This is JoCo podcast number 262 with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening. Good evening.

The president of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Colonel Merritt, a Edson United States Marine Corps four service, as set forth in the following citation for extraordinary heroism and conspicuous intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion with Parachute Battalion attached during action against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands on the night of 13 14 September. Nineteen forty two.

After the airfield on Guadalcanal had been seized from the enemy on August 8th, Colonel Edson, with a force of eight hundred men, was assigned to the occupation and defense of a ridge dominating the jungle on either side of the airport, facing a formidable Japanese attack, which, augmented by infiltration, had crashed through our front lines. He, by skillful handling of his troops, successfully withdrew his forward units to a reserve line with minimum casualties when the enemy, in a subsequent series of violent assaults, engaged our force in desperate hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, rifles, pistols, grenades and knives.

Colonel Edson, although continuously exposed to hostile fire throughout the night, personally directed defence of the reserve position against a fanatical foe of greatly superior numbers. By his astute leadership and gallant devotion to duty, he enabled his men, despite severe losses, to cling tenaciously to their position on the vital ridge, thereby retaining command not only of the Guadalcanal airfield, but also of the 1st Division's entire offensive installations in the surrounding area. Signed Franklin D. Roosevelt. And that is an example of the level of heroism that was required to achieve victory in the Battle of Guadalcanal, which lasted from August 7th, 1942 until February 9th.

Nineteen forty three, six months and two days of just absolutely brutal and savage fighting. And we've covered some of that in several books on the podcast.

And we even had Dean Ladd on the podcast who received a battlefield commission on Guadalcanal and went on to fight that Tarawa and Sipan and Tinian.

But I recently received a copy of a book from a podcast listener by the name of David. I guess I'm a little cautious about giving out full names because I don't know, you know, I don't know the background.

So a guy named David, he sent me a book was actually not a book.

Technically, it's a Fleet Marine Force reference publication from FMF RPG 12 TAC one one zero.

The title is Fighting on Guadalcanal.

So thank you, David, for sending that to me.

And the book is filled with all kinds of layers, one of them being the Medal of Honor citation that I started with.

There's there's an additional layer in this, which is that this that this Fleet Marine Force reference publication was put together by a guy named Colonel Red Reader who was West Point class of nineteen twenty six, who led the 12th Infantry Regiment, who in the day.

And he eventually was wounded and he received the the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit and a Bronze Star, Purple Heart. And he retired in nineteen forty six and then he worked as the athletic director back at West Point and eventually became an author. And he wrote a bunch of books, including a memoir which is called Born at Reveille.

So I'm sure at some point we will cover that book on this podcast, but for tonight I wanted to.

I wanted to go to this book, which which is what I'm guessing is sort of the beginning of Kernel readers writing career, was to put together this this manual fighting on Guadalcanal, and it's the direct lessons learned.

And let's get right into it.

So here's the forward. To secure the point of view of the fighting men in the Solomon Islands, Lieutenant Colonel Russell P. Reeder Jr. nuts who I just mentioned of the operations division of the War Department general staff, was designated as my personal representative. He reported to Major General Vandergrift, United States Marine Corps and Major General Patch US Army on Guadalcanal and discussed with many officers and soldiers their experiences in jungle fighting against the Japanese. The stories of these men, as told to Colonel Reeder, have been printed for your information.

The American Marines and Doughboy's show us that the Jap is no Superman, he is a tricky, vicious and fanatical fighter, but they are beating him day after day. Theirs is a priceless record of the gallantry and resourcefulness of the American fighting man at his best, soldiers and officers alike should read these notes and seek to apply their lessons. We must cash in on the experience which these and other brave men have paid for in blood.

So that's what this book is. There's an opening note from Major General Vandergriff, just a very famous commanding general of the 1st Marine Division.

He says, I desire to thank General Marshall for the message, which he has just sent me. I passed this message of congratulations on to my men. My message to the troops of General Marshall's in training for this type of warfare is to go back to the tactics of the French and Indian days. This is not meant facetiously study their tactics and fit in our modern weapons, and you have a solution.

I refer to the tactics and leadership of the days of Rogers Rangers, so there you go. Already we're talking about we've got to make some things a little bit different. We got to we got to look at the way we used to fight.

And if you think about that attitude of fighting with the Rangers, with Rogers Rangers, with the French, in any war, you know, this is the big difference between, you know, the way the British wanted to fight, which was we're all lined up, we're standing in ranks and we're going to shoot.

And then you shoot and then we shoot back at you. We're not doing it. You know, that's that's how we won the Revolutionary War, because we're going to fight a different way, the early form of maneuver warfare. So that's what this book is. This is a bunch of just short.

Anecdotal quotes from a bunch of Marines, mainly about what their experiences are on Guadalcanal, a bunch of great information, Gunnery Sergeant H.L. Beardslee.

Company, Fifth Marines, I've been in the Marines, I've been in the Marines 16 years and I've been in three expeditions to China and five engagements since I've been in the Solomons, I will say that this nineteen forty two model recruit we are getting can drink more water than six old timers.

We have to stress water discipline all the time. They don't seem to realize what real water discipline is. We have too many NGOs in the Marines who are namby-pamby and beat around the bush. Our NGOs are gradually toughing, toughening up and are seeing reasons why they must meet their responsibilities. Respectfully speaking, sir, I think that when officers make an NCO, they should go over in their minds. What kind of NCO will he make in the field?

Water discipline, there's something you don't hear very often. You've got to go deep into the field before you start talking about water discipline, because guess what? And I don't know when the wind need the word hydrate.

Do you remember pre the word hydrate?

Hydrate was a new thing. It's a relatively new thing.

Yet as far as the expression hydrate, I think even the idea, because when I was a kid, we didn't we didn't have the word hydrate because hydrate seems like a proactive thing.

Yeah, right. Like like like you're going to get ahead of the curve, right? You're going like you need to hydrate. You need to stay hydrated, hydrate or die.

I had never heard that hydrate or die. That was that was the CamelBak. Remember CamelBak. That was their expression.

Hydrate or die like the CamelBak that things with little hose coming off. Oh that was oh, CamelBak. The brand, the CamelBak, the brand had the expression hydrate or die.

So but let's face it, what we're saying here and you never hear this, he said, don't hydrate, hydrate too much.

You're going to Daksh going to run out of water. You need water discipline.

That's that's a totally different mindset.

Now, I will tell you, when you're going out on a long like a desert patrol where you're not going to get a water resupply, you got to have some water discipline.

I mean, you know, these guys fought when they needed to have water discipline big time.

But it's interesting to hear that attitude.

You don't you don't hear that anymore. Everyone's all about hydrate, hydrate. It's a different mindset. I'm sure maybe that maybe there's some other doctors that will approach us and kind of give us the real deal on that.

Yeah, well, it makes sense because you have two different scenarios like, yeah, if you have the luxury to be able to just hydrate at will, then oh yeah.

Hydrate or die for sure. But, you know, water discipline, that idea kind of seems like it would be under maybe too specific circumstance where you don't have a lot of water just to go.

Have have you ever not had water.

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Thika, where you are almost going to go down, dried up, dehydrated. What would happen?

Well, it was heat exhaustion. OK, so the thing is, I had water but I didn't get enough water.

OK, what was the scenario. Football. So there was like a Gatorade thing on the floor.

Yeah, automatic. Yes, sir. I was not out of water, OK.

My body was up like low on water.

Can you get can you get heat. Whatever he can. Yeah you can. You can get a heat casually while you're drinking water.

Yes sir. So so you were saying you were kind of close to that. I guess that's different from just straight up dehydration.

Well, dehydration is like levels, right? Like here. They say you're too dehydrated if you're even thirsty for water.

That's what they say. But so, yeah, you know, it depends on what you're trying to say.

You know, we're going to get some feedback on this one. I can tell you it makes sense.

But, you know, in the field, you're talking about a situation where there's two elements where limited water, you don't have unlimited water because you can't carry unlimited water and then you still have to function in the event of unlimited water or not.

And let's face it, so there's been there's been a lot of times where I was thirsty right in the field.

There's one time where I was.

In like a little bit of a bad situation where I could start feeling like, oh, this could be a problem and we were out we were out in the Ozarks in Arkansas, doing this big land warfare problem and. We we were expecting, you know, we had planned that, you know, there were streams you could see on the map and there was a couple. So we, you know, OK, we'll be able to go this far and we'll be able to get water from the streams and purify it.

And then we'll go another distance and get some more while the first, like two or three streams that we came across were empty, they were dried up. And so I was run in danger close on water. And I'll tell you, not having water to me is the second. The second worst feeling in the world, the worst feeling the world is don't don't have air. But the thing is we don't have air. That's only a bad feeling for like 30 seconds.

And then you're passed and then you're done.

Not have water. It takes a while. Yeah.

So when you try it, when you go too deep in the red zone there, it's not like you can just drink water and get out like er a lot of times like when you're like let's say you're in the red zone er but you can still recover, you just take a huge breath and you're on the road to recovery. But water you get like for real heat exhaustion or a heat stroke is death, but like heat exhaustion, like a real one.

And you drink water, you'll just throw it up because your body can't really take in that kind of water yet you had to do the IV thing. You have to do this big process, you know, so. Oh, yeah, no water.

So I'm sure someone will contact us and tell us like what the there's got to be some minimum protocol because that's the thing that I have. You know, you got have some kind of minimum protocol like what's the minimum amount of water you need.

Yeah, I hate being thirsty. I would carry a lot of water. Yeah, I would carry a lot of water. But, you know, you don't you just made me think of, you know, when you're in the triangle or something or you're caught in a gaetane and you get out in like how good.

I feel so good. I feel so good. All right. I guess it's really triangle triangles are hard to breathe, but like a guillotine and a guy choke.

You like having a hard time breathing because it's like a good we're naked. You know, you're not it's a you don't you don't feel all panicky because you're still taking breaths. Yeah.

You're like, oh, good. I'm good. Good night. You're ready with the guillotine there, because I think there's two elements in the guillotine defense that makes you not breathe. So like one, it's pressing against your windpipe so you can hardly breathe. But another one, you're trying to tense your neck to resist like that, that talk. So when you tense your neck, it's like harder to actually take a take a deep breath.

