. Right. And it's like, it's like kind of hard. You don't just, you're not just whacking birds all that you like, you're missing pretty much. So when you get one, it's like a huge, huge deal. So I kind of understand.

But the same thing they do the exact same thing anyway.

So you're not injured. That's good. You know, some cuts and bruises. That's good. Yeah, I'm seeing injuries and injuries all part of the game for sure.

You have to contend with injuries. Yeah, 100 percent. They're all in play. I mean, I hate to say this.

Maybe you can correct me if you think I'm wrong, but I would go so far as to say if you're getting zero injuries, you might need to step it up a little bit.

Right. I'm not saying you want to get injured. I hate being injured. Yes, I hate being injured.

But the only way to completely avoid injury is playing video games, which even that, I guess you can get carpal tunnel syndrome or something.

Carpal tunnel, I think is like more of a typing thing like political, this pronated supinated.

Right. To ask Greg train Greg Craig whenever he's explaining moves, he's using his medical textbook to anatomical. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So what are you getting at? Well, have long side. Well, it wasn't necessarily getting at anything.

I'm just trying to re like visit kind of where we all are, you know?

But you make a good point. Like where. Yeah, you're not of course you're not saying. I don't think it can be. I'm sure it can be. But it I'm not interpreting it as like yes, you should pursue getting injured and that's in your heart. No it's not that. But with most exercise most most worth it exercise, it's going to come with an element of risk. Yes.

So whether you're pushing hard, whether you're going through dynamic terrain, whether you're in which can be a few different things, will be jujitsu, even like long distance outdoor running is different. Sure. It's like this is all for real stuff, Cliff, you know, all this stuff.

So, yes. Well, you know, that's not my gym, obviously. I don't know. It's called Cliff. What is it called? It's just called rock climbing. Rock climbing, a cliff climbing, technically. Right. All the rocks. And they are Cliff. We're good either way.

Anyway, as we get older or slingshot hunting, very similar to elk hunting sometimes. Same thing. Pretty much, yes. Very, very similar.

Well, on our way through this path, whatever it may be, exercise wise, we do need supplementation some not just not just exercise, but also cognitively. Sometimes we want supplementation as well. Oh yeah.

To to to reap full benefits of that the path provides. Yes, I agree. So let's talk about Chudacoff. You got you supplementation all day physical.

So we start with the foundation. The structure doesn't mean as much in my experience anyway.

I've only lived one life of course so far early on in life versus later on in life.

It seems like the structure kind of signifies more significant.

In my experience, you don't worry about your joints, you know your back and how like people like when you get when you get like trainers, they'll be like, hey, you need to start with your core, right? You see, I'm saying, yeah, because your core is where you're based and all this stuff. Right. Let's face it, when you're young, you're like core. What what are you even talking about?

You're just thinking arm on the biceps and see what's up with that bitch, you know, is doing core max out anyway.

But as you grow older, you understand so that a thinker max out even to make fun of it, because I've never heard that before.

But it's very funny, like, hey, let's do some core max out, would you, Max, or.

Yeah, I don't know, I just made it up, but it sounded correct.

And given the circumstances nonetheless, the point is joints, joint warfare, this joco joint warfare. This is supplementation for your joints. Keep them in check in check in the game. Start at the foundation.

Dudley had a little knee tweak while we were up in the mountains and he was just dosing joint, not morphine. And he and he was in it. He was in like an Echo Charles situation where he didn't have it.

And then he went back on it and his knee was using all the power through what bursitis is. Yes.

OK, so I get I've had it before, OK? I've had bursitis on my shoulder and my heel.

Yeah, my heel. It's weird.

So I get bursitis now when because I didn't do this before I do deep squats barefoot check. For some reason I get bursitis in my heel. Just genetic weakness really possible.

Nonetheless, when these things happen I have this weird like confidence, like it'll happen, like I'll do it then the next day, like I'll be walking down the stairs. All men like it. It feels like almost like a shark. It's it's a weird, very distinct feeling when you heel. But I always have this weird, like subconscious almost feeling that like all this is going to be gone immediately, even though it's like really bad. So, you know, when you have injury then you have full recovery.

Yep. That time to me just feels like in my brain, I'm so confident that that time is going to be like almost no time because the next day. Because it doesn't work. Because you're on the jungle. Yeah, that's how it feels. And the Croyle really. Right. Yeah, the combo. Hundred percent. So sure enough next day is.

