This is JoCo podcast number 250 with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening. Good evening. So on the last podcast, number two forty nine, we were reading the newest edition of the book About Face by Colonel David Hackworth, which has a forward in it written by me.

And if you haven't listened to two four nine yet, just go back right now and listen to that one first.

And we ended up rereading some of the book, but we just started to scratch the surface and and look, I I was prepping for this podcast and saying, you know what?

We should read a little bit more, read a little bit more from the book. Talk about it a little bit more. And just as things start to pick up in the Korean War, we just start to learn these incredible lessons. So we're going to take one more look at about Face today, picking up. It actually picks up. You know that when you write a book, they want you to have like the big action scene.

In the beginning, I did not know that, but I understand. Right. Right. So they want the reader to not to pick up the book and invest something into the book.

So this book starts off with a big time action scene that we actually read last time. So this is a later chapter, but it actually predates the big action scene of February six, which is this battle where he gets wounded and you get shot in the head, David Hackworth gets shot in the head and all this mayhem happens.

So this is actually predates that with him kind of showing up in Korea. And that's we're going to do want to talk through some of these things. I'm going to try and slow it down and talk about some of the things that I pull out of this book. So here we go back to the book.

The course of the Korean War had changed dramatically since its lightning fast beginning at the start. US forces, hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned and undertrained, had been driven back by the North Koreans into the tiniest corner of South Korea beyond the not tongue river.

They're the eighth army dug in its heels, determinedly holding what was known as the Pusan perimeter until September, when MacArthur's daring amphibious invasion at Inchon severed the North Korean army's lines of communications and chopped its legs out from under it. No longer was the enemy an effective fighting force, and our certain defeat along the lines of Dunkirk in 1940 suddenly appeared to be surefire. Victory units of the 8th Army smashed out of knocked on perimeter. Spirits were high as we raced north beyond the thirty eight parallel beyond the North Korean capital of Pyongyang to within spitting distance of the Yalu River, the dividing line between North Korea and Manchuria.

Fighting was sporadic, but as units moved further north, the weather worsened and enemy resistance increased. It was like a it was like compressing a spring. The night the Chinese came, I was in a foxhole in the center of my scout section's defensive position. Now, let's think about that the night the Chinese came.

That's a scary thing.

And, you know, every time I read about the Korean War, which we've covered several Korean War memoirs on this podcast, what would a savage scenario that was?

And it's called the forgotten war. And I did that piece, I did a piece on Memorial Day and talked about the forgotten war and and just about how anyone that was there could never forget what those guys went through in any way.

And if you pay any attention to it whatsoever, you realize that we should always remember what sacrifices were made in the Korean War and a lot of it this sentence right here the night the Chinese came.

So here we go. The night the Chinese came, I was in a foxhole in the center of my scout section's defensive position. The sector was densely covered with screw pines and scrub oaks. My foxhole buddy and I were sitting on the edges of our hole when we saw and it was like right out of a cartoon, a row of small trees moving toward us. We chopped them down, along with a little Chinaman creeping along behind each one with hand grenades.

But that was just the beginning. The next thing I saw was what I could only describe as a wave, a human wave of Chinese crashing over us.

For the next three hours, they came wall to wall China men, many of whom did not even have rifles, only long lances tipped with bayonets. Others were armed with us, Thompson submachine guns or Russian drum fed assault rifles for the main they were sorry shots with no understanding of basic infantry tactics, but what the Chinese lacked in proficiency, they made up for numbers and their presence heralded the start of the largest and most bitter retreat in U.S. Army history.

So that's crazy, right? You've got these these Chinese coming and they've got spears. And can you imagine imagine people coming at you for ten minutes, right, like can you imagine enough people that they can come at you for 10 minutes? Now imagine 30 minutes and that. Imagine how many people that is. Now, imagine three hours of people coming at you. Upon my arrival in Korea, I'd been assigned the twenty fifth recon company as a replacement scout section leader, it was an army mistake.

My military occupational specialty was infantry, not armored recon.

And it had upset me to no end because twenty fifth recon guys were not eligible for the CIB, regardless of how much infantry combat they saw. So this is the Combat Infantryman Badge and that's what you get when you're in direct combat in the army. And it's a.

Let's say that's like a serious mark of pride in the army, because that means you've been in this shit. So you can see a little bit of ego creeping out from David Hackworth because he's like, what? Are you kidding me? We're just recon and we are not even eligible for getting the sebe. This is garbage. Continuing add to that McArthur's brilliant stroke at Inchon, the war had seemed over save for the victory parade, and I'd been sick that after all I'd gone through to get here, I'd missed the guts of the whole damn show.

This is just once again, this is typical. Be careful what you wish for.

He's thinking after Incheon, Americans had such a leg up that I missed it. I missed the war.

I hadn't wanted to show up in another occupation force, so in the Army, when he joined the army, he went to Europe and World War Two was over. And so he showed up there and he was just, you know, get, you know, standing around and starting standing guard duty and stuff like that. They were training, but whatever. He wasn't getting the combat that he wanted. So he's afraid when he shows up in Korea. Oh, they did this big move at Inchon.

You were not going to get any combat.

I hadn't wanted it to end up in another occupation force still Sergeant Combat, and that's the nickname that he earned himself even when there was no combat, when he was in Europe, but he was just so fired up, they called him Sergeant Combat only in a new theater. In my heart, I'd secretly wish the war would continue long enough to let me get involved in at least one good fight. My wish came true only too well, my first real firefight, and this is good.

It's always good to hear this right, because there's such a huge amount of difference between. Your first firefight and your next one, just like any any anything that we do, anything that you do as a human being, the learning curve when you see something for the first time is the steepest learning curve you're going to get. So it's always good to think about these things. My first real firefight had occurred just before the Chinese came on a dull, overcast day.

The Scout section had set up near a secondary road. We spotted a squad of North Korean soldiers weapons at Slint Arms coming out of the tree line. They were good looking troops, but asleep at the switch. They didn't see us. It was an amazing sense of power. I felt ultimate power, I suppose, just watching them come and holding that weapon to my hands. We let them get within about 30 yards before we cut loose. I dropped four guys point blank with my one, each dead with a six o'clock sight picture in the chest.

Just like the good book said. I felt no guilt. Few of us did. I'd been trained too well. And besides, the enemy had been utterly dehumanized throughout my training. They aren't men, they're just gooks, I thought.

As the former enemy fell and a fierce firefight began, we knocked off the point element of a much larger enemy force and stirred up a hornet's nest. OK, note on gooks, the term and this is this is in the book, it's a it's an Asterix. The term gook is derived from the Korean word handbook, which means Korean person. So I know that it's a insensitive term, it's in the book. What is six o'clock sight picture me just where he's lining up his his weapon, the sight on his weapon, six o'clock sight picture, basically a point of aim, point of impact.

So he's just aiming, I guess, like towards the bottom of his. He's lining up the bottom of this site.

On their chest, so he's simply saying, like, I like made good shots, essentially, like they're like lined up perfectly and like the good book says, I'm sure he's referring to the Army marksmanship manual, which says, you know, once you get this, you you set the six o'clock of your site onto the point of impact you want to hit. And I could be wrong about this because I'm not I'm not 100 percent sure. But it's something meaning, hey, he took the good solid sight picture that he's supposed to get, the one that he was taught to boom, hit him in the chest.

But here's what's sketchy, is these were just the point element.

A bunch of people behind him following the lead of a lot of the older veterans.

Earlier in the day, I'd placed several clips of Amul ammo on my rifle saying I liked the look.

It was kind of John Wayne ish and it seemed to make sense. A new clip only seconds away. But when I'd taken up my prone firing position, the sling had flopped on the rain soaked ground. Now, as the firefight got going, I grabbed for a clip only to discover that it and the rest of them were clogged with mud. Bullets were flying in. My brain stalled out. I vaguely remembered an old tale about how well the M1 worked under any battlefield condition, quickly knocking off the bigger pieces of Muzz mud.

I used the clip up into my rifle. I got one round off the weapon jammed and for the next few minutes I sat in the ditch field stripping, cleaning and reassembling the thing while my first real combat went on without me. Our field, our our artillery fire took the starch out of the North Korean advance and we were able to scoot, asked with no friendly casualties. Other that is then Sergeant Combat's bruised pride. My first firefight had been my first screw up.

I didn't know until much later that you generally don't walk away from that one. What does that say? Be prepared. So here he is in his first firefight. He's got the cool guy bandoleer scenario going on with this way, with his weapon in his mags, and it doesn't work out well.

That's why you got to rehearse things, how they're going to actually be. You can't just do something for the first time in combat and be like, oh, this will be fine. No. A few days later, five of us had been out on a reconnaissance patrol, it had it was a very black night save for the US flares that hung eerily over the battlefield, very quiet, but for the occasional whine of artillery fire, the odd burst of an automatic weapon.

We had moved about a mile into enemy territory. When we heard motors leaving the patrol, I crawled to a mound near the edge of the road for a firsthand look at look through the darkness silhouetted by the artillery flares I could see for enemy vehicles. A file of infantry was walking on each side of the motor column, with more infantry walking in front. They were so close that I was sure the vehicle's engines prevented them from hearing my pounding heart.

They passed by. I was about to return to the patrol when I saw a lone North Korean soldier, his weapon slung, tracing a telephone wire as he passed my position I Partitas is here hair with a submachine gun magazine and dragged him back to the patrol. So he knocked this dude out. Think about that, like a massive patrol goes by, you find one lone guy, take a magazine out of your gear, hit him on the head with it, knock him out and then drag him back to your patrol.

Daylight wasn't far off when we headed home. Progress was slow. Initially, we had to pack up our zonked out prize.

We later he awoke, stumbled along belligerently, but at least under his own steam.

When we thought we had made it, we ran into a large enemy force moving down the road in formation.

They were jabbering excitedly and dragging machine guns behind them on squeaky wheels. We were about six yards from the road. I lay on top of the prisoner, covered his mouth with my hand and pressed my trench knife hard against his throat. I thought the cold steel would be enough to convince them to be good, but it wasn't old habits die hard. He started squirming around my hand, was muffling his cries to his comrades when he tried to bite it.

I had no choice.

I slit his throat and lay there on top of them for what seemed like a bloody eternity, eternity until the road was clear and we could hotfoot it back to the US lines.

There you go. Welcome to Combat. Yeah, I hadn't wanted to kill him.

I would have rather the capture. The guy alive prisoner is worth a thousand dead ambriz. But I was probably as scared as he was and in a millionth of a second I had to decide and it was either him or my patrol.

You know, when people talk about the split second decisions you have to make in combat, there you go. What am I going to do? I'm going to I'm going to kill this guy.

Killing that guy in one other incident probably hammered home most that Korea was not some training maneuver, that I was really in war boots and all the other occurred when we were digging in on a small knob overlooking a main north south road. Digging in was a task of a front line trooper performed at least once a day, went on the move, usually spent time cursing your commander for always choosing that hardest ground in the town and then moving the line. Just when you'd finished your hole.

Some of us thought it was an army plot to keep us in shape. For myself, I'd rather have done a million push ups, but on this particular occasion we'd gotten some great dirt. It was soft and loose, a breeze to dig, and I was about two feet down in no time. Then my shovel hits something mushy, a few quick scrapes revealed an olive drab green material, a few more uncovered a decaying corpse of a man with bright red hair and a twenty fourth division patch on his moldy fatigue jacket.

The soldier's hands have been tied behind him with communication wire and he'd been shot in the back of the head. Three more bodies were found by other troopers on our little knob, all killed and buried the same way.

Company was notified. They said the men had probably been killed at the beginning of the war. That was when the Twenty Fourth Division had fought along this road. We were instructed to dig out the dog tags and provide eight digit grid coordinates where each body was found. The atrocity did little for morale, but a lot for fighting spirit. There would be no love lost for an enemy as savage as the North Korean reds. So much for the Korean police action, I and my friends thought.

This was all out war. With no quarter given. Yeah, he talked about dehumanizing the troops and I've talked about dehumanizing the enemy, and that is something that absolutely the military will try and do. And it's a very crazy fine line to walk because as you dehumanize the enemy, you're also possibly dehumanizing the civilians that are in that area.

And so you have a very sketchy scenario that can unfold, but they still have to do it to some level because otherwise you've got people, the US military, that in their mind, you know, it's a sin to kill or whatever beliefs they have. They don't want to do it. And you're trying to convince them that it's OK because these aren't even people. They're not even humans. That's dehumanizing. And I've said before, and this is the type of thing that makes it very clear.

You know, I've said that the we didn't really need in Iraq. We didn't really have to dehumanize the enemy because the enemy dehumanized themselves with the things that they did to the local populace.

Torture, murder, rape, just complete and utter savagery.

And that's the same thing that's happening right here, you know, you're finding Americans that have been bound and executed in the back of the head and buried in shallow graves. Continuing on now that the Chinese were in the conflict, the recon company's mission was to provide a reconnaissance screen in front of the Twenty Fifth Infantry Division's withdrawal, in other words, to delay, deceive and disorganize the undeniable communist advance. So the Chinese are coming now. They've got the numbers, they've got the masses.

They've got America on its heels. Get the twenty fifth ID, tropic lightning, by the way.

Stationed in Hawaii. I went out and I went out and spoke at the honor of speaking to the 25th Fifth ID, just a historic group of soldiers.

The Chinese had struck the eighth army like a giant steamroller, crushing many units and mauling most others at the Army's commander, Lieutenant General Walton Walker, who had said in July of nineteen fifty as the first real s word began, quote, There will be no Dunkirk, there will be no Bataan. A retreat to Pusan would be the greatest butcheries in history. We must fight until the end. End quote, now found himself directing yet another brave but bloody withdrawal to the south.

Only seven years before Gen. Eisenhower's forces were similarly surprised and smashed, but that time we'd had Paten to save the day.

In my heart of hearts, I kind of wish someone would get the idea to use our recon company to be the spearhead to Bastogne for the Korean conflict. But it was not to be in just as well. Unlike the seven hundred and fifty second recon, which had seventeen and twenty four light tanks, we were a light skinned force with only six and twenty four hours in the whole company. Divide these up amongst three identical platoons. And it wasn't exactly the punch Lt.