You it's like those double Doublemint I've been training with Deep Dean list Dean Lister for a long time. Twenty five years. He showed me some guillotine defense the other day and I was like, no, you waited twenty five years to show me this defense. I couldn't get him and then he couldn't get me. Sure. This defense, I'm like, well why wouldn't you show me that? Why would you not show me that role?

It's probably like his so many. Yep. And you know what?

He has so many things, but he also he just thinks that everybody knows everything, you know. So if you don't ask him about it and the only reason he was showing someone else and I'm like, what's that defense? And he goes, oh, you just do this here and put this hand here.

And I was like, you never show me that. Yeah. And he goes, Oh. Oh, yeah. It's real obvious you feel like an idiot. All right. So there you go. Water discipline. Next, I have just been promoted from first sergeant, this is Sergeant Major B Metzker, 5th Marines.

I have just been promoted from first sergeant in the firefighting. The Marine first sergeant helps the company commander.

He checks up on the company as a whole, even down to checking on the evacuation of the wounded.

I was able I was available to the company commander for any emergency orders during the firefight.

Teacher soldiers, sir, that when a man is hit in the assault to leave him there, too many of our men suddenly become first aid men. Your men will have to be rugged and rough, and to win, they must learn to disregard politeness and must kill.

So a couple of things there. First of all, we're going to I'm going deep on this. So, first of all, this is what I used to when I used to teach when I used to teach the young SEALs about leadership.

We teach roles and responsibility for every individual person inside of a platoon from a leadership perspective. Fire team leader, squad leader, platoon leader, tasking a leader, a company commander level and the senior enlisted guy.

Which is that which is what he's you know, he's he's the company first sergeant.

And what you want to do and the way I used to explain it to guys and it's the exact same thing and he's saying, you want to be the action arm for the leader.

For the commander. Right. So the command. So so basically you're the guy with all this experience. But if but if the if something's going wrong, like you got a problem, you got to be the guy that the company commander can look at says, go solve that problem and you have the capacity to do it because you're not assigned any specific role. So you should actually do your best to keep your company, to keep your company, first sergeant, like, free from direct responsibility so that he can he can be your action arm to go make things happen.

That's that's number one. Number two is prioritize and execute. Right. Everyone wants to help out the wounded guy.

You can't you got to win first.

You can't you can't do that.

And then, I mean, let's face it, this is total war. And these guys are just in a different level. You got to disregard politeness and you got to just kill people.

That's where we're at. That's what's so interesting about about with the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge and in the in the HBO series The Pacific, they portray Eugene Sledge.

He's kind of like this very nice, very polite guy.

That's how they portray him. And then you see videos of the real guy, the real Eugene Sledge. And that's exactly what he's like. You know, he's kind of like a Southern gentleman, young, very nice, very kind. And, you know, those guys were getting thrown into this savagery.

And that's what this that's what that's who this message is for. You got to disregard politeness and kill. Now, Eugene Sledge, we should probably we should do that book again. But Eugene Sledge, you know, he had to he had to put some things in check himself. And he watched guys in Japanese soldiers teeth out that were gold and like, you know, pissing on.

And he saw crazy stuff.

And he had like a line that he didn't cross over, but he also understood it. So even a guy that's as nice and and a good of a person, which Eugene Sledge apparently was even he realized like this is this is next level.

This is another situation. This is a normal platoon sergeant, H.R. strong company, 5th Marines. Some of my men fought their hand grenades were too heavy. They tossed them aside when no one was looking later, they would have given six months pay for one hand grenade. There you go, short term versus long term, got to carry that little extra weight of the hand grenade.

Platoon Sergeant F.T. Offerer, Company B, 5th Marines after the Japs had been located, my platoon has gained the element of surprise by moving in fast with bayonets and hand grenades.

In turn, they have surprised us by being in a defensive position on the reverse slope of a ridge.

I think the snipers look for our men and then Colonel Edson. Said no doubt about this and one engagement in one platoon, every big gunner was hit, so. This idea that you could locate them, this is sort of like in jujitsu when you get let's say you get the mountains and you immediately go for the army. Sometimes that's not enough to do it right. Whereas if you get mount and you're like, OK, I got the mount, that person's going into a defensive position and now they're going to set up for it.

And so what he's saying is if they locate the Japanese immediately, they they go at him with grenades and bayonets, which you would think about grenades and bayonets is now your they can't really locate you because of your because of your muzzle flashes and where you're shooting.

You're just getting in there with grenades and bayonets and.

Which is, you know. You think about modern warfare, you don't think of the tactic of, hey, when we make contact, we're going to immediately attack with bayonets and grenades.

That's what kind of war this was.

Platoon Sergeant, A Zolo company, C 5th Marines. Sir, I would like to tell you that that a man's keenness or doneness of I may determine whether or not he will live. 10 men in my platoon were killed because they walked up on a Jap thirty seven millimeter gun. I went up later after the gun had been put out by our mortars to help bring back the dead. The Japanese gun was so well camouflaged that I got within four feet of the gun before I saw it.

Corporal W. A. McKlusky, Company D. 5th Marines, sir, the other day on Bloody Ridge Rifleman, protecting our light machine guns pulled out and left us. We were doing OK at the time, but they're pulling out. Caused our whole outfit to withdraw. I think the men in these rifle companies should receive some training in the work and in the mission of the machine gun company, they should be able to act more intelligently. What does that mean? You should have your team cross trained.

No matter what business you're in, no matter what kind of team you have, you should cross trade. And the interesting thing about that and we've read that, we've read about this before.

When people see other people running away, you've got a pretty good chance that those people are going to run away. To. This is just mob mentality.

Second Lieutenant Andrew Terzic, Fifth Marines.

I think that in the regimental supply, there should be extra canteens. So when out when an outfit gets in a place like the table plateau where there is no water and extra canteen of water can be issued. Sir, this would be really this would really help our men stay in their.

And what's interesting, this is all like done like an interview, so that's why they keep saying things like they're talking directly to this guy and he's just putting the quotes. They're they're talking to Colonel Reider.

Marine gunner is Rust 5th Marines, I hate to admit it, but it's the truth. When we got here, a lot of our young men were confused at night. They were not used to the jungle at night. They could not use their compasses at night and we did not have enough compasses. We have learned that when we get off the beaten trails, it seems to confuse the Japs and we had better success.

So what does that mean?

You've got to train at night. Platoon Sergeant Jesse L. Hollingsworth Company, 5th Marines. When we moved around on these jungle trails, we have learned to have men at the rear of each platoon who carry light loads so they can quickly so they can get their weapons into action quickly to help overcome ambush fire from the rear.

That's so what you want to do as a human, as a human that's strategizing in the world, is you want to have an element that's flexible and can move quickly to help you overcome situations.

So whether you're in business, whether whatever situation you're in. You want to have a specific element that is designed to move quickly and. Give support where it's needed, could go left, could go right, could go north, could go south, could go east, could go west. Why do you why do you need that? Because you can't predict the future. So you should design your plans so that the design of the plans is inherently flexible.

Put the big rugged men into the heavy weapons company, I'm just throwing that out there for all the young men going in the military, they're going to saddle you up with that big gun and you're going to carry it from some of our new men were so scared of our hand grenades when they first when they were first issued that they jammed the down the kollapen later in action.

They could not pull the pin.

I noticed as I get and I pointed out, pointing this out to my platoon, that when a man gets hit, the men close by get to yell and corpsman, corpsman, corpsman, they get so excited sometimes that they actually forget to use their own first aid packets in first aid training. Tetch, correct. Use of injecting morphine and procedure of tagging.

Because what are you going to do when the corpsman gets it?

I give seventy five dollars for a pair of tennis shoes to rest my feet and for use in night work classic.

I have only been in the Marine Corps for years, but I have learned that you have got to develop a sense of responsibility in the men wearing Chevron's. Right, got it. You got to develop that responsibility in action. We have had unauthorized persons yelling, cease firing or commence firing. This caused confusion. Platoon Sergeant George E, a whole Idaho company, 5th Company, 5th Marines, I put five years in the US Army before joining the Marine Corps.

Sir, I like the Marines better than the Army because the average Marine officer is closer to his men than the average Army officer whom I observed. We have comradeship in the Marine Corps. Also, the Marine enlisted men are more Spartan like I believe, sir, we baby our soldiers too much in peacetime. I hope we are not doing this now.

And then here's here's a comment from from a kernel reader here.

I asked Colonel Edson and Edson is the guy that we read the Medal of Honor citation from, I asked Colonel Edson what kind of a sergeant a hoe was, and he told me that he was one of the outstanding men in his regiment and that he was a very rugged individual.

I heard that I was like, hmm, I can picture this dude.

You know, he gets described as you're in Guadalcanal with Marines and you in that environment with the toughest bastards in the world, you get you get described as a, quote, very rugged individual. You know, George E, a whole platoon sergeant company F 5th Marines doesn't play around.

He continues on in our training for this jungle warfare, we had a great deal of work in hand to hand, individual combat, use of knife, jujitsu, et cetera.

Let's face it, when I read that, I got very, very you know, we were feeling good about it. What's the year on that? Nineteen forty three.

Yeah, that's that's the tradition. Jujitsu. It's not the age. OK, well maybe it is actually because nineteen twenty five that's on it.

Yeah but this is pre judo. No it's not pre judo so it's jujitsu. Let's, let's take it for what it's worth anyways. Your excitement is going to go down just like my dad because he says this with the exception of bayonet fighting, we have not used this work. I have been in many battles since I hit the island and I've never seen anyone use it.

OK, so I did some hand-to-hand training.

Well, I think maybe just out of sort of I would have found a way to get my leg.

It might bring that jizz. Every man should have a watch. That's a good one.

Just to kind of let you know, I mean, think about you're going to warn you, never watch. Our battalion commander, Major Walt, wants every last man in our battalion to know as much as he does about the situation.

It pays. Think about that, you're in a leadership position, you should try and get every last man in your team to know as much as you do about the situation, it will pay off.

He also says this, get rid of gold bricks. It's better to be short handed having good men around than having a lot of undependable. You familiar with the term goldbrick? No, not in this context, anyway. What context are you familiar with it in a regular goldbrick, which is a gold bar. OK, got it.

Got it. Got it. So that's the difference. A gold bar is made of gold. A gold brick is a brick painted like gold.

But have you ever seen The Big Lebowski?

Yeah. Yeah.

But like once upon a time ago, the term is heavily used in their gold pricker. Yeah.

So a gold brick is not it looks like. Good. Yeah.