Still saw just sort of like freak, this is like this might be something serious, you know, like it might be bad the next day after that pretty much gone. It's like it just it's like I decided to just be I just feel like, you know, it's one of those one of those deals nonetheless.

So drug warfare. Croyle Discipline. Discipline, go. Yes.

Well, start with Molk though. So from like cancer to the foundation and then you start to go, God, you have to build, you've got to build something so you can be doing curl's shoulder press lap raises building up the upper body.

Right.

Won't mean nothing. Why does that get a whisper. It won't mean anything if you're trying to jammed up.

So you got to take care. So now go up. Now, when you're doing the bench, when you're doing that, in your case, deadlift, whatever you do, do squats all day.

You're going to need the protein supplementation for rebuilding. That's when you implement the Molk.

I had Molk with me on my trip and like we said, I said one night at a hotel up heading up there. Moakes ruffing it. The hotel sitting's. Good to have you got the vote. Well, here's the thing, they got the little travel sampler box. You brought those those are awesome.

Yeah. You know, in an airport, you can't bring fluid through.

Just walk through, get yourself a little milk with your milk pouch and they'll probably break it out.

Yeah. Yeah. Actually that is good because I have a bunch of those, the little packs, I think they're like from the musters and stuff and you know, we send them to me, OK, I don't buy into that at home but yeah.

That's just wrote. Yeah that's good. Good move. Nonetheless, it's there for a long time.

I'm, I'm trying to explain it to you, you know, trying to make me elaborate on it because OK, so if you can you see if you can go these these are things that I feel are beneficial to know if you see it as in its entirety as a system.

I'm trying to stay quiet, but not eating crazy. There you go.

OK, so you like your joints are taking care of really all good. Your muscles boom. You work on, break them down, rebuild them more supplemental protein in the form of it. These are all good work in MC2, by the way. So if you're kids you need general protein and they like that, you know the dessert scenario as well. So that's available then.

Your body all good, all degenerating, regenerating, bigger, all good structure, foundation, all good. Now you need the mind, your mind, keep you mentally in the game, boom. That's where the discipline comes in you sense. Discipline, discipline, go kans powder, whatever you like. That's your choice. That part is on you. I can't give accurate, specific guidance on what? An implementation methodology. Fair enough.

Nonetheless, if you're into the energy drink scenario, get the cans.

Yeah, actually, yeah. If you're into the energy drink scenario, as you just put it, you know, that's not good or into normal energy drinks scenarios.

It's not good because those things are not good for you. And I know it might sound crazy, but discipline go in a can is good for you. Yeah, it is good for you. Yeah. So there's no sugar in there. There's vitamins in there. There's caffeine.

Ninety five milligrams grams of caffeine, which is not some crazy, you know, run around.

There's some name for dude like this. But anyways. You know that. Yes sir. Yeah we do.

This isn't that this is like a it's just, it's just it's good for you. Yeah.

So OK, so I went kind of like OK, so I've been talking to Pete and Brint recently.

There was so I you know, you kind of go deep in these rabbit holes like OK, like other. So apparently other energy drinks do a lot of wonky stuff with the and it's and it's wonky meaning like they advertise this. But then meanwhile they're doing a lot of this other stuff that they sort of admit when they advertise, you know, so you just you kind of get maybe more than you bargained for in a bad way. In a bad way.

Not so good.

So and I wound up watching this video is a comedy video for sure.

It was called like a lot of people make this kind of video, like if energy drink advertising to advertisers were honest and the guy and it's like this official guy and he's saying, like all this stuff, he won't talk about any specific energy drink.

So I was like, bro, he's talking about all this like poison and stuff like this. What they do to do this and it makes it this and this is that.

So if when you're consuming your energy drink of death, like saying all this stuff like, dang bro, like I don't even know because I used to like energy drinks.

Yeah. When you were working late at night and everything. Yeah. Like in plus you were lacking energy but now I feel kind of betrayed but not more discipline.

Go boom all day. All healthy. Hundred percent preservatives. Nope.

No pasteurized unless get on that sugar. No fruit, you know fruit. No sugar. So yeah. All good.

There it is. And also while you're on the path that supplementation supplementation methodology, perfection, it's a perfect system.

You know, when you get all this stuff, all this stuff at Orjan Main Dotcom or at the vitamin shop, if you're walking in or if you're in Florida or Virginia, we got a little situation coming to the Walwa stores.