Col.. Creighton Abrams had in nineteen forty four. Still, we had plenty to do to keep us occupied exchanging ground for time.

The drill went that we would hold the position until the enemy was breathing hot and heavy down our necks and we would break contact and run like hell, leapfrogging through another recon platoon or rifle unit that was set up behind us in the same way. So they're doing a cover and move as they're retreating. Trading ground for time, it was a dangerous game with no room for error, and we found ourselves playing it day after day after day. They were strange dudes, the Chinese seemingly with no sense of personal peril.

That's a bold statement, seemingly with no sense of personal peril.

That's a human instinct of self-preservation. And they didn't seem to have it.

You know, when when Seth Stone went into Sadr City, you know, that was in 2008, we had fought in Ramadi in 2006 and he I was talking to him while he was there, you know, after the first couple operations that they ran. And he said something similar. I don't remember the exact quote of what he said, but what he was trying to explain to me was. The fighters in Ramadi were perhaps better fighters, more tactically skilled, he said, but he's like these guys in Sadr City.

They don't care. They don't care if they die and they are just coming. And it's a different type of threat and it's a different scenario that you're under.

It was not unusual to see them jump on a US tank holding grenades and then scramble around looking for some opening to toss them in.

Of course, if the tank was buttoned up, it was impossible and the tank commander inside would simply call another tank nearby to, quote, scratch my back, which at which point the second tank would spray the first tank with 30 caliber coaxial machine gun fire and wash the hitchhikers off. But there are always other Chinamen to take the dead ones places. It was a grim fact and we were constantly reminded of as we were moving south, morale dropped with every rearward step of the humiliating retreat.

That is the just important to remember that when things aren't going right, when you're in a leadership position and things aren't going right and you have to retreat or you have to take a tactical withdrawal or you have to undo some of the progress that you've made, or you have to abandon some of the work that you've done, which is I'm not just talking about war, I'm talking about any scenario business life you've got. When you have to retreat, you have to pay attention to the morale of the troops because it sucks and it sucks.

And what it sucks is it sucks. The morale right away from the troops. They've put forth this effort. They fought and bled or they've worked really hard to get to a certain point. And now you're leaving.

We kept falling back away from the Yalu beyond Pyongyang until we'd refocused the 30th parallel and we were back in South Korea. The only thing I think running faster than the eighth armor where the rumors, the Marines were cut off at a place called the chosen reservoir in the north, and we're being zeroed out. The US Army 10 corps had surrendered, boats were waiting at Pusan Harbor to take us to Japan. These are all just crazy rumors that are going around.

Partially true, partially untrue, maybe. Meanwhile, while inner winter had arrived, but winter gear had not, MacArthur had said we'd be home before Christmas.

I guess it's supply people believed him because the Chinese had caught us with our pants down and they were summer trousers.

Feet and leather boots, fros. Gloves and mittens were scarce as good looking girls, our field jackets were as thin as and protective as page one of the newspaper, we were slowly freezing to death in the bitter below zero weather, while the Chinese, like Genghis Khan's mighty hordes, marched on seemingly unstoppable. Logistics wins wars, and here you are, it's crazy to think about this compared to either Napoleon's march into Russia, which we've covered on this podcast with the memories of a Napoleonic footsoldier and how everyone how it will be.

We don't need winter stuff. We should be done by winter. And then same thing with the Nazis going into Russia. And Stalingrad freezing, how come we don't learn these lessons, how come you know, this is something to do with I was talking about the other day, when you come up with a freakin plan, you need to have a negative attitude. You need to have a negative attitude.

Your attitude can't be we're going to be home by Christmas. That's just wrong. Your attitude has to be this could take five years or more.

We need to be ready for the worst case scenario going in there and thinking we'll be home by Christmas.

Like let's if that if if if MacArthur uttered that one time, which he did.

Think of the effect and impact that has on the rest of the chain of command, think of the impact that that has on the whole supply logistics chain when they go, you know, it's going be over by Christmas, I guess, is not really that important that we get good boots for the men. I guess it's really not that important that we get good warm jackets for the men. Just just a little hint of that.

Yeah, I feel like I kind of fall into that trap a lot of times, you know, when you're going somewhere and you know what that is?

That is a an extreme form of decentralized command. It's an extreme form of.

Commander's intent, right, so, so, so lately I've been talking about the fact that culture is. Culture is like the most. Premier highest form of decentralized command and commander's intent, because if the our culture is, for instance, A, we always take care of the customer, right?

Then you echo Charles as a front line guy working at a cash register.

You can make a decision on what to do with the customer because you know that our customers most important thing, if you know that, listen, we always we always treat civilians with the utmost respect. That's our culture. When you get into a situation where there's a wounded, you know, a wounded mom in a house with a building, you make that a priority and you take care of and you get medevac in and casualty care for that individual. Right, because that's our culture.

So culture is like the highest form of decentralized command.

Well, what happens?

When you give commander's intent just by saying something as innocent as will be home by Christmas, think of how that reverberates throughout the the organization, everybody goes out good because you can you think about the Herculean efforts that it takes to to get, you know, two hundred thousand warm jackets and pairs of boots and specific sizes, that that's no joke.

You can't just snap your fingers and that happens. It's going to take it's going to take effort at every level. People stepping up to make things happen. You know, like in a communist country, I remember when the Polish were kind of striking against the against the communist regime there, they would just make little small mistakes in factories.

You can prevent things from happening by just doing a little bit, just by just dragging your feet just a little bit, because equiv, you drag your feet just a little bit and maybe it's not that big of a deal.

But if there's a hundred people and you're all dragging your feet, we're not making progress anymore.

So you picture an entire supply chain that here's. Yeah, it'll be over by Christmas.

How much effort is being put forth and, you know. Sure. Do you have some really great people in there somewhere that are going to get after it? Yeah, you do. Does that overcome the other ninety four percent of the people that are dragging their feet and it's not that big of a deal. And hey, I'm going to still head home at four o'clock today.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The jacket thing. But, you know, like when you go somewhere, I don't know, the park carnival or whatever, and you kind of don't account for the weather or, you know, like when the sun goes down, you do account for the weather.

No, but I know where you're going with this. Yeah.

Like, to me, the weather is I look outside and boom, that's the weather. But meanwhile, my wife is like, oh, bring the jacket, bring the water just in case they get thirsty and you get there, you know, whatever all the stuff she's bringing these bags, it's like, I don't need bags, you know, I don't need all this stuff.

I'm going to the park. All I need is me.

Really. And so did she let you learn your lesson each and every time? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. You go there.

And here's the thing that I mean, in my particular case, which, you know, maybe this applies to others as well, where I won't learn the lesson every single time because sometimes I'm like, fine, you know, sometimes I do make it on you, reinforce you reinforce the lesson of being a slacker.

Yes, exactly right. So you're right. This is not an easy lesson to learn. OK, so we live collectively, you and I at this time.

We live in San Diego, California. And what's interesting about San Diego, California, is if you go out to dinner.

Let's say right now, what is it? October twenty twenty, if you go out for dinner at. Six o'clock at night, the sun is still up and it's it's warm outside, it's 80 degrees. There is no need for a jacket, isn't even conceivable. But if you're going to eat outside and the sun is going to go down, it is going to get chilly. It's going to get chilly. It's going to get 50 degrees. That's going to happen in, you know, three, four hours.

So, yes, when you when you're used to that scenario being the case, it gets easier or whatever. But, man, yeah, it does kind of take this weird mindset. I had that exact scenario happened, by the way, like the like a week ago or whatever. My wife's birthday. We go to this rally.

It's called like sea level. I don't know, one of these, you know, I've been there.

Yeah, no, actually, yes. Some of the guys there said that you've been there at the restaurant.

So I was like, all right, cool. But one of our people works there. Yeah. Yeah. One of our jiujitsu people.

Oh yeah. I fully um so yeah. So I go there so we go and you know, it's warm, it's kind of high, it's been hot. So I'm like, all right, same tactics or I look outside. What's the weather like. Oh we're sitting outside. Cool. I look outside whether hot, sunny or whatever.

And here's the thing.

My wife kind of felt that she didn't fall for it, but she kind of was like kind of was feeling the same thing. So I was like, whatever, no jackets. Didn't green jackets for the kids, nothing like that. So we go in there and our seats are. Yes. Outside but covered. It's a little bit of an ocean breeze going through there, and here's the thing. Was it cold? I wouldn't call it cold, but it was something like you had like chicken skin.

Every once in a while you wanted that lightweight lightweight. It would have been perfect, would have been perfect. And the thing is, it wasn't about me. It was about the kids, somebody else.

You get you to get a four year old and a seven year old that's just slightly uncomfortable and chilly. They might not throw a tantrum, but you're going to hear about it.

You can learn this lesson. It's a good lesson. And you seem to have to learn it over and over again. Some of my kids know it. You know, they think, you know, they're bringing I was going to meet my meet my family like I think we were recording one day and I was going to meet my family somewhere eating outside covid.

You got to eat outside and whatnot.

Right. So but my son actually just showed up with a sweatshirt for me. Credit and full credit for its full credit on that one. Yeah, because that's like and really the whole reason is like, why do I want to.

Why am I going to wear myself down carrying this jacket when I probably won't need it? I'm going to carry this, you know, bag of additional clothing when we're not going to need all this stuff or this big bottle of water. You know, there's water there, you know, like. But why are you bringing all this stuff up?

Stuff like, you know, anyway, so. Yeah, but again, like, you have that mindset, you're going to get jammed up or potentially get jammed up in the know in the future. You have a plan for that kind of stuff, which I think my wife is like that's her whole jam is like, what do we know? She'll overdo it, you know. But I'll underdo it. I think like the answer, the solutions right there in the middle.

Hopefully you guys can find a balance and responsibly evaluate future scenarios.

Yes, they were not only short on cold weather gear continuing on back to the book, food was in short supply. All spare time was spent scrounging. One of the most modern armies in the world became an army of days past, foraging and living off the land. We kicked in the walls of houses, searching for rice and kimchi hidden in false walls and secret caches. We cooked what we found in our steel pots. When nothing else was available, we'd take the sea ration packets of sugar, powdered coffee, powdered milk and chocolate we'd stored for days like squirrels in the pockets of our fatigues.

MASH it all together with snow on our helmets and trick trick ourselves into believing it was ice cream. Trying to beat the elements became a war in itself. It was so bitterly cold you couldn't sleep. You had to keep moving, stomping feet and flexing fingers. Twenty four hours a day. Those who didn't were saying goodbye to their hands and feet and in some cases their lives for a while. Every day a couple of men were evacuated because of frostbite, black toes and fingers to be cut off at the hospital.

Grenades, knives and ammo would freeze fast to the foxhole. Brimm weapons froze, too. You'd have to kick the bolts of the M1 and Browning automatic rifles to get them back. We seldom had rifle patches to clean our weapons. Most of us cut little squares out of our shirts or trousers to do the best we could. Gun oil was a luxury, usually beyond our reach. We lubricated our weapons with motor oil or the frozen lard of sea rations and took to keeping them with us in our fart's sacks at night.

Staying alive became our only concern. And we did. Man is most adaptable when we pass through villages. If a house had a lot of wood doors, window frame, even the most beautiful hand carved furniture, we'd burn it one piece at a time, finishing off the job by throwing a thermite grenade on the thatched roof and standing by until the whole structure was burned to the ground.

Our orders were to destroy anything the enemy could use gladly, we thought to ourselves, and we could stay warm while we did it at night, we would carefully, obsessively bundle, stack and restack kindling wood while waiting for daybreak when we could light our fires. The thought of those friendly flames allowed us to make it through the night instantaneously. At first light, thousands of tiny fires would spring up across the front and around, each huddled a cluster of shivering men.

It was probably as bad in the Chinese camp, except that at least the Chinks were prepared with winter gear down trousers and jackets, long overcoats that blended in with the snow and down mittens that we liberated and wore until our own supply people came through. It was a frigid, brutal, soul destroying time.

I knew then how the their mark I knew then how the Verimark must have felt during World War Two or how Napoleon's army must have suffered years and years before that when each made their horrible winter retreat from Russia. Like I said, this just savage, frigid, brutal, soul destroying time, and this is coming from the perspective of a guy that, you know, served multiple combat tours in Vietnam as well. By the time we reach Seoul, the North Korean capital, once a bustling city of millions, was virtually deserted, an empty gray tomb.

Most of its inhabitants and those in the north of the northern villages on its outskirts had left and headed south with the few possessions they could carry, clogging the roads with wall to wall human misery.

On one occasion, American fighter planes must have concluded that the hordes of desperate civilians were Chinese columns moving south. P fifty once had strafe the refugees and for at least a mile, there were dead littered across the road. Retreating vehicles had to push the bodies out of the way.

It was here that I realized it was only the guys on the ground who saw and understood the real horrors of war.

Two Air Force pilots wore as a remote thing, they make their kills from hundreds or thousands of feet in the air, even the guys who fly on the deck do so in a flash, dropping their loads and flying away without seeing the results, the way homes and people are blown to smithereens or the effects of napalm. At night, they don't didn't have to listen as we did in the winter of 1950, to the wail of the Gook's cries of civilian refugees begging to be let through American lines or see in the morning when they were allowed to pass through the dead.

They left behind those who'd frozen to death in open rice paddies overnight.

The pilot, when he finishes his day's work, flies back to his base lands, goes to the club, has a big stake, and if he wants to forget the day's combat, he can drink himself into a stupor. The front line fighter can't do that. He lives with death and the horror of the battlefield every day and every night. It is his cross to bear.

We continued retreating, gray, rotting bodies, the unforgettable smell of death, rats feasting on the dead and growing bolder by the day.

This, the flotsam and jetsam of war led us through Seoul, our unit's mission was to fight a rearguard action in the center of the city, the scout section rifle squads set up at a downtown intersection. We took over a bank, a drugstore and two other corner buildings. From my command post. I'd use the banks manager's office, which was a welcome diversion from the cold and snow. The bank vault was locked tight as the self-appointed new bank manager, I authorized the guys to open it with their three point five anti-tank bazooka.

Two rounds later, the door swung open as easy as a C ration can in the hands of a hungry trooper. The vault contained thousands of dollars in small Korean notes. All the big stuff was gone. I told everyone to cash in. No withdrawal, no withdrawal forms needed, I said. And they did. We had to laugh at the propaganda leaflets at the Chinese border down upon us from the hills they occupied on the high ground around Seoul, quote, American capitalists running dogs of Wall Street.

They accused how right they are, I thought, as we stuffed our pockets in packs and even made hobo sacks to carry our spoils of war.

It was strange watching the Chinese brazenly looking down from those hills about six or eight hundred yards away. Our infantry weapons were out of range, preventing a little selective sniping. But we were able to put some effective fire on them with the M twenty four main gun and had the great fun of taking pot shots with the turrets 50 cal. The Chinese went to ground and shy of a cheerless Christmas, we slipped out of the sad, near deserted Seoul. My section's new found wealth was the first thing to be tossed on the side of the road, Boki dollars meant nothing, meant little to warn troopers, and it had been just a game anyway.

South of Seoul, we found ourselves caught in a friendly battle zone, a railway yard being blasted to kingdom come by demolition, toting engineers and Air Force bombers, railroad flat cars, complete with brand new vehicles and tanks, which would have been distributed to the front lines had it not collapsed, were being blown sky high to keep them out of enemy lines to us in the middle. The challenge of this army obstacle course was not only to avoid our own flying debris, but also the enemy incoming, which was pouring in throughout the operation.

Yeah, that's that's a scary sight. So you've got and it shows you that I guess it is not scary. It's the desperation of the situation that you're in, that you've got, however, many numbers of vehicles that we're going to be shipped up to the front line. And now we're just blowing them in place so that the enemy doesn't capture them.

You want to talk about a morale, a morale crusher.

We came upon the number of freight cars with sealed doors, one of the guys pride one open to reveal an entire carload of supplies, soap, cigarette, aftershave lotion, obviously goodies needed by our rear echelon comrades. And we decided to help ourselves, someone drove a brand new through three quarter ton truck off a nearby flat car, so we had a way to get away with had a way to get to carry out our route. It fell about four feet and crashed to the ground.

Springs breaking, fenders collapsing, but it still ran. That's a comic scene, right? You've got this vehicle in a flat pit on a flat freight train and just drive it off Dukes of Hazard style.

We loaded our spoils onto the truck even as telephone poles and large chunks of steel rained down around us. Then we jumped aboard ourselves and unasked the place. Eight recon men bouncing along and a light in a truck right out of the Grapes of Wrath. We motored by a battalion infantry hiking south down the road. Hey, how are you fixed for cigarettes? We called an Aqua Velva. Anyone? As we threw all the troopers a little something, we ran out of goodies about the same time our mobile pack ran out of gas, and we reluctantly turned to the return to the backs of our tanks with the rest of our platoon.

We were young sometimes the war was great fun, like a game of cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians that you played as kids.

You know, it's from a maturity level, right, that's something that's just so.

It's important to remember, man, that you're dealing with people that are 19, 20 years old, 21 years old, I mean, Hackworth, one of the older guys, but most of these guys, a lot of these guys, when you go into the military, it's young kids.

When I went in. I was 18 years old. Like, I'm using my judgment, you know, when you talk about so what is it, the development of the prefrontal cortex. Right, which is which as a man doesn't develop until you're something like twenty five. Yes, sir. So you got to you got to find your way through seven years of military service where your freaking decision making process is not fully developed yet.

That's how dumb shit happens. Yeah. Makes sense. You do dumb shit. That's why leadership is so important in the military. But the thing is sometimes the military leaders are only twenty three.

They're still not even there yet. Continuing on the politics or purpose of the war was not our concern, and we didn't understand or care about the big picture any more than we really understood the risks of combat, of being killed or going home without a leg. After a while, you stop worrying if the next minute you were going to get it. Instead, you just prayed for a clean wound so you could get out of there, a million dollar wound to get you home.

You know, it was crazy when we had Dean on and he was going into Tarawa where the Japanese had a freaking island fortress.

And I asked him, I was like, well, you worry about getting wounded or anything. And he's like, no, that would be someone else. That's the deal, man.

It's not going to happen to me.

After we retreated across the Han River, my platoon was given the mission to outpost, a long, lonely stretch of the South Bank. It was Christmas Day, and although there were no Chinese inside, it wasn't a particularly jolly time. General Walker had been killed two days before in a freak Jeep truck accident, very similar to the one that had killed his former World War Two boss, General Patton.

Still, paratroop General Matt Ridgway had taken over as the new commander of the eighth army and word was we would retreat no further, it was a good word, but my platoon had a more immediate concern. We were starving. A personal recon of the area revealed a village nearby whose only occupants were a half a dozen scrounging looking chickens. One long burst from my borrowed M-2 carbine gave us Christmas dinner in the form of three decisively dead birds that we plucked and threw on an open fire.

We ate them unseasoned and undercooked. They were very, very raw, in fact, but wonderful to us. And we gobbled them down and huddled closer to the fire, thinking how lucky we were.

No sooner had we finished than a recon company, Jeep and trailer bounced across the field to our positions, Christmas dinner, turkey, cranberry sauce and all the trimmings had arrived. Only the American army could do that. Unfortunately, our chicken appetizer had left all of us with roaring gut aches.

But we wolfed it down anyways because it was good, because it was there and because none of us knew if this meal would be the last.

The enemy took soul. Just after the New Year, the bridge across the horn had been blown. But a few days later, the Chinks got a bridgehead across and we once again headed south in zero degree weather with our tails between our legs. So much for no more retreat's. I began to think about all the general's proclamations concerning this war. That we'd be home before Christmas, that the Chinese would not intervene, that we'd hold here, we hold there all of it was bullshit.

And I started to wonder how they could possibly make so many dumb statements when each in invariably fell apart when put to the test.

Then I thought, well, maybe they just don't know. We never saw a general on the front. We seldom saw a colonel or lieutenant colonel or a major either. And at the squad level, we only on the rarest occasion saw captain. So how could the brass know how defeated its army was if it wasn't there to see or if they weren't there to see an exhausted guy lie down on a road and just give up?

How could they know how cold and ill equipped we were if they weren't there to see blue gloved hands stick to the frozen metal of weapons? How could they know how steep and rugged the terrain was if they never climbed a hill? Little leadership lessen their massive leadership lesson there. You have to find out what's going on with the front line troops and you can't rely on reports. And, you know, I was reading some other sections of this book. And the temptation to just listen to the reports of frontline troops in any organization is a it's a massive temptation and it's the wrong thing to do because, of course, when you're in charge, of course, your subordinates are going to polish that thing up for you, make it look all good.

Make it look all good. That's what they're going to do. You can't rely on that, you have to go down there. And the other thing you have to do is you have to be able to admit when you don't know something. So the front when you see the frontline troops, like they'll polish like the report, it's like, why do they do it just to show, like, hey, we're doing a good job down here kind of thing or or they don't want to get anyone in trouble.

We like to not to go super philosophically deep on you right now, but a lack of moral courage, guts, a lack of moral courage to report to your boss. My men are frozen, starving, and they're ready to give up because what you're doing is you're you look, you're the leader. And so you're putting yourself on report for not being a good leader.

Right. Because, you know, there's no bad teams. Only bad leaders.

All right. Oh, like the leader of the front.

So if I'm a leader on the front, if you're General Echo and and my guys haven't eaten and they're there, their morale is breaking.

I don't want to tell you that, because then you'd be like, well, what's wrong with you, John? Well, how come? Because guess what, Fred, over there, he's like, my men are doing great, right? Because he has no moral courage to actually tell the truth about what's happening.

Yeah. And then that puts pressure on me where now I'm thinking, oh, I mean, Fred's doing well. Maybe my guys maybe my guys can do better. OK, you know what, General Echo? We're fine.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. So it's a lack of moral courage. Yeah, it seems natural to know now that I'm kind of thinking of it like that, especially if you're in charge of the guys over there, you don't want to be like, yeah, we're we're not doing good. Yeah. Even like it's kind of seems like even in, like, social scenarios, you know for sure that, hey, so how's how's married life.

So I don't know whatever whatever the situation is. And you're going to be like, oh, I'm struggling through this married life kind of thing.

Like it's like you want to say that if in fact you're struggling through marriage. I'm just saying. Yeah, it seems like yeah.

That seems a lot more natural.

Yeah. Obviously to happen in the business world too, because, you know, the echo. How's your sales going with your sales team down there. Yeah. You know, you don't want to say, well, it's not going very well, you know, because you're putting yourself on report for for for failure because you are the leader. But if they're stuff, what you should say what you should say is, hey, boss, here's what's going on.

My troops, they're over fatigued right now.

We need food and we need some warm weather gear because, look, there are some there are some motivate. There's some motivated guys that want to make it happen. But when they can't even load their weapon because their skin is freezing to the bullets. That is a problem, a problem that no amount of motivation can cure, we need gloves like that kind of thing, you have to be able to frame it correctly.

Yeah. Back to the book still, we kept retreating, exchanging ground for time, we were always cold, always hungry, always tired, we were all so filthy it was too cold to even consider washing. So when we got to Suwon and found ourselves with a few days to rest, we decided to take that abandoned city by storm. As in, everyone had left Suwon in a great hurry so we could pretty well help us help ourselves to whatever we needed.

My section took over a house we scrounge around and found an old fashioned Korean bath, one of those stand up jobs about chest high with a wood furnace beneath it. We filled the tub, built a roaring fire, and one by one jumped in each of us skimming the other guy's dirt off the top of the water.

I was last. The water was almost black by then with all kinds of crud floating around. But I didn't care. I might not have gotten clean, but for the first time in weeks, I was warm. Just after we left Suwon, my platoon was ordered to establish a night blocking position astride a north south road that paralleled a railroad track. The scout section and rifle squad were set up in a defensive line that ran from the road through a rice paddy and onto a railroad trestle.

Our machine gun was set up on the trestle, pointing straight down the tracks. Little high ground where it could put plunging fire directly in front of deployed troops and flanking fire on the road 50 yards away, or platoon leader stayed with the two M twenty four tanks on the road behind him was the 81 mm mortar squad.

It was late at night. All was quiet. We were locked and cocked and pros at this deadly delaying game. Now I moved between positions, having whispered conversations with the guys. It was a habit. I had to keep myself awake and make sure the men stayed awake too. I was the I was at the machine gun, which was manned by a stud of a Hawaiian trooper named Sheldon. When we saw the enemy coming, there was at least a company and maybe more behind for a breast double timing quietly down the railroad track.

When they were no more than 30 yards from the machine gun, Sheldon let loose a long burst that cut a wide swath into their unsuspecting ranks. A burst of machine gun fire was the signal for the infantry, tanks and mortars to join the fray. The scout section of rifle squad immediately poured fire into the enemy formation. The enemy panicked. They did not fire one round and return. Instead, they broke ranks and hightailed it to the rice paddy, running right into the rifle squads grazing fire.

It was great to see we were cleaning the clock of an enemy force at least ten times our size, like young Rommel did. I thought in 1914 when he ambushed and destroyed almost a complete British rifle company with a handful of soldiers simply by using initiative and surprise two of the key elements in battle. The mortar was popping rounds of high explosives right on top of the confused reds. Meanwhile, our tanks, main guns, which were loaded with anti-personnel grapeshot, hadn't fired anything at all.

A white star cluster flare popped and hovered over our positions. This was our signal to beat feet in retreat and we didn't need a second invitation. We scrambled to waiting vehicles and quickly moved to and through us lines. We'd taken no casualties, but I still couldn't understand why the tanks guns hadn't fired. The enemy had been hurt badly, but not destroyed. If those tank guns had been employed, we have completely wiped them out.

The sun was coming up as the platoon pulled into the abandoned shonen school yard that served as the base for recon company. I went over to our platoon sergeant and asked him why the tanks hadn't been used.

He looked away and sort of bowed his head as if he was embarrassed, which was very strange behavior for this rugged, highly decorated warrior.

Better see the lieutenant, young sergeant. Why didn't the tanks fire? I asked my regular army platoon leader moments later, I didn't want to give our positions away, he replied. I couldn't believe it. Give your positions away, bullshit, I cried, Sergeant didn't talk to officers like that, but I didn't care. We had the closest thing to a glorious victory that I'd seen the chinks stick their noses into this goddamn war that I'd seen since the chink stuck their noses into this goddamn war.

And now this pissant weak lieutenant, you were just too yellow to do your job.

I shouted and stormed back into my scout section in a rage. I grabbed my pack and rifle. I'm leaving this outfit right now. I told my platoon sergeant I'm not waiting for orders. I'm going AWOL. I came here to fight, not play hide and seek. And where I come from, officers like you've got here would have been drummed right out of the officers corps. And with that, I headed for the road.

So that's just mayhem, right, they they they don't actively assault the enemy with all the firepower that they had, Hackworth gets pissed off, so he goes AWOL. Now, normally absent without leave.

What someone's trying to do is they're trying to shirk responsibility. You know, they're a hippie or they're a bum and they're trying to get out of there. They're there for whatever reason. They're trying to leave. They're trying to get away from the army. He's going AWOL because he wants to fight more.

There was a expression in there, and I've heard it before, their ranks, like you referred to, like we shot bullets into their ranks and then they broke rank, like assembled in a formation type thing, like lined up, which is crazy to think about.

It's crazy to think about.

In modern war, a group of individuals being in ranks in ranks is like four across and whatever, 30 deep.

That's it's a specific formation assemblance or is it just sort of just them over there in that whatever? I mean, the fact that he's saying in ranks means that they're in a legitimate formation.

Yeah. You know, they're probably moving down this road. They don't think there's any Americans there to interfere with them. So they're just in ranks walking because it's an efficient way to walk, but it's not an efficient way to fight.

It doesn't seem like it's an efficient way to get mowed down by machine gun, which is exactly what happened. Yes.

Yeah, I could see that. Well, yeah.

And so when they broke ranks, they all ran in different directions. Yeah. You know, so. Well, let me ask you this first. Just in the spirit of understanding what that means, because it sounds real cool in my opinion, like I could just be throwing out that expression from time to time, not in a military sense, but, you know, I don't know.

Well, they do use it in a non-military sense.

Let's say there's 20 people and where we come up with a plan and we're going to go forward with this new plan and then Echo decides is going to do something different. There's an expression, oh, Echo just broke ranks. OK, yes, exactly right. And that's kind of what I was sort of trying to figure out. Like, could I use it in that way?

Yes, you can, because it sounds really cool when instead of like, oh yeah, I just started shooting at all of them, you know, a shot into their ranks, you know, like that sounds way cooler, but so could it be even loosely used in in an official on an official situation of just a group of people there, you know?

Yeah, right.

Like they weren't necessarily in a specific formation, but they were over there deliberately.

I would say it was a bunch of people. Yeah, I would say that was a crowd of people. Right. Right. That's what you say. There's a bunch of people in ranks.

Yeah. They're organized. Yeah. Well, could they be interpreted as organized, you know, like, you know, the kind where those two guys, let's say not military, maybe like I don't know your friends in the neighborhood and you don't like them, you know, a bunch of cousins or whatever, you like them and they're all there on the corner. Right. And you have maybe you and your brother or whatever. You guys don't like them, they don't like you, whatever.

And then you see them over there on the corner assembled, not for any specific reason, but they're together, you know, could you could you in theory refer to them as on the corner in ranks? In theory, yes, you could, but it wouldn't be accurate to people is not an equivalent of the cousins. Let's say there was five five cousins, even five.

You're going to have a hard time getting, you know, being in rags. Not people know to me they're in ranks.

So you're asking me for permission to use this word and then you're just what I tell, you know, you're just doing it anyways. Yes. Or cool. Say whatever you want to say. It's you're you're the one that's going to look.

You're the one that's going to look dumb. And I didn't want to say it, but like, this is where we're at. And you sounded like you really did want to say it. But if you hesitate because if it's the right thing to do, call my friend dumb. Well, I guess it is. My friend wants to act dumb. He's going to get called dumb in here. Just decide what you're going to call something.

Look, if there's five definitions on the corner altogether cruising and me and my brother start running at them aggressively and they scatter, they broke ranks.

OK, there you go.

Throw them. Now, I guess I'm dumb because they had to been in some form of ranks. Yeah. So I just look at this is like an understanding process.

Do you understand? Yes, sir, I do. I'm not even sure I understand.

So Hackworth goes AWOL because he wants to fight more back to the book.

Any man who's wild enough to go AWOL to fight is just the kind of man we want in our outfit, said Captain John Paul Vann. When I stopped at his eighth ranger camp, fresh from my breakfast out of the twenty fifth recon company, the Eight Rangers was a great spirited outfit, recently rebuilt after being decimated the night the Chinese entered the war. After I explained my situation, the whole outfit accepted me with open arms. The Rangers were elite troops forerunners of the special forces.

Their mission was raids, long reconnaissance patrols, ambushes and other special jobs that conventional troops were not trained to handle. Their history went back to Roger's Rangers before the Revolutionary War. During World War Two, there have been six Ranger battalions whose brave and daring feats are unmatched to this day. Historically, such all volunteer specif, specially trained units had been misused, tasked either with impossible missions for organizations their size or placed with palace guard combat duties well beneath their skill and ability.

When I arrived at the Eighth Ranger camp, the unit was chasing guerrillas behind the main lines. Morale was high and the guys were spoiling for a good fight. But during the time I was there, there was nothing much to my way of thinking anyway that seemed to be happening. I was impatient to get in the thick of it, and as proud as I was to be a ranger, guerrilla hunting was not my idea of infantry combat. Little did I know then the starring roles that guerrilla hunting and Ranger CEO John Paul Vann would have later in my life.

Besides, the word was that the eight Rangers was going to be broken up soon and something in me said to move on. So I did until I saw a sign by a road that proclaimed Wolfhound White Rear. Well, if that's not a guarantee for a good fight, I don't know what is. I thought and hightailed it to the battalion. Sepi, the Twenty Seventh Infantry Wolfhound Regiment was a colorful unit itself. The outfit had gotten its name during a stint in fighting the Communists in Siberia during the Russian Revolution in Korea.

The Wolfhounds were known as the fire brigade because whenever there was trouble, they were sent in to save the day. They weren't a special unit, just a group of guys who thought they were good, so they were good. I had to highlight that because that just teaches you something about leadership and about morale and about attitude and about esprit de corps. You get guys and you convince them that they're good and they think they're good. They get good, they become good.

I'd see members of the outfit regularly over the last months whenever the twenty fifth recon had sent their portion of the division.

Was sent had been sent there portion of the divisional front, and I'd always been knocked out by the because these guys acted more like pirates on the high seas than as a regular army regiment. To begin with, the wolfhounds wore their regimental crest crest on their fatigues like their Medal of Honor. Their spirit was just incredible. They were so totally non-military in terms of what I was accustomed to. They seldom wore steel pots. They modified their gear to make it more functional and simply got rid of things that weighed them down unnecessarily.

The long wooden handle of the entrenching tool, for example, was cut off so it wouldn't rub against your leg. The packs were thrown away and you carried a tramp's rule which was quickly grounded when you got into a fight. Badgers were stripped of by pods and carrying handles and skateboards were tossed with the bayonet living permanently. At the end of the rifle, grenades were carried in canteen covers. You could fit five and if you wanted to carry a captured weapon, go for it.

So these guys are got a little little bit of rebellion in them, got a little rebellious attitude, which is a good thing.

Got to be balanced, but it's a good thing. This renegade kind of soldiering was not only sanctioned, but encouraged by the twenty seventh regimental commander and fire chief, World War Two paratrooper Colonel John Iron Mike Mickolus Michaelis, who would go on to four stars, understood what made men fight.

He was known for morale boosting slogans like your lean, your mean, you're rough, you're tough, you're professional killers and pre battle pep talks like you're not here to die for your country. You're here to make those other so and so's die for theirs. The Wolfhounds proud, proud combat record showed that they believed him.

And they'd eagerly adopted their commander's no nonsense brand of soldiering, I was more than ready to do the same. The Second Battalion XO pointed the way up the road to where the rifle companies were deployed, the first unit I came to is Company G, where I reported to First Sergeant Edwin Ragia. I can always use another sergeant, this giant of a top kick raud then and there he assigned me to 3rd Platoon finally with the assurance that I'd be picked up on the morning report so I wouldn't be considered a wallflower or AMEA.

I joined my new family. At first, it was not the happiest of unions, I should have realized it wouldn't be easy. It's always a bitch to join a unit, particularly one as tight as the wolfhounds, as an individual replacement. And for some reason, it's even worse when you're an NCO or an officer. You don't know anyone and no one trusts you until you've proved yourself in battle. You get all the lousy details and only the worst battlefield horror stories.

You're just the new guy. You're just fresh meat. And add insult to injury, though. I've been a squad leader, an acting platoon sergeant in Italy and a section leader in the twenty fifth recon. Now, in the in the 3rd of the G, I found myself an assistant squad leader.

I was damned unhappy with the demotion, I probably had more noncom experience than any of the squad leaders in the platoon, but the fact was that in their eyes, I was untried and all protests to the contrary fell on deaf ears.

Doesn't matter who you are, Hackworth, checking into a new unit, got to prove yourself it didn't help. I didn't help my cause that any that evening, soon after my arrival, when just at dusk, I got caught in a right in a rice paddy right smack dab in the middle of a blistering chink mortar attack. I started to run, but slipped and fell in the paddy. When I finally got back to my foxhole, I discovered that my water repellent outer trousers were covered with human shit, which the Koreans used for fertilizer.

Unsurprisingly, the guy sharing my hole was unhappy about this as I was. I took off the trousers and made do for the night with two pairs of long johns and two pairs of odd trousers I had on underneath. Then I sacked out until it was my turn to go on guard, leaving my FoxxHole partner to contend with the lingering aroma of my accident guard was a grueling ritual, mainly because everyone was so tired. Each squad had its own sector, normally for foxholes, each about four yards apart.

The two guys shared a hole and took turns throughout the night searching into the darkness, you'd look until you got tired, then glance at your body sacked out at the bottom of the hole. Then you look a little longer. And two, while you thought, should I wake him now, has he had enough sleep? Few guys had watches to own or watch an infantry squad during the first. Kareen Wynter was a luxury beyond imagination. So you spelled each other based on the honor system and you only asked for relief when it was impossible to keep your eyes open any longer.

Then your buddy would ask for a sitrep, and that was it, you'd be asleep almost before you'd zipped up your feather down fart sack.

That's what they call the sleeping bags, if you didn't pick that up the last time I used it, it doesn't even have watches.

Mm. What's happening? I asked when my FoxxHole partner woke me for my turn, not a thing, he replied, and he was out like a light still inside my sack. I sat in the darkness in the edge of the hole, got my eyeballs unglued and tried to remember where I was. I was fantasizing about smoking a cigarette, drinking a hot cup of coffee, eating a charcoal, black rare steak and getting a squad of my own when to my amazement, I saw a man lying prone immediately to my immediate left rear.

I woke up my buddy.

There's a God cheek almost on top of us. We whispered through our options we could toss a grenade, blast him with a rifle or crawl out and get him with a knife. We decided on the third alternative because the guy was right in the middle of our squad position and rifle fire or a grenade could easily start a firefight among our own guys.

The chink wasn't moving and his back was to us. My buddy covered me while I crawled out of the foxhole with my trusty M1 and 10 inch razor sharp bayonet attached. I crouched in a crouched position. I silently slipped up behind the enemy soldier. When I got within striking distance, I drew my rifle and thrust it with full force. Branches crackled and it was over. I bayonetted my own frozen stiff trousers, which I had earlier hung over a bush behind our foxhole to dry.

The next morning I had to put the shitty things back on again now with a hole in the ass as well. And for some reason, the fresh meat was the only one in the squad who didn't think this was very funny. So that's how he that's that's the impression he makes his freakin stabbing his own pants, its own shit covered pants in the middle of the night. Being a new guy is hard. Seems like it being a new guy is hard.

Being a new guy is very hard.

You cannot you cannot do these kind of things. Sucks when you do. Everyone's watching you. Yeah.

You know, kind of when your new guy kind of kind of back off a little bit, you know what I'm saying to you, like just take take a rap off.

Yeah. That whole first impression thing just in general. Yeah. Because like the new guy, you don't have any evaluation criteria. Like there's no like you didn't you're not judged on anything because you don't have anything, you know, and then you start doing these weird things happening in your pants. You're like, OK, well that's how this guy is. He stabs his own pants in the dark sometimes. I guess so. Yeah. You're weird. You're weird.

And then so now you got to kind of make up for all that stuff by doing a bunch of awesome stuff, you know. But I guess even beyond that, look, OK, so let's admit that it's hard. But I guess what I'm saying is air on the side of not doing dumb shit, you know what I'm saying? Like, if there's something I could maybe do this and it might make me look good.

But just think about, you know, once again to be negative when you plan to be negative and think to yourself, you know, that by me, look, might make me look cool.

But also, if this goes sideways, it's going to look real dumb. Yeah. Have you ever seen, like, fail videos?

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Right. Yes, very often. I mean, those are a legitimate thing, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's an addiction, by the way.

So how many of those people in the five seconds before they attempt their whatever they're attempting, how many of those people are actually thinking this is going to look really good? Yeah, yeah.

So there's there's two of them. There's one girl, one guy, and they're the same thing.

So it's like, oh yeah, I'm going to jump in this icy pond, you know, with my the guy obviously has his swimsuit on the ground and swims whatever.

They're two separate videos is what I'm saying, but the same thing.

So they go, you know, the girls like I come to you for this type of action. This is where the whole world winds right now, is that this is the ultimate fail video. Yeah. So one of them for sure, they're endless and I love them.

But, you know, great lessons in these videos, you know, so that now we're talking about freaking philosophical lessons we get from fail videos. Yes. Yes. I brought it up. They got the I brought it up. Yes, I'm guilty.

So, you know, the girls like, OK, ready. The guy in the camera may or may not be in on it. Whatever says, OK, one, two, three, go.

The girl jumps off this little pier, which is, you know, maybe two, three, three feet down into the water, the icy water and the ice is just so thick that it doesn't even break. So she just like God slams on to the ice.

You could get really badly hurt. Oh, yeah, that's the thing. It's like that's the you can break your neck. Yeah. Or your back or your tailbone and. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh break the neck a lot.

Diving into shallow pools or shallow water pond water. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Luckily they, they weren't trying to dive in there. Oh ok. Yeah. I feel a little better about it now. Yeah.

I don't think that wouldn't be a good idea even if it was thin. Ice did like dive. That's like some next level. Not smart that level fail. Yes sir.

But no you can still get hurt. Imagine jumping off this table onto concrete slippery. That's essentially what it is you know.

So you mean ice. Yeah. Hayslip recog doesn't break, doesn't crack.

And here's the thing. I'm assuming they didn't get injured. I'm sure it hurt for sure on a couple levels.

But when you watch it, it's real funny because you think they're going to like do like a cannonball or whatever. And it's like it's real funny, but yeah, man, it's the thing if you're the new guy and that's what you do, it's like, man, yeah, you're the guy who jumped on that ice and like, jam yourself up, you know, just kind of reassess in those five seconds before you're about to do something.

Just think and look, I'm not saying you don't have to have courage. You got to try things, you know, but just think maybe this isn't going to quite turn out the way I wanted it to. Yeah. A chance that this goes a little bit wrong as possible.

And if you're a new guy, you don't have that much leadership capital to spend on recovering from this. Yeah.

So you've got to take risks and stuff. Since back to the book, the war seemed lost at best. It was hopelessly confused.

I thought wars, at least American wars had happy endings like capturing Berlin and Tokyo.

All we were doing was yo yo, going back and forth across the Korean Peninsula. Defeat than victory, than defeat and defeat with company, too. We were retreating, shuffling along, heading south colder.

Sometimes the temperatures were twenty degrees below zero and more tired than we'd ever been in our lives.

One day a snap had us wading through mud on both sides of a mire that had once been a road.

Jeeps and trucks sloshed through it to each vehicle, trying in vain to miss the rush of the vehicle in front so as to not become bogged down. One jeep stalled and would not restart. Just as our column was passing by the driver and LT passenger on the thing, the lieutenant called for help to push it over to the side. But before we could slosh through the quagmire and give him a hand, he whipped out his pistol and aimed at one of the tires.

I figured his daddy must have been an old horse soldier and this guy was going to follow through with the Cav tradition of shooting his disabled mount and for sure, pow, pow, pow. But the last shot missed the tire at, glanced off the rim and boomerang back to strike the lieutenant right between the eyes. We. Push the jeep and the warm steel body off the road and then return to our column soon the temperature drop the road, turn to ice and we just kept heading south.

That hadn't meant anything, the lieutenant's death, for openers, what he'd done was dumb, but more than that, we'd become immune. Fighting a war on the ground is like a working in a slaughterhouse. At first, the blood, the gore gets to you. But after a while, you don't see it. You don't smell it. You don't feel it. So what's another dead body? It's almost as if you don't care. In this case, we just leaned forward, kept walking and tried to ignore the song in our heads, the ones the troops called the Bugout Blues.

So this is the life of a ground pounder, I often think the risks were higher in the recon company, but life in George was far more harsh, at least in recon. We frequently rode on the backs of our tanks and thus kept warm in the infantry. It was just a plodding grind, one foot after the other until the column stopped and we'd flop down the sound sound asleep before our heads touched the ground and recon. We were seldom hungry because we stashed rations on the tanks in the infantry.

Growling bellies were our constant companions in the infantry. Many men lost their will to live frequently.

Guys would just quit, drop out of the moving column and plunk down on the side of the road. Sometimes with the Chinese within sight, you'd say, Come on, buddy, get up, let's go. You're going to be captured. And he'd say, I don't care. I can't go. Another step a day felt like a week.

And the more tired an infantry became, the more tired an infantry man became, the more he wanted to lighten the load. First would go the souvenirs, then his extra ammo. Next would be the bulky gear, the field coat, the pile jackets and the down sleeping bags.

Even though he knew he'd freeze that night in the infantry. I found you live for right now. You don't give a damn about tomorrow because you don't even know if there will be one. Get getting it's weird, I know you like to talk about the the long game versus the short game versus the the strategic moves versus the tactical moves. But it's interesting when you think about what's happening right now with a human being and with human beings in general, as we encounter stress, as we encounter pain and suffering, we start to focus on just a short term, just a short term win.

And think about that from a life perspective. I mean, here you are. You know, it's going to be freezing tonight. You know, it's going to be freezing, but you don't want to carry this down sleeping bag anymore. So you just leave it to think about how crazy that is. But we make decisions all the time that are that stupid.

But we want that short term gratification when a lot of cases relief like short term or short term relief, which I guess as far as the game goes. Same thing. So it's like relief, gratification, you know, whatever. Yeah. Like there's a difference. But in the games for the games concerned, that's what you're going for, you know, in like like a craving.

Right. Yeah. Craving like that's a relief from. That's crazy.

That's throwing away your you're down. Sleeping back, sleeping. That's what it is, it's going to feel good right now, like you just got rid of three pounds. And by the way, back in the day, like these down sleeping bags, you know, like nowadays things are like, you know, this is probably four or five pounds, which is a big difference in your home. I think I think about what that does.

Think about. You're right, man. It's a craving, right?

It's when you say, I really want to eat those Cheetos, you know, it's just not all right. I just want to just those Cheetos are going to be good.

And then even after you eat your chicken salad or whatever, Cheetos still sound kind of good. You know, still like a little little thing that is just like this.

My my down parka. Yeah. That could keep me warm, you know.

But I think what it has to do with that, there is a difference.

What it has to do with this, like one is caused by suffering. And you just get into this mode of just basically surrender. Maybe that is what happens in life. Maybe you get to a point. We just kind of surrender to where you're at. You just kind of accept like, hey, this is just me. Yeah.

And now, you know, Cheetos, no Cheetos, whatever. Donut, no donut, the doughnut.

Yeah. That's a good way of putting it, excepting where you're at. Yeah.

And it's like because where you're at it's a place in your mind to you know how like even if you're you're making progress but you're used to not making progress, you know, when you really used to it can happen like with like if you have like a certain amount of money in your bank account when you're a kid or young men or whatever, if you're used to having, like, you know, twenty dollars in there, like just constantly, that's sort of the baseline or whatever.

And then you're like then you can get one hundred or five hundred.

Nine hundred. Oh but you're used to having twenty.

It's like. Yeah like I'm making progress. I'm saving money. I'm but you're used to having twenty.

So didn't you go out buy that big screen TV. There's a chance that, that I set that back down to twenty. Exactly right. Except where you're, you're except your place. Except you can't do that basically it's bad idea. Yeah.

Like you have to like actively maybe like raise your for real raise your standard. Now when you get the nine hundred in there. Now the new standard is I don't know, make it realistic I guess. But a thousand eight hundred should be the standard like the baseline now you know. So sure. You got some wiggle room, maybe you're not perfect, maybe it's new to you. OK, but the standard is eight but you start going below eight.

That's the same thing as having negative kind of attitude. But you got to really establish it in your head.

You know, it's hard, though, very fair, because people are where they are and they kind of get used to it.

That's why that's why they are where they are, because they're literally used to, you know, not like like pretend used to it. Is it good to get. Well, never mind. Is it it's good to get that new standard and actually stay there long enough that you feel it. Yeah. You get used to the new standard. That's the tricky part. Yeah.

You feel good, but then you're like, oh and then you go back to your normal ways, you know, first craving that comes about satisfying the craving relief from the credit, however you want to put it like even like when you say suffering, it's kind of like what does that really mean? You know, I mean there's certain levels of suffering for sure. Like you can go deep into human suffering for sure.

But really to some people, like not having a drink, suffering, you know, when they're like or have a craving for ice cream or something like this, it's like it's kind of like it's suffering.

You know, that's a really horrible stretch, isn't it?

I mean, really, to think like I can have ice cream, I'm suffering or any kind of addiction, I I'm assuming, you know, like I've the only addiction I've really dealt with as far as like seeing people is like a cigarette scenario where they're like craving a cigarette so much. And it's like and it kind of seems like you're kind of suffering.

I guess my my my contention here is that not having ice cream, we cannot equivocate that you can't do it to suffering.

I understand. Yes. Bottom line is, let's be careful that we aren't thinking short term. Let's hang on to our sleeping bag. Let's carry the extra weight, because in the long run, it's going to pay off. Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.

That seems like obvious suffering where you're like, hey, I'm going to need that tonight. You know, I'm going to literally need that to stay alive. Possibly. Yeah. Not the kind where. Oh, that would be sort of nice tonight. That'd be cool tonight. It's not that I'm going to need that tonight or I risked death. And yet right now my suffering is so bad.

OK, I got to get rid of it to not have it tonight. Oh yeah.

Man that is back to the book now and then if we were really lucky, we'd stop in a village and come commandeer an abandoned house for ten or twenty winks.

A Korean home had a hard adobe, mud floors under which lay an oven, the purpose of which was to provide central heating for the entire house. Of course, American soldiers at. No idea how these things worked, and the first time around, we built the biggest fire we could and went to sleep shivering and bitching that the gooks didn't know how to do anything right. It turned out, though, that the previous occupants of the of our temporary abode had the last laugh throughout the night.

The floors got hotter and hotter until some of the guys jackets spontaneously combusted and the ammo we made on the floor blew up. Snow never looked so good.

So you're going one extreme to the other. On most nights, though, to stave off the cold, we'd employed the old soldier's tricks from the bleak frozen days of Valley Forge. One was to stuff hay in a poncho and wrap it so tightly around two guys to keep in the body heat. Another was to fill your steel pot with coals and embrace it all night long, a practice that continued despite a number of tired soldiers who died this way from asphyxiation.

Another was to put a slug through your foot. In other words, shoot yourself in the foot. I'd thought about that one. Most of us did, but it always seemed too risky. You might blow your foot off. You might get caught in court martialed. But one bitterly cold night when I would have done anything to get out of that place, I came up with a perfect solution. If I emptied most of the powder out of a grenade, I could toss it into my foxhole and blame it on a sneaky Chinaman.

Better yet, if I chipped the trench on the side of the foxhole with my bayonet, I could contain the damage to my leg.

Only all I'd have to do would be lay my body in the trench and stick my leg in the hole, toss in, frag Fragonard and bang million dollar wound.

It was a wonderful idea. Somehow a lot better than the one I often saw during a firefight when a guy would stay in his hole and wave his arms or kick his legs like a chorus dancer hoping to catch a slug and the first boat back to the states.

And I spent all night digging away, working on the trench and thinking how warm I'd be.

Back in Santa Monica, the war vet who got hit in the leg, I chipped and chipped away on the frozen ground, completely forgetting about the cold, the time, the fact that I needed some sleep, or that my buddy who was sleeping, sleeping behind the hole may have had enough. Finally, it was ready. I hoisted myself into the trench, prepared the grenade and dangled my leg in the hole. And I was just about to pull that pin when I saw the most beautiful sight, a sight that every infantryman in Korea dreamed of seeing.

It was the sun slowly rising, they meant the terrible night was over. It meant I could light my fire and be warm again. So I forgot my little trench.

And for a moment, forgot the other thing, the son meant the beginning of yet another long day, another step s the never endor ending bitter taste of defeat in all our mouths.

So this is hack.

This is freakin Hackworth, who just went AWOL to go because he didn't think his troops were fighting hard enough. He gets to the front lines. He's he is where he wants to be. Any even a hack is thinking about either shooting himself in the foot and then beyond thinking about he comes up with a scheme with a grenade and he actually executes the entire plan other than the actual event itself. And the only thing that stops him is that the sun's coming up.

That's that's freaking insane. Yeah, and I'll tell you, you know what I take away from that. Hold on a little bit longer. The sun's going to come up. Hold on a little bit longer.

The sun's going to come up. I posted something about that the other day because I was watching the sun go down and going through seal training when the sun's going down and the instructors will be they line you up and they say good night. Say good night to the sun, gents. It's going to be a long, cold, wet night.

And they're just making trying to make people think, hey, you got whatever however many hours is going to be dark for 12, eight, nine.

It's going to suck.

It's going to suck. And that's what they want you to think about, how much it's going to suck. But it's in the back of your mind, you go, the sun will come up in the morning. They can't stop that from happening. Yeah, get in that tough situation.

Remember, the sun's going to come up and you can get through it, man.

Yeah. You got to admit, though, man, I kind of felt for a little bit when he's, like, digging the thing and and thinking about how warm he's going to be.

It's like he had his full fantasy outstretched in front of him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I mean and then and then the standard starts to get shifted, kind of like, oh yeah. You're almost kind of e like the warmth that you can imagine, you know, and to have that warmth kind of just taking away meaning, you got to shift your plan back to like the reality or whatever.

And I can see how that could be hard.

He's even got the fantasy of like, hey, the war vet. Yeah. You know, happy guy. I got got hit in the leg. He's got his whole fantasy planned out. He's ready to execute on this thing.

And this guy is like born for karma.

And that's how shitty this situation gets. Yeah.

And that's like another thing it says like how like how much do you think people are thinking? I imagine with somebody that doesn't really want to be there, I imagine what's going through their freaking minds.

You. Back to the book, and then as if overnight everything changed, it turned out that despite the fact that I never saw a general on the battlefield, apparently one Lieutenant General, Matthew Ridgway, had been all over the English the Eighth Army Front, assessing the situation and making his plans. I wrote in an open jeep.

He would later write in his memoirs and would permit no Jeep with the top up to operate in the combat zone.

Riding in a closed vehicle in a battle area puts a man in the wrong frame of mind. It gives him an erroneous sense of warmth, of safety. His mental attitude is that of an ostrich poking his head in the sand.

Also, I held the old fashioned idea that it helped spirits of the men to see the old man up there in the snow and sleet in the mud, sharing the same cold, miserable existence that they had to endure. As a consequence, I damn near froze.

And quote, Nevertheless, Ridgway persevered. With no quarter given, he banned the word retreat from the English language, at least in so far as correspondents could describe our miserable truck to the south.

Quote, I'm more interested in your plans for attack, he told a staff officer when the latter offered up those for another withdraw. He even he recognized even before we did that the Chinese offensive was running out of steam and sought to take advantage of it with deep patrols to the north to find out exactly how stretched the enemy was. Operation Wolfhound was the first of these and the fire brigade under the command of Colonel Mike Allen R. Mickolus, one of Gen..

Ridgway's World War two airborne proteges, was on the attack once more. So now you have a totally different situation. The guy goes to the front line and he actually sees what's happening. And not only does he see what his troops are going through, but he also sees what's happening with the Chinese. He sees them start to get thinned out. He sees maybe there's not as much pressure as he originally saw.

So he can say, look, all right, we're done retreating here we go back to the book. Two platoons of company and elements of the 80 Ninth Tank Battalion made up one of the task forces named for and commanded by our own company commander, Jack Michali. Task Force Mike Lee was given the mission of taking Suwon. And on the 16th of January, it did just that. The enemy was totally unprepared for the daring daylight assault. George was outside of artillery range.

Captain Mike Lee, an old horse Cav man, approached Suwon and the only way possible frontally down the road, never probed for mines and fast. My platoon, the 3rd, was not involved in the blitzkrieg operation at all. But when the other guys came back, having killed one hundred and fifty enemy without a casualty of their own in high spirits and with stories of Captain Mike Lee sauntering across the street to Suwon while enemy machine gun slugs started all around him, our morale went sky high.

We were ready to take on the world. Meanwhile, I got my squad and immediately set about instilling it with the trust standards and beliefs about the way things should be done, so so he is now given a squad because he just showed up there. And even though he's a new guy and even though he stabbed his own pair of shit covered pants with a bayonet in the middle of the night, he is still giving a squat.

So I have to back up a little bit. So he talks about this trust capital. Capital, T Capital. R Capital U Capital S Capital T.

When he first got in the army, as I mentioned, he went to Europe. When he went to Europe, he was not in combat because the war was over.

But there was these old timers there and he explains abbreviate a little bit. But he kind of talks about what it was like and where he developed his.

I want to see his personality really.

And and, you know, like I was I always tell people when you when you go in the SEAL teams, your first platoon leaves a big mark on you and definitely your first two platoons. And the teams have become a lot more similar than they used to be. All the different SEAL teams, there are a lot more similar than they used to be. They used to be they used to have much more of their own personalities.

Team won the nickname for Team One, which is where I was was Stalag team one, because it was you know, you had uniforms, inspections and you had you everyone had short hair and they inspected your haircuts and all this stuff.

Team five was kind of, you know, they were kind of wild, kind of just do, you know, they had no inspections and they were just kind of they had the they had the image of being more wild than Team three was sort of a little bit in between. But they were also sort of they seemed like shy for lack of a better word, like team three was just kind of like they were just doing over there doing their thing.

They were also disconnected because they were deploying to Southwest Asia back then and team one and Team two were deploying to Southeast Asia. They were a little bit disconnected, which made him seem a little bit more shy, I guess. I don't know if that's the right word, but they were just a little bit more they were all kind of on their own program. Team one on one end of the spectrum, Stollberg Team one, team five, kind of wild team three somewhere in the middle that everyone had their own personalities in T and the East Coast, had their own personalities, too.

And they kind of lined up a little bit, except for the fact that Team two and Team one were sort of the traditional old school ones. That's why when I went from Team One to the East Coast, I tried to go to Team two and I did Team four was more like the wild one teammate was kind of in the middle.

That's back in the day. Now, the teams are very similar because they all kind of are on the same rotation. You're going the same types of deployments. So they're much more similar. But wherever you spend your early days leaves an impression on you.

And that's kind of what happened to hack he shows up into this environment and I'm going to go into it here, back to the book gradually. So now we're going back in time. It's the end of World War Two. The fighting's over, but he's he's deployed and he's in Europe. Back to the book. Gradually, most of the World War two warriors that went back to the states and the post-war Wild West feeling of lawlessness went to and have been great fun for a kid to be part of the hell for leather spirit that made up the seven hundred and fifty second, the seven five deuce.

But like the tightening of a screw one turn at a time, each day the unit became more military. The WHO gives a damn attitude of the remaining seven hundred and fifty second combat leaders and troopers replaced by the exacting discipline of the peacetime army for the next four years. I learned my trade one year with the recon company of the Tank Battalion in the Po Valley and three more months with triste United States troops. And this is where the acronym Trust comes from triste United States troops, the illustrious unit whose five thousand handpicked members, Walter Winchell called, quote, the chrome plated soldiers of Europe.

We worked hard during those years, long, merciless days of training, repeating, training, repeating, repeating until we got it right. Our transformation into soldiers inspired and monitored by those battle savvy and CEOs who well knew that discipline and tactical proficiency on the battlefield were the direct results of discipline and combat skills instilled on the parade and training grounds at night. It was down on our hands and knees, all of us hand waxing the barracks floors until we had enough money to chip in and buy a buffer.

You could eat off those floors just as you could, just as you could almost be blinded by the brass belt buckles and brown boots that each of us wore polished every night to a dazzling finish. The only way out of these activities was sick call, but rarely was it used as an excuse. It took as much effort to see the doc. You had to strip your bed, cram all your perfectly pressed clothes into a duffel bag, see the supply sergeant and then the first sergeant, not to mention the lion's share of a month's pay you'd spend having your clothes repossessed when you came back, as it did to continue with the normal routine punishment was meted out by a process known as NCO.

Justice for Karlov say that for crimes such as a uniform of less than starched perfection, a bed that didn't bounce a quarter or even a mildly insubordinate smirk, the sentence could range from fifty pushups to double timing around the parade field, holding a nine point five pound M1 rifle over your head, yelling, I'm a shithead, I'm a shithead.

Until you collapsed, we rarely saw an officer above our platoon leader and he was seldom with the truth because of administrative duties. But no one seemed too concerned about it. Above and below the chain of command. It was well recognized that his father's teachers, older brothers and chief tormentors increased. The NCO corps had no equal.

So that's what he's talking about when he's talking about this trust attitude of discipline and training hard, that's where it comes from.

So so now we're back to Korea. We're back to him getting a squad and here's what he does. Meanwhile, I got my squad and immediately set about instilling it with my trust standards and beliefs about the way things should be done. I got out a notebook and wrote down each man's name, rank and serial number, his blood type weapon, no next of kin. And whatever training combat experience he had, I started demanding that rifle's be cleaned and that shoulder shape up.

If I saw a soldier walking around without his weapon, the next thing he knew he'd be on the deck crawling to it. While I stood by kicking him and telling him that with each kick was that he was being hit with a slug. Brutal stuff.

I'd learned it in basic training with Lieutenant Kramer at the Fort Knox rifle range, kicked my arm until I positioned it correctly under my weapon. But that's how a guy learns.

Besides better my foot and a mythical slug than an enemy slug and the good by friendly foot arm or life, that's how our guy learned.

You want to talk about a politically incorrect, unpopular thing to say. Yeah, I remember when I was a new guy. I remember some of the older guys. Saying to me, you know, sometimes people need to get beaten so that they learn and you know what I said? That's correct. It's actually accurate. I hate to say it because everyone hates it.

It's the truth, but sometimes you need to learn a lesson the hard way. And if you don't think it's a big deal or whatever. It's a big deal, you know, so. That's what he said. That's how a guy learns once again. What do we have? We have 18, 19, 17, 21 year old men.

Who's what is it, the frontal cortex, what is it, the frontal lobes? They're not they're not fully developed. Yeah, yeah, they understand physicalness. Physicality.

Yeah, yeah. That's one of those things that it's kind of universally like, understood. You know, pain is not good, you know. Yeah. Some people can take more pain than others for sure. But after a while, it's like we all kind of don't like pain.

Of course, of course there's weirdo's or whatever.

But for the most part, they're like these things that if you start to threaten and like, you know, it's valuable to people.

Here's the other thing.

This is this is a fucking harsh environment, right? This is war. You're getting people ready for war. You're getting people ready to kill. You're getting people ready to freeze. You're getting people ready to suffer.

You're getting people ready to have to march for miles and miles and miles with no food, with no sleep like this is what the job entails. Yeah.

And if you think you can pamper someone and that's going to effectively prepare them for those type of situations, I don't think that's accurate.

Yeah, I think you're right about the back to the book. My guys thought I was crazy and a prick to boot. They still didn't believe I paid my pat my battlefield dues. Little did they know that they were doing the paying in spades for making me get that sergeant combat feeling all over again. Then came six February, which we talked about on the last podcast, part of another reconnaissance in force mission codenamed Operation Thunderbolt, which turned into a full scale attack and I never got to complain again.

So after his performance, which we talked about in two forty nine, what he did to lead that day back to the book, in fact, the reaction was the direct opposite. No longer was I the hard ass sergeant who arrived out of the blue with strange ideas of discipline and training.

Now I was just Hak Hak, the great fighter who'd gotten shot in the head courageously saving lives and inflicting punishment on the enemy.

It was a great relief knowing I would not have to prove myself to anyone anymore. But what I didn't know at the time was that the name I made for myself on six February nineteen fifty one was one I'd have to live up to for the next 20 years. So he and this is a story that gets repeated throughout his life. He kind of shows up somewhere. He has the core mentality. People kind of question it, but then they see how it enables them and and protects them in combat.

And then they're kind they're down for the cause.

Back to the book. It seemed ironic that the thing that saved my life on that day was the very thing I hated most in Korea. The cold, the blood kept pumping. And this is when he's referring back to when he got shot in the head. The blood kept pumping, but it froze almost as soon as it came out of my head after the doc patched me up with the Carlisle bandage, I radioed Captain Macci Lee and gave him a sitrep.

I'd already appointed another NCO to skipper the platoon.

Michael told me that to head for the road behind which Gilchrist's platoon was fighting, he would send a little jeep there to pick me up. The platoon doc, always worried about his flock, wanted to tag along. I told him I'd make it policed up one of our deads and ones and head it off. I kept low using the rice paddy walls and irrigation ditches for cover. I probably wouldn't have felt it if I'd gotten hit again anyways because during my run back down the drainage ditch, I'd fallen through the ice and been soaked from the waist down.

The water and zero degree weather turned my lower my lower torso into a block of ice. My head was spinning and my balls were frozen and I wasn't sure which one worried me more. Then I came upon PFC Charles. The guy had earlier tasked to take the two North Korean ws we'd captured during that morning to the old man for interrogation. Charles was sitting in a drainage ditch by the road, eating a can of C rations at his feet, where the prisoners stretched out in the ditch, dead each from a single bullet in the back of the head.

I was outraged.

Why'd you kill them? They tried to escape, he said simply, but I didn't believe him. Besides, he continued, I wasn't going to risk my ass to get to gooks out of here. There wasn't much I could do. I told him to report back to the platoon. Gilchrist later told me that Charles had received word only days before that his brother had been killed in action over in the Second Division. Not too good a choice for an escort hack, he'd remark, drawing on his pipe.

I continued on small arms and machine gun fire was skipping down the road, I gave it all a big mess and kept my little ditch.

I headed south until I met Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Mirch, our old battalion CEO who is controlling the battle from his tactical ktp behind a roadside noal a few hundred yards from the front. There I was placed on a litter in a medical jeep. And as we bumped down the road, all I could think was holler, you halleluja got it made leaving this goddamn place.

Or so I thought, because just then the Jeep's radio crackled on first platoon George Company got a serious wound real bad. Get there fast.

He'll be on the side of the road. I couldn't believe it.

Let me out. I'll wait here. So there's he's getting out of there on this jeep and all of a sudden over the radio says, hey, we need that jeep back here and Hackworth can let me out, bro. Let me out. I'll wait here, I thought.

But I was too weak, too tired, too cold to get the words out. The Jeep spun around and headed back up. That fire swept road past Colonel Mirch right in the jaws, the whole goddamn communist army. We stopped. The medics calmly sauntered out to pick up the other casualty they took all the time in the world, or so it seemed. While the enemy used the large Red Cross markings on the Jeep for target practice, the jeeps canvasses which sides were being ventilated.

The slugs were passing above and below my litter. I felt totally helpless and swore that whoever the wounded guy was, I would hate him for life, which, from the way things were going, was not going to be long.

It turned out he was a buddy through the Hawaiian Mafia connection, a handsome six footer named Rey Mendez.

I almost kept my kept to my word, though, when I found out his critical wound to be a slug in the thigh when he'd been hit, he'd rolled up in a ball, bloodied, squirted out of his leg all over the front of his jacket. And someone had concluded that he had taken it in the gut, oblivious to the fight raging on all sides of our thin skinned ambulance Jeep, Mendez became cheaper and cheaper as we headed out of the battle area.

He sang praises of his million dollar wound and spun dreams about as in imminent return to the islands. Me one big war hero.

He said the regimental collection collecting station was jammed with casualties. The surgeon who bent over my litter was covered with blood like a butcher. We're going to bypass division clearing and send you straight to MASH at Suwanee said. You're on your way home. The next stop was quick. MASH was near the emergency runway at Suwon. The doc there wrote on my wounded leg, oh, my wounded tag emergency air evac, which somehow scared me. And before I knew it, I was strapped down to the deck of a C forty seven.

We took off just that dark. Why don't they close the goddamn door?

I thought it had to be open because I'd never been colder. I was shaking like a jackhammer. I couldn't feel my hands or feet. A flight nurse stayed right with me. Another anonymous sign, ominous sign.

So he's getting like they put air evac immediately. He's like, oh, God, that means I must be really, really bad. He's got this flight nurse staying right with him. She piled on blanket after blanket with no effect. Just as I was reaching the point where I didn't know if I could take it anymore. We landed in Pusan and it was another world paradise.

In fact, a heated ambulance was waiting. As they loaded me in.

I felt like that old boll weevil who lived in the red hot fire. Mighty warm, but nice. I'd found a home. I fell asleep and didn't wake up again until I was being winched aboard the hospital ship USS Haven in Pusan Harbor. I opened my eyes and everything I saw was wiped clean and oh, so warm.

Medics were starched, the nurses all looked like Doris Day, I was stripped, placed in crisp white sheets with soft blue blankets, I was safe and suddenly starving.

A medic came down to the immediate rescue with a delicious hot meal. I wolfed it down just in time for the next wonder of wonders, a beautiful young nurse in a tight little white outfit who came to clean me up. Why didn't I join the Navy?

I thought. Except for my bath and the Korean tub, I hadn't washed in more than two months, I was caked with dried blood, Korean mud, and God only knew what else. Each time the nurse scraped off one filthy layer, she'd have to change the sheets and start again. It took four sheet changes with no help from me because as a head wound, I wasn't allowed to move at all. Next, the poor girl had to shave off my ratty beard.

Bad hygiene and ingrown hairs had covered my face with oil like pimples. It was too terrible to be funny watching the nurse bobbing and weaving all over the place to avoid flying debris. Every time that rasor hit one of the anti-personnel mines buried in my cheeks, the next few days were a haze. Sleep really hard, sleep people standing over me, having whispered consultations, blood. I've X-ray after x ray doctors probing, asking questions. How many fingers do you see?

I slowly regained my strength. Someone somebody commandeered my wall from watch. I never saw it again. The sleep was good. I caught up on months of it lost.

But then I started getting restless. The ward, though spotlessly clean and staffed with talented, dedicated, dedicated pros, was an extremely depressing place.

We were all head wounds, most either terminal or vegetable cases. It was amazing that many it was amazing that many young boys, all of them were still sucking in air. One guy had tubes running out of everywhere. He'd caught a slug right between the eyes I wanted out.

I'd had my little vacation, I told the docs, I'm ready to return to my platoon, there's nothing wrong with me. The doctors probably thought that the bullet had done some pretty serious damage to my brain. Nobody wanted to go back to the front. They didn't realize that the guys in 3rd Platoon were my brothers, my family, and I love them.

I'd only been with them three weeks, it was true, but in combat, that's a lifetime and I didn't want to leave them out there alone.

If by being there, I could help keep them alive, keep them out of a head wound ward. I want to go back. I kept telling them. He did go back, he healed up. He healed up pretty quickly and. Went back to his platoon by mid-March, so he was out for maybe a month and a half and. You know, this book is just incredibly good, by the way, that's page sixty nine of eight hundred page book.

That's where we're at page sixty nine of an eight hundred page book just in Korea. He's going to get two more Purple Hearts. He's going to get battlefield commissioned. He's going to take command of a new Raider unit. He's going to go on offense against the enemy. He's going to get awarded three Silver Stars. Then he's going to go back to America. He's going to volunteer for another tour. With the 4th Infantry Division. And then that war is going to end and he's going to stay in the Army and he's going to go through all the political things that you have to go through to move up the chain of command.

And then he's going to eventually deploy to Vietnam as a battalion operations officer, as a battalion commander. He's going to go there with with SLA Marshall. And then he's going to go and he's going to be a battalion commander for the four thirty nine infantry. And eventually he conducts his. His famous or his infamous interview, depending on how you look at it, with the issues and answers where he.

Disparages. A lot of the senior army and a lot of the civilian leadership. After which he is drummed out of the army rapidly and all the I mean, these events that take place, they're all documented with such detail. And it just gives so much information about leadership, about human nature, about the way people act, about why people do what they do.

There's so much to learn from this book, so we're almost at two hours right now. What an honor it was for me to have written the forward to this thing, this book that had such a huge impact on me. Check it out. Check out the book.

Well, one thing that's cool about it is you don't have to look, it's eight hundred pages long. You don't have to read the whole book in one sitting.

You know the story I just told you? The story. The story is about a guy that's that's that freakin loves his troops throughout his career. And you pick it up anywhere and you read what he's going through for two or three pages. I guarantee you'll get a lesson out of it. It's it's that good. And you don't have you don't have to read the whole thing at once. You will. You'll want to because you want to know what's going to happen.

Like I said, we're on page sixty nine right now. And by the way, we skipped a bunch, I skipped a whole section because he kind of talks about the opening action scene that I talked about. Then he kind of goes into how he ended up in the army and goes through the world through two and he goes through the trust troops and all that. Then he picks back up with Korea. So we didn't even cover we probably covered 40 pages out of an eight hundred page book.

So. Check out the book. It will teach you valuable leadership lessons and it will teach you how to become smarter as leader and it will teach you how to become a better person. About face, Colonel David Hackworth.

Speaking of being better, Echo Charles, do you have any, let's say, recommendations or recommendations?

Well, actually, back to the Wanggai me one big war hero over there. It's not me.

He didn't say me when he say I. Because in pidgin, no, I'm sure I'm sure Acworth maybe remembered it incorrectly, Hackworth was wrong because what I'm hearing.

OK, no, I'm just saying in pidgin you don't say me.

I might have read it wrong. No, that's what he says. He says me one big war hero. Yeah. So he used incorrect pidgin. I won big war hero.

OK, also kind of reminded me like this just totally never thought about this.

But when I'm realizing in pidgin you say one instead of a like oh like hey, toss me a beer and whatever.

Toss me one beer. One beer. Yeah.

It's weird. It's like a subtle difference right there. Kind of one beer. No, no, no, no.

I say I like fry but one is like, you know, like non pigeon will say for lack of a better term you say one as it only when the option of more than one is considered in the scenario, you know.

But in pidgin you just say one just means a whether two or more, whatever is considered or not, it seems in.

Trust me, won't it? Mm hmm. I won big war hero as opposed to I'm too big for heroes this see them saying, Oh, I'm a big you see you see the translation, right? I'm right.

That's why you're here, man. Walking down that picture if need be. Yes. Yes. All right.

So, OK, becoming better. So think about this. The other day, you know, my neighbors are over and they ask, hey, do you work out every day? I was like, yeah, well, I try to, you know, the whole deal you work out every day, right?

Yes, every day.

Like seven days a week. I mean, that's kind of the plan that here's the deal.

I will try and work out every single day. Sometimes you have a travel day, you know, the flight's at six fifteen. I got to bed at 11. Am I going to get up at three, fifteen or. No, even earlier than that, three know my body could probably use the extra sleep more than it could use the workout. Yeah, exactly. But I know that there are days like that out there, so therefore I don't voluntarily take days off.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. In kind, yeah, I dig it. Same deal more or less, you know. But why like why do you work out every day? I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just saying you ever think about like, why do you work out every day, you know, and then like, how do you work out every day. Like what? Like why.

Why I work out every day so I can stay in shape, bro. Yeah, but you don't have to work out every day to stay in shape. OK, well I have to be more to it than that. I think it's good for you mentally and physically.

See, there you go. Mentally.

Right. Mentally. That's so that's such a broad thing to say though to and I mean that in a good way.

I don't mean it. Like when we go to Koppa. I'm not saying that. I'm saying like, that's. Yeah. Mentally that's a big deal mentally where that's part of like essentially like your life, you know, it's part of like who you are, you know, like that's the discipline. Yeah. And there's a lot of things like that, but they seem like real small because so many people do it, you know, like, you know, some people, they they make their bed every single day.

Right. There's that. And then there's like, OK, then you get all the way down the spectrum, like obvious things like, oh, I brush my teeth every day or whatever, you know.

But man, you're essentially, if you want to call it the path, like working out every day beyond the physical benefits and, you know, whatever, being stronger, whatever working out every day is like.

It's one of those things where if you can adjust your standard to that. In that way, that's good, that that yeah, that'll keep you that'll keep you in a place that's like. I guess that's why we call it the path. It'll keep you on the path. Yeah, I think that developing a pattern is very positive, right. So in a way, sticking to the pattern.

Yeah, once you deviate, let's face it, you lose momentum.

And that's a good way to develop a pattern as far as staying in shape working, because let's face it, like working out a lot of times, like we can consider that is like kind of low on the priority list for a lot of reasons. And I understand. But if your whole thing is like, no, I work out every day the same way I freakin brush my teeth, brush my teeth every day, you know, it's like part of the day I floss my teeth every day.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's like one of those things that started when I joined the Navy.

What Flosse they said varsity's every day I was like, OK, and I started doing it every day.

Yes, and that's good. It's the reason I laugh is because it's funny how it's like that simple for you, you know, like the dentist tells you that your whole life. But then they're like, OK, there's a fostered either. Yeah, Roger that. So, yeah.

Hey, how about this work out every day. Every single day. Good move.

Well but it is a good way which again, I feel like there's some place where you're going with this. I feel like this is a building up to something statement.

Yeah. And here is not building up to a statement of kind of kind of a big lie because I was thinking you had some kind of philosophical eureka moment.

Yeah. I mean, but basically what you're saying is work out every day. I have a battle to say it. It's got to make me wonder.

I'm telling you why you should work out every day, because let's face it, like if you just say, hey, work out every day, there's a lot of pushback you can get like you need rest days. No, you need, you know, like, you know, big philosophy to it. But working out every day, just like you said, which I'm glad you did, by the way, it's it's a it's a mental thing. Yes, of course.

Physical, but it's obvious.

Yeah. It's a mental thing. So and then you additionally you said to, you know, make it a a routine or whatever, like it's just part of your develop a pattern.

Develop a pattern. Yes. Exactly right.

That's a good way to develop the pattern is you just automatically assume and do it every day, just automatic as part of the day. You know, not like I want to try to get a workout in today. You know, it's not that.

It's like that's it's more of a given, you know, think it's a weird thing that I'll say to people like, how do you do that? Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Or they're like, what do you say to yourself? I don't say anything. I don't even it's a weird thing that I don't even think about it.

Yeah. I don't sit there and be like, wow, you know, I have worked out for five days straight so I really probably don't actually need to work out today. How could you you know, it's like, you know, I actually read once four years ago and a Muslim fitness magazine, you know, five days in a row is a bit too much to work out. You should take that whatever day off. You always can find 80 million ways to rationalize the Bulgarians actually on their periodization cycle.

They only, you know, like there's a million different. I was reading about Michael Phelps, and even though he trained hard, there was always one day a week that he would just rest like everyone's got a million different rationalizing things that you can put in your head. Yeah.

Yeah.

Even though there you should get that's that's the rationalizing thing. There's a there's a TV show that it's called Alone and Alone.

It's TV show got alone. They put people out in the world. I heard about it on Joe Rogan because he had one of the winners on the show. And I didn't even hear that. I just heard Joe Rogan mention it. He was like, yeah, the show is crazy. They put them out. And so I was with my wife and my youngest daughter and they were looking for something to watch.

And I go I go, well, hey, there's a show called Alone.

It's about being alone in the wilderness. Long story short, everyone quits. And you the show goes on until only one person is left, everyone else quits.

So they're in different places.

They're all alone in the wilderness, OK? They're alone in the wilderness with each other, though. No, they're alone, isolated, alone.

So as you watch this, you see people and they have cameras with them. So they're talking to themselves. Yeah.

And it's been funny to watch because you can see people when they're going to quit and you're like, oh, they're like. So now now I've got my youngest daughter who's eleven. When someone starts rationalizing, she says, Yeah, oh, he's rationalizing because, you know, someone will say, you know, I could stay out here for a long time, but, you know, I really miss my family. And you're like, oh, he's rationalizing.

Or or I just don't know if it's worth, you know, what this is doing to my body. I've done some stuff to sort of to my body and I'm starting to think about even though the money would be nice.

But so we start rationalizing. And the reason I mean, you'd see that in SEAL training, in SEAL training, you'd see someone say. You know, I don't know if, you know, I've actually probably got to get married and I don't know if it's the right thing to do to put my girlfriend through this. And you're like, OK.

Yeah, for sure. Definitely don't want to put your wife through this. Go quit. Go quit. Fred Soacha.

So it's so easy to rationalize things. Rationalization is the enemy. And that brings me back to where I started this, which was. I'm not thinking about it because I know that my I know that my rationalization, my powers of rationalization can can win.

I can convince myself. Forty eight times I just quoted a muscle and fitness magazine from nineteen eighty seven that said that the Bulgarians ensure that they get at least one complete day of rest for every five days working out. You can support any crap that you want to support.

If you just if you just want to rationalize with yourself, be irrational, be irrational, shut up.

Do what you're supposed to do. Yeah, that rationalizing is a very successful person in regards to rational, everyone is everyone is.

You also know your own, you know what to say. You know how to cook like you're into being healthy. Right?

And you're like, yeah, you know, I did see that. I did want just watch that YouTube video. And they talked about the value of Rasta actually is more important.

It's actually more important than diet and lifting. The most important thing is rest. And I think I've been really I don't think I think I think actually in order to truly have discipline, I mean, to have the discipline, just to not work out today, that's going to take discipline.

These are all lies. They're all just lies. They're all just rationalization.

Yeah. I like today. I was lifting today. Oh yeah. But I was rationalizing prior to lifting. I was rationalizing. I'm sitting there like observing myself rationalizing.

And what I had to do is actually I was feeling a little tweak in my leg, in my knee, not very minor, but I was like, well, you know, maybe, you know, just let that thing heal up, don't want it.

And it's like, no, actually shut up, you know? And I lifted lighter. Yeah, but I didn't rationalize. Yeah.

I was like, OK, cool but hurt like good, you know, to stretch it out come thing to combat rationalizing and I will all just shut up and do what you're supposed to do.

That's one thing. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. But what I do or sometimes if I have the strength is all imagine like you know how like I'll come with you with an issue like an excuse or something and you always have some workaround for the excuse every single time, like somewhere.

And it's like, man, if you can just imagine kind of what Jocke would say right now, you know, because you could legitimately have a tweak in your knee, you could add in varying levels. It could be like almost like, hey, if you start doing this squat routine that you have planned, like you will make it work for sure.

You know, but you can also use your other leg. Yeah. Some other pistils. Oh, some other stuff.

How about that. How's that sound. And a lot of times like that, other stuff like it. I'd rather battle through the pain to be honest.

OK, so when you go surfing, sometimes it's like cold, miserable, maybe the waves aren't that great. But, you know, you should go. So Stoner and I, we had this rule for a little while.

When we got to our surf spot, we could either go surfing or if you don't want to go surfing, that's fine.

But now you have to swim around the pier. So it's like that's the deal.

So guess what? You do. You go surfing and, you know, you should go surfing anyways. Even if you get two good waves, it's worth it. And you got to work out, you know, you've got to paddle, but you're either going to so you should have an alternative like, hey, you can either work out today or you can whatever, whatever some miserable thing is that sucks.

Worse than working out.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm going to come up with that thing. Yeah.

So and actually I actually do that but it's still working out so it's like a version of that. It's, it's a perfect it's analogous to your surfing thing.

It's either do the workout plan or do this Meccan. It's a specific Mittagong. There's two of them. If I did this one the last time I did, I do this other one. That's it. They're just two. So it's like either do the full workout or do the Mekons. So if it's like men, if you're if you think your knee is tweaked or whatever, you can do the math. That's cool.

Yeah, there you go. And it's like it's right on the borderline of the workout on the mat can suck the same. Yeah. Equally yeah. But you know how sometimes you're just not in the mood to, to do that workout and then sometimes you're really not in the mood to do the Mekons.

It's weird how sometimes you want to, sometimes you would prefer to do a Mackan and sometimes you would prefer to lift heavy. Right. You know, it's ok, it's OK. What's not OK is I don't feel like lifting heavy, so I'm just not going to do it because I don't feel like doing I'm that concerned. It's not going to do anything. Yeah. What you want to do, I like, I like that option. You can either do this or that and I do that to a certain level.

You know, if I, if I just whatever I don't feel like doing anything that's going to be a Mekons scenario. I'm not cool. I'm going to lift heavy, you know, and I'm going to grind it out to like I'm going to say, oh, I'm just going to, you know. Yeah, no, I'm going to get some. And that's why I like the metal because the mankind is very specific. Like you either did it or you just didn't do it correctly, you know, kind of thing like it has the the wrestling between it is basically circuit training.

Yeah. Essentially. And I got to do certain weight, a certain amount of reps per thing. And so it's there, it's not like, oh, I'm going to go light or I'm going to slack. It's kind of hard to slack because it's like real glaring if you do so. Yeah, you're choosing one or the other.

I don't care what you're in the mood for or not in the. For like, you got to do one, you know, but if so, I always have that in play, always, you know, and it works.

Yeah, it's good to give yourself a shitty alternative. Yes.

Yes, it is. In these cases for sure. Yeah.

Well, anyway, hopefully we are on the path, whether you're working out every day or not, I should say, I recommend you work out every day. Here's the thing. If you're hurting yourself or something like that, don't do that workout.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Don't do something that's going to injure you. Yeah, but don't do nothing.

Don't do nothing. Do a very deliberate. Yeah. Workout every day.

And the point is there too is like that after a while it does just become normal like, just like making coffee or you know, like every day. It's just all that's sort of just what you do every single day and it becomes that, you know, and boom, your new person, boom. Just like that.

Just like that. You know, we're all in the past working on it every day.

Hey, look, your joints get sore. I get it right. My knees actually sore. Actually sore.

Probably did squats super hard. Yeah. You know, the kind where mentally you go into, like getting jiggy or whatever in squats do, and so mentally you kind of it's almost like a you turn off a certain part of your mind, you know, saying you're just your body just has to like basically facilitate the rest.

But then when you're done, when your mind switches back on, you're like just in pain, you know, how are you going to basically pay the price mentally afterwards?

Yes, you're on the road to recovery, which is cool. But anyway, it was one of those scenarios. And yeah, my knees were weird, strangely sore on the inside.

I don't know, oddly fully healed now, by the way, those two days ago. Nonetheless, point is, sometimes your joints get sore. Mine too.

Chuckles To when you get older, we're all getting older. I know.

No matter how old you are now, we're not getting older. No, but like everyone goes, oh, it's because you're getting older.

No, because you're not taking care. You're taking care less. Yeah.

And also, like, when I was younger, you saw a lot worse.

Yeah, it's not really worse. I feel like my capacity, maybe my enthusiasm, sometimes less. But that might be just because I got more stuff going on as an adult. You see, I'm saying I don't know. Nonetheless, if your joints are sore, don't worry.

When did you become an adult? How old were you? I want to say, like mid 30s.

I think it was me never to be honest with you, but I don't know. I think it's a slowly, slow, gradual. We're still ahead and we're working hard. Kids, kids, kids, move that forward. When you have kids, you start to become an adult pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly.

I mean, you've got, like, humans that now rely on you for your fruit, for their food.

So for everything and everything else. Yeah. Like a roof. Yeah. Yeah. Like and health. Health for guidance.

Life. Yeah.

Whole freakin exist. Bunch of things we're talking about. Yeah. That can switch on the adult circuits for sure.

For sure. How old's your how old's your oldest. Seven. Yeah. So I was probably right, probably mid thirties. You started kind of moving in the direction of.

Yeah I think so too. Nonetheless I don't have sought joints at the moment.

That is because what I was trying to tell everyone, the people are people. Jacqui's supplementation called JOCO fueled the joint stuff is joint warfare.

There is also super krill oil, which is other health benefits, by the way. But anyway, in combination, this will keep your joints in the game, working out seven days a week, working out five days a week, whatever, working out nine days a week.

All of that stuff will keep them together the whole time. You're going to be worried about your gains, not your joints.

They check your mouth.

I'm just saying that also vitamin D now we're in the midst of the pandemic and everybody is saying take vitamin D, thankfully we make vitamin D, vitamin D three, get some of that.

You can also get Cold War, which is immune health, which again, these are products that we've had. And it's pretty cool that a lot of people are recommending them right now. So you can stay healthy. And then on top of all this, working out that you're doing, you're going to need some. What Echo likes to call additional protein, yes, additional. Well, because, you know, there's a debate, if you will, to be an any lifestyle of how much protein you should have seen.

So if you want to supplement protein, I remember listening to this right now.

Yeah. About six zero four.

And nonetheless, it doesn't even matter. Does it matter? Because for those six people, they're getting higher fire. Yes, exactly. I here fire, but a good system.

Nonetheless, if you're going to a low in protein, you might as well have it in the form of dessert that the smoke is. I know. Strange name. I get it from the last supplement protein like a dessert that we've got some kids protein too.

Warrior Kid protein. Because why would you feed your kids something that's actual poison. You wouldn't do it. You'd get them or your kid milk. They will love it. You will love that they're having it. They will be healthier, stronger, smarter, better. They're going to have a massive deadlift for sure.

Just one hundred percent white t we got that.

And we also got these cans of what we call discipline go.

Isn't it an energy drink. You know what it is because it gives you energy but it gives you real energy.

Not a not a lie, not just a not just a massive hit of caffeine. Three hundred milligrams of caffeine. Look, you inject three hundred milligrams of caffeine into a piece of wood and it starts to get excited.

But after a little while, it's like very quickly it's back to just being what you put a bunch of sugar into, into a rat and it gets all excited. That's fake energy. There's real energy. It's got it's not got no sugar in it, but it still tastes good. It's sweet with Monfort.

Oh yeah. Well here's the thing. The bla bla and I get it and I understand why you said blah blah blah because it's like yeah these are all these numbers and all this stuff, whatever. But then I kind of looked into it. I did look into them by the way, and so put.

So preservatives, sweeteners like these things, that's the things that make normal energy drinks bad for you. Yeah. The ones that are bad for you. And you know, there's a bunch of energy drinks so I can't eat. So it's hard for me in the spirit of accuracy to say all energy drinks or all this or all that.

But the preservatives and artificial sweeteners are straight up poison straight up, but they do Sweetin or they do preserve or do it, you know, and there's these list of very specific things that they put in.

The only reason they're in there is not to help you. Yeah, it helps nothing. So what I was trying to say is we don't have any of those things in here in order to not put chemicals in there to preserve it. We pasteurize it like what you do with milk. Yes, so and in order to Sweetenham, we've only got one fruit, which is good for you among fruit is good for you. So anyways, all these different items, you can get it.

You can get Origin, Maine, Dotcom, you can also get them at the vitamin shop. And we're a little we're about to enter a new market in the world. You know, when people say, oh, I really wish this stuff was available here or there, I mean, we're moving in that direction. It's starting started with vitamin shop.

Next thing we're going into is a place called Walwa, which is a convenience store, mostly East Coast. We're starting in Florida and Virginia. If you live in those areas, be on the lookout because you'll be able to walk into a Wawa and clean out the shelf, clean out the shelf, get yourself some discipline, go try the different flavors and yeah, you'll get that little you get that little mid-morning eater and they're going a post drink crash or like.

Yeah, no. Yeah.

And being in the in the store is like especially like a convenience store scenario. Whatever it makes it does. This is a big deal in the sense where right now and I get it like you eat, order your shipment, you know, you get it whether it be online or whatever, or find a vitamin shop for sure. But when it's when it's at the store, you can just sort of stop in and get one kind of thing on the way here, on the way there or whatever.

It makes it a whole different process. Way more convenient if you were probably why they call it convenience stores, by the way. Yeah, unless that's a good that's good news right there. Yeah. So discipling go it's what it's called in the canon of you mentioned that for those who may not have known that. Got it. Thank you.

So anyway. Yes. Or JinMing Dotcom now can get there also other stuff it Orjan mean is digital aggie's. If you don't have one get one from their American made all good.

What are we doing without a digital GI at this point I we should definitely be having a digital GI. Yes, that's for sure.

Also jeans, American denim, also some hoodie, some other clothing items on their American made boots, works of art. I've heard them be referred to as works of art in America.

Just made Pete Roberts so happy. Well, it's accurate. I agree with the statement. Yeah, they are.

This is works of art and also the preservation of a culture of creation and manufacturing.

That's what's happening.

This is a loss.

This is a dying art, a dying capability that is now being preserved. Whether it's the the manufacturing of the cloth to make the Ghys, whether it's the manufacturing of the boots, whether it's the the sewing and fabrication of the jeans, all of it is a preservation of a manufacturing.

A manufacturing thread that ties America together, so we're not going to let it die, by the way, and we appreciate you all helping us keep it alive.

So, yes. Or Jamaine dotcom so we can get this stuff.

Also, chocolate, dark chocolate. I just made, like, kind of a statement and then you go, yeah, yeah, that's where I can get this stuff. But it's true. OK, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. You can get these pieces of art you started.

Man, that was so freaking deep. It was deep.

And man, thank you so much for saying that. You're welcome. You're welcome. Anyway, I'm glad my services have been fully appreciate that topic. My speech was yes, it was Drugstore.com.

We we can get our shirts. This one equals freedom. Def core to the core, by the way.

Good, good.

Get all these you if you want to represent while you're on the path. Back to the book. Back to the book. OK, that's a shirt. We're also hoodies on there. Some tank tops. Other items, so we're adding are we got a hard core Riccardo's on their back and stuff? By the way? Yeah, yeah.

Speaking of Davor, and we don't even get to this part of our face, but I think we all know that the what we call the legend or the what you call it when everyone saw the cannon, is that what is called a cannon is like a big book or big work of art.

I mean, a big work of the part of the story that's like, you know, they became the crux of the story.

Perhaps now it's like legendary, a legendary patriotic part of the story. One of them. Yeah.

Anyway, why they're called called the hard core rather than the hopeless. Yeah.

You know, hardcore Kandos. Yes, sir. No slack.

Um, yes. So we've got that. Sure. We got it. We got some cool stuff continuously adding items on there. Maybe like once a month. Month once every two months maybe. So anyway check in there if you like. We do have an email list if you want to get emailed their new stuff, basically just new stuff. That's it. Pretty much where your kids are on there too.

Yes, sir. Which is legit. Yes. That's all we use now. And here's the here.

You know, it's weird. The the compliments that I hear personally and online is that it smells real good.

There you go. It doesn't seem like that was like one of the things that we're or that Aidin in them were like trying to, like, push just a byproduct of excellence.

Just do it. Yeah. Yeah. And that is the case for sure. Yes.

And even though it smells good, which I agree with, but even more important, it can help you. It can help your family.

Stay clean, stay clean, subscribe to the podcast, don't just subscribe to this podcast, we got some other podcasts. We got the unravelling podcast. We've got the ground a podcast. We got the Warrior Kid podcast. We got a YouTube channel.

If you want to see those YouTube videos that he makes, he makes everything explode and blow up and catch on fire, except if it's a long video. And in which case I'll just let you be bored with that which he's fine with. We got an album called Psychological Warfare, which is me talking about moments of weakness that we may need to overcome. You might need a little help overcoming that. When you try to rationalize, you might be trying to rationalize.

We can fight through that together. Pressplay, you press play, you have it on there. You have a little ENPI three on there, you press play on your phone, and then all of a sudden you stop rationalizing and you start doing the flip side canvas.

If you want to not rationalize visually, get yourself some get yourself some things to represent. I know that life just told me that he hooked up the Echelon Front HQ building in Texas with some flip side canvas works for the walls. We also have some books. Hey, first of all, this book right here about Face written by Colonel David Hackworth. I wrote the foreword one an honor. Check it out. This is a book you can refer back to forever.

I'm still reading it. I have been reading this book for approximately.

I would say approximately 20 years, approximately 20 years, and I'm still reading it. We also have the code, the evaluation, the protocol written by myself, Dave Burke, Sarah Armstrong in the mix on that one. Leadership Strategy and tactics, field manual, all the answers are in there, all the answers are in there, they really are. Get that book, you can look up, you got a problem with your employees, act in a certain way, go to leadership strategy.

Oh, you're boss. You're having a hard time leading up to go in there. Check it out. Oh, your morale is down for your troops. OK, go in there, check it out. All the answers are in there. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, We Got Way, The Warrior Kid, one, two, three, we have four on the way. Be checking out for it. We'll have it to preorder ASAP. It's it's.

It's. The final version is with the printers at this time. OK, so we're there. Yeah, we also want to know, you know, sometimes we collectively cause shortages of certain books.

So if you want to get away the warrior kit for, please preorder it so that you don't get caught at Christmas time with no book for your little warrior kit. Don't forget about making the Dragons, speaking of warrior, your kids, don't forget about the Discipline Freedom Field Manual, there is a new edition out the new edition.

I wrote a bunch more for it, we added it in there. It's got a new cover. It's got a photograph by Echo Charles on the cover.

The photograph is of my head, which which you took of me. Yes. You'd think that there was there a big, like, setting up the lighting and all this stuff.

Now, I was standing in Echo Charles's hallway. We just got done recording the podcast in his living room and he goes, hold on a second, turn around. And he's holding a camera and he goes, click, click. And one of those two shots is Echoes, iconic picture that is on the cover. It's bigger. I showed you the new one yet I have one. You have the it's not a completed one. It's actually. Oh, you have a fake one on the inside of the cover.

I'll bring you the real one. I'll bring the real one. So they made it look a little bit more. And, you know, I'm I'm an old school, hard core kid from the dirt.

And so things had a certain look to them. And this one kind of moved in that direction a little bit, being a little bit like my old school core days DIY make things happen.

You got a good track record with covers, I can say. Yeah, like, yeah, they call it. Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

So there's all those books, plus there's extreme ownership, plus there's the economy of leadership, which I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. We have Echelon Front, which is a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. That's what we do. Go to Echelon front dotcom. If you need help in your business. We have online where we are providing leadership instruction through an online platform, answering questions. There's a forum is all kinds of things to do on there.

There's courses to take.

There is if overwatch, where we are taking people from the military and putting them into civilian companies in leadership positions, people that understand the principles that we talk about here. And finally, if you want to help, if you want to help out our military members, active members, retired members, their families, gold star families, if you want to support, then check out Mark Mom. That's Markley from Taskin to Bruiser, his mom family. She has a charity organization.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors dot org.

And if you if you feel the need, if you just feel the need to hear more of my unbearable bellowing, or maybe you just need a little hater, a little dose of EKOS muddled meanderings, which we certainly got plenty of today, you can find us on the interweb, on Twitter, on Instagram, which echo just so he knows what I'm talking about.

He refers to Instagram as.

The Graham Facebook echo is adequate, Charles and I am at JoCo Willink, and thanks once again to my mentor, Colonel David Hackworth, for everything he did for me, for his soldiers, for the Army and for America.

And thanks to all the military personnel out there right now.

Right now, right at this moment, while you're sitting there listening to this podcast, while we're sitting here making this podcast, there are military personnel out there right now holding the line against evil and protecting our way of life. And the same thing to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all other first responders, thank you for holding the line and protecting us here at home.

And everyone else out there. You know, we have to remember that. In life. Most of the time, we don't have the luxury, we don't have the luxury of a colonel or a captain or a lieutenant or a Sergeant Hackworth in our lives.

We don't have someone there to keep us in line to make us do push ups and give us a good swift kick in the ass when we slack off, what we have to do is we have to be our own Sergeant Hackworth.

We have to be our own mister infantry.

We have to be our own hard core recon, Ricardo, to hold the highest standards and allow no fucking slack.

That is our charge as leaders, as people, as human beings, so go out there.

And get after it. Until next time, this is Echo and JoCo.