152: Consistent Discipline, Drive, and Sacrifice. The Ethos Of a Marine Raider, with Derek Herrera.

This is Jocko podcast number 152 with echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

These are men that would rather die than live with the shame that they didn't offer their last breath in service to the men to their left and to their right in battle.

Each man was shaped through immense trials, personal fortitude and dedication, giving all he had to offer.

At times when only the great pride of walking in the path least traveled was there to keep him company.

Through constant discipline, drive and sacrifice, they have risen to the top of their trade and embodied the ethos of the Marine Raider.

A man who displays the very pinnacle of soldiery, virtue and unwavering loyalty. A man who will never quit or surrender and who will at all times stand ready to sacrifice whatever is needed to accomplish the mission.

They stand as shiny examples what our nation entrusts its freedom and respect to.

Nothing is more awe inspiring than the look on a fellow operator's face as they are surrounded by death.

The casual smile of confidence as they acknowledge that things will be what they'll be.

And if this is the way we die.

Then let's do it right and honor our legacy.

When surrounded on all sides, we faced what seemed the inevitability of death.

Not a man before you skipped a beat in their commitment.

All or nothing.

Death or glory.

And those are some excerpts from a speech by Marine Raider Gunnery Sergeant Brian C. Jacklin talking about a mission that he was on. And I think in that speech, he did a great job of explaining the type of man that makes up the Marine Raiders, which is the Marine Corps component of Special operations.

And tonight, we are lucky enough to be sitting with one of those men. A United States Marine, a special operations Raider, and a true harrow, Derek Herrera. Derek, welcome, man. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

It's awesome to have you on here, man. I know we got hooked up through some old mutual friends and I'm glad we did. And I'm glad to sit down and be able to talk to you and hear a little bit about you and your life and everything that you've done. And as usual.

Let'S start in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Sounds good. Yeah.

Which is where you were born, right?

I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Like, what was the family doing in Little Rock, Arkansas?

My father was pilot in the Air Force.

Okay.

And so he was stationed there, and I was born there in 1984.

And. And then how long were you guys moving around? All the time. Typical military Family?

Yes, absolutely. So moved about every two or three years. So I lived in Arkansas for about two years. Moved to Illinois, I think, for a year or two. And then Honduras for an overseas assignment to go see Galpa, Honduras in the late 80s, which was pretty interesting.

Do you speak Spanish then?

No.

I did for a while and then tried to replace it with Arabic and then Pashto, and I learned that it's not one of my gifts.

Let's just go with English and get a terp.

Exactly.

New enough to be tactically conversant, you know, But. But no. So lived there for a few years, and then my dad moved to Dover, Delaware. Was stationed at Dover Air Force Base. He was a C130 and C5 pilot and continued to bounce around. But at that time in elementary school, my parents had divorced, so my family still lives in Delaware today. Also the opportunity to live in Colorado and a few other places.

But at what. At what age were you when you got sort of like the military bug in your head?

It was always a family business. So my grandfathers were both in the air Force for 25 years and 28 years, respectively. They were enlisted in the Air Force, and my father was in the air force for 22 years in active duty.

How did you not get bit by the Air Force bug?

It was interesting. So going through high school, I'd always knew I'd wanted to serve in the military and started to get interested in the surface academy option as well. So when I lived in Colorado, actually, my dad was. I live with my dad when he was stationed at the Air Force Academy. So we lived on the Air Force Academy when I was there for seventh and eighth grade and just always was drawn to that line of work and.

Decided Air Force Academy is. That's a nice environment.

It's a really nice environment. It's beautiful.

Yeah. And. And your dad was working there and that, it seemed. Was that not. I mean, when you say you were thinking about the military academies, were you thinking of the Air Force Academy as your primary or.

No. So after that experience in ninth grade, I moved back and lived with my mom in high school in Delaware. And my senior year of high school.

Had been playing lacrosse up to that point and had the opportunity to go and play for Navy or try to walk on at least, and had decent relationships with the coaches there. And so I was applying to Navy and Air Force and.

Also wanted to be a Navy seal, actually. And so at that time I wanted to go to the Naval Academy. And so as soon as I got in and Got accepted there, stopped applying other places and just decided to go there.

Yeah, right on.

Did you visit the Naval Academy? Do you know what was going on at the Naval Academy?

I thought I did.

The only reason I asked that is because, like, I mean, I know I was not the most squared away kid. I was kind of a rebellious kid. And even though I love the military, I think if I would have gone to. And I went to West Point when I was a little kid and that kind of got me fired up, you know, I think my dad took me to some kind of game there. I mean, I was really young, like maybe seven or eight or something like that, but it was enough to make me go. Yeah, you know, I kind of. But I think if I saw it when I was a little bit older, I don't know, I think I would have just said, like, I don't know if I can put up with all that right now. Yeah, but you did. You were like, I'm bring it.

You know, any 17 year old young man.

Doesn'T always have all the right motivations and, you know, you have all the reasons why you go to a place like that. And what I found after I had gone there was that those reasons change once you're there. And so I entered in 2002 shortly after September 11th. It wasn't solely out of patriotic duty and every, you know, and those sorts of things. It was because, you know, I had already gotten in. I'd wanted to play lacrosse there. I was in love with my high school sweetheart from Delaware, who's now still my wife of almost 13 years. And so those were the reasons why I'd initially, you know, decided to go.

How did that play? How did you have in your high school sweetheart? How did that play into. Want to go into the Naval Academy? Because you would be close by.

Yeah, it was about an hour drive away.

Got it.

So she could come and. Yeah, see me on the weekends, that kind of stuff. And, and so those were some of the initial reasons why I went there, in addition to all the, the patriotic reasons as well. But what I found when I was there and you're challenged and you're tested, is those smaller, superficial motivators often fade away. Right. And what you're left with is those reasons why I initially went here aren't going to continue to propel me through the rest of this trial. Right. And so the, the motivation and the things that I learned from there at that point was the seniors that we had watched and were led by who had just graduated were literally Going forward and leading Marines and sailors in battle. And we literally watched that on television with the invasion of Iraq and the things going on in Afghanistan and really bought into the entire leadership philosophy, wanted to be a part of that and wanted to be that and follow that example. So those were the reasons why I tried to stay and continue to move forward and become a military officer.

I always, lately I've been like, apologizing to people because there's actually been a pretty decent number of people that have joined the military because of listening to, you know, all of us and the guys I bring on here talk about their experiences and they just think that sounds pretty cool. And I always say, hey, just don't be mad at me. Like the first two weeks that you're going through boot camp or whatever, don't be mad because it's just, it's like not. It's going to be a shock to your system when you lose all that freedom that you've had. And. But I totally agree with you in the fact that, like, once you get through that initial shock and you realize that there's a long term thing going on here and you want to be a part of it, that's. Yeah, that's, that's, that's awesome. And especially for you guys that came in after September 11, because that's, that's a. I don't know if people can appreciate that, what the difference is between the pre September 11th and post September 11th. I mean, pre September 11th, there was almost, in fact, my first deployment to Iraq. My SEAL platoon had zero combat experience. Zero, zero. So no one had any combat experience at all. The most things that anyone had done at that point was doing ship boardings in the Persian Gulf, which is not combat experience. It's just a, it's just a fairly administrative operation. And now every single guy, every single guy in the SEAL teams has combat experience. Every single guy. Well, I mean, barring maybe a few outliers, but basically every single guy, you know, the Marine Corps. Look at the Marine Corps right now. I mean, it's been, it's been what, 17 years of fighting. And the combat experience is just so incredible compared to prior to September 11, which it was totally rare to have somebody at a SEAL team that was in the first Gulf War, that was in one of the three platoons that got to do something. And what they did, you know, God bless them, they were doing their duty, but it wasn't these big, long, sustained combat operations.

Yeah, it's interesting and I think that's something that you Know, I think about a lot today, especially when we talk about millennials and everything else, and they get a bad rap, but everybody knows what they're joining the military to do. Like, and some men and women run to the sound of the gun. Right. And some don't. And so the people that continue to stay and, like, there was no question of what. What you were doing if you signed up to join the Marine Corps or the seals. Right.

Like, and then how did that selection process, you said you wanted to possibly go in the SEAL teams. How did that work out that you didn't go in the SEAL teams? And you. That's got to be a tough decision to make.

Yeah. And sometimes it's made for you.

Right?

So Naval academy is a very, very humbling experience. And so as I came out of high school, I was kind of a very talented young athlete, and, you know, was able to get in, but I was also from a small town and, you know, didn't have the humility and ownership needed to be a part of the teams. And that became readily apparent. You know, I was physically capable, but just wasn't mature enough, honestly, and wasn't, you know, didn't have that right mindset. So I was thoroughly humbled. And then as I was kind of, you know, coming to the realization of what I wanted to do with my life, what. What now? You know, had a mentor of mine who I really respected, who was a Marine major, and said, you know, Derek, like, I can help you try to get in the Marine Corps if you're still wanting to do that, and that's what you want to do. I think you'd make a great officer. And, you know, the Marine Corps that you see at the Naval Academy is not. What is the reality. Right. Of what the fleet does. Because I had a really bad taste for Marines there because all the Marines there were drill instructors, and it was their job to mess with you. And so I was like, man, Marines are dumb. I don't want to be like that. But the more I got to know the reality of what it was like in the fleet and what. What real Marines were doing, decided to pursue it and absolutely loved it. It was the best thing for me.

And did you get. So then you go from there to. From the academy, go to the basic school, correct?

Yeah, so we go to the basic school. We go for the six months of. Of the basic school, and with every Marine officer, so every Marine officer, ground, air, everybody goes through that same process. And then during that time, there's another selection. And so you Know, literally rank every choice you have from, you know, tank, supply, logistics, finance, at like 1 through 21. If you're a ground officer or if you're a pilot, obviously you have a flight contract, you don't have to do that, but you rank it and then they do a quality spread to determine what you get. And so in some cases, pre 9 11, like you said, it was, it was really hard and competitive to become an infantry officer. And then when we were there, it was still pretty competitive until about halfway through the course, or, excuse me, like a month out from the end of the course because manpower came down, it was like, we're standing up a new infantry regiment.

So boom.

Yeah. And so. So I think I would have gotten infantry regardless, but either way, got what I wanted. It was my first choice and that's exactly what I wanted to do and move forward and.

And then where'd you, where'd you go from. From there? Would you.

So you stay in Quantico for a three month course called Infantry Officers Course.

Get some.

And it's amazing.

Yeah.

One of the best training experiences there are. And so you learn weapon systems, you learn, you know, all different kinds of basic small unit tactics, everything you need to be able to lead a rifle platoon in, you know, an infantry battalion.

Yeah. I don't know if you. Yeah. You said you listened to the podcast with Jim Webb on it and like his first of all. And so then you went to a battalion and then you started to work up.

Yeah.

And all that. Jim Webb went from that school to Vietnam and they like brought him out in the field and dropped him off and said, there's your platoon over there. The guy you're replacing is no longer with us and you're gonna go take over that battalion. And he walked up on the side of a hill and said, hey, how you doing? I'm Lieutenant Webb and here's what we're gonna do. And then that night they got in a big firefight and he called in, you know, combined arms and. Man. But that school must be, must be an awesome school.

It's pretty amazing. Yeah. And by the time we were there, we had really phenomenal leaders and instructors who were able to teach us because they were fresh off the battlefield in Iraq and were able to teach us exactly what we were going to do. And so for me, I went into a long workup prior to deploying, but some of our guys were just like, what happened to Jim Webb?

No kidding.

They had maybe a month or meeting their platoon at their, their final exercise as they're stepping off to, to go to Iraq.

And so that's no joke, right?

There was. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. And so for me, you know, I ended up going to a new battalion that was standing up, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, the walking dead, and.

Had about a year roughly to work with my platoon and to train before we ended up deploying to Iraq.

And that was just a standard ground pounder infantry platoon initially.

Yes. Yeah. And so we were a standard rifle platoon. And then about two months before deployment, based on the needs of the situation in Ramadi, where we're deploying to, the decision was made to actually break us down into smaller training teams and advisory teams. And so my platoon of, you know, roughly 40 marines and sailors turned into two 12 man teams, which I was in charge of one, and my platoon sergeant was in charge of another one. And so the reason they did that was because that was roughly the minimum size required to partner with effectively for these police stations. And so at that time.

Due to the successes of people like yourself and the other people that had fought in Ramadi and turned the tide of the battle, we were consolidating and basically, you know, withdrawing a lot of the combat power. And so we took over for two different infantry battalions and another army unit with just one infantry battalion. So we had the entire AO area of operations for just one battalion. And so I had initially one police station that I was partnered with, you know, as a. A young lieutenant in a 12 man team. We partnered with an Iraqi colonel and over 800 Iraqi police.

Whereabouts were you?

So we were in a small neighborhood just south of Camp Rami called Tamim.

Okay, Tamim.

And so all of Tamim we were managing with police there because the police had done such a good job and taken over.

That, you know, we were in the back seat.

Yeah, almost totally just to give everyone a tooth. This is 2008, right? Correct, yeah. So 2008, the major fighting kind of tapered off in, in.

07. I mean, early 07, they were pretty, it was pretty calm. I know the guys that relieved us, by the time they left, it was very calm in Ramadi. You know, obviously there's still always going to be a threat, but like Tamim, when we were there, there was, there was a lot. There was really bad, big, gnarly IEDs in Tamim when we were there. And it was, it was. Yeah, it was awful. Some of, some of those Humvees would get hit and it would just be, you know, they'd lose three, four, five guys at a shot. It Was a, it was horrible. But you know, that's awesome. And that's. I always trying to explain to people that.