We'll be there in October. Yeah. So they go get some. So this is how it goes. If you're in Florida or Virginia in the morning, you take the joint warfare before you. It depends when you workout before the workout on your way to the gym.

If you're going to the gym, stop it while you get the discipline, go to the gym, hit the gym, smash the gym, really smash it, come home, pomoc all day.

You'd be in the path big time, just established the routine anyway, back to Origin or the word or didn't mean dotcom.

Also on their American made stuff, straight up jeans, boots, Ghys brass cards, t shirts.

American made stuff, yeah, which which may not seem like a big deal, but it is a huge deal. It's a huge deal, you know you know what the typical business scenario is?

Hey, cool.

Let's start a brand and outsource it to some overseas place. You know, get the prices cheap. You can take advantage of of of slave labor, basically, and then we'll bring it back here and we'll sell it for some incredible markup and make a bunch of money and not hire anybody because we're going to keep it all.

Yeah. Or you can do what we're doing.

You build it here, treat workers well because they have awesome value to become self-sufficient as a country and maintain knowledge, ancient knowledge, which is almost lost, almost lost.

We got it.

The you know, that that that situation when the ball's about to go out of bounds, that someone gets there just in time. That's all.

That's what Origin is doing just in time to save the knowledge and and the big corporations. You know what they say. You cannot make this stuff here.

It's impossible. Yeah. No, it's not. It was done before. We're doing it now. Watch me.

Yeah. And it's like these like the jeans, for example. Like when you think about it, like, oh yeah. The designer jeans, like when you consider really what are you paying for this. It's like the whatever the brand. But what do you like for real pain. For like what do you care about, about those, those jeans.

You know. Sure. The fit. OK, that's good. If that's a thing, if that's for real thing.

I've been thinking about that whole aspect of designer jeans. And you know what, these are designer jeans. They're designed for work. They're designed to last. They're designed to function properly in all scenarios. So they are designer jeans. They're designed for work. Get some of that.

They take some. Yeah, yeah. My favorite jeans.

Hundred percent. Also, JoCo has a store, it's called JoCo Store.

And this is where you can get your shirts while while you're on this path you want to represent this one equals freedom. Good. Got shirts, hats, hoodies. New board shorts, by the way. Good utility, water jets, all that. They're brand new anyway, so some Irish Oaks Ranch soap jackalope. You know where it gets all that stuff anyway? Yes. JoCo store dotcom.

You like something, get something.

You can also listen to some podcasts that we have, including this one. You can subscribe to it and you can. You can leave. What do they say, leave a review, comment and like leave? Here's the thing.

I would say, OK, so you joco the link, you currently have the best content as far as comments go. So not even necessarily on your. OK, so you did the one the stuff for GQ, the the movies or whatever, breakdown, the breakdowns. And there was another one.

I think it might have been your TED talk, but you read those comments, Brooke, it's like like when JoCo was born, the doctor turned to his parents and said, it's a man, you know, like that kind of man.

So funny. When Jacko left left for college, he told his father, You're the man of the house. Now you I'm reading these, like, laughing out loud, reading all these comments. Oh, man. It's the best. Nonetheless, yes. We have a YouTube channel. So, yes, subscribe to that, too. Comment if you want to. If you have one of those men, I don't even care if it's like kind of funny, but just just saying those comments really good.

Yeah. We also have other podcasts, by the way. We have a podcast called The Unraveling, which we are about to launch on its own.

What feed?

So we have that the unraveling, JoCo unraveling looked at us. We got more episodes coming and we're starting to get caught up to where the episodes are a little bit more, let's say, current to what's happening in the world right now. We spent a lot of time of Iraq. We said we're going to check those out. If you want to check those out, we've got the Grounded podcast, which we haven't done in a long time, although it kind of seems like we just did one as you tried to explain the methodology for taking Molk, which is fine.

No, you know, it's crude. It's a no. We got to use decentralized command here. You got to let you run with it. Sometimes it's all good for your kid podcast. Haven't done one of those in a while as well. So sorry.

Straight. That's it. Yeah. Well, there you go. They're all good podcast. Very valuable, but yes, maybe not quite as consistent as a joke podcast. And, you know, it makes sense anyway. Yes. And I mentioned the YouTube channel. We have YouTube channel. So yes. Video version, all this of excerpts. All good. Also psychological warfare.

If you need a boost from JoCo telling you the right thing to do when you're about to do the wrong thing, a.k.a. skip a workout, a.k.a. eat donuts. Okay, do something that you know you're not supposed to do. You never plan to do it. In fact, you plan not to do it.

But a moment of weakness is kind of luring you in whatever you want.

Chocolate tell you why you should or shouldn't do something. Boom. There you go.

Psychological warfare.

Don't forget about you. Flip side, campus soccer games, dot com, Dakota Meyer's company making stuff to hang on your wall. That is graphically cool. You've got a bunch of books.

Got this book here called About Face.

I wasn't sure because it's a reissue. I wasn't sure if there would be and if this would be, quote, a first a dish.

I just got my copies and I found out that yes, indeed.

What you have with this book, this version of this is a first a dish of this version. You can see it right there above where it says Library of Congress, Congress. There's a numbers one through ten. Yeah. And when this is the first edition, which means the one is there after the first edition is gone, you won't see that one anymore.

That's a problem. So you'll be on second edition, which.

Pretty much it's an awful place to be. Terrible, brutal, brutal. What's the what's the the actual like name?

You know, it's called the Dollface. There's no change to it. All it says is formed by Willock. Oh. Because there's no other change to it. I mean, the cover the cover is also a little bit different. Yeah. It's actually I guess a lot different. So well it's not a lot different. There's a helmet, there's a little bit different so. Yeah.

And we'll link it, link it to the right one. I've been signing about faces for a long time. People bring me an about face and I'll sign them. So that's pretty cool.

And now I get to sign one that is even just a little bit cooler and now you can get it first. It's hard to get a first edition of the original book. Now you get a first edition of the reissue, the relaunch. Anyways, check it out.

Don't forget about the code written by me, Dave Burke, Sarah Armstrong, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Field Manual. All the answers are in there, by the way.

All the answers are in there. So. So check that one out. We got way. The Warrior Kid one, two and three without making the Dragons. We got this political freedom field manual. We got extreme ownership and we got the dichotomy of leadership, all kinds of books. If you don't like what I talk about here, you can get more, you can get it. You can get the books and read about it and in an overlay and understand these things in a much deeper way.

We also have Ashlawn Front, which is my leadership consultancy, where we solve problems through leadership. Go to Echelon from dot com for details on that. We got F on line, which is me talking, answering questions. Got the rest of the National Front team. There were two live things. We got a forum, we got leadership primer and immediate action using all kinds of stuff to help you as a leader. We got to muster, which is our leadership event.

There's only one in 20, 20 due to the covid virus. It's going to be in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th, go to extreme ownership dotcom details. Now, listen, we've done every one of these that we've done a sold out. We were going to do two earlier this year. They both got canceled because of covid. And so people have transferred their tickets over to that one. So this one's going to sell out. Plus we it looks like we might have to have less seating depending on the covid scenario.

So if you want to come, come and sign up now. And of course, we have if overwatch.

Executive leadership for your company that understand the principles that we're talking about, people leaving the military, whether retired or they're getting out, these are experienced leaders that can come help you and your company go to f overwatched dot com. And if you want to help service members active and retired, their families are gold star families around the world. And check out Mark Leigh's mom, mom. She's got a charity organization called America's Mighty Warriors. Go to America's Mighty Warriors dog to donate or get involved.

And if you need to hear more of my overburdened operation.

Or you feel you need to absorb more of Echo's unbridled banter than you can find us. On the website, on Twitter, on Instagram, which is what Echo calls the Graham and Facebook echoes at Echo, Charles and I am at JoCo Willink and thanks to to Colonel David Hackworth for writing this book.

But more important, thanks to Colonel Hackworth for his service and sacrifice and for his dedication to our country and to his soldiers and a dedication that never wavered.

And the rest of the military personnel that are listening, active duty retired veterans, thank you for your dedication as well with a special dedication from Haak. To all the Doughboy's, the ground pounders, the grunt's, the American infantrymen, past, present and future, thanks to all of you. And to the police and law enforcement and the firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all the other first responders, thank you for your level of dedication that you also show to keep us safe here at home and to everyone else out there.

Let's remember that lesson from Henry C. de Boer.

Who died on that frozen piece of Korea? On February 6th, nineteen fifty one, the lesson is, if you're taking care of yourself, if you're making yourself the priority, then you're a coward.

But if you take care of others.

If you step up and do the right things for the right reasons, if you put the needs of others above yourself, you will be my hero.

To go and be heroic. Until next time, this is Echo when JoCo out.