Just here for. Looks good on Attila the Hun. Yeah. Also no go all.

Exactly man. I got a book I just read for this podcast will be coming in the future, but there's a guy that shows up in the Korean War and he's all squared away and he's all he's all right and everything's good to go.

And the older combat vets are like, I don't think so. And then one younger guy, that's kind of that's a bad ass that's actually writing the book.

He says, oh, yeah, this guy is going to be good to go.

And sure enough, the older veterans that were looking at him, he was suspect. He was they were suspects.

He was like everything was kind of perfect, kind of like that conversation we had the other day about, you know, music and everything being perfect.

It's too perfect. It's not real. Right. Well, that's kind of the impression these guys got. Oh, this guy is totally perfect. Well, guess what happened when the bullets started flying?

He had a he had a trick knee and all of a sudden he couldn't get after it.

So to me that right there, Goldbrick got Corporal James Stankovce company, 5th Marines, unnecessary firing gives your position away.

And when you give your position away here, you have to pay for it.

Man, I went on like the crazy I've gone crazy tangents. It's about giving away your position, unnecessary firing. And I'm not talking about combat.

I'm talking about in conversations, in leadership situations where you give away your position. Yeah. You take shots at Echo.

Echo says, you know, I'd like to use this plan over here. And I go, that plan doesn't make any sense. And now all of a sudden, you know where I stand.

Why would you do that? Why wouldn't I say, well, explain to me more about your plan and then ask you a question about it, because if I if I give my position away, all of a sudden you're not even you're already, like, defensive.

I'm causing problems. Why do that? And by the way, you might now attack me because I just gave my position away. Now, you might start throwing shots at me. So when you say, here's my plan and I say your plan doesn't make any sense, I just gave my position away. I don't think your plan makes sense. There's my position.

Whereas if you say here's my plan and I say, why do you want to put guys over here or why do you want to move this over here? And you start answering my questions. I haven't kept my position away. You're not defensive. You're trying to explain it to me. Maybe your plan makes sense, but I just didn't understand it. So don't give your position away.

Not in Guadalcanal and not in the meeting with your with your team.

The men in my squad fire low at the base of trees, there's too much high firing going on. I have, as I have observed, Japs often get short of ammunition. They cut bamboo and crack it together to simulate rifle fire, to draw our fire.

They aren't supermen. They're just tricky bastards.

Second Lieutenant HSM Davis, 5th Marines in parentheses, promoted on the field of battle, do you understand what that means?

I think so.

OK, so you understand that there's enlisted guys in the military and there's officers. So basically enlisted guys have not gone to college. The officers well, I guess the enlisted guys may have gone to college, especially nowadays.

There's a lot of enlisted guys that have gone to college. But the in these days, most likely the enlisted guy hadn't gone to college. So they went through a regular training pipeline. And you're sort of the work force of the military than the officers. They've been to college and they've been through some kind of a training program to put them into a leadership position.

Is that kind of like at a company, the difference between a guy who has a great resume degree but comes in at a certain high position versus the guy who worked his way up through like the mailroom?

So so a little bit.

But let's say a construction site, you've got a guy that went to college for civil engineering and he's he's overseeing the whole project. Right. And he's he got his degree three years ago. But then you've got a guy that's been working construction since he was 14 years old and now he's been doing it for twenty eight years and he's the foreman or he's any of those people in between. Right. Right. That's that's kind of the breakout.

So. To get promoted on the field of battle, battlefield promotion to get commissioned is.

It's pretty powerful. That means that when all this mayhem was going on, they skipped you through like entire an entire spectrum of promotions to the next completely different level.

It's Hackworth, actually, and Korea got got battlefield promoted. Like, you're so good.

We're going to take you. We're going to put you in charge.

So it'd be like if it'd be like if you showed up as the the brick carrier and you did such a good job. And then they said, well, you can start one, but you did that and you did something else. And then next thing, they promoted you to the the guy that was the civil engineer, the put you in charge, the whole project.

So that's so when you hear about Second Lieutenant H.M. Davis, 5th Marines promoted on the field of battle, we're talking about full logit.

He says travel light, for example. To hell with all the mess equipment. We used our Messe cup and spoon for the first 15 days here and enjoyed our chow.

You don't have to live like a gentleman in jungle warfare. Our mess equipment is too bulky for this type of warfare. Makes noise. There you go. And then he says this. Not every man can lead a battalion. Find out who can lead your battalions before you go into combat areas.

And then Colonel Hetson in parentheses remark by Colonel Hetson says, I would like to concur in that statement. So the Medal of Honor recipient, the commander of that battalion, he says, I like to concur with that. There's something that's so pure. And just unmercifully beautiful about combat when it comes to like, hey, we can we don't we can't afford to play around, it's kind of cool.

When I was in Sri Lanka, which we covered on like podcast three or something, working with those soldiers that were fighting against the Tamil Tigers.

And if they had someone that was good, they'd be like, you're promoted, you're going to be in charge. If they had something that bad, you're not in charge anymore. They didn't care about anything. There was no H.R. department. There was no hey, we're going to document what mistakes you made. We're going to counter you. They're like, no, you made like five bad calls and you're done.

And you young recruit, that's been doing great. You're you're in the game. You were put you in charge was very cool. And that's what happens in war.

Doesn't so much happened in peacetime in an advanced and in an advance in the jungle, it's hard for a platoon leader to keep control of his men. Corporals and their men must be taught to act individually.

It's a little something that we like to call decentralized command.

You are not going to be with everyone. You can't control them. It doesn't work. Platoon Sergeant s.M Feighan Company, 5th Marines, I haven't been fired at many times by snipers and I haven't seen one yet, I see that and there's a lot I skipped over some of these, but there's a lot of people complaining about snipers.

The sabers which the Japanese officers carry have proved to be worthless. I killed two Japs who came at me with sabers and I got them first by shooting them. You remember that scene in Indiana Jones? Yes.

Or recall scenes. Which one?

Some guy comes out and he's swinging a sword around, like kind of a real shield, like, hey, I got the sword and we're going to fight.

And an Indiana Jones kind of like, shrugged his shoulders, pulls a pistol out and shoots him.

That's what I read when I heard this. I was like, well, yeah, if you got a gun, he's making a statement. Hey, a gun is better than a saber. Yeah, well, thank you. The we agree. But this is a new kind.

And obviously the that scene. Indiana Jones. Yeah. And you asked for it. So here you go to that scene in real life, they were going to have or the original script or whatever, they were going to have this epic kind of battle sword battle.

But Indiana or Harrison Ford had to use the bathroom. And so he pulled that out as a little improv.

They just kept it cool. Good to know. Never mind the bottle.

Guadalcanal. Let's hear about the bathroom battles on the set of Indiana Jones. It's different, you know, obviously.

But then he says, yes, but I wished I had in reserve a good jungle knife. I don't mean I don't mean a BOLO, which we should have for cutting trails, but a knife with a 12 inch blade, a good steal, we could use this against the these Japs as well as cutting vines that catch us at night and then says no.

Many men expressed their wish for a jungle knife such as described here. This desire is being admitted in further remarks to avoid repetition. So everybody was like, give us a big ass knife.

Corporal Fred Carter, Company, 5th Marines on the river, we got to firing at each other because of careless leadership by the junior officers.

We had a little blue on blue situation. We are curing ourselves of promiscuous firing, but I should think new units would get training to make the men careful.

There you go.

These guys had a little blue on blue situation and he's saying I should think new units would get training to make the men more careful.

Yeah. That's what I did when I had a blue on blue friendly fire situation, came back and said, I'm going to train people so this doesn't happen to them. We learn not to fire unless we had something to shoot at doing otherwise discloses your position and waste ammunition.

He says, I've been charged twice by the Japs in bayonet charge, our Marines can Albay and not fight them, and I know our Army men will do the same.

And the note by Colonel Edson, incidentally, in the last push we executed, we executed three bayonet charges.

Sergeant O.J. Merian Company, El, 5th Marines, a platoon guide, you crawl in the advance unless you are to charge and make it, the reason for this is that all men hit are hit from the knees up except for ricochets. We have crawled up to within twenty five yards of a machine gun firing over our backs. The Japs don't depress their machine gun. Men get killed rushing to help a wounded man.

If the wounded man would crawl about 10 yards to his flank, he can generally be aided in safety as the Japs seem to fire down lanes in the jungle. Colonel, let's said we have taught our men that the best way to aid a wounded man is to push ahead so that the wounded man can be cared for by the corpsman. The men have been the men have to be trained individually for when the fire starts. The corporal can't see all of his men.

And further, when the order for an attack is given, any number of men are unable to see the man on his right or left. So you see, sir, it takes guts for the men to get up and move forward.

When the signal is given, the men have to depend on on one another and have confidence in each other. So, again, you can see these guys. Have you ever been to go I guess you have a triple canopy jungle like real thick jungle.

Yeah, obviously it's really you can take five steps and you can't see another person, you know, and that's what these guys are seeing for the first time or not for the first time. But they're seeing, hey, somebody gets five feet away from me. I can't see them anymore.

They have to know how to act on their own. They have to be ready to utilize decentralized command.

He says, I was in one advance when the Japs let us come through and then rose up out of covered foxholes and shot us in the back. The best cure for that is rearguard looking towards the rear corporal. Corporal F.R. McCallan company, Fifth Marines. Sometimes the information doesn't get down to us and then we are really in the dark. When we get the orders and information, we can get in there and pitch better again. Make sure you keep your people informed.

My platoon is the best one in the company because we are all like a baseball team, our lieutenant is like the captain of the team, he is close with us and we like him and yet respect him. We have a wonderful platoon. I'm not bragging. That's a fact.

And then here's the note in parentheses.

When I read this to Colonel Hetson, at the end of the day, he was so delighted that he sent a runner to find out who Corporal McCowan's platoon leader was.

Give that guy a promotion. And here's the interview with Colonel Merritt Hetson himself, and again, this is the this is the guy who received the Medal of Honor that I read at the beginning of this podcast.

He says, If I had to train my regiment over again, I would stress small group training and the training of the individual even more than we did when we were in training.

So there you go. Everyone is stressing that people need to be able to think for themselves and make things happen. There must be training and difficult observation which is needed for the offense, it is my observation that only five percent of the men can really see while observing.

Yeah, what's crazy about that is they do drills, especially human sniper school, where they put, like stuff out in a field like a canteen and a knife and a notebook.

They put all this stuff in a field and then they give you then they then they bring you out to the field and you get to sit in position. You got to look and you've got to see. You've got to they've had it kind of hidden, partially hidden. So they'll put 10 items out there. And you've got to sit there with your notebook and you kind of got to write down all the items that you can see and what their location is.

And somebody that's really and there's different people have different levels of skill at actually observing things. So some some people get old, they get nine. They get eight, they get 10. Some people see like three or four things.

So to actually train for that is important. The other crazy thing about this is I was talking about this on the phone line the other day.

It's hard, it's hard to see and sometimes things that you think are so obvious, other people aren't. And sometimes. If you think what you're doing, no one can see how they can all see it. So if you think you're making some little tactical move that no one saying you're wrong, you're making, if you're making some little maneuver to get the promotion or whatever and you think that it's all good, no one can see it.

You're wrong. Everybody can see it. Yeah, everybody can see it. You know, you can't see it. You can't see that. They can see. Yeah.

The offensive is the most difficult to support as you cannot tell exactly where your troops are so scary whether the Japs will continue to fight as they do now.

I don't know the defend on the low ground in the jungle, they dig standing trenches extremely well camouflaged, and he goes into some really like tactical level stuff, talking about the need for a rifle grenade, the need for any mortar.

Why that would be good to it gives the platoon commander kind of at hand weapons. He says this, I suggest that you have maneuvers with ball ammunition, which is basically do maneuvers with real bullets, and then he says, even if you get a few casualties, I was like, dang, we're now in the SEAL teams.

We do live fire training all the time. And not only that, we do incredibly complex maneuvers with live fire.

And it's so beneficial. That you're just used to it, you know, you're used to it, you really learn about paying attention and safety and how to keep your distance and all those really important things.

But if you the other thing I will say we got when I first came in the teams, that's all we did was live fire and it was sort of like a laughing, you know, sort of like that's as good as it gets, like we're doing live fire.

It was one of those things.

And it was you know, you'd go out with live fire and you do so much of it that it became so it wasn't really it's just it was just normal.

Right. Live fire was just totally normal. It's how you operate. But once we got ammunition and like the the the high speed laser tag systems, that's when you got you have to do both. But that's when you got good at actually combat, because when you're going live fire, you're not going against anyone but paper targets.

They don't move, but you have to do it. Yeah. So he goes into more details about the kind of boots that they have.

And he says the same thing that everyone's been saying in your training. Put your time and emphasis on the squad and platoon rather than on the company, battalion or regiment.

So train at the lowest levels.

Your principal of the command post up into the front is certainly true here in your scouting and patrolling and your training and patience. Which you should have have the men work against each other. So he's saying the same thing, you have to do something where you're actually going against other humans, not just against paper targets.

Same thing for squads and platoons. And their problems develop better snipers. He goes onto a bunch of things, smoking lamp. Once the smoking lamp goes out and it gets dark, you have to be quiet.

Yeah, he used this example in the Raiders, we adopted the custom of dropping all rank and titles. We use nicknames for officers, all ranks use these nicknames for us. We did this because the Nips caught on to the names of the officers and would yell or speak at night. This is Captain Joe Smith talking a company withdraw to the next EL.

So we adopted nicknames with code words, Captain Wall became silent, Lou, my nickname was Red Mike. An example of the use of these nicknames as code words is one night the Japs put down smoke and they yelled gas.

We were too green at the time and two of our companies withdrew, leaving a company exposed on two flanks.

He says a value of night training is that it lets men learn the normal noises of the woods at night, Woods are not silent night. He says the Japanese is no Superman. He has the same limitations that we have. They have the advantage of experience with proper training. Our Americans are better as our people can think better as individuals.

Encourage your individuals and bring them out. So this is any team, right, you either train your team to think or you train them to obey, and certainly the Japanese leaned toward what they wanted was obedience.

Both a rifleman and machine gun must be taught to shoot low. Well, I can tell you, that's what I got taught to shoot low. This leadership business resolves itself down to being hard boiled by that I mean getting rid of the poor leader, even if you like him personally, because this is a life and death affair.

This goes right on down to the noncoms.

You can see they just there's no way you could allow no slack for poor leadership, like, you know, it's peace time.

I can tell you when when I first got to the to the parliament approved the amount of SEAL officers that got fired when they were in a SEAL platoon was very, very small, very small number of SEAL officers that would get fired.

And then after the war started, it would happen.

It would happen.

It was not like it happened often, but it happened a lot more, happened a lot more because you'd be looking and this isn't just a deployment over to, you know, trained someone or, you know, this is going to be we're going to war. So that was that was Colonel Edson. Now we get to Major Lou Walt, commanding officer, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine, and there is a note from Colonel Etes and Colonel Larsen told me that Major Walt was one of his best leaders and one of the best men he has ever seen in action.

Major Walt was a young man of about thirty five years of age.

He's extremely rugged and looks like a fullback on a football team.

I talked to him over 20 minutes before I was able to make a single original note as his ideas seemed to echo Colonel Ed since. So that's pretty cool.

You got the diagram. You're saying all the same stuff that the regimental commander was in. Here's a little report that Major League Walt gives at six thirty PM they smoked are two right companies. And when the smoke had envelop these two companies, they broke out. They came out in mass formation, 20 abreast, yelling bayonets, fixed automatic weapons, working rear ranks, throwing hand grenades.

They were trying to escape to the sand pit at the mouth of the river in order to cross the river to get back are right front company had just completed a double apron, barbed wire fence. When the Japanese hit the left flank of the right company. They killed nine out of the first ten men, nine of the first eleven men they hit. Then they hit the barbed wire. Two of our heavy machine guns opened up, shooting down along this barbed wire fence and dispersed their attack.

It got dark quickly, like it does here. There was smoke, Japs and Marines all mixed up. Three Jap officers were swinging their two hands towards. There was hand to hand fighting all night long, we mop them up at daybreak, we killed seventy eight Japs, they killed 12 Marines and wounded twenty six of us. The Jap has a great deal of respect for our hand grenade, and it is a valuable weapon to us. Do you ever practice throwing it in wooded country?

Scary throwing grenades in the woods because you can hit a tree, you can hit a branch, he says, and this is always a common theme about the Japanese.

The Jap is not an individual fighter. He won't fight with a bayonet unless backed up with a dozen other Japs.

Here's where we get to choose pure leadership, as in the basic field manual. Each man should know the objective. I make my platoon leader designate an objective every one hundred yards in the jungle and they work to it and reorganize, they don't push off for the next objective until they get word from the company commander. This method we have found ensures control. I control my company exactly the same way I set up objectives for each company. When the companies reach their objective, they report after the reorganization, we go ahead.

I think reserves in the attack should be kept up close so they can be committed immediately.

Platoon Sergeant C.C. Ardent. And there's a note in here, it says, when when Colonel Edson sent for his best fighters, he did not include Platoon Sergeant Ardent. After I got through talking to these men, two of them came up to me and said, Sir, did you did not see Sergeant. He has more patrols and does more scouting than any man in the regiment. Could we get him for you, sir?

And so here we got ardent. And he seems like the kind of guy when I was reading this, I was like, I know this kind of dude. So here's this. This dude. I practiced walking quietly over rocks, twigs, grass, leaves through vines, etc. I practiced this around the bivouac area. I received instructions in scouting and patrolling in Quantico, but I still practice this around here in the bivouac area, I believe, because I practice this is the reason I'm still alive.

Some of the other SEALs laughed at me because I'm always seeing how quietly I can walk around because I go out and practice on my own. But they have stopped laughing because I have been on more patrols than any man in the regiment and I am still alive when I am scouting and come to an opening in the jungle and have to cross it.

I generally run across it quickly and quietly. Going slow here, make Costa a scout. His life, different types of terrain calls for different methods.

So I totally know that guy just obsessed and I love it.

Go ahead.

Does it thinking like like you did to guys to do that to you know, you know, guys like they stand up and they do like a technical stand, even though, you know, they're doing they're keeping it real.

Yeah. Or when they give you a hug, they like fish round look like they're always doing that thing, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. But I think this is the guy that's like stand, you know, not just that.

This is the guy that's and and, you know, I when I when I first got in, they actually the whole time I was in, it was like, OK, I got to do this again.

I need to do this better. I to get better at this. But I did that kind of in a broad way. Right. Like like I kind of wanted to be good at everything, you know, whereas I'd be like someone, whereas there's some guys that would get really into one thing, you know, be like someone that just works on, you know, deep offguard.

They just get obsessed with deep safeguard. And that's what they're working on.

Like, that's all they're doing. That's all they're doing. This is Colonel a more. L e r sim's. Well, commanding officer, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, he says, is the Army stripping down to essentials and equipment, teach not to waste ammunition, learn to make every shot count, try to get the Japs on the move, keep them bouncing around.

Don't let them get set. When you let them get set, they're hard to get out. This is such a good philosophy to have when you're ever in a competitive moment against another person or against another business or against another team.

Don't let them settle. Don't let them, you know, like we talked about earlier, you get them out and go for the unlock.

Look, sometimes you think, well, get there an established position. I get it. I get that philosophy.

But if you can and you can get there and you can go for it, you're going to catch them off guard.

Don't let them prepare. Go. He says our battalion commanders in the 7th Marines know that in reporting information at once, and if they need help to ask for it and not just try to pull things through, that they are enabling regiments to act as a team in the right manner and in the right direction. So he's saying, listen, the battalion commanders knew that they needed to get the information, the correct information up the chain of command as quickly as they could so that they took the chain of command.

The senior leadership could support them. And if you needed help, you needed to ask for it.

A regimental commander cannot be impatient. Don't push your battalion commanders unless you feel there is reluctance on their part.

Our great leader, General Vandergrift, gives me a job and lets me handle the situation with a regiment in my own way.

He is not impatient with me, impatience would ruin the best plans, a mapped plan may not turn out to be feasible. So we have learned here not to be impatient.

And then he says it has been impressed upon us here that the logistics have to be correctly planned, the science of logistics turns out to be your life. Logistics wins wars.

Here's a thought I would like to leave you with the regimental commander's pick your officers for common sense. Basic field manual knowledge is fine, but it is useless without common sense, common sense is of greater value than all the words in the book.

I am too deep, so that's a statement right there, right, common sense. Isn't that amazing? Promote and put in leadership positions, people that have common sense. Then he says, I am too deep in my battalions in regard to battalion commanding officers. That is, each one of my battalion executive officers is a potential battalion commander. The reason for this is if the battalion commander gets killed or sick, I won't be called out on a limb.

He says, I make my staff officers get out of this sweep, not to snoop. So they go get out of the command post and go to the front lines. And he does that, quote, not to snoop on the troops, but to help the battalions and equate themselves with the general situation, insist on night training.

But don't train day and night, if I were training my regiment again, working seven days a week, I would train three nights and four days. Our orders to our Marines on the perimeter defense are this is this is kind of epic. Our orders to our Marines on the perimeter defense are you stay on your position and do not pull back.

If they bust through, you will plug up the hole, but you stay there.

And then he says this regiment can out, yell the Japs out, fight them out, bayonet them and out, shoot them. This yelling as in hand to hand action is important.

It's like a football team that talks it up. The Japs yell at US Marines, we're going to kill you.

More blood for the emperor. The Marines are back.

You blank, blankety, blank, blank, blank. And it's just as bloody as little. Love you blank. Blankety blank, blank will kill you Japs. More blood for Franklin.

There's Jesse yelling at each other. You know, that was like when we had cowboy on. And Cowboy could hear the North Vietnamese army commander yelling, hey, get ready to get ready to assault, and he's tellin telling Lynne Black.

Here they come. He just gave the order to assault.

Sometimes that's how right it like you're close. I think it was Leif who said when they were like in a gunfight and they were so close, they were they were yelling at each other where you could definitely hear people talking.

Yeah. Yeah, I saw I have to ask Leif, like, what particular instance that was.

Yeah, he I saw a video.

It was online of some fire, some army guys, I think in Afghanistan. There it looked like a kind of a jungle.

There's parts of Afghanistan that look like that. Yeah. Like not a thick but like it was like trees in there and they were in a gunfight and they were you could hear them yelling at you. And I think it was in a different language and stuff. And they were just the same deal, blankety blank, blank.

And it's crazy because in football, yeah, that's how to you know, it's like it's all talking trash the whole time. Yeah. Even the referee is saying, hey, be quiet, because I know that the referees know factor because you can't do nothing for you is talking and everyone's yelling at each other and depends.

Certain teams are more hostile than others or whatever. Just depends on the personality of the team. But yeah, that goes on.

But it's all like it's all within like sportsmen, like, you know, some of it's funny, some some of it's like kind of me, you know. So it's there's there's a sort, it's, it's kind of the culture, you know. But it's crazy to understand that like straight a straight up kill you and you're trying to kill them.

So that blankety blank blank is like the real deal.

You know, they're. This next section is about the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 7th Regiment, U.S. Marines, 1st Marine Division, you might know who that is.

It's Lieutenant Colonel Lewis B Puller from podcast one 21.

We went through his book, which is called Marine in podcast one twenty two.

We talked about his son, Lewis Puller Jr. So if you want to check out those podcasts, there is.

It's a podcast that will stay with you. I'll put it to you that way.

So what he says, this is one of the most this is the most iconic Marine of all time, Chesty Puller.

And he says and this was kind of cool because this is. It's cool because the way this is written, you can tell that this guy was taking notes like there was someone there sitting there writing down word for word what these guys were saying. So this is chesty puller talking. And he says, In handling my companies, I take the company commander's word for what is going on. You have to do this to get anywhere in order to get a true picture of what is going on in this heavy country.

I take my staff. I make my staff get up to where the fighting is, this command post business will ruin the American Army and Marines if it isn't watched.

Hell, our platoons and squads would like a command post in the attack if they are not watched.

As soon as you set up a command post, all forward movement stops. That's a good one.

It's a good one to think about mentally, for you, for us, for me, right you and soon as you set up a command post, like, OK, I'm good, I'm good in this spot, forward progress stops.

Don't do it. He says the walkie talkie the Japs have operates like, why can't we have a similar one? And then he says this, To hell with the telephone wire advancing with the troops, we can't carry enough wire. We received an order this advance. The advance will stop until the wire gets in. This is backwards.

So, you know, because they didn't have good radio communications, they they would run a wire, an actual wire so they could talk to each other on these little field telephones. Well, obviously, it's not easy to run that wire out there. And you'd see. You ever seen movies of guys? They got the little wire reel running out, avoiding getting shot. I mean, it's a total nightmare. But then you get these commanders saying, hey, don't advance any more until you get the wire position.

And just like, look, we know where we're going. Let us go. He said the staffs are twice as large as they should be, the regimental staff is too large. I have five staff officers in the battalion and I could get along with less.

The officers have to dress and look like the men.

One time, the commandant of the Marine Corps asked me why our patrols failed in Haiti. I replied because the officers bedding role in Haiti at that time, the officer had to have a pack mule and the enlisted men saw the officers lying around in luxury.

The patrols were actually held up for this pack mule. Your leaders have to be up front.

Those that won't get up there and are not in physical shape to keep up with the men will cause plans to fail. It's OK to say that an outfit cannot be surprised, but it is bound to happen in this type of warfare, so therefore your outfits must know what to do when ambushed. So he's saying like, hey, look, you can say we're not going to get surprised, but guess what? You are.

So you better know what to do then, he says, calling back commanding officers to battalion and regimental GPS to say how are things going is awful. That's a statement. That's a complete statement.

If you call me back from the front line to say, how's it going to.

It's awful.

Each company is responsible for its flank. This is a time tested and proven formation which worked if attacked from the flank face and adjust the good little.

Good little thing to think about. In marching around camp, I just noticed, like now that I'm reading Chesty Puller, I'm getting more fired up, I'm channeling Justin in marching around camp.

I think I'm doing what I think he sounded like in marching on camp. We've learned. Hear that you must have an all around defense. There you go. He's just making statements. He's not even he's just he's just rattling things off. We need more entrenching shovels, give shovels to the men who have wire cutters. You need both wire cutters and shovels. I wish we had had the M1 rifle, and when we get relieved from Guadalcanal, I'm going to make every effort to get it.

I consider it my imperative that the Army and Marines be equipped with mortars and only carry one type grenade, have the hand grenade fit in the mortar and be of use as a hand grenade and also as a rifle grenade, you need a rifle grenadier in each squad for use against enemy machine gun nests.

I didn't in some of the other guys, I kind of skipped through some of their when it gets starts getting real granular, but I wasn't going to skip Chesty Puller because because Chesty Puller, the following is the result.

And so that's it. That's that's what we get from Chisti. But then the following is the result of a conference with five of the best CEOs in the First Battalion of the 7th Marines. These CEOs were selected by Lieutenant Colonel Fuller.

Here's some comments from them.

The Japanese fire is not always aimed at is harassing fire and scarers recruits get the recruits are they are used to overhead fire Japs who have infiltrated signal to each other with their rifles by the number of shots. We get these birds by constantly patrolling. He says if one of the guys say if you shoot their officers, they mill around talking about the Japanese, if you shoot their officers, they mill around there and CEOs are poor. You can tell their officers by their sabers and their letter leather puttees, which is like some kind of legging, I had to look that word up.

Yes, it's like a legging.

But this is again, this is something that you hear a lot about the Japanese is that once their officers are dead, they because they're very centralized command micromanaged. So if you killed their if you killed their officers, all of a sudden the rest of the troops are just kind of milling around.

They don't know what to do. Lieutenant Shepherd, 7th Marines also promoted on the field of battle. We salute you, Lieutenant Shepard. I would stress in training teamwork between the leaders in all units, liaison between support plans and all leaders, liaison between artillery in the infantry. If I were training my unit again, I would really have some high class patrol training. I would do everything with these patrols I could possibly think of to include losing them and making them go across country without maps or composites.

The Japanese do a lot of yelling at times and at other times they are deadly silent. One night, some Japanese got in our marching column, we discovered them and bayoneted them. At another time, I heard I myself heard a Japanese yell in good English company, forword.

The Japs don't like our men yelling back at them. Next, we get to Master Gunnery Sergeant R.M. Fowl, 7th Marines, and he's twenty four years of service, he said, we learned not to get excited or go off half cocked. Where there's noise, the Japanese make noise to mislead us.

They shot off some firecrackers at the start, but we have learned that where the noise is, he ain't. You never hear a move. He sleeps in the daytime and does his work at night. Officers and CEOs during shelling should move around and talk to the men, quiet them down, if you don't do this, some of them will walk around with their fingers on their triggers and they get to imagining things.

And along this line, we learn to post double sentinels, one man to quiet another. Sheesh. Imagine that. You've got to you've got to put two people on watch because you've got one of them is going to freak out.

All my time in the Marines, I've seen men bunch up and I've talked about this and make my NCO talk about this all the time. The men seem to fear separation. I talked about that leadership strategy and tactics. I got a whole section called Don't Back Up.

And I don't didn't just talk about it from the battlefield perspective, but what happens is the way I the reason I had to talk about it in there is because, yes, people bunch up on the battlefield. They do it because they're they're afraid and because you want to hear you want to be close. Like, I want to get to you to hear what you have, what's going on. But what happens in from a leadership perspective is people punch up.

Mentally ill from the heat, so EKU, you have an idea I like to crowd in with your idea and put my ideas in there, but we all want to get together. We want to talk. We want to give our input. It's like, man, give that person some space and let that plan develop a little bit.

Don't bunch up. Don't crowd it.

This one says the Japs are man monkeys and they run around considerable in order to compete with these mad monkeys from Japan. You got to be in excellent shape and you've got to be tough. We can lick them and we are doing it all the time, sir.

So, yeah, you're saying they're like in great shape and they're able to move around through the jungle very quickly? Well, I suppose it's like when when Joe Rogan calls some fighter, like a gorilla or whatever.

Right here. Or a monster. Yeah, a monster animal. The animal Sheck man.

The monkey says Lieutenant Colonel Frisbee, executive officer, 7th Marines. I hope the Army is being toughened up.

We toughened up by bivouacs, not camping at the combat ranges. We lived at these combat ranges in order to teach platoons to keep off the road. We made platoons march in the field alongside the road when they moved from one combat area to another.

Hey, what's bivouacked?

Sleeping in the woods, not camping, but, you know, setting up a small area to sleep in.

You're not like put pitch in a tent.

It's like a just a makeshift sort of we're going to sleep here, like not even a camp like this.

So just kind of for sleeping for rest. Yeah. It's not like in a bad way or necessarily good way more just like, you know, to get sleep like, hey, we've been patrolling.

All right, we're in a good spot. Hey, we're going to bivouac here for the night, OK? You know, half guys on security, other half guys get, you know, put your head down, get some sleep got.

Probably a good, defensible position, but here's Lieutenant Colonel Định. And Con. 2ND Battalion, 7th Marines, and by the way, a Medal of Honor. From Haiti, it pays in the attack in the jungle to use the heavy machine guns. There is a difference of opinion, as you've noticed on this matter. It's hard work. Yes, but don't overlook the value, morale and otherwise. And don't forget about the high rate of fire if you ditch the heavy machine guns and substitute the lights in their place.

You must remember that you will be up against the Japanese machine guns.

As we all know, I'm a huge fan of machine guns and apparently so is lieutenant colonel.

Be careful about withdrawing the men unless all the men know what it's about. If you don't do this, you're liable to make the men panicky. We already talked about that mob mentality can happen. You must realize that there is such a thing as not attacking when ordered to do so. We have got to get to a point where the men go ahead when ordered and damn the hindmost, corporals must be indoctrinated with leadership to overcome this and all ranks have got to have the hate.

Oh, like I said, this is a different time, man, you're going against a different enemy.

We're talking about you have to hate the enemy. That's where we're at.

Hmm. Here's a conference with three second lieutenants and five old CEOs of 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. The basic principle of leadership in the U.S. Marine Corps is that the individual is told of his responsibility in different situations and is held to it. You got to have confidence in each other when signals to move forward are given. You must have confidence that the men next to you will move forward even if you cannot see them.

We have that kind of confidence in this battalion. There's a quote here, which I'm in full agreement with. It says, We love the heavy machine gun period.

We have two American Indians we use as talkers on the telephone or voice radio when we want to transmit secret or important messages to awesome.

Be mean and kill them, kill them dead, our platoon, our motto in this platoon is no prisoners. Second Lieutenant de Klerk, seventh Marines. Promoted on the field of battle, this officer was interviewed in the hospital where he was recuperating from wounds.

We have a lot of trouble in my platoon with water discipline. We also have trouble with men bunching up in order to talk to each other. They seem to do this even though it means death.

Major Beuse, assistant G three on the UN General Vandergriff staff, we have had to multiply our unit of fire in hand grenades by five. The yellow color on hand grenades is poor. Why can't they just be painted black as the yellow color enables the Japs to throw them back? You ever seen that color combination? Well, it's very it's very common in the military.

It's like an olive drab. But then the writing is in yellow and like even the grades, No one listen to this guy because a grenade so have like a yellow band around them.

It's not like a bright yellow, but it's definitely yellow.

Yeah. Why is that? Why is it yellow? That's just how they marcom. I mean, there's there's no particular reason it looks kind of.

I almost actually leadership strategy and tactics almost when in fact the reason I didn't go because it's olive drab, the reason I didn't go that same exact yellow is because you couldn't really read it clearly enough.

Yeah, that's kind of a bummer. I should have just stuck with it.

Yeah. Like Claymore do. Claymore mines are the front towards enemy. Yeah.

Actually, yeah. Yellow marathoning. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very good. It's the common thing.

It's the common stencil color is this olive drab green and it's a faded yellow. It's like a drab yellow. Yeah.

Interesting. He says this, I am being sent back for arrest, we have been in action continually here from August 7th, nineteen forty two until this date, November twenty six, nineteen forty two.

What we all marvel at is how General Vandergrift can stand it so much better than we do. It must be his character.

Have to do like a full on podcast on General Vandergriff. Major Ben Jay, Northridge, CEO, 2nd Battalion, 160 4th Infantry, if I could train my men over again, I would put officers and men in slit trenches and drop bombs nearby to overcome fear.

We were all scared to death at first. Let's overcome this fear. How about firing some captured twenty five caliber ammunition out of captured rifles to let officers and men know the sound also captured Jap machine guns ammunition out of their captured machine guns. Got to get used to that sound. Luckily, we do. I mean, luckily we have AK 47, so we can do that. No problem. No factor. We know what that AK sounds like.

Lieutenant Colonel Frank Richards, CEO, 1st Battalion, 160 4th Infantry. He says, If I were training my battalion again, I would have training in patients. I would have patrols wait for the enemy to expose himself, they move around, too, they have to relieve themselves and they have to get food.

I would have the men in this patient's training made be made to sit still for hours at a time. Captain John A. Gosset, CEO Company, eight hundred and sixty Fourth Infantry, teach the men the capacities of the hand grenade and handling men. And that crazy that this guy is at here in Guadalcanal and here's the two notes that he's got, he says, You've got to learn the capacities of hand grenades and how to handle men. I thought I knew how to handle men, but since I've been here, I have revised my ideas as I have learned a great deal.

I have learned the primitive, rough and tumble way. You can't pat all men on the back. You have to be rough with some men in order to get results.

It is not my nature to be rough, but I am forcing myself and I have learned which of my men I can pat on the back and which I have to deal with in the hardest manner.

Everyone is the same. Everyone's different. Captain John A. Dorson, commanding officer, Company B.. One hundred and sixty Fourth Infantry. If I could train my company again, I would have some maneuvers on which the men were deprived of food, water and comforts in order to find out which NGOs and men can't take it, I would relieve these people.

This type of maneuver would teach men to know and expect hardships, it will lessen the shock when they come up against the real thing in the presence of the enemy. It is important that the entire squad know to know how to operate the bar, not just to men reason, think of the bar men who are wounded get killed and become sick and have to be evacuated and cross training.

Lieutenant John S. Graves, platoon leader, Company C, one hundred sixty 4th Infantry, the biggest thing I have learned since I hit this island is that leadership and initiative is so important here. The platoon leader can only be in one spot at a time and men must be trained to act correctly on their own. I've never seen this type of training.

Yes, decentralized command. That's just post that on your brain. Sergeant of DeMoss, squad leader, Company C, one hundred and sixty Fourth Infantry, sir, I would like to say that there is no place for recruits here.

We need trained soldiers who have initiative and and know what is the right thing to do. The jungle is so thick that squad leaders cannot get around all of the time to see men and tell them what to do. This is the common theme.

This is Colonel B, more commanding officer, 160 4th Infantry note, when I saw Colonel Moore, he was interviewing a patrol and patrol leader who had just come back. They had been on a reconnaissance for 15 hours.

The patrol leader had been met at an advanced position.

And as he had valuable information of the enemy, he was conducted by Jeep to the observation post of the artillery where he directed artillery fire, then returned to the colonel, where he made his report. The patrol and its leader were nearly exhausted. Colonel Moore had on hand. A small sample bottle of brandy, which he issued one small sample bottle to each two men.

He made them dilute this brandy with water in their canteen cups. It was noticeable that this helped them. The following interview took place after the patrol had been dismissed, one could not be around Colonel more Kornel more very long without realizing that he is a leader and regimental commander in every sense of the word.

Taking care of his people. And he says the greatest problem is leaders, and you have to find some way to weed out the weak ones, the platoon leaders who cannot command, who cannot foresee things and who cannot act on the spur of the moment in an emergency are a distinct detriment. Leadership. This is the last thing we're going to read from this book. He says many of the junior leaders have not used their heads at times in their training.

I recommend you put them up against situations where they must use their heads.

He says the good leaders seem to get killed, the poor leaders get the men killed. The big problem is leadership and getting the shoulder straps on the right people. Not one man in 50 can lead a patrol in the jungle. If you can find out who the good patrol leaders are before you hit the combat zone, you have found out something.

I have had to get rid of about twenty five officers because they just weren't leaders.

I had to make the battalion commander weed out the poor junior leaders. This process is continuous. Our junior leaders are finding out that they must know more about their men. The good leaders know their men. The good leaders know their men.

Obviously, that's not new. We've heard it before. In fact, we've heard all this before. And what's crazy is they'd all heard it before, right? Like, these principles have been around these principles been around forever, but they still made mistakes.

They still had to relearn those lessons and they still had to make every effort.

Like this manual to pass those lessons on. And what should we do? We well, what we should do is we should make our best effort to receive those lessons. Remember those lessons, just as we should remember these brave men who learn these lessons in blood.

What do you got?

Charles, I always like so there's kind of two ways you can go with, like, all of this stuff where it's like you hear it over and over and over again. Right. Which should sort of reinforce it.

So you kind of got to be careful to not regard it.

I guess maybe this happens subconsciously sometimes where you just, you know, you hear something over and over again and then it just becomes sort of just noise. Like I already know that.

You know what's weird about me? Hmm. Yeah, I know a lot of things.

Well, when you say that, like, I can't relate to it because every time I hear these things, I'm like, there it is. Yeah. I'm like, there it is. It's a reinforcement. It's it's I'm hearing it again. It's a little bit of different thing, but I know what that means. Yeah.

You know, like the last little section is so crazy to read that it's so crazy to read that this guy is saying in training you, I recommend you put them in situations where they must use their heads.

And I teach that all the time. And I'm like, oh, you want to train your leaders, you've got to put you can't give your leaders problems that there is a rote memory. Memorize viable solution. Do you actually want to make them think? I always bring up a story with the Germans.

The Germans would give their subordinate leaders in training. They would give them problems that could only be solved if they broke the rules, which means there's no format to what they're getting them to try and do. So how can you get your people you need to put your people in situations where they need to think so. Every time I look and this is lessons that I've taught before, but I hear it like there it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe because you like a it maybe often or maybe it made like such an impact for because of like your experiences and stuff or maybe both on and on but so it's always sticking with you.

So you're always like looking to like reinforce to make it better to improve on this very thing that you're actually practicing. Yeah. You know what's interesting? So my last three years in the in the I was running that training, so I got to see and I always say that the training that I ran was the best leadership laboratory in the history of the world.

And I would be willing to go toe to toe. And anyone that thinks that they've seen a better I'm not not not to fight them, but I would be interested.

Right, if there was someone else that says, oh, we did. We had a leadership situation where this is what we got to see. And therefore, we have a really good understanding of of leadership as well. I'm sure there's other things that are out there. I'm telling you, the when I was running that training, it was freaking awesome because you're seeing platoon after platoon after platoon after platoon with different leadership. You could see the good leadership versus the bad leadership.

You see what worked, what didn't work. It was the best leadership laboratory.

And I, I, I learned that I got to take the lessons that I learned and see them applied.

And when they when they applied them, well then things would go well. If they didn't apply well things would go bad.

So obvious, it was so obvious. And what's interesting is now at Echelon Front, I kind of get to do the same thing because it's, hey, I work with the business. Here's what's happening in their market.

Here's what's happening in their expansion. Here's what's happening as they grow.

So we get to see, oh, here's the leadership. Here's what you need to do. And then I it's like this is the mistake that you're making. This is where you need to move. And so I like you said, I I'm very lucky because I continue to get to work directly in this environment that I've been completely and utterly. Engaged in for, you know, I mean, for a long, long, for decades and and yet that I guess maybe that's why when I see these things.

I think to myself, like gas, like I get it just just more reinforcement and yeah.

So you like it. What, like straight up? OK, so we'll call this maybe oversimplified, simplifying it leadership.

Do I like it. Yeah. Are you serious right now.

I mean I absolutely love it. I love it.

And you know what, I love it in the way that what I love about it is it is a continual challenge to its it's solving a problem and getting the grass.

It's kind of like jujitsu in that you get out there, you learn to move, you see, you move, you use the move. It works. It doesn't work. You make adjustments on it.

It's a very similar thing. But yeah, I love it because it's super complex and yet it's super simple.

Right. And the gratification is is extraordinary because people, you know, like people say, I did what you just told me to do, you know, I did in the last meeting and Fred's on board now and you're like, that's awesome. You know, and this was a problem for someone that was a legitimate not just a challenge, but like a threat to their lifestyle.

Right. A threat to their business, a threat to their corporation. And you're like, hey, here's this. Here's OK, do this report back. Let me hear what you got. OK, here's the report. OK, here's the reaction. OK, good. That means continue moving, Isma'il. No, that means go over in this direction.

So to be able to to be able to be lucky enough to take all these lessons that I learned and be able to apply them on a daily basis, it's ridiculous.

It's freaking awesome because, like, it's. Do you like leadership? Well, I knew the answer and maybe it was kind of a semi rhetorical question. But if because some people, they don't they don't like it, they they see it as a necessity and stuff like that, but they don't really like it.

So and it's a spectrum for sure.

It's like sales, you know, like sales, for example, where some people, they just love it. And every little tip, every little thing, every little like established like element of a successful they're all all about it.

Well, people can be in all kinds of stuff.

Yeah. Exacta guitar drawing. Oh yeah. Reading. I mean. Yeah.

So if there's a certain philosophical element that is like with stood the test of time and the reading and hearing reading man it's going to reinforce a thing, they're going to be into it and it's going to be just in their head. They're going to pay it. Any chance that they get, even if it's as much of a little development, they're going to pay it. Boom is ready, is down because they enjoy it and that's part of their jam.

But if let's say you don't really like it, it's like a like a chore or whatever.

You know, there's certain in introvert type people who are in a leadership position who kind of don't like it, they'd rather someone else deal with the people or something like this for sure.

And then so those are the ones that might be, I don't know, but they might be the ones that are going to be making these mistakes over and over again because they're not consciously, like actively trying to implement these lessons that are just in someone like your kids just straight up being reinforced. But for them, it's it's almost like not even getting it. It's kind of like, yeah, I heard that before. Whatever. I heard that before.

Whatever. I'm too busy, like, not caring almost in a way, like I'm too busy, like caring about the things that I care about.

And like, yeah, I think I think where there's a lot of misconceptions and I wrote about this in leadership strategy and tactics, but it's all like the cover flap or whatever.

Leadership is the most challenging of human endeavors. It is often misunderstood. It can be bewilder, mystify and frustrate. Even the most dedicated practitioners, leaders at all levels are often forced to use theoretical guesswork to make decisions and lead their troops. It doesn't have to be that way. There are principles that can be applied and tenets that can be followed. There are skills that can be learned and maneuvers that can be practiced and executed. There are leadership strategies and tactics that have been tested and proven on the battlefield, in business and in life.

So that's what I think people miss out on, is they miss out on the fact that it's not it's it's kind of like any. Any skill set that you want to learn, you want to learn how to play guitar, you've got to learn the chords, you've got to learn notes, you want to learn jujitsu, you've got to learn. And Ormoc, you've got to you want to learn how to play basketball. You've got to learn how to dribble.

You couldn't expect why would anybody expect that they could walk out on a basketball court without ever practicing and be good at it? Now what?

Now, let me ask you this. Have you ever watched some, like a skateboarder or a BMX guy or a mountain biker or a surfer and been like, oh, that looks you think in your weird mind that you could actually do what they're doing right now, the skateboarding guys.

But, yeah, the other guys guys are crazy. But but you think, oh, like, oh, I can see myself doing that.

So I think people look at leadership sometimes and there's things that are happening. Oh yeah. I would do the same thing or whatever. It looks easier than it is. Yeah.

And so you have to be careful of that. And maybe that's why I continue to enjoy reading and learning about it, because I see how hard it is. I see every day what a challenge it is for people.

So if I can take one thing away from a book that I can use as a tool to help someone else maneuver through a challenging leadership situation, I, I, I love it. I love adding that capability. Yeah.

Yeah. It makes sense to me.

So speaking of learning and improving and getting better, what other suggestions might you have for us?

I do Mr.

Yeah, kind of like Echo Zane Charles kind of like me saying, hey, exercise will help improve every other aspect of your life. True. Unlike any other thing or whatever. True to that thing. Sure.

I'll say it over and over again. Whatever helps reinforce it, hopefully, hopefully it doesn't become noise.

I will give you some credit right now for taking what I just said, which is that was pretty meaningful moment from what you just said, is you're going to continue to read the same stuff over and over again on the support section of the podcast. What's good for the goose is good for the other guy.

You understand what I'm saying? Anyway, we're working out that's going improve your life health.

What if you just tried to say things in a different way sometime? Like, maybe people would be more interested in it. It's possible, possible.

Nonetheless, we are still working out, regardless of how I say it. Yeah, I worked out today. Did squats what?

Oh, good job.

I had pull ups today, by the way, we're in the process of the let's call it the new garage gym of Justice. We are probably two months out maybe right now. So we're getting there. Really. Yeah. If anybody, if anybody, you know, maybe a year and a half ago there was a transition where I was I moved into a temporary holding facility for myself. So that meant a temporary workout facility in my home. And that was all a strategic move to long term.

Have a much better sort of facility facility.

Yes. So we're getting there.

I'm looking forward to unveiling that. I might even do you know, I'll get people to say, hey, show us your gym tour like gym tour.

Well, I'll tell you what I will when I win. The new gym is complete, or at least like when it's kind of getting close.

We'll do a little we'll do a little facility tour.

Yeah. So you're thinking, so what are you going to do? Or you're seeing a month or two months ish, two months ish, maybe maybe three, maybe two and a half new, maybe two. We should. But we're getting there. We're getting close. We're getting close.

So improvements across the board, straight up facilities, personal health, all that stuff.

Good thing for us. What we're looking for is what we're going for anyway. We've got supplements for you if you need them, which you need. You know, that's a spectrum. But this thing will 100 percent help you.

Yeah, I'm going to go and said say that you you need you need to get joint warfare and krill oil for sure.

Yeah, I'm not sure of it.

Well, if you're listening to this podcast, which means you're getting after it. Right, OK, if you're not listening to this, which we don't care you, then you don't need it, right?

Sure. You legitimately don't, because you're like on your own program, you're probably watching TV. You don't need joint warfare and super grill. If you're to to strengthen your thumb, to press the remote control, you're not a little bit different. You can just get whatever more more French fries, more Cheetos. That's what you can get. Yeah. If you're in the game, you may want to get super grill. You may want yeah. You should, you need to get super girl, you get your food.

And the reason I say need is because if you don't take it you have issues you will have. That's it. Don't just get get away from the issues. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like one of those things like you ever play. You played soccer before, right. Soccer, baseball, football. Right. You wear a certain kind of shoes, cotton cleats really cleats.

So when you start, when you go play, when you suit up, you put on your cleats. You don't put on tennis shoes. No. I mean, look, is it possible to put on tennis shoes? Do you need. That's the thing. Do you need cleats? Depends on what you mean by need.

Right, exactly. And that's exactly what I'm saying. Okay, so clarification accepted that.

Look, if you want to stay on this path and not worry about your joints giving out on you and they can all they can get give out on you for sure they can bother you aitc they can ache when you're not even exercising straight up.

They can. But if you don't wanna worry about that and stuff, that's when you take the joint warfare in the super cool oil 100 percent take it every day like I do every single day.

So far since our last talking. But you've tighten it up. Yes, they're also.

Discipline and discipline go kind of the same thing, just different delivery, different modalities of delivery. Yes, sir. Big time.

So yeah. Oh, well, you know, the powder is a powder. There's a pill is the energy drink. I call it energy drink healthy energy, even though it's barely related to the common, what's commonly considered an energy drink. When I think of energy drink, I think, oh, massive amount of sugar, massive amount of caffeine, massive amount of chemicals.

Yeah. To keep it from going, getting spoiled.

That's what I think of when I think of an energy drink and I think of a pink, orange and yellow. Can that it's in. Yeah. Silver maybe. Yeah that's what I think of. So that's an energy drink.

Now it is a very strange to say that what we have, which has no sugar, it's sweetened with Monck fruit, it's got ninety five milligrams of caffeine. So it's got caffeine in it, but that's the same as a cup of coffee. It's not some crazy amount that gets you all psycho jittery and you have a big crash from home and there's no preservatives in it because we pasteurize it.

So what we're really talking about are two totally different things.

One of them has a bunch of bad stuff in it.

The other one has a bunch of good stuff in it. Yes. So so why are they both called energy drinks? I'm not 100 percent sure one of them should be called an energy drink. The other one should be called poison.

Next question, how not to get too analytical in here. But I think I know why.

Because you in you know, some of us, we think of energy drinks not as what the whole energy drink. We just think of the stigma, not just the stigma, but the stigma is a very significant portion of research and rightly so.

By the way, some if there's some stuff that straight up bad for you, that should mean something.

Yeah, that's what I think. Yeah. So, you know, you think about those kind of things, or at least like I said, but, you know, like hippie people that will say like, oh, that's bad energy.

Yeah, that's different.

So now I'm kind of feeling like there's such a thing as, like potato chips that drink as bad energy, a good energy and clean energy.

To me that's in play too. I think so. So, you know, if you consider the stigma of energy drinks and it's not an unfair stigma, it's not fair. That's accurate. Fair stigma.

If you consider that and you associate it with the word energy drink. Yes. When you look at JoCo, discipling go Citris, psycho, JoCo, all these flavors.

If you look at that, then yeah, they're not going to be very similar in that way because we don't have the stigma here. No stigma, energy, drink without the stigma about.

There you go. There you go. Boom. Look at that one on go to JoCo fuel dotcom. You like that one. Yes, sir. John Schofield.

I'm not sure he can get it. That's that's part of origin. I, I'm kind of the same deal. You can also get them at Walwa, the energy drinks, the stigma, the UN stigma, stigma, less energy drink at Walwa and the vitamin shop as well.

Also, milk, milk. Forget about vitamin D three, Cold War, JoCo, White T, I'm actually drinking some that white T right now, drinking some of that, and I'm drinking a disciplined go. So I'm kind of getting after Vitamin Shoppe. Walwa and Orjan Main Dotcom also got some we talked about jujitsu a little bit today. Fortunately, let's say it was not required to be put into use in Guadalcanal. Right. Luckily, we still had we had our bayonet.

We were able to just stab people in the neck and didn't have to choke them.

But had it been required, we're happy that people were trained in jujitsu.

And we even if we don't have to use it, even if you don't have to use it ever in your life in a real situation, believe me, you're going to want to have it so trained some jujitsu. And when you trained jujitsu, you're going to want to get to training. You're going to want a rash guard to training, and you're going to want those things to be made in America. And you're also going to want them like you're going to want the best possible ones that you could get because you're kind of making a commitment in your life to jujitsu.

You're going to look at yourself in the mirror and say, you know what, we're going to do this. We're going to gain a skill that will help you in all aspects of my life.

Do you ever or you know how like you look at yourself and you kind of have like a little bit of an identity, varying levels of identity, whatever do you part of that identity?

Are you like a jujitsu person for me?

Yeah. Yeah, I would say yes.

Yeah. But see how you just said.

I would say yes some because it's a spectrum for sure and not one and one is not better than the other, by the way.

Well the reason I said that is because. And we've talked about this on the podcast, if it wasn't, here's why I actually it's just a yes, because if it wasn't for jiujitsu, I wouldn't have be where I am because I wouldn't have been able to figure out a bunch of stuff like you for me, the physical part.

The knowing how to submit people or whatever that is, as far as what I got from jujitsu, this is going to sound crazy, that part, the actual being able to fight and beat people up.

You know, of all the beneficial things I got from jujitsu, that part is 20 percent. The 80 percent benefit that I got from jujitsu was an understanding of the world.

Now it ties into combat. It ties into leadership. And that those things also participated in in providing me with that 80 percent. Yeah, but the jujitsu was the factor that allowed me to see it.

Yeah. So, yeah, that makes sense. I think I would agree with that. So yes, I'm a jujitsu person. Yeah.

So yeah I feel like if I, if I look at my identity, I'm not, not a jujitsu person but I'm not like I'm a jujitsu, you know, like if I, if you meet someone someone's not going to be like, oh yeah, that's a jujitsu guy.

That's not the first thing they're going to say.

You're not known as a jujitsu guy. Yeah, but people know you do. Everybody knows you do jujitsu even though they also. They also know you do other things, other things, yeah, that are significant, I think that's why you and I look at you. I don't see OK, jiujitsu guy, even though you're straight up judges, no one's going to say like.

Yeah, not nodded, but then because you have all these other things that you have, like straight up, like for lack of a better term, significant prowess like in you know, I don't know about all that.

It's just I don't have significant prowess in jujitsu, even though we're working on that one. What is prowess really like doing good at.

Yeah. Yeah, they were worried.

Well I think that yeah I've totally missed it anyway.

I think that might be the first time I ever said that out loud.

The word proud nonetheless nonetheless that this would go kicking in, getting them brain cells, working it. Whether you want to be a jujitsu person or just have to be part of your life, you should definitely make it part of your life.

You're going to need to get your game guards go to origin, main dotcom. And unfortunately for all of us, we can't just walk around in our guys unfortune, unfortunately.

So you've got to get other clothing. You can also get that other clothing.

Edwards, you name dotcom jeans, American made boots, American made jeans with American denim rivets that are from America. Oh, guess what?

Everything I'm talking about without compromise made in America, you go to brass buttons, even the brass. The brass what. But the brass buttons, those are significant.

So I look at them. They're like, they're legit. Legit. I mentioned the rivets. I didn't mention the the brass buttons. Yes, sir. Or Jemaine Dotcom.

You're good. Yes, sir. Also, speaking of other clothing stores called Jochum Store, that's where you can get T-shirts, hoodies, hats.

All this wind equals freedom. Good.

All the stuff to represent when you're on the path of heartburn.

Jim, you got that covered cough, homie.

I know you're going to say you're going to say that. Anyway, it's also on the shirt.

Also on JoCo store.

I was like, I know where overcover it now.

But when when when I had covid and then you had covid, I was a little bit happy because I was like, cool, we can still record podcast.

We can only guess where. At least we can still go in the record. No factor. Yeah. Yeah that's true. Little bit happy. No, no offense.

You know covid plus covid doesn't equal more. It cancels itself out. Yeah. Kind of thing. All right. Well I'm clear. We're all clear unless. Chuckles Store also Angelakos store.

We have a t shirt club working title t shirt club get a t shirt every month.

Different varying levels of layers on these t shirts.

They're inside their their Easter eggs in the shirts in the not literal Easter eggs, but Easter eggs, the expression Easter eggs stuff that like if you listen, you kind of know, you know.

Anyway, interesting. Sure. To get one every month. School club. Check it out.

Chuckles Store Dotcom. Also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. I think it's important varying levels of importance at Jonquils. Talk to us to just get Raasch cards and just like a T-shirt like this t shirt that I'm wearing, hardcore Ricardos. Yes, you can fully I mean, you don't have to, like, go on there and join the club. No, no, no, not at all.

That's an optional club right there that we made. It's a good club. I mean, people seem to like it.

I think maybe if anyone look, let's face it, Eickhout tried to come up with like, hey, we'll just call it the T-shirt club. OK, that's good.

If anyone can come up with something better than that, which I'm sure most people can akono, that you have a better name. You know, even if it was called like the pickle head, the club or whatever, people would be like a little bit more into it.

Uh, well, I don't know what the picnic, but I do agree. I see what you're saying.

And I they I can't disagree on though. OK, they're bringing the people together also.

Yeah. So subscribe if you haven't already and leave a review if you're in the mood and God be creative with the review if you want. Good. These are all good things.

Also got some other podcasts. Yeah, we got some other podcast, JoCo Unravelling podcast, we got the Grounded podcast, we got the Warrior Kid podcast.

And also if you want to if you want to join and support kind of at the next level, you can go to JoCo underground dot com where we have a sovern.

A sovereign virtual land that we rule and that cannot be taken away from us no matter what happens. So if you want to support that, we've got some extra things going on there. We got some we got some alternative podcasts that we're doing. We got a little Q&A. If you're in there, you can go to JoCo Underground Dotcom and join that so we can connect.

Check it out and you can also check out YouTube videos that echo Charles makes and you can give him some feedback on in the comments sections.

Well, I saw commentator said David said, does JoCo read these comments? Here's your answer. Yes, I read the comments.

The reason I read the comments is so I can attempt to give Echo Charles feedback about the level of explosions, fires, smoke tanks, eagles, aircraft that he puts in the videos.

Yes, yes. The explosions are kind of like banana cream pie.

You're not going to buy banana cream pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner, you just have one piece of banana cream pie after dinner maybe. See? I see, I see.

You understand. I see the look on your face. You understand what I'm doing. I'm avoiding carrying on this topic.

Well, I have subscribed to subscribe to the YouTube channel called Jakiel Podcast.

Yeah, good.

Also psychological warfare. Look into that one. If you're having moments of weakness, look into this. Psychological Warfare is an album with tracks each track. Is JoCo telling you?

Explain to you the methodology.

The tactic to get past that moment of weakness easy with these hundred percent accurate and effective 100 percent, that's what psychological warfare is.

You get that wherever you get and you can get some visual reminders of the path by going to flip side. Flip side, canvas dotcom.

Dakota Meyer's company, Awesome Company makes really cool stuff to hang on your walls.

Got a bunch of books, a bunch of books, leadership strategy and tactics.

Field Manual talked about it today about Face David Hackworth, which I wrote a forward to the code, the evaluation, the protocols, the discipline code, Freedom Field Manual, brand new version out where the Warrior Kid for Field Manual did it.

We have the Warrior Kid one, two and three, that's the whole series, Mikey and the Dragons, extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership also have Echelon Front leadership consultancy where we solve problems through leadership. Go to Echelon front Dotcom for details on that. We have Heff online where we do leadership consulting live online. We have leadership courses. So if you want to get deeper into the principles that we talk about here, you can go into that online training program and improve your leadership skills.

But if online dotcom, I'm on there all the time, so is the rest of the Echelon front team. We have the master coming up in Phoenix, March three and four, Orlando May twenty fifth and twenty six. Las Vegas, October, twenty eight and twenty nine. Those are our twenty twenty one dates. Go to extreme ownership dotcom if you want to go to that overwatch. If you need executive leadership inside your company, go to ETF overwatched dot com.

And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their family. You want to help Gold Star families. Then check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, then go to America's Mighty Warriors, a dog.

And if you didn't get enough of my belligerent beliefs or you need more of EKOS speculative speculations.

Then you can find us on the website, on Twitter, on Instagram, which just ecoATM talking about what you call. The Grahams and on Facebook Echo is adequate, Charles imageshack a Willink. I'm also on parler now, by the way, the new platform.

Sure, and I am at Dudko Willink and thanks to all the branches of service, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard, thank you for fighting battles out there so that we don't have to. And thanks to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all first responders, thank you for providing us protection here at home and to everyone else out there.

Look, we heard these lessons before. Remember them? You know them, be disciplined, take initiative, train your people.

Train your people from your front line troops to your senior leaders, you want them to take initiative and practice so you get better, make sure the team knows the objective.

You know, these things. Remember these six? Remember these lessons and also remember where these lessons came from. And remember the men who sacrificed everything? For us. And until next time, this is Echo and JoCo.