That in Ramadi we actually won. And you know, you're proof of that. When you were over there and you guys were, I'm sure doing out civil affairs and you know that type of thing, is that basically what you were doing?

Yeah, we were you know, just really just trying to turn it over to the police there and so got to sit on, you know, the weekly shuros and the council meetings and hang out and drink tea with the colonel and we try to try to do operations with them and everything, but they locked the place down. I mean literally by the time we were there, they had, you know, triple strain concertina wire and checkpoints all around the entire city. So they were controlling the flow of, they prevented the flow of any, you know, enemy material or any fighters. So that then they did such a good job that honestly I don't think anybody shot at us the entire deployment. We had a few different smaller IEDs here and there. We had one major incident with a vehicle borne IED that killed a lot of our Iraqi policemen unfortunately. But none of our Americans were involved or had gotten, gotten injured at that time. But they were very well trained fighting force and you know, they did good work.

How was it setting the expectations for your 19 year old Marines that was, that were, you know, on deployment with you that were expecting to go get some.

Yeah, that was interesting. So you gotta, you gotta deal, you know, with the missions that you're, you're given. Right. And so the average 19 year old Lance Corporal or 18 year old Lance corporal at that time, you know, signed up to join, to go fight. Yeah, that wasn't our mission and so we were very cognizant of that. And over the year, the workup, we were well educated too. So we had direct comms with the teams we were turning over with over classified email network and those sorts of things. And we're able to find out exactly what we'd be going into. And so we were able to manage those expectations appropriately.

Yeah.

And because of that we were, we were successful. I think our teams performed well. You know, they're obviously frustrated at times. You know.

Yeah, no, I would have guys ask me that. You know, guys, once I was, well, I was back when I was still in. But guys would say, you know, how am I supposed to get guys fired up to do this mission when it's all we're going to be doing is drinking tea and you know, I'd say, listen, that's, that's still your mission and you have to do it to the best of your ability and get the Iraqi police trained up as best you can and like, you still have to just attack it with everything you've got, regardless of what that mission is. And, and that's, hey man, that's, that's what, that's what the nation is calling on you to do. Is that right there? And so go do it to the best of your ability. And that's again, you know, that's why I asked you that question, because believe me, you get these young kids, man, they don't want to have tea with anybody.

No, they just want to shoot their saw. Yeah, and we're pretty fortunate and we did do some interesting things as well. So because we had access and placement within the neighborhood.

Tamim was kind of a pretty tightly, you know, packed urban area and a lot of people would come and go. And so at that time we had great intelligence networks that would, were able to help, you know, help us identify if somebody didn't belong. And we were able to work with our, our counterparts to, to try to, you know, intervene before they were able to cause any issues. And so we mounted up for a few different raids which, you know, kept, kept the guys motivated and things. But, but it's kind of a good and bad thing, right, that, you know, there was no, no fight going on in that regards. Good in the sense that, you know, the guys are safe and came back and were able to have a successful deployment and still do something really meaningful for the country, but, you know, not as, as exciting as they would have wanted because that's, you know, what the 18 year old signs up to join, to go do, you know, volunteers to do.

Yeah, I don't think too many guys walk in that recruiter's office thinking about, you know, police actions or anything like that. But. Yeah, but that's, but you have to send their expectations correctly. And it sounds like you were able to do that now when you came home from that deployment, you, you deployed again. But it was like even more, it was even more on the humanitarian side. So what was that like? Well, tell us about that one.

That was tough too. So before I had actually deployed again, when I came back, I had such a good experience and learned about MARSOC at that time, the Marine Special Operations Command that did selection in between those two deployments and was selected. And so at that time, the criteria to get into MARSOC was you had to do two deployments and so had to Go back and train and then deploy again.

So wait, so is selection like buds for marsoc? Is that what it is?

Kind of. We follow more of a Green Beret army model. So it's modeled very, very similarly to a. The Special Forces assessment selection process.

So how long is the training?

It's about six weeks. And so you go there and you do, you know, the basic tasks associated with selection, including, you know, hiking a lot and land nav and psychological screenings.

Is it more of like a weeding out? Are they actually training you for anything?

Yeah, there's no, I wouldn't say there's really much of training. It's a lot of critical thinking and practice problem solving and very similar to the sfs as far as like, you know, here's problem set, ethical problem set, physical problem set, teamwork and you're continually being evaluated. But that's just a basic evaluation to just get the shot at going to like, you know, going to our training course. And so then we have a seven month long.

Okay, I got it. So the first thing that you go through is just selection to see if you're going to be able to go through the real course. Yeah, okay, got it. Yeah, yeah. BUDS doesn't do that. You just show up there and that's what, that's one of the reasons the attrition rate so high. Maybe if we had them pre. And actually I take that back now they do have like a pre. You go to like a pre buds and you get prepared for it and all that. But so you go to that selection and you get picked up. So you go through that thing and they pick you up, but then you haven't done two deployments. They go, no, you still got to go on deployment again in. Yeah. And that deployment ends up being a humanitarian deployment for the most part.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So we did what was called the Marine Expeditionary Unit and so on the Marine Expeditionary Unit there are marines and parked aboard naval vessels and so there's a battalion, infantry battalion.

I did two, I did two mu. Our deployments back in the day day. So I was out there with all the boys getting after it. That's how I developed a bunch of, you know, have a bunch of friends that were in the Marine Corps in recon and Force Recon from that time from doing ARG deployments. So yeah, we, we got our shipboard time. We used to. Seals don't go. Don't really do that too much anymore.

But no, no. And yeah, and I think that's a good thing. It was tough. That Was. That was pretty tough, you know, so talk about motivating your team to stay motivated through seven months of shaking hands and drinking tea in Iraq, and now it's, hey, stay ready and just train. On a ship where, you know, you have no room, you don't have any real ability to train. The gym holds six people, and there's three treadmills, and you can't get on the flight deck for, you know, two hours a day.

What kind of ship were you on?

So I was on the LPD19. It was a Mesa Verde. It was nicer. It was newer ship, so it was nice. And it was good because we were on the. It was a smaller ship, so we weren't on the major. You know, the big flat top with the command deck. And so. So it's pretty good. And. And I had a great deployment because I was a company executive officer. And so I got to spend very little time on the ship, which was a lot of fun because got to go and plan all the training. And so, you know, we were bouncing around doing different bilateral training missions with Israel, Jordan, Oman, trained in Kuwait, had some liberty time in Qatar, Bahrain, all of the peaceful countries in the Middle East. Yeah, so it was. It was good. It was a really good experience. But, you know, a lot of Marines hated it because they were stuck on the ship. They didn't have the luxury that I did to go and get off the ship and train. And so it was a. It was interesting deployment.

Yeah, those shipboard deployments are very interesting. They were like. We would do the really dumb stuff. First of all, when I was on shipboard deployments, there was no Internet. There was nothing. So we. We would. Yeah. And I mean, we were just dumb. And so we would watch. We had, you know, a big box full of videotapes. You know what those are?

Yeah.

Yes.

Video cassettes. Because there was no whatever. Streaming, Netflix. So we just had, like. I don't know, we probably watched 20 movies 5,000 times each. So that era of movies I'm very familiar with. But. But. Yeah, and then it was like. You know, the big joke about seals is when you're on a ship is sleep, eat, and lift. That's what it stands for, is sleep, eat, and left, because that's all there is to do. And. But we would. We would PT every day out on the flight deck or somewhere on the ship, and then we would try and set up where we'd go shoot seals. Skeet. We brought pallets and pallets worth of skeet. So we'd go on the back the fantail of the ship and throw skeet and shoot it, or we'd sit out there with grenade launchers and launch grenades at the trash. So we tried to make it fun, you know, but still, there's 24 hours in a day and there's not a lot to do on a ship.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's very pretty boring and yeah, and for all the listeners too, the. That was the reality pre 9 11, before there were all these deployments. Oh, yeah, that was. You know, you were just. So the mission for the MEW was just to be prepared in a crisis, this crisis response force, essentially. And so for us, we actually had the opportunity to do one real world mission responding to the earthquake in Haiti, which was, like you said, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. And so.

Right off the bat, as we were getting underway, that had happened a couple weeks before we were scheduled to deploy. So we got on and went down and were able to get involved and help out. And so just flew in with the company Marines. And our company was tasked with just helping provide and establish security for a forward staging base, logistics area for some of the food and water that they were distributing.

So how bad was it down there?

Pretty terrible. It was really, really bad. We flew in on a helicopter into the giant dirt field, which, you know, we were bouncing C wire and, you know, setting up fire plan sketches and everything just to. To get, you know, everything squared away. But the level of poverty was pretty, pretty striking for, for us. I mean, we had Marine standing post and standing guard and everything. And, you know, you see four homeless kids between the age 8 and 12 sleeping with, you know, everything they own, and they're sharing one blanket outside the wire, just hanging out. You know, we see like a fist fight, a drag, knockout, drag down fist fight between two girls that are age whatever, 12 and 14 over a piece of wood, because firewood is like gold there because they just don't have wood. And so that was really, really eye opening experience for us.

And so what were you guys doing? Were you guys bringing water? Were you bringing medical care? What were you doing?

So the UN was administering all the food and water, and so they basically dropped us off in typical Marine Corps fashion. They said, you know, pack light. You'll only be in there for 24 hours before we leave you. And then as we're getting on the bird, they're like, okay, it might be like 48. And by the time we land, they're like, we're not sure when you're getting out. So. So we End up staying for about nine days and, you know, had to beg, borrow and steal things there. But our job was just to literally make sure that, you know, overnight they could drop off 60 shipping trailers, ISO containers of food and water and that people weren't going to.

Who distributed the food and water?

It was primarily the UN force there. So I think at that time it was a lot of, I think it was a primary Brazilian force. And so they would come in, in the mornings, load up and go and distribute it. And I know that was different for a lot of other places, but for us that was, that was the mission that we had and that was the kind of the way it worked. So just a very short temporary stint and then got back on the ships and steamed across the Atlantic and then.

And then hit all a bunch of exercises and whatnot. Like you said over in the Gulf.

Yeah, yeah. So unfortunately we didn't get to do the exercise we had planned for Israel because we were in Haiti instead. So we went straight to, I think it was Jordan, where we did Infinite Moonlight, I think at that time. And we were able to do some basic patrolling with the Jordanian soldiers. That was kind of cool, actually, because not only is Jordan just an amazing country to be in, but.

Those people that we were training with were some of the same units that we're going to fight in Afghanistan.

Okay.

And so the Jordanians provided a good contingent of forces to go, go forward in Afghanistan. So that was, that was fun getting to work with those guys and to train with those guys. And then we trained with Omani soldiers and that was pretty interesting as well.

The thing we learned which was really interesting was.

Actual Omanis, there's not. They really small population. So they have. At least the units that we were working with had some, some conscripts from Pakistan, essentially Baluchistan. And so the officers spoke Arabic and they were Omani, but the rest of the platoon was all Baluchi and, you know, spoke Baluchi. And so it was kind of interesting to see how that worked. But, you know, very capable force had a good time.

No kidding.

Fighting with those guys.

And so, yeah, modern day conscripts. Yeah.

And I mean, they all volunteer. I mean, they, they, I guess technically concert might not be the right word. They all volunteered to be there. And so we talked to another platoon sergeant. He's like, hey, so it's like a.

Way I've been here for money and get a better life for themselves.

So he's like, hey, the deal is, is I've been here for 20 years. I love Doing this job, I will send money home back to my family, and if I make it to 30, they'll let me bring my family over here. So he hadn't seen his family in 20 years, but he's, you know, trying to better their lot in life by going forward to, you know, live and fight for another country, which you can't. Can't fault him for that. Like, that's what you want to work with.

All right, so you get home. You get home from that deployment, and now it's time to go to. What's the. What's the long course of marsoc? What's that course called?

It's called Individual Training Course. And so it is.

Pretty similar to other Special Forces training courses.

So where is it?

It's in North Carolina, Camp Lejeune. And so we have a small portion of the base there now where we've established the pretty sizable compound. And so I'd say probably 80 to 90% of the marine Special Operations Command is headquartered there. And then they have a small west coast contingent out here at Camp Pendleton. And so the entire schoolhouse is there. And that's where every operator goes through training.

And how long is that course?

It's about seven to eight months.

And what are you doing in that course?

So that is a course that encompasses all of the basic fundamentals required to join a team and to be an operator. So we do the first phase is some physical training. You know, you do some basic fire support, some medical training. You do your sear. Your full spectrum seer training there. And then you move into some basic SR and patrolling to special reconnaissance. And basic, you know, reconnaissance skills are guys.

This.

So this isn't really a selection course, then? I mean.

No, this is a training course.

But. But like.

But it's pretty high stakes, too. And guys are quitting or guys quit. Yeah, yeah. Plenty of guys quit.

Really?

It's not easy. Yeah. Yeah. So we kind of.

It just. The way, you know, it just seems like if someone was a Marine already and then they made it through that first course, and now they show up at this course. It seems like that's. That's a lot of hoops to jump through to get to there and then quit. That seems kind of a little bit crazy.

Yeah, yeah. Well, we had some great instructors, and they. They pushed us hard. Right. They tried to break us.

What are they doing? What is it like, the same. Is it like the BUDS type stuff? Be cold, be wet, be tired, be miserable. No sleep is just to get some of that?

Yeah, for the most Part kind of a mix of BUDS and SQT probably mixed together. And so one of the things that they were able to do within MARSOC is to try to take lessons learned and best practices from all of the other services. And so whether it was the Q course or BUDS or SQT or OTC or anything else, the instructors kind of looked at what was going on in other courses and looked at the requirement for Marine raiders coming out the backside because some of those guys will graduate. And we had guys deploy within a month or two later on hot fills out to go operate.

So do they. Do they put you through like another, like, crucible type scenario?

Yeah, so it kind of makes. It's called Raider Spirit and.

Well, that's. That sounds real fun. That's one of those things like, I'm gonna get you a little bit that Raider Spirit. Come get some.

Yeah, yeah. And it's of varying length depending upon the class and the size and the performance. But at that point, you're trained in your amphib package or basic small boat handling. You're trained in, you know, basic reconnaissance and in those principles, all your comms and everything else. So it's basically a full flip, full mission profile for, you know, including an amphibious insert, which for us was, I think like January get. So maybe.

And so.

And then same thing, you know, limited sleep, limited water, limited food type thing. So pretty. Pretty intense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It just seems like a super. The Marine Corps squared away and it. That's. This whole thing sounds like a squared away to do this because if you look at buds.

You don't even have real guns. Most of buds, you don't even have rifles. You're carrying. You're literally carrying a boat paddle. They kind of make that your weapon because you can't lose it and you can't put it down all this stuff. But it's a boat paddle. I mean, you're just. You're so. You're just so young and untrained. You know, you just have no skills. And so there's no. It's just. And they teach. You know, when you get to land warfare, you teach, you learn some basic diving, but the diving that you learn is just so.

So just. Just easy. Like looking back on. It's just the easiest possible things you could possibly do. Diving. And the same thing with the land warfare pieces. Like, they're telling you, hey, walk this far. And like they're telling you exactly where to go. It's not even. It's barely. You do land nav, but it's barely Land navigation. And it's, and it's good because, you know, it weeds out a lot of people. But then you have to go through, like you said, sqt, which comes afterwards. And that's where you start learning. Okay, this is real land nav. Okay. This is real shooting. Okay. This is, you know, actual room entries. And then you get to a SEAL team where you go through more training. But it seems like it. That's why I was kind of, I guess I was kind of surprised that guys that had been through enough stuff already would get to that and still be like, you know, I don't want to do this. That seems crazy to me.

Yeah, yeah. It's a gut check. I mean.

And that's one of the things that is interesting. You know, BUDS does a good job of weeding people out up front. And so you have a pretty high quality care, you know, as far as the intangibles, the ethical and character principles. And then for us, you know, it's kind of, I would say more on a sustained.

Sustained beat down.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean we started, I think we started the course with like 50 or 60 guys and 13 of the original guys finished.

No kidding.

That's changed a lot since then. So we've grown up a lot since then and just like BUDS has, right?

Like, oh yeah. You know, I bet back in the day those, those new MARSOC instructors, like, no one's getting through my course.

Yeah. And rightfully so. But the cool thing about it now I see both sides of the team token. But the cool thing about it now is that we want more guys. We need more guys. We don't want to lower the standards.

Yeah.

So why don't we just be smarter about it? Right. Like if we do a better job of selecting guys or get more guys starting or whatever else. Right. Like if the output is a trained operator and we need, need these guys, then.

Was there any part of that training that you thought was hard?

Yeah, a lot of it.

Was there anything that you were in jeopardy on where it was actually?

Yeah. So same thing, right? So hum. You know, Naval academy was humbling. Being the Marine Corps has been humbling. And at that point I was a pretty humble guy. And so I did really well throughout the majority of training.

And.

So in the last phase, all feeling good about yourself, I was okay, but I said, you know, so we were doing the unconventional warfare package. Very similar to, very similar to what the Green Braes do with their final exercise and infoing with the G force and everything else. And so was Doing well, and then.

Had a bad meeting where somebody thought I came off a little bit arrogant with our G Force commander and everything. And so then they just kind of, you know, put the spotlight on me and, you know, put me, put me on the bubble, right? Because, like, you fail anything and you're done. And so, you know, that was one of the scarier times, right? Because I committed years of my life to be able to be doing this successfully. And then in a moment, you know, if I can't figure out how to make this guy like me or this G Force commander, you know, execute this mission with me, like I'm on the bubble, right? I think, you know, some of its instructors mess around, but they're, they're just testing you, right? Like, you know, see, how are you going? How do you deal with failure, right? Because if you've been successful thus far in a good number of things.

Let'S push him beyond his limit. Let's break him and see what happens, right? And. And I don't know if that was exactly the case. I didn't see behind the curtain, but I survived.

I failed something called pool competency. And I failed pool competency, which is they put, they put your dive rig on, which is an old school dive rig with a, with an inhalation and an exhalation tube. And it's this, this old thing from like the 60s or 70s or something, Aqua lung. And you have to do all this stuff that they tell you to do underwater, and they're, they're slapping you around and smashing you and ripping your mask off and risk ripping your regulator out and all this stuff. And you have to stay calm and you have to go through all these procedures. And when I went through, it was a 30 minute evolution. And the first time I did it, my instructor who ended up working for me in the future, he was a. Well, he was a first class at the time, but he became a warrant officer. But he was a UDT Vietnam guy, an awesome guy, but he failed me. And.

Yeah, so I failed. And years later, I talked to him and I was like, hey, do you remember putting me through pool? He said, yeah, I was just messing with you. And I'm like, bro, you almost ruined my life. What are you talking about? You're just mad. He goes, no, I knew you'd do fine next time. But same thing. Like, it was a test of, let's just see how this guy does. But what we did over the weekend, me and a couple buddies that were. That had also failed, we went in the dip Tank which was just a square metal box that was filled with water. And we pool comped each other. This. I don't even, I can't even believe we did this. It was probably the most unsafe thing I did or one of the top unsafe things I did was we drowned each other and trashed each other getting ready. And we did it to each other over and over again until we were like, there's no way we're gonna fail. And so that's what we did. Like there's four of us or something. We just spent the weekend in the. I don't even. I can't even believe they let us do that. They just gave us dive gear. And so you're just going to play with the dive gear. Cool. We're in the dip tank like idiots.

Different time, right?

Yeah, yeah. But it is humbling. And it's one of those things, you know, there's no worse feeling for me than that feeling of like, oh, if I fail, this, this is, this is like my whole life dream done and destroyed. So, yeah, they make, they play those, they play those games with you. Yeah, I think they have to play those games with you because you're going to fail in other situations. Once you get to the, to the teams, you know you want it. You do want to see how people are going to deal with failure. And they would do things like that in buds where, you know, they would. There would be seven people that, that would pass a swim and everyone else is a failure and they, you know, tell us, you know, they, they line us all up and make every single. Make 100 guys sign a chit that we were loser failures on the swim and if we fail again, we're gonna be dropped from training. I don't think that was actually true. I don't know, but it didn't. Looking back at the time, I believe at the time I was like, oh my God. So they do a good job of that psychological warfare on you in that training.

Yeah, before that too. That another pretty intense phase. So we do the CQB initial CQB phase prior to that too. And so that one was. Same thing. That was pretty high stakes, pretty high, you know, high stress.

Did you mess up?

No, I, I was, I was okay there. Yeah, I didn't have any issues.

Throw any rounds, you shoot me. Any hostages? No, I shot a hostage one time. Yeah, I shot a. Just in training, but yeah, obviously just in training, but this guy, they had a target set up. You know, those, those, they look like watercolor painting targets. So they're different characters. And you could take little. You could take the person's hand and you could paste over like a pistol or a cell phone or a badge or a. Whatever. So I come into this room and it's kind of dusk. And this was back in the day, so we didn't even use night vision. This is just like day, you know, we're just shooting with our eyesight, our regular eyesight. And I come in and there's a guy and I look at his hands and I see like a dark pipe pointed at me. And I drilled this dude, you know, two to the chest, one to the head. Gets. And we get done with a run. And the instructor, he comes out and he's like. He's holding the target in his hands and he's like, he's like, hey, Jocko, look at this. And I was like, check. And he goes, what do you see? And, and what it was, was, it was allegedly, it was a rolled up newspaper that he was pointing at the.

The.

At you, you know, at me. And it looked like the barrel of a gun. And I. And I looked at the instructor, I was like, hey, bro, if I come into a room and someone's doing that, they're gonna die. I'm sorry, man, you can't do that. Because the guy looks all jacked. He's this guy, this guy with the green shirt. I'm gonna find one of these and post it because I'm sure you can find them. It's the guy with the green shirt, super thick neck, and looks all hostile and aggressive, and he's pointing this pipe at me and I drilled him and I got in trouble. That was my, you know, I had whatever had to run a tire or something like that. But that was when I was in the teams that was, you know, hey, yeah, horrible. And you do, you know, even. Even though I was like, hey, I'll do that anyways, but inside. And you know, even though I was like, man, that, you know, you got to be better than that. And that was a. That was jacked up for me to do that. And so I had to check hands more carefully and be more patient in taking that shot to make sure what I'm looking at is what I'm looking at. So, yeah, failure is a good teacher. And it's very humbling. And then.

So do you guys have like a full on graduation ceremony from that? Do you get a pin? Do you get that, that new Raider.

Pin they do now? Yeah, we didn't have one at the time, so we've We've grown up. We weren't called Raiders and we didn't have a pin. So we just got a little certificate handshake and sent on our way.

And then you went to where.

And then I was assigned to Camp Pendleton, California. So I moved out here with my wife and joined 1st Marine Raider Battalion. And.

And that was your first time being out at Pendleton, correct?

Yeah.

How you like Pendleton?

I love it. It's awesome. I still live here. Didn't make it far, even though my wife's family, all our family is still in Delaware. So we. We love it here. Hope to never leave.

It's Pendleton is. Is awesome training ground. I mean, really awesome training ground.

Yes. Yeah, it's great. Great place to train. We did a lot of our training there and typical places out in the desert, you know, like Fort Irwin and a couple other places. But yeah, it's. It's good and it's massive. I had no idea how big it was, but just huge.

And then how long was that work up for?

We had. So I arrived in August and I was in the three shop in the operations section before I went to a team for about two months. And then we deployed in May. So about nine months that I was with the team. They had done their. The workup cycle, I think, was probably similar to what the SEAL teams had done, where it's. You come back, you go back, and immediately guys are shotgunned out to schools, individual training, and then come back to collective training and then deploy. I had gotten there right when Edward was trickling back in from a lot of the individual schools that they were going to.

And then how big is the team that you take over?

We had 20 total with attachments. And so each team is about 14 or not about exactly 14. So there's, you know, small headquarters element and then two foreman elements to corpsman, you know, medics, and. And then we plussed up with our intel assets and EOD and gotten country, got some dog handlers and some other stuff as well with our team.

And then. And that when you say got in country, this is. This is you. You deployed to Afghanistan?

Yes.

And now it's 2012, correct?

Yeah, 2012. So I'd gotten out of training in 2011 and then deployed in May of 2012.

And then what was that when you were going into that deployment? What was the atmosphere in Afghanistan at that time?

The atmosphere was different depending upon the region you were in. Very, very different. So.

Where we were going was highly kinetic. Bad guys run around all over the place, just kill or be killed and focusing a lot on security and combat operations. And so there were two mission sets that our teams would. Would perform. Either they would be doing a program called Village Stability Operations, which is what we were doing, or they would be assigned to a commando Kandak battalion, which is more like Afghanistan's version of, you know, Ranger regiment or anything else. And so when we deployed, we deployed with a company. So we had three Marine teams. One of our teams took over a commando mission, and the other two were doing village stability operations. And then as we deployed, we took over a couple of SEAL units and a Green Beret team as well that reported to our company headquarters as well. So specifically for our team, where we went, we were in very, very primitive rural area in the middle of the Helmand province, right in the Green Zone. And.

Which Green Zone means something different in Afghanistan than it did in Iraq? Green Zone in Iraq was an area in Baghdad, actually, that was. That was controlled and safe and all good to go for Americans. And there was other people living there and whatnot. It was a safe zone. And the Green Zone in Afghanistan is not that.

No, no. So the Green Zone in Afghanistan literally is due to vegetation. And so the Green Zone Afghanistan is mostly arid or desert climate, and there's very little green areas or good farmland, essentially. And I think it was in the 60s, I think it was the USAID or another international development agency built another canal off of the Helmand River. And so in between those two waterways was good farmland because farmers there would, you know, cut out canals and everything else to grow crops. And so this was like one of the only green areas in the entire country. That's what they. They mean in the Afghanistan version of the Green Zone.

And since there's vegetation is also cover and concealment for fighters. For enemy fighters.

Yeah. And so where we were, it was. It was tough because guys would use those canals to sneak up, and it was very undulating or hilly terrain. I would consider. And when I try to explain it to most people, too, I consider it more. More similar to trench warfare than just desert open warfare where you can see other people. People are very able to, especially with some of the urban structures there as well. Some of the enemy fighters would be able to creep up and, you know, try to get the drop on you and. And get close to your position.

So these. So you were doing vso, the Village Stability Operations. And what did that. What did kind of what was your standard VSO mission look like? What was that deal?

So for the VSO mission, we had three lines of effort. So the first was to establish security, and the second was to try to revive economic development. And then the third was to link political governance. So the three lines of effort, security, development, governance for political governance, Couldn't really focus on economic development or political governance if the villagers didn't have security. And so one of the first things that we did, and we took over a pretty capable force because people had been doing this mission a lot before us in this region, they would train and equip a small police force called the Afghan local police. And so the idea was, if you take people in these small communities that are from there, train them, pay them to provide security, that they would be more effective at providing security than any Americans would be, which is in most cases very true. And so we took over this site and we had about probably 100 or more Afghans that were on our payrolls to help go and perform security for the area. And so that was primarily what we focused on because we were still trying to train them, get them to a place where they could provide security for themselves.

So is this multiple. Multiple villages in, like an area that you're. That you're providing security for, that these Afghans are providing security, or is it like one big, you know, like, larger village?

For us, it was just one village. And it wasn't even. I mean, it wasn't even that big, honestly. So we literally, as far as operational areas and things, I think ours was a few kilometers max. So we were.

Yeah, because super focused.

Where we were was.

Essentially a minefield. We're right in the middle of this. This contested region. Prime poppy growing area. So Taliban wanted it, and the farmers would grow poppy, and that was their economic, you know, that was their payday, their paychecks. And so very complex problem to try to change. And so we.

So did you live in the villages? Did you live there?

Yeah.

So you took over some houses or whatever and you set up your. Your base of operations and you lived there?

Essentially. Yeah, we took. Basically, we weren't able to really take over any houses because all the houses that were unoccupied were all full of IEDs. So the TTP and basically what we had done at that time was.

Wherever we were going to set up, we would bulldoze and just build structures on our own, you know, hesco barriers. But it was very primitive. We had no. No running water, just living in a dust bowl, essentially, get some towers up for security, and then that was pretty much it.

And there's how many of you out in this remote location we ended up.

Having two sites, and so we had mutually supporting positions within our team. And I think we had probably 60Americans. So we had our 20 guys, and then we actually had a trailer platoon of army infantry guys out there as well. And so they would help provide security and stay in post and allow us to go out and do missions.

So now you get into doing missions. And what does that look like? You're going out, you, you, you have to take people, you have to move people, you have to go and meet people. Like, what was the kind of standard.

When you, when you say mission to execute from those little forward operating bases, what was kind of the standard mission that you would execute?

Yeah, so the missions varied, but for the most part, and I was only there for about two months before I'd gotten injured and came back. But.

The team we took over for had done a really good job, and they had some very challenging human dynamics within the ao. They were getting attacked multiple times a day. So when we got there, we tried to do whatever we could to proactively prevent that from happening. And so the standard practice that we would do is we'd go outside ambush patrol, try to find guys who were coming to kill us and kill them before they got to us. So.

To do that is not an insignificant task, especially when you're going through a minefield. And so the ttps that we kind of used at that time was we would go under the COVID of darkness, which would allow us time to slowly and methodically get to wherever we wanted to go, take over a compound or a building, and then just stay there all day and observe and see what happened. And then that next night usually exfil under the COVID of darkness again. And the main reason we did that was because a lot of the IEDs, they were out and set up were in positions where there were just so many of them, and they were in positions that were advantageous and would be know, observed by the enemy. And so if.

An entire compound had a few different IEDs in it, and we started to realize that, hey, we, we can't go in these compounds or we can't go near them, because if there's nobody in them, most of the time they have IEDs, the enemy would then wait until we were in a position and just fire a few shots at us, trying to drive us into those positions and things. And so just in general, we just preferred to operate at night because they didn't have night vision capabilities, they weren't able to shoot at us at night, and we would be able to take our time and move very slowly and methodically through the IED threat that we encountered. And so that's how we were able to try to mitigate that. And that was how we would usually conduct those missions.

And then how often would you actually get contact once you were out, set up in an ambush position?

I think almost. Almost 100 of the time felt like that, at least. Yeah. And so we wouldn't go out every day, so we'd stagger these. And obviously, with the operational, you know, the number of people that we had, we're trying to maximize the bang for our buck and. And to be very efficient with that while also running other operations and trying to build the police force and other types of, you know, upward lines of operations.

And so we'd go probably every few days.

So this is a very aggressive VSO mission. Yeah, I mean, this is a lot more aggressive than I was thinking.

The term that was thrown around by some of the guys was smash mouth vso. And so if you look at the. The entire landscape of Afghanistan from the highest levels of command and everything, there were, you know, green, yellow, and red areas. And if you looked at that based on enemy activity or friendliness to coalition forces, the traditional model for VSO was, hey, put them in yellow areas that, you know, we're likely to be successful.

We can make some progress.

Not in red areas. Right. Where people will just fight to the death and, you know, there's no chance of this happening. And so.

Different people have different thoughts of what's green, yellow, and red. And so we ended up there, and that was our mission, and we tried to make the most of it. So. But, yeah, very different. And so that. And we even had teams. Other Marines were out in the west in Herat province, which was very different than the Helmand province. And so out in Herat province, guys are, you know, walking around with just a pistol and driving on motorbikes and, you know, drinking tea and hanging out, no helmets, like, you know, not getting shot at. Very, very, very different experience than. Than where we were.

And that. That was great because, you know, we're just glad different places of, you know, different portions of the country were successful.

Yeah.

With that mission set. And I think to a large degree, most of the. The special operations units that conducted that mission were very successful.

And for us, you know, it's debatable how successful we were, but that was a very different environment.

Yeah, I know there were guys that were going over to do it, and they would ask me about, you know, what do you think of this, we're going to do this village stability thing. And I was like, oh, you're going to go out in the middle of, you know, Indian country with your platoon. That's going to be an awesome mission. Like, it's going to be great. Go get some. Go do. Do a good job. I mean, that's just. It's a cool mission. It's just to be out there on your own. I mean, how much oversight did you have out there?

Not much. I mean, that was one of the coolest things, was having the freedom to go and execute. And so, you know, whether or not it was, you know, destined for success based on what the situation was, we were going to do the best we could to make it success. And we had a lot of resources to do that. Whether it was, you know, the intelligence assets that we had at our disposal, you know, as a captain in the Marine Corps, had assets that were like, more than a mu Commander. Right. And same thing for cas and air support.

ROE was a bit restrictive for conventional forces. And for us, you know, we were able to, as long as we met certain criteria and, you know, able to justify it, we're able to drop CAS where we needed to.

You know, which was very different. And so we did the best we could and made the most of it.

And then you're a couple months into deployment, and that's when you got. That's when you got wounded.

Yeah.

And what. What happened on that op?

Yeah, so we were starting to have some successes with the security bubble that we were establishing. And so we pushed a little bit further from our base to try to see where we thought there would be enemy activity. And so we went about, I think, maybe a click and a half on foot from our base and found ourselves in Indian country, essentially. So we occupied a compound under cover of darkness, and shortly after the sun rose, immediately started seeing heavy activity around us and started getting engaged from multiple directions with different weapon systems. And so.

Shortly after that happened, there were three Marines on the rooftop of the compound that we're in. We had the rest of Marines down, surrounded, protected, or excuse me, protected by the rest of the compound walls. So most of the construction in Afghanistan is mud, mud huts.

And despite not having running water, electricity, or anything, they were able to build these massive fortifications around each house. And so the walls would protect you, but you can't see anything. So you also don't have situational awareness on what's going on. And so as a commander, as a leader of the patrol, swapped out with Brian Jacklin, who was on the rooftop at that time to try to get awareness, and so started observing different things going on. And, you know, as I was up there, enemy fighter had engaged us from our flank, and so myself and another Marine on the rooftop were shot. Third Marine was able to roll off without getting shot. And so immediately a bullet went into my shoulder and into my spine. So I just felt a pulsing sensation in my back and kind of slumped over, saw Ricky, who was the sergeant to my left. He had been shot through the neck and was face down on the rooftop.

Tried to triage myself, pick myself up, and realized that nothing below my chest was working. And so I immediately got on the radio, called my guys, told them that I'd been hit and that Ricky had been hit, and they sprung into action and so took the initiative to return fire, gain fire superiority, and triage us and continue to fight.

And how long did that last?

It's a long time.

I mean, you're out there in the middle of nowhere, and you're in a really hostile situation. How long did it take to get assets there?

Assets were pretty timely.

But it was also a very chaotic situation. So at that time, we had 10Americans out on the mission. We had 10 of our Afghan partnered force with us. And so now we're down to eight Americans. Two are critically wounded. We had to pull guns off the line as well to treat us. So our medic immediately started treating Ricky, and I, another Marine started treating me as well, said Leaf6. Brian. Jacqueline immediately got on the radio and started to try to.

Call in for medevac and air support. At that same moment, Murphy's Law kicked in as well, and the satcom antenna came down, so our satcomic pennant came down. So we're now. Brian was relaying through our main position all the information that was going on, and so became pretty chaotic and took about, I think, 30 minutes or so before the medevac helicopters were able to come in and get us out.

Man. And. And. And how bad. What was that? What was the other guy's name that was hit? Ricky.

Ricky, yeah.

And so he got shot in the neck like one. What. What was that all about?

Yeah, we all thought he was dead, and turns out he was very, very, very lucky. So missed everything important in his neck, missed his windpipe, missed his spine. He was unconscious for a while, and we were both off the rooftop, and our medic started working on him, trying to bring him back to life, while another Marine was trying to keep me stable. And so.

Put some click clot. And different clotting agents in his neck. And all of a sudden Rick kind of woke up and made like a zombie moan and was like, it was like blinking and stuff and so turned out fine. And luckily today he's, you know, he's left the service, but he just, he's about to graduate from college, he's into bodybuilding, and, you know, he's doing great, which is awesome. And so at that time, he was pretty stable. And I started to take a little bit of a turn for the worse because the bullet that went in my shoulder had also kind of punctured one of my lungs and sort of have blood pooling in my, the left side of my chest cavity. And so guys were trying to get us out there.

Were you conscious?

I was, yeah. Yeah, for the most part until towards, towards the end where I started to fade a little bit.

And then did you, did you eventually just. Did you pass out? They hit you with morphine? What they, what they do?

I didn't get any drugs until. I don't think I got any drugs until I got on the helicopter. And then while I was on the helicopter, passed out and woke up in a hospital in Afghanistan. But I do remember the event. And so I remember making the radio call to my teammates while I was on the rooftop, Remember getting pulled down, remember talking to Hafiz, one of the Marines who was working on me, talking, talking him through a needle D as he was giving me a needle D, trying to tell him and talk to him and stuff. And he said, you know, he said some. Said some interesting things while I was there too.

And, you know, so just to give people a little bit of a visual on that. A needle decompression is when you're, when somebody is going to take a, what like a 14 gauge needle or something like that and jam it in between your ribs into your lung cavity to allow some pressure out. Then you had to talk him through that.

He knew what he was doing, but I was just, you know, just trying to encourage him in different things. And so at that time, I was also trying to relay information to help them find the bad guys, you know, find who they were trying to return fire for or against. And so was talking them on, trying to talk them on initially. And then after that it was just trying to talk to him to make sure.

And then the helicopters set down in your compound?

No, they couldn't. So that was a big challenge. And so what happened and what Brian, Jacqueline was awarded the Navy Cross for and a lot of other guys who all Risked their lives to save. Ours did was they had to call in the helicopters out into an open field despite being under fire, fire. And so they prepped the area with as much air support as they could, called in the bird and the bird landed. Brian blew a breach in the compound wall through smoke and then literally what he said was, if you get hit on the way to the chopper, jump in, follow me, and led the way. And without hesitation, the other guys carried us out into the open. And I'm not a small guy, you know, I'm 200 pounds of, you know, barrel chested freedom fighter, just like most of us, with a lot of kid on too. And so.

Those guys carrying us out there, we're in a polis litter. And so to carry us it takes four guys and they can't return fire, you know, they can't pick up their weapon and engage the enemy. So they're totally exposed and without hesitation ran out there and doing the bullet dance, dodging bullets, trying to get us on the bird and get us out of there. And I'm alive today because, because of that. And so that for me, what I tell people when I talk about this is one of the best days of my life. And so, you know, it was one of the worst days of my life too, because I suffered this spinal cord injury and was paralyzed from the chest down for however long that may be. But it was one of the best days of my life because a team that I was fortunate enough to lead, a team that I was fortunate enough to be a part of, display the highest levels of selflessness and sacrifice and courage on the battlefield. And just to witness that, to be a part of that, you know, is something I'll never forget and something I'll be proud of for the rest of my life. So.

Yeah, and if in case anyone missed it, the opening for this was actually, those are Gunnery Sergeant Jacqueline's words that he, that he gave during a speech. And I thought they were just so, they were just awesome words. So I figured I'd share them with some people and obviously the rest of the guys, you know, a bunch of kick ass guys that like you said, I mean, just incredible heroism across the board from, from your team.

You now. And, and by the way, and actually, and Jacqueline mentioned this in his speech as well, there were some, there were some seals, like you said, I guess it was the guys that were under you, the guys from Seal Team 3 that came in and I actually talked to one of those guys today because I knew, you know, because you were coming on. And I just, it was, I talked to him with Dan Crenshaw, and, and I, I just told him, you know, I said, hey, I'm. I'm talking to Derek today. And he's like, oh, that's awesome. And it was just cool, it was just cool to, to hear the praise coming from Jackson, Jacqueline, and, and that's exactly the same thing that, that Dan Crenshaw said. He's like, yeah, those guys were awesome. I mean, that's just, that's. He, he, you know, I said, oh. I go, you were on that mission, right? He goes, he goes, oh, yeah. He goes, those guys were awesome. That, that's what he said. And it was cool to hear Jacqueline saying the same thing. And you know, a lot of times people get, I guess people get caught up in whatever it is, inter service rivalry. And I actually literally have zero of that. I, especially after my deployment turn Ramadi, I have zero inter service rivalry of any kind. Like, if you're on the battlefield and you have an American flag on your uniform, you are my brother. And it was awesome to hear that feedback from both those guys.

You, you wake up in a hospital and you're in an Afghan. You're in a hospital in Afghanistan.

Yep.

Yeah.

I wake up in Camp Bastion.

Doctor's there and he's like, hey, Captain, you got shot. And you may, you know, you're paralyzed and you may never walk again. I just kind of stare at him and say.

Yeah, I know. I'm kind of at this awkward stare off and like, hey, anybody tell my wife yet? He's like, no, he just kind of stares at me. I'm like, go get me a goddamn phone.

And oh, okay.

Yeah, got it. So brings over the phone and I wake my wife up in the middle of the night, you know, so you knew immediately I knew. Yeah, I knew that that was the case literally the second I got shot, you know, because I tried to pick myself up. And it's hard to understand if you, you have never experienced it, but, you know, if just your body is numb and nothing works, then, you know, you know, and so like, totally knew that that was the case and didn't know how long it would last, but I knew that that was what the issue was and so called my wife and woke her up, told her, you know, hey, been shot, paralyzed, I may never walk again and I'm coming home. And so that was pretty tough time and, you know, pretty tough phone call to make. But through it all, we're just really happy to was able to make that Phone call, you know, because a lot of guys don't get to do that. And so then moved on.

Got evac to Germany, spent a couple days there. They didn't do anything for my condition, just kind of waited transport back to Bethesda where I checked in and met my wife and family. And they started to do some other surgeries to remove the bullet from my spine and some other other things. And so our guys at that time too were.

They stayed put in the compound and fought for the rest of the day, repelled a few different enemy assaults. And then as you mentioned, the SEAL team that had come in to be the quick reactionary force for them came in at night and Jacqueline did the turnover with them. They came in to kind of reinforce the area and do some battle damage assessment.

And then that's when Dan had gotten injured and so.

The guys had gotten out. And, you know, the rest of our guys made it out that day without any further injuries. And so was in Bethesda and started my recovery process there with my wife by my side and moving forward.

And that recovery process is, I heard you say in one of your other videos that you have out there, you're just talking about, talking about the new normal, like, okay, this is the new normal. This is what it is. And I'm going forward.

Yeah, yeah. And the doctors were pretty non committal. So when I was there, they didn't say, you'll never walk again. They didn't say, you know, what you can or can't do. They said, you know, hey, you have a spinal cord injury. It's very severe. It's very, you know, it's a big deal. But if you recover function, you know, the research shows that it might happen in the first two years, most likely. And so that was good in some ways and bad in other ways. It was good because it left me the opportunity to change, you know, to control my mindset and to say, hey, like, so what, I'm gonna get up in six weeks and go run a marathon or whatever. The challenge with that though, was that was a little bit that was good for me to get through those initial stages. But it was also naive of me to not let the reality sink in. And so, you know, when that didn't happen in six weeks and I didn't walk and I wasn't gaining control or function of anything below my chest.

That'S when it started to get real and, like, was really challenging for me to deal with because I didn't, you know, it was out of my control. The level of, you know, the permanence of my injury.

And then what, what, what. Was there anything that helped you get through that transition of when you. All of a sudden six weeks goes by and you. You. The reality starts to hit you that made you say, okay, here's what I'm gonna do.

Yeah, it was. It was bad for about, I think, probably first four to six months.

And the reason why. The reason why it was probably the lowest point, actually, definitely the lowest point was August 10th of 2012. So about two months after I got injured, I had transferred to a VA facility in Tampa, Florida, because that was a major spinal cord injury clinic. And so the military DOD side doesn't have spinal cord injury recovery. They have it all in the va. So it was just me in the VA with my wife. We relocated there. And on that day, actually, that was the day that three other Marines in our company from a different team were killed in an insider attack in Sengin. And so Captain Matthew Mnooki and Gunnery Sergeant Ryan Jeske and Staff Sergeant Skymote were all three guys that weren't in my team, but they were friends of mine that were killed and weren't coming home. And so it was hard to deal with that. It was hard because I was still in the hospital. I couldn't go to any of the funerals. And then it was continued to be hard, hard after that because it just reinforced the fact that my guys were out there vulnerable and I wasn't there to lead them. And that was my job. And I felt like I was failing them every day, you know, and so although my wife was there with me throughout this recovery process was lonely. You know, everything you do in the military is in teams. You're always, from day one, boot camp, you have a buddy for everything. And now this was the first time in the military when I'm. I'm alone and, you know, without any control over the outcome of what would happen to my guys. And so that was tough. That was like, definitely, definitely the toughest part of the recovery process. And so luckily, I was able to fly back to California and see them touchdown in December. All the guys made it back safe and sound. And then that was really when I was able to start to put the pieces back together and go forward and move on with my life.

What did that look like, picking up the pieces and putting them back together? And the reason I'm asking this is just because, you know, I'm looking at where you're at right now, and if there's any buddy that could be listening that could say, okay, let me hear what he did so I can emulate that.

Yeah. The.

Key things. There's a couple things that I did that I think are very similar to some of the stuff that you've talked about before. And one is mission and purpose. And so recovering in a hospital, sitting there by yourself wasn't the mission that I signed up for. And so as soon as I possibly could, I was back at work. And so I was back in the ops section in January, you know, as a future operations officer, trying to do PowerPoints and slides and all the other stuff that, you know, that officers are tasked to do. And it was great because nobody else wanted to do that, that stuff, so I was happy to take it on and do it. And so being around the team, providing something meaningful for them and having an impact was more important for my psyche than anything else. Other two things I've kind of looked at were like, very stoic philosophy, stoic mindset, and realizing that, you know, some things are out of my control, But I do have control over the way I choose to react to things, the way I choose to move forward with my life, and that I have opportunities, opportunities that guys like Matt, Ryan, and Sky don't have. And so for me to squander that, for me not to take advantage of every day and move forward in a way that they would be proud of is a complete waste. And so that makes it really easy to stop feeling sorry for yourself and to keep pushing and to keep doing whatever you want to do. And so those are the two things I think that every day, even to this day, continue to push me forward is like, you know.

Setting out on the mission and the vision that I want to achieve and the purpose for my life and taking advantage of every day because, you know, it's an opportunity. I have something that every day I wake up, I can go and create or do or build or make something meaningful. And to not take advantage of that is to squander an opportunity that any one of those guys would love to have. So makes it real simple and easy.

For me to do.

Oh, man. Brother.

Yeah. That's awesome, man. That's. That's awesome. That's an awesome attitude. How long did you stay. How long did you keep working in the Marine Corps for?

Stayed for about another two years after that. So the Marine Corps is pretty cool. They have some programs in place for guys that are injured in the line of duty where you can stay in essentially as long as you want, as long as you keep getting promoted and keep Contributing. And so for me, I didn't pursue those longer term programs because I started to find some other opportunities that I was as passionate about and wanted to pursue outside the military. And so I continued to work for about two years as a staff officer working with first, you know, the operations section as we were transitioning and trying to assign new mission sets and supporting all those different types of operation, operational planning efforts. And.

I'd gone back to business school part time to try to learn about business and to go get more education.

And then I became really passionate about a new opportunity and medical technology and medical research and thought that that was where my next big impact would be, and so decided to officially retire from the military in November of 2014 and have been out since then.

And what was the, what was the new opportunity and. And where did that lead?

So the opportunity that arose was to start a company and try to address issues and unmet needs associated with spinal cord injury. And so I learned firsthand how many challenges and how many issues there are in addition to just being in a wheelchair that a lot of people don't see. And so everything from bowels, bladder management, sexual function, physical training, bone density and muscle mass, there's so many different things that are challenges that are unmet needs of the people like me and the patient population of which I'm a part of. And so the idea in the company that we started is called Spinal Singularity, and that's what we're working to solve. And so our first product, the first thing we're working on, which is in clinical studies now, is a smart catheter for bladder management. And so it allows people to push a button and empty their bladder, which is currently, you know, much more advanced and much more, more useful and functional than the current method of management. So that's what we've been working on for the past few years.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's as I was kind of reading about the stuff that you've been working on, and even on that item right there, he reminded me of when my buddy Jody Mittick came down to be on the podcast. And he's, you know, he's a double amputee, but, you know, I would see pictures of him walking around and he would do like, he did some big race up in Canada. I forget what the race was called.

The Amazing Race.

The Amazing Race. And he would do all this, like, really, you know, badass stuff that I would think, hey, you know, it's all good. And when he came down here.

I think it might have been the second time he came down here. It was the second time he came down here, and we, like, hung out more because, you know, he came down for a little bit more time, and we were a little bit tighter. But he. Well, first of all, I got him a hotel room, and he called me and he said, hey, I'm not going to stay at that hotel because they don't have, you know, handicap stuff there. And I was like, kind of. I was like, okay, yeah, man, cool. You know, whatever. But in my mind, I was kind of thinking to myself, like, why does he need that? Because I see him walking around and he's running the damn Amazing Race, right? And so I asked him. I was like, well, you know, like, later, I didn't ask him on the phone. I said, yeah, cool, Whatever you want. And then later, I talked to him. I was like, why do you. You know, why do you need that? I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I was just honestly asking. And he was like, yeah, well, you know, like, at night, I mean, I take my legs off and I gotta crawl around, and if I gotta pull myself up on the toilet, I gotta pull myself in the shower. And, like, if there's not handles and stuff, you know, it sucks. And so. So that was, like, part one of this story. Part two was he wanted to walk around San Diego and, you know, see where I lived and go to the ocean and all this kind of stuff. And so we did that, and we had gone to the Midway Aircraft Carrier and walked around there, and then we walked downtown, and then we walked. We were. Then we went to where I live, and we were kind of, like, walking in the beach area, and I could see he was kind of, like, slowing down. I could see his face getting a little bit, you know. Know, like.

A little bit of strain in his face. And he's like, hey, man, let me sit down for a minute. And then he'd sit down and we'd talk a little bit. Then he'd say, okay, let's go. And then he'd say, let's sit down. And finally he's like, hey, man, can we just go back to your house? Like, my legs are really hurting. And you know, like, yeah, guess what? You're putting all that pressure on their stumps, and it wears away the skin, and it's. You know, it's hard and it sucks. And I guess so that's part number two. And what these two things reinforce to me is, you know, what? Like, there's so much going on that we. That I don't see that. That. Because, you know, I hadn't been injured like that. There's so many things going on that, like, oh, you know, he's doing okay. It's like, yeah, he's doing okay. You're seeing him for like two hours, three hours. He's living like that 24 hours a day. And he's got all these things to contend with that haven't even remotely crossed my mind. And so when I. When I saw the. Yeah, I mean, straight up, the first time I ever. It ever entered my mind how you take a piss, how you would take a piss. The first time it ever entered my mind when I was researching what your medical devices are, and I was like, you know, how. How ignorant am I, you know, to be sitting here and that. Never even thought of that. And then that's one of all these other problems that you have to contend with on a daily basis. And it's, you know, it's a daily. It's a daily struggle. You know, something. Something Jim Webb brought up as well. He. He was talking about different types of courage, and he brought up something called daily courage. And he's talked about one of his friends that was wounded. And he's like, every day it takes him 20 minutes to get out of bed. It takes him 15 minutes to get here and, you know, to the other side of his room. He's like, that's daily courage that he has to show. And I'm thinking to myself, yep. And, you know, it just makes me feel like there's so much. There's so much more that, you know, you go through on a daily basis that we, and me, I completely take for granted. Completely take it for granted. And so for me to sit here and talk to. To you and realize, you know, how hard it is for you on a daily basis, the things you have to go through. And then to hear you say, like, yeah, but I'm glad I'm here, unlike my brothers who didn't come home. Yeah. I don't think anyone has any excuses, really. None. So.

Yeah, totally agree. Yeah. And.

Just makes you to be that much more.

Creative with your mindset. Right. Like, you look at all the challenges, but gotta also look at the opportunities. Right. So I can sprint through airports much faster than you can without gaining the stress. I got good parking most of the time, you know, so you just gotta make up time where you can. Right. It takes me a little bit longer to get off the airplane, but kill you on the straightaways any day. And so, you know, you just Gotta take, take the, go to the bed.

Yeah.

So, but you know, it's, it's. Don't have a choice.

So that was the, that was the. You got your MBA as. Is that why you were still in? You went and got your MBA or did you get out?

No, I, I got out about halfway through. So I did the part time program at ucla. It's an executive mba, so it's on the weekends, every other weekend. And so as I was leaving the military, so I did the first year, I was still full on active duty and then retired shortly into the second year, took another job at another medical device startup to get some experience and then as soon as I graduated started full time working on Spinal Singularity in my company. And so one of the experiences too, that was really cool that I had as part of that retirement, as I think about it now, was being able to use and be involved in as a user exoskeleton technology. And so there's robotic exoskeleton technology that allows paraplegics to stand and walk. And so because of a lot of generous donors and the Marine Radar Foundation, I was able to be, to use that device and to obtain that device even before FDA approval. And so I had a really, really great setup within our, our battalion headquarters in our office. And so we had a physical therapist downstairs. My office was upstairs. It was fully accessible, which is not like most buildings in the military. And so I was able to use this device to stand and walk and to do therapy. And when I retired, I was able to use that device and not use my wheelchair at all, to leave on my own two feet, which was a goal that I'd set for myself. And so that was great, but it still didn't address a lot of these other unmet needs that we had for the community. And so that was what inspired me to try to move forward on my own path and start my own company and build this product to solve these issues. So yeah, so very thankful for all the donors and the foundation to help support that. And I was also very fortunate. So like you said, a lot of other people had gone before me. And so one of my classmates at the Naval Academy, a guy named Matt Lampert, got to 1st Marine Raider Battalion about two years before I did because he was on the quick cycle of deployments. And in 2010 he was a bilateral amputee above the knee as I was going through the training pipeline. And so I went up and saw him in, in Bethesda in the hospital and just checked in with him real briefly as. As he was coming back and starting his rehab. And, you know, this is maybe a week after he'd gotten off the battlefield or less. And he says, you know, like, so what are you gonna do? And he's like, I'm go back. I'm gonna go back to California. He's like, no, I'm going back to Afghanistan. Like, okay, gotcha. And I'm thinking, like, man, the hell are you gonna. How's he gonna do that? And sure enough, as I graduated from training, he was my company executive officer who checked me in, and then we deployed again. So when I had gotten injured and deployed, he was there as their company xo. And then after my friend Matt had gotten killed, he went down and took over his team as a bilayer amplitude above the knees. And so, you know, he had come back, he had done that, he had trodden that path. And so for me, you know, going back and recovering, our building was accessible. You know, it's wheelchair accessible. There was a lot of other things. And then just that example that he said as well was. Was really helpful and inspiring for me to follow. And so. So, yeah, so really, really fortunate in the. The rehab environment, especially because of all the assets that SOCOM has. And so if I'd been in the grunts, been a totally, totally different story for how the recovery would have gone. You know, my entire command was super supportive of. Of me coming back and working and doing this. Whatever you need, whatever you want. You want to go to ops? Like, sure, let's do it. Giddy up. And so.

Yeah, so. So it was a good place to recover.

When you hear about, like, when you say broadly, like, if I was a grunt, I would have gotten that kind of support. I mean, I get that because, you know, in the SEAL teams, we have the same thing. Like, people will rally around and make stuff happen.

Is there any organizations that, you know of that sort of support? Like the frontline soldier Marine that gets catastrophically wounded?

Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of different nonprofits out there. Semper Fi Fund is a big one. There's a lot of different groups that support them.

And.

And. And it's different. It's not that they don't have the assets. It's just the location of those assets. And so an infantry battalion has a very different operational mission and leeway than Special operations battalion. And so for all of the guys that were injured in the conventional forces, when they come back, they're immediately sent to Wounded Warrior Battalion at the hospital. And so Their job is now show up to your appointments and do your rehab until you get separated from the military. Yeah, that's a very different way to recover with a bunch of other people who are injured or on their way out or whatever else, versus, you know, and. And without an operational purpose, then what I was able to do, and I was very fortunate to do, where I went back to an operational role within the battalion, and I was the only injured. One of the only injured guys, you know, recovering around normal people because I wanted to be like that.

Yeah. I don't know if you ever heard of a guy named Jake Schick, but he was on here and he. He told his story and that's like, that's what it was. He was there. He was just like. His job was just to kind of recover. But you could see in. In talking to him, he. He would have loved to have had some kind of a. A higher purpose than just that, which eventually he made. He made it for himself. He made his own organization to, you know, help wounded vets and. And help suicide prevention with 22 kill. But, yeah, so I think that would have. That's a. That's a good comparison. You know, just from hearing him tell his story about, you know, what his recovery was like. And it was. It was geared towards, okay, you're going to do this until you get out of the Marine Corps, I guarantee. You know, you talk to Jake Shick for three minutes and you're going to realize if. If you could have told him, hey, we want you to do this for the Marine Corps, he would have been all over it. He would have gone and done anything, you know, because he's a badass. But. But yeah, no, that's. That's a good point. And that's. Well, you've. You heard me say it, because you kind of referenced it a little bit. You know, I always tell guys they need to find a new mission, whatever that new mission is. You got to find a new mission. You can't be sitting around with no mission, man. You had a mission from for whatever, eight years, seven years, 20 years, however long it's been. You had a mission, you had a goal. And if that goes away, you gotta find a new one. And it doesn't really matter what it is. I mean, pick something good, right? I mean, your mission shouldn't involve whiskey, but pick something positive and something good. Move in the right direction. How is spinal singularity doing right now? Like, what's the status?

We're doing really well. So it's been a good Three years. I learned a ton. And just the fact that we're still in business today is pretty amazing because I had zero experience, right. I had no clue what I was doing because I had no experience in the medical device industry, had no network. And so the first year was a lot of, a lot of faith, a lot of ups and downs, right. Just like starting any business, but especially in the medical device industry, I learned a ton. And then I was fortunate enough to find people to bring in that, that are experienced and that I trust. And so we've raised money from investors, we've raised, you know, money from grants and non dilutive sources. And we're at. Now we have a small team of six employees in San Clemente and we're running a large clinical study across the US right now. And so we have sites all over, everywhere from Minnesota, New Jersey to, to.

All over Southern California and Arizona where those sites are actively enrolling people interested in supporting our trial.

And then how long does that trial need to last before it gets approval?

So the goal is to have approval internationally next year and then hopefully by the end of the year we can have FDA approval for the product as well. We aren't 100% certain that that's happening, but that's the goal and hopefully we can collect the data we need as quickly as possible to accomplish that.

And then do you have your next device in mind after this one goes live?

Got ideas? Yeah, but I'm always, I've always been like a versatile guy. Not like the, you know, execution like the 100%, I'm the 0 to 90% guy, not the 90, somebody's gonna bring it home guy. And so I know that. So everybody else that we were, you know, everybody else in our team now are like the 90 to 100% guys. And so I'm trying to be more like them and not even think about it because if, if this doesn't work.

Got it.

You know, there is no business. Right. Like we've put all of our, you know, this is what we raised money to do. You know, we haven't, we don't, we can't knowingly devote a minute of time to anything else until this is successful. So you'll get with that. Then we can kind of go back to drawing more thanks things. But.

And once it's approved here, then it just, then it's just sailing it, selling it and getting it out there and it's to going, going into the. Yeah, into the world. And then what about the, what about the Marine Raider foundation which is another thing you're involved with.

Yeah. So after I was injured, I was very ignorant to the realities of the way things work and what the needs would be for me. And so.

A lot of nonprofits out there do all kinds of great work and different things. As a Marine Raider in this situation, without knowing anything, you know, I didn't want to talk to anybody. I was very hesitant to reach out for help to anybody.

And so as these things arose, you know, one of the guys who is or was, is an employee of the organization now and wasn't currently an active duty writer at that time was like, hey, man, like, we're starting this nonprofit to help guys. Like, if you need anything, just say, say so. And so I was like, all right, cool. And so they helped pay for my wife to move out to Tampa so she could be there for my recovery. Helped, you know, get her car out there so she could drive around and help transport me around to different things. They helped us raise money for the exoskeleton because it was still not covered by insurance or the va. It was still experimental at that time and helped do all of these things. And so, you know, my wife and I are eternally grateful for all the support we received from them. And so as soon as I got out of the military, that organization said, hey, do you want to be a board member? Do you want to help? Yes, absolutely. And so that was 2014. And so I've been on the board since then, and I think it was 2015 I took over as the board president. And so I've been trying to devote my spare time to help that organization. But the missions that we serve, and ultimately what we do at the foundation is just to support unmet needs of the community and their families. And so the government's really good at supporting injured veterans. And they have so many different programs that help people. But every situation is unique. And so Congress isn't going to change a law to appropriate money for you to not do something that doesn't fall into the black and white letter of the law. And that's fine, but that's where we step in and are to able to help things, help people, and, you know, take the stress off of them in their times of need. So have four real major areas. One is support to the the Marine Raiders. Another is family resiliency. Third one is tragedy assistance and survivor support. And then the last one is Raider legacy and preservation. And so.

Obviously, the Raider support and the family support are pretty broad ways to work, and they can be anything from from just anything under the sun that will help Marines and their families. Tragedy assistance, survivor support. Even though.

We'Re engaged in varying levels of combat, there's still guys out there putting their lives on the line every day. And that's evidenced by recent training incident that we had about two years ago. Less than two years ago, in 2017, there was a C130 crash that. That claimed the lives of seven Marine Raiders. And then two years before that, helicopter crash in another training mission off the coast of Florida that took lives another seven guys. And so being able to support their families and family members that had survived those incidences is a big part of the mission that we fulfill. And then Raider legacy and preservation.

Can I say one thing? We. You hit on this a little bit, but I'm just gonna expand a little bit so people can kind of understand when you talked about, like, Congress isn't gonna change a law to give a family what they need at a certain time. Cause it's too specific or whatever. And the reality is, let's say a kid needs a new bicycle and there's the dad can't go and get it because he's wounded, he's in the hospital. That's the kind of things that the foundation can do. Go out, buy the bike, get it built and deliver. You know, like little things like that that really matter. And it can be bigger things too, like you said, like moving a family, helping to pay for the movement of a family, helping to redeck, you know, get furniture for the new apartment, whatever it is. There's no law that takes care of those situations. But these types of organizations do that. And it. And it does have a big deal. It has a huge impact for those. For those families that are there. And believe me, when those families are in those tough situations, these little things, to be able to.

Not have them think about it, not have them think about, hey, the. The. The cost of a flight to fly, you know, dad out to come and visit his son or whatever. Any. Any of those little things. They don't seem like a big deal, but they're a huge deal when families are going through these traumatic times.

Yeah. Yeah. Another example, when my friend Matt was. Was killed and his family went to go pick him up at Dover.

One of the last, you know, things that his mother wanted was her whole family to fly home with him. And the government only pay for the father and mother, I think it was. And so the other two brothers and some other family friends, they wanted to all be on the same plane. That was one thing. That she wanted, you know, and she didn't want anything else. She said, hey, I want us all to be on the same plane going home while we're. We're grieving with my son.

Yeah, no, that's. That's.

And so instead of having to deal with that and the insanity of it, you know, just tell her, hey, we got your flight for you. Like, get on the plane. You're good.

Perfect example.

Such a small, seemingly small gesture, but with a timely injection of support, can have a really lifelong impact on. On people. And so those are some of the different experiences. And I can go on and on, on about different ways that we've been able to help people. But bottom line is, as guys are going out doing these different things, and for them to be able to go forward and to fight with a happy heart, they want to know their families are taken care of on the backside, and the community will support them. And so that's literally. It is. We just, you know, we're 501c3 that raises money to support the community members in their time of need.

And then the last one is Legacy. Yeah, so which is legit, because you guys. I mean, you guys kind of are saving the legacy of the original World War II raiders, right?

Yes, we're trying to. And so.

Can you explain how that.

How you guys adopted the name? Because it's awesome.

It's a good history. So the Marine Raiders, the World War II Marine Raiders, were one of the first special operations units formed, period. And so they were formed in World War II, and their mission was to conduct enemy deep reconnaissance essentially prior to invasions in the Pacific. And so these guys would mount up in rubber boats. They were the first ones to do submarine lockouts. And, you know, and some of the things that they did were just insane even by today's standards. And so these guys were very well trained and basically provided the lineage of who we. Who we are today. And so those. That group and then other members also joined the OSS at that time, which was the precursor to the CIA. There was a lot of Marines at that. That unit as well. And those are the two kind of units that we draw our lineage from as. As the Marine Special Operations units today. And so these guys were disbanded in, I think, 1946, after they came back, or maybe it was even 1945 after the war. And so we've been very active in connecting with these guys. They have an association that actually Colonel Kaczynski is in charge of now. He's the president of the Marine Raider Association.

Which is a social organization.

Not a 5:1C3. And so a lot of these guys are still alive today. World War II veterans. And so we get to go and meet with them and talk with them and hear these stories of these amazing missions they did. And conducting, you know, month long patrols behind enemy lines, you know, sabotaging the Japanese and different, different battles. And so these guys were very, very vocal and outspoken to different leadership within the Marine Corps as they're all, you know, in their 90s and passing away. They said, hey, one way to honor our legacy is to have a Marine Raider, you know, have a Marine Raider unit today. And that went over terribly with any leadership because if you don't know, there's, there's a pretty strong.

Culture and brainwashing done within the Marine Corps. And it's from day one, there's only one title that matters. It's that you're a Marine. Yeah, it's one or a zero. You're a Marine.

You are elite.

No one is special or everyone. Everyone is special and no one is special. You know, you're all replaceable, but you're all special. Which is the weirdest conundrum. But all of us believe it. And at the highest levels, a title of any unit, you know, that thinks you're special, you know, is against the entire culture. And so since formation, since the Marine Special Operations Command was officially formed in 2006 from the force Reconnaissance Units, overnight they became the Marine Special Operations Command. So literally change the guide on at a ceremony, and then they're officially SOCOM assets.

There was this undercurrent, this push from the lowest levels. And guides were really strongly pushing this. And so the Raider symbol, the Raider logo from World War II is a, you know, a shield with the Southern Cross and a skull and a dagger in it. And so. Excuse me, the dagger's not there. We have the dagger for some of our units now, just the skull in the Southern Cross.

And so guys would wear patches. And patches are another thing that the Marine Corps. Patches, beards, anything that is not in strict adherence with the uniform policy is not tolerated. And so, you know, that's a quick way to get hammered, right? It's just like, you're not special. What do you think you're doing? This isn't authorized, all that kind of stuff. Whereas the Army's like, you know, army goes out.

Hey, bro, I'm in the single teams, man.

You get more points for flair, right? Yeah, yeah. So you guys aren't as bad.

Oh, so embarrassing.

Expected to have like to look cool.

Right.

But within the Marine Corps, it was this consistent undercurrent. Pushing and pushing and pushing into those patches. And then it became tattoos. So guys would get the Raider emblem just tattooed on their chest and then not wear a skivvy shirt. So you just would see. So, like, you know, you're going into your First Sergeant, and they're like, where's your skivvy shirt, Devil Dog? What skivvy shirt? I don't need a skivvy shirt. And so it wasn't official until it was about two years ago, a year and a half ago. After a decade of insurgency from the units that. That we have a name, and I think it's directly attributed to Al Raven, actually. So within socom, he's a really smart guy, a phenomenal commander, obviously. And he gets marketing and branding and just the basic, you know, title. Right. Like, you've earned the title of Marine, and within the special operations community, you're in the title of SEAL and Green Beret. And so he said, hey, my. One of my last things I want to do, like, I want to work with the common of the Marine Corps. I want you guys to get a title. Yeah, yeah.

And it's Raider. It's. It's. It's not even about marketing and branding. It's about heritage and unit pride. I mean, what. What more awesome thing than to take and keep alive that tradition from World War II of those guys in the service and sacrifice that they had? It's. It's badass, man. It's awesome. It's awesome.

Yeah. And as part of that, too, you know, there's just, like, everything growing up, right? Like, we're growing up as an organization, so we're new to socom, so we're trying to figure out as quickly as we can. So we'd have our, you know, military special occupational specialty code. So that took a while till we had.

So guys stay in the Raiders now for their whole career? Yes. That's awesome.

Yeah. Because initially when they started, it wasn't the case, Right. It was like, well, we'll let SOCOM use you guys, but then we want to use you, too. So every five years, you're coming back to the fleet and you're gonna be in a infantry company or rifle platoon and stuff. And they were like, guys, when I.

First joined the Navy, I've talked about this before. When I first joined the Navy, the Marines didn't have names on their uniforms because they didn't need them. Because your name was lance corporal. Your name was staff Sergeant and that's it. It was legit. I always had a lot of respect for that. But of course now they have them. But I always thought that that that show shows you there's like a slow, you know, there's a slow change in the Marine Corps. I'm sure some people would say that it's not good, but. Yeah, it just is. It's just the Marine Corps.

Big green weenie. Yeah, here it comes again. Yeah, it's good. And so, so we have an M. West guys can stick around. We have a name, we have a badge now we have a, like a, you know, it's like you guys have the trident, we have a war eagle. Yeah, some of the guys, which is like a big eagle and a giant sword and so.

Well, the cool thing is that the cool, the cool thing about the Marine Raiders and about the Marine special operations is if you're in the Navy and you're in the SEAL teams, like you have nothing. There's no cross, there's almost no crossover. There's almost no, there's one, there's 3% crossover from the US Navy to a SEAL team. In terms of your skills, right? You're a guy driving a ship or working a big 16 inch gun or working on a missile technology. That's what you do in the Navy. The SEAL teams, you're in a field with a machine gun, there's zero crossover and that's horrible. And in the Marine Corps it's like, oh, you're an infantryman. That totally. I mean every skill is applicable. And that is such an advantage to the Marine Corps and it's such an advantage to the Raiders because you get guys that have fundamental infantry skills when they roll in. We have to teach guys infantry skills. Once we've taught them sort of fundamental special operations type small unit tactics, then we have to teach them conventional, more conventional movements just to get them up to speed because you got to know those things. If you're out working with 140 Iraqi soldiers, you can't, that's, that's not a small unit anymore. You know, you gotta, gotta think a little bit differently. So you guys have that, that advantage. And that's an awesome, an awesome thing. I mean I remember the guys used to kind of complain about it. When I was friends with a bunch of force recon guys, they would always complain about going to B billets like, hey, I gotta go. Well, not a B built but they have to go back to an infantry platoon. And I would always think to myself, man, I'd Go to an infantry platoon. Are you kidding me? Like, it's awesome. It's awesome. And so I think that's a. That's an advantage. So if there's any young ones out there that are thinking about your future, think about the Marine Corps, because you get that full spectrum of kind of land warfare. You get the amphibious side, too, but you get the full spectrum of infantry. And. And that's awesome.

And you don't. You.

It's hard to get that in the SEAL teams. You get it over time. But I got. I'll tell you where I got it from. I got it from working with Marines on ARC deployments, and I got to see what a company movement looked like, and that's where I learned it from, thank God. Because by the time I was older and in Iraq working with the army and Marine Corps, I kind of had at least some semblance of knowledge about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. And one of the good things about that as well for us as a organization is we don't have street to soft. Right. There's a period of time. And so, you know, like, you get to assess people, and one of the best assessments you can make for future performance is the past performance. And so if you've already got two to four years of observation in the Marine Corps, if you couldn't hack it in and if triple tune, then you don't really.

Yeah.

Deserve to try out or make it to the special operations community. But those lessons learned, you're absolutely right. It's. It's exhibit exactly the same stuff. So if you, you know, like, for all those young motivators out there that want to become a Marine or become a marsoc, like, first, first step is just become a Marine. Be good, great Marine at whatever you do. You be in the infantry, like, be great. Like, be the best rifleman you could be. Be the best mortarman, machine gunner, or whatever else.

Do they take any mos?

Yes.

Okay. So that's awesome. So you don't have to worry about what your MOS is. You won't get withheld.

No, it's. It's becoming more and more competitive and. And if you're smart, obviously, I mean, I always tell people just to go in the infantry or reconnaissance units because, you know, if you want to be a Raider and you want to go do those sorts of things, those skill sets are much more applicable. It's better to learn them early and become a master of those as opposed to a master of admin or supply or anything else.

So what's mos?

Military operational Specialty? I think so occupational, especially military. So it's like what your job is. You can be a rifleman, you can be a machine gun, or you can be a mortarman, but you can also be a mechanic. You can be an IT guy, and you can be. I mean, there's Marines that are. Do every job, you know, every job that you can have. It is same thing in the Army. It's the same thing in the Navy, you know, and so that's why it used to be in the Navy, you had to have certain ratings if you were going to go in this SEAL teams.

Okay.

And so I was wondering if they did the same thing. Like we only take guys from infantry.

Last thing I'll ask you about, because I know we've been here for a while. You got two. You got two sons and how's that going?

It's awesome.

How old are they?

Awesome. They're almost 16 months old or 16. Yeah, 16 months old.

Oh, so you're just in the full. Get some stage?

Yeah, my wife is awesome. So they can do a few things. So they can run, they can yell, and they can throw things. So when I come home, I just know that, like, she's been just getting run around, getting thrown at, you know, like yelled at, cried, you know, diapers, like the whole thing, so.

And they're twins.

Yeah, they're giants, too.

He's got a twin brother.

Yeah, they're giants. They're huge.

Isn't there, like, psychological things to watch out for with twins?

Like what?

I don't know. Aren't they, like, hyper competitive?

Yeah, I think so, in a way.

Let me give you one piece of advice. I don't even. I don't. Not a twin. He's a twin. Get your kids training Jiu Jitsu when they're really young. Because if you have a twin brother or even a brother that's close in age, you're going to be really good at Jiu Jitsu because you have a natural training partner you train with all the time. They're the same, same size as you. And there's some kids out there that are just sick and it's because they have twins. I mean, I'm not just, I'm not trying to take away from them, but it's a huge advantage. If you've got a twin brother, they should be grappling a lot.

I fully intend on that. So that's one thing we didn't talk about. But I love Jiu Jitsu, so I, I got Involved. When I was a senior in high school, it just became like a.

In jiu jitsu. Yeah.

Okay.

Did you wrestle?

I did a little bit of wrestling, and then I played mostly football in lacrosse, and one of the guys, I was a lifeguard too. And so one of the guys that came to my pool, he was like a correctional officer and got hooked up with some guys up in Philadelphia and started training. So it was like me, him, and a couple other guys training in like a church gym, and so trained there and then went to naval academy. One of the things that I did too, was tried to start a jiu jitsu club, a grappling club there, because it was, it was just coming up, right? It was like 2002, 2003, 2004. And so trained and then did, did boxing, did a little MMA and had a couple fights. And then like when I graduated, became a Marine and was married, it was like, put that on hold because I don't have time, but yeah, absolutely.

I got four kids. I didn't put it on hold. I got after it.

I don't know, Brad, you can be a boxing seen fighting MMA fights. I don't know.

Yeah, I always have guys go, well, you know, I once I had kids, I got two kids, and then they kind of give me the look, the look for approval for me. And my answer is, I got four kids.

Yeah. Yeah, get some.

Are you training anymore?

I'm not, no. No, I haven't. So I, I, I trained a little bit in the Marine Corps. You know, we did some combatives and stuff, and I did all that, but just focused on trying to be a great infantry officer. And so.

Yeah, Yeah, I got a friend, Max. You know Max. Max is paralyzed, chest down, I would say. Yeah, he trains.

It's awesome.

Yeah, he trains.

Has to come down and hook up with him sometime.

Yeah, he's, he's, his grip has gotten a lot stronger.

He's all tight. Yeah, you know, his grip is super strong now. But that's awesome. But yeah, yeah, no, Jiu jitsu is, is good, and with your twin boys, it's gonna be real good.

Yeah, man, look, we've been at it for a while and, man, just, just awesome, awesome to hear you and talk to you. Where can people find you? So where should they look? Twitter.

I'm on, on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, the usual. Twitter, all that stuff.

Derek, Derek Herrera. That's India. And there's two Rs in a row in Herrera, and there's a third, so there's a total of three Rs in there. Yeah.

But only one in your first name, right?

Yeah, just one in your first name. H E R era dot com. And so that's a website. I haven't updated the blog in a while. Been focused on. On work and just doing that. And so Spinal Singularity.com has some of the other stuff we're doing, but Facebook, Instagram, all this stuff's public. I don't put anything out that's not, you know, that's not private and really easy to find me. So I try to answer all the emails and messages and whatever else. If anybody sends me notes, so not hard to track me down.

Awesome, man. Any. And. And marineradorfoundation.org and can people find out how to donate on there? Is that.

Yeah, if you go to that website at the top, there's a donate button says donate now, and that'll take you to a link. You can mail checks, you can sign up for credit card, PayPal, whatever, whatever you do. There's also some contact information, too. So if you can't, can't give financially and you want to give time, there's volunteer, you know, opportunities for different events and things. But, yeah, that's great way to get involved.

Awesome. You got any. Any closing thoughts?

Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and share my story with you. I'm not here doing this to seek the limelight for anything. I'm doing it to try to be a good ambassador. The guys that are continuing to go forth and put their. Their lives on the line on a daily basis who can't talk about what they do or advocate for themselves, a lot of people to thank, my wife in particular, who's been there for me every step of the way, the foundation, the Marine Raider foundation, and all the people associated with. With the organization, my team, who saved my life and wouldn't be here without them, and, you know, all the guys that are out there continue to lay it down on a daily basis.

Awesome, man. Well, like I said, it's. It's been an honor to sit here and talk to you and hear your story and what you've been through and your sacrifice even beyond what you did in the Marine Corps, what you're still doing, building your business and with the. With the foundation. And most important, I think, is just to set this incredible example to this day.

Of what it means to never surrender, of what it means to never quit, and what it means to never give up, regardless of the challenge that you're facing. Man, that's awesome. So I appreciate the example you set for me and for everyone, and thanks for coming on and. And sharing it a little bit.

Thank you. Pleasure's all mine.

Awesome.

And Derek has left the building, obviously. Awesome. To have him on and hear about his story. So. Echo.

Yes.

If somebody wants to support this podcast, how can they do it?

Anyways, we will. Well, actually, and I was. I meant to kind of. I didn't want to interrupt, but, you know, the. What. What do you call it? The something D. The decompression.

Needle down. Decompression. Yeah.

I guess I should ask him that. But is that like. Can you feel that? You know, like when. You know, when it goes in.

They're sticking a damn needle into you through your rib cage and into your lips, lungs. Yeah, yeah.

Remember?

Do you want to see if you can feel it? I'll stick a needle through your chest.

Yeah. No, no, no. I. It. Remember that movie Three Kings when they did that? Mark Wahlberg. Yes.

No, they did that.

I'm pretty sure.

Okay. Anyway.

All right.

You don't want to talk about that movie.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right, cool. Anyway. Yes. How can we support. How can we support ourselves? That's the question.

First way is to stay on the path, keep working out, keep eating healthy. That's the hardest one. Me and Derek were talking on a side note, like, eating healthy is kind of the hardest part about this whole staying on the path.

Good, good. Could be. Yeah.

I think because it's like the. Well, then again, working out can. It depends on who you are. Either way, you want to stay on the path. One of those elements of the path, it's required. Now is Jiu jitsu.

True.

You agree, right?

Yep.

Thought you would. Anyway, when you do GC, you're gonna need a GI. Go to originmain.com, get whatever GI you want. Doesn't matter the color. Well, no, no. Check with your instructor.

Check with your instructor.

Getting ahead of my side.

Check with your personal moral compass. If you get a ghee that's not white.

Yeah. What? So what do you mean?

Tradition.

The tradition. Like, yeah.

You know, Pete consciously tries to, like, usurp my personality. Like, he always. He won't give me a white G. He only gives me a blue gi, a black GI or whatever gi. He wants to try and break me out of this tradition.

Yeah.

Which he successfully done because now I have all different colored ghee's.

There you go. But I wouldn't say that violates your moral situation. That's more of a style thing.

Okay. Which violates my.

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. A little bit.

Huh.

Either way. Yeah. So. Yeah. But.

But I guess I can. I can claim a small victory because I can be like, oh, I don't care what color it is.

Right.

Right.

Yeah, that's true.

A little. Little moral victory back in my direction.

Yeah. Because nothing. Not like you're sitting around being like, hey, maybe I should grab a green. No, because that'd make me like that. That'd be awesome.

I'm just opening the package from Pete going, oh, yeah, he sent me a Bluegie. Whatever.

Still, I'll wear it.

Yeah, cool.

Thanks. The man. Oh, so, yeah, get a ghee man. Whatever color you want after you check with the instructor and your moral compass. Yeah, I guess also rash guards.

Biggest selling GI color is. Do you know White? Nope.

Black.

Yes. Come on. We've had this conversation. We had that conversation with Pete. Everybody wants to be a ninja. Everybody wanted to be a ninja when they were little.

Oh, I didn't know he was saying that's the best. The most selling. I thought that that's like.

Everybody wants to be a ninja.

Yeah.

And the ge. The ninjas had a black geese. Apparently.

Just had geese. They had.

They had the little special shoes with the toe.

Yeah.

The Tai Chi shoes.

Either way, rash guards. You can also get rash guards for nogi or for whatever kind of activity. You can get T shirts there and you can get supplements.

Jaco supplements.

Yeah, yeah, those supplements. Joint warfare for your joints. Krill oil for your all around.

Discipline.

Yeah.

Get you. Get you in the zone. Which JP sent me a text and he's like, how are you still saying Dave Burke is the rep? Oh, yeah, he's more. Because JP's more disciplined.

Yeah.

And he's on discipline go.

Okay. Yeah. That kind of in a way opens.

Up the Go pill Discipline go pill. And he's all. He sent a picture of.

Some like super highspeed thing. He's like, this is me on discipline go.

So JP is what he called jockeying for discipline go. Representative position.

Yeah. And he thinks Dave Burke. Because Dave Burke is sort of the OG discipline player.

Good deal, dude.

Yeah, he is.

Well, let's face it, Dave Burke, he's pretty. He's gonna be perfect regardless because he's such a like, boom, high achiever dude from day one, you know? So, you know, JP's a loose cannon. So he can be the representative. Well, he can't be. At least can. He's not. He can be the representative. Discipline go. Because he's disciplined. But he go.

He goes No, I think the funny thing you don't mean loose can. What you mean to say about JP is JP's fired up.

He's fired up.

And what's funny is JP doesn't need no discipline. That's why he's not the best representative. Because I'm like, jp, what are you gonna get more in the game? He's in the game.

Yeah.

So. So jp, well, we'll just give them mutual supports, supporting assets behind the discipline. So, yeah, you need discipline. You can also get Mok mint chocolate peanut butter chocolate vanilla gorilla, which is supposedly named after Leif Babin, from what I understand.

And the Darkness. And then the Warrior Kid Molk strawberry and chocolate. Try those out. Even if you're an adult. I hate to say it, but I was thinking about this. Have you ever, as an adult, drank a strawberry quick? Yes, you have. I have. Big time. Now we don't have to do that anymore.

Yeah.

Because now you can get something that's literally completely healthy.

What was the one there was like, that wasn't quick that they tried to skew or angle as healthy.

Right.

That was.

They couldn't do that.

Some other one. Some other chocolate.

I never remember that.

Yeah, I forget it had vitamin. Nonetheless, they tried the working milk. That's gonna be.

That's the Ovaltine they might try and skew.

Yeah, that's.

Oh, come on. Go look at the ingredients and then compare that to. To mulk.

Yeah.

You know what that stuff has in it? A bunch of sugar. You know, know Molec, hasn't it?

Molk.

Direct from Molk.

Way different, man.

I dig it.

So, yeah, get all that stuff from originmain.com.

Yeah. Also, if you want to represent Jocko as a store. Everybody, Christmas is coming up.

This is what I'm doing. I'm gonna activate. And it's funny because I'm saying it like this is new thing. This is like such an old thing. A gift card. A gift card on Jocko store dot com. So it's like gift. You know how like, okay, your brother or whoever your cousin is like, in the game.

I don't have a brother.

Well, you know, whatever. Your cousin, whoever. And they're in the game, they want, you know, and you say, hey, you know what? I can't pick out what I want for you from here. You just pick out what you want. Boom. There you go. Gift card. Boom.

Nonetheless, you know what? I'm leaving this completely in your hands. You know why I don't give gifts? I don't like gifts. Gift cards just Aren't a thing for me. I've never given anyone a gift card ever.

Yeah.

And so that's gonna be your deal over there on your side of the track.

That's exactly what I was thinking when I was making it. So I was like, this goes against kind of Jocko's thing. So you know what I'm gonna do on the gift card? Virtual representation. I'm gonna put your face right in the middle of it. Boom. That's what I did. So there you go. In honest. So it's kind of like, yeah, it's a gift card, but it's kind of from Jocko. Since you don't give gifts, Boom, now you do.

Okay, there you go.

Anyway, on there, there's some good shirts. You want to represent discipline equals freedom. You know, any kind of. How should I say, Philosophy. The path. Some good stuff on there. Some rash guards as well. And hoodies, tank tops. I know it's winter. I dig it. But if you're in Honolulu, Pearl harbor, wherever, you can still represent the tank top this time of year. But, yeah, a lot of good stuff on there. Jocko store, death course. Stuff to the core.

Also. Subscribe to. Subscribe to the podcast, if you haven't already. On Stitcher, itunes, Google Play, and.

Spotify. I don't listen to Spotify. I barely know what it is, but I hear good things. And, you know, I. We're on there.

And you know what doesn't Spotify play? Like mixed tapes, kind of. Is that the theory behind it?

I. I don't know, man.

Yeah, I don't know either. But you can get the podcast there as well.

You can. Yeah.

So, you know, you can ask Alexa for the podcast.

Yeah, elect. Okay. And don't be confused with that. I think we went over this before. Some people think that it's an Alexa. It's not Alexa. That's like saying I have. It's not an iPhone. It's a Siri. No, Siri is the.

The.

The girl inside Alexa is the girl inside the device called Amazon Echo Check Layer. Anyway, yeah, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already and leave a review if you're in the mood.

Don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast, which I just posted a new one last week and got a lot of really cool feedback on that one. And.

Yeah, I think once people got that one, because I don't talk about it. I don't. I don't post very much about it. But anyways, a bunch of people downloaded, like, all of them because they're they're cool and they're good. I believe the word is conversation starters with your children. That's what a lot of people said. Like, oh, I finally had the conversation that I needed to have with my kids about.

Well, in that case, Warrior Kid podcast number 19. About making good decisions.

Yeah.

And making bad decisions. And how if you make some bad decisions along the way, you could ruin everything.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And you. What's interesting about that one too is I have the supreme luxury of being able to listen to all these while they happen.

Right.

These podcasts. But on top of that, if I have a specific question for myself, I can just ask you, you know, but, like, even though I might already kind of know the answer. But when you deal with kids, you can't just deliver certain information the same way you would as an adult or like your friend. So I'm like, man, how do I approach this specific situation? And the way that. And the way you do it in Warrior Kid is the same way like you. You kind of tell it to me or whatever it's that alleviates so much stress when, like, when you need to approach your kids with this kind of stuff.

Well, one thing that everyone says is, this is what I try and tell my kids. They don't listen to me, which is they listen to Uncle Jay. They don't listen to me. They listen to Uncle Jake. Let Uncle Jake tell them what's what. Yeah. Uncle Jake speaks the truth and they. And they accept it from Uncle Jake.

Yeah.

Oddly enough.

Yes, sir. Also YouTube if you like. If you are interested in the video version of this podcast. You want to see what Jocko looks like, you want to see what Derek looks like, See what I look like? If that's your thing.

If you haven't seen the two minute trailer for the Mikey and the Dragons book, you can get that on YouTube, which, by the way, is epic, and I don't use that term lightly. Echo sent me the for approval text with that video in it, and I watched it and I wrote back, this is the best video I've ever seen in my entire life.

All caps.

Yeah. Good.

And then I went and read YouTube comments. So far, no one has said Echo is jacked because you're not in the video.

Yeah.

Which is. Which is supremely cool. But no, what's cool is people are saying about a two minute video, a cartoon video about a kid's book. People are saying that they got tears in their eyes, that they got chills. It's a legit video. Yeah, it's awesome. So yeah, you can get that if you go to the YouTube channel. And then while you're doing that, you can subscribe to it too. To the YouTube channel.

Get the, the big, you know, subscriptions.

Sure.

And then you can get, also you can get, you can get Psychological Warfare from iTunes, Google Play, MP3, whatever. And that's me telling you to do the right thing and making you do it.

Yeah.

So just give it a shot through it.

It's true. Also, when you want to vary up your workout, you want to add kettlebells to your workout. Get on it. Kettlebells. Go to onnit.com jocko Some good stuff on there. Workout stuff. A lot of good stuff on there. Good information too by the way. So go on there. Onnit.com Jocko Jocko.

White tea.

Yes.

Tastes delicious and is very good for you. And it gives you an 8,000 pound deadlift. So give that one a try. Also got some books. We got Mikey and the Dragons. Okay, update. I am printing them as fast I can. There's a bunch of printers that are printing new copies of Mikey and the Dragons. Some of them have already been shipped. They'll be going to Amazon. We are going to be cutting it close right now actually. We should be good people that are ordering. Well, it's going to be cutting close depending on when you exactly order, whether it gets to you by Christmas or not. But the faster you order, the better chance you will have of getting it before Christmas. I apologize that I did not order enough books to be printed and that is my fault and I should have done better. And as Sarah Armstrong pointed out to me, she's like, oh yeah, well you know why you didn't order enough books? Because you thought, oh well, Sarah will get a book and Andrew, Paul will get a book and Iris will get a book and then everyone posts what they got. Andrew got 20 copies.

Copies.

Sarah got 10 copies. Irish got 10 copies. So everyone's buying multiple copies. Cuz it's the ultimate Christmas gift for anyone between the ages of 0 and 10 or 12. Anyways, Mikey and the Dragons. Order it as quick as you can and we will try and get it to you by Christmas. If not, hey, what's the next holiday after Christmas? New Year's. Okay, maybe they'll get a New Year's gift. New Year's gift and or what's after that? Easter.

Well technically Easter, Valentine, Valentine's Day. Oh, well technically you said holiday.

Okay, you get Valentine's Day gift for your children. I guess you should do that.

Yeah.

And if not, you know, just get it for.

Yeah, yeah. It's a good one. That's a fun one that you mentioned, that video. And the goal there was to kind of try to capture what it's like.

Like reading.

You know, how you read a book. It goes on in your head.

Yeah.

And so you capture what's going on in that book in your head and how you're reading it to your kid. You kind of capture that in a little summary. That's what it was. I think it did. Because that's really how I felt when I read that book to my daughter.

Yeah, it's good. Do you do voices when you read that book? Let me hear the king voice.

Come on, man.

Sorry, sorry.

You heard mine. Two My son. Yeah.

Because it really is brother's classified.

So you got at least just give us a 2. My son.

To my son.

That was awful.

I know. It sounds way better when I read it to her. Understand that.

Wow. I also. I feel like a voice actor over here compared to that one.

You kind of are.

Anyway, hey, moving on. Yeah. Mike and the Dragons. Awesome book. Also way of The Warrior Kid 1 and 2. From Wimpy to Warrior Kid and then Mark's Mission. That's number one. Number two. Also important critical books, I personally think, or the one that my daughter requests me to read again and again and again is part two, Mark's Mission. I think she really likes Nathan. Nathan James. She likes that idea of that irritating person because that's how kids are. They always talking, you know, wait until.

She meets Danny Reinhart. Yeah, Danny Reinhart. Book three, I'm in the process writing right now, 10 chapters deep, Danny Reinhart shows up. So, yeah, she'll. She'll like Danny Reinhart. Even though my youngest daughter, when I. When she found out about the character Danny Reinhart and who he was, and now she goes, Danny Reinhart.

Because the character, he's like good at everything. Yeah, that's the. The premise of Warrior Kid 3. The. There's no bully per se. There's actually a kid that's a good kid. He's good at Jiu jitsu. He's good at pull ups, he's good at running. He's good at everything. And he's nice. And that rubs Mark the wrong way because all of a sudden he's got someone that he's jealous of. It's hitting his ego. And what's that guy's name? His name is Danny Reinhardt.

How awesome is that?

So when I told my daughter that she was Like Danny Reinhardt. And she says, oh, she says, what did Danny Reinhardt do today?

Yeah, but.

Well, you kind of can anticipate that your son or daughter that you're reading it to or the person reading the. You know, if they're of reading age, they're gonna like Danny Reinhardt.

They are, but they're. I don't know, they're gonna, they might, they might side with Mark a little bit because you can hear Mark's getting annoyed because Danny just, he'll. He does this, he taps, he'll tap someone out and say like, oh, you know, I must have got lucky. He's one of those kind of guys. Or like he beats him in a running race and he's like, oh, yeah, you know, I was, I was feeling pretty good today. I guess one of those guys, he won't take credit for anything, which is. And, and since it already bothers Mark that he lost, he's like, why did he say that?

Right. Yeah. And plus we all been on the mission since, you know, since before Mark could even do pull ups. We've been with him the whole time, you know, and so we're feeling his pain with him. So now this guy Danny, he hasn't felt any pain.

No, forget that. Danny just naturally good at everything.

Screw that guy.

Yeah. So that's Danny Reinhart. And that's gonna be coming out in the spring. Hopefully if I finish it in time, but which I will. Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. You can get that book too. That's another book that you can get for the holiday seasons. Let's just say that. Agree if it might kind of mess up, like jam up someone's new year a little bit if they try and get on the path, like for Christmas.

Like what Pre New Year's resolution scenario.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, maybe they, maybe they use that to kick off the New Year's resolution. They get a little death core.

Yeah. But here's the thing though. I think you might even say it in that book. Maybe.

Yeah, yeah, maybe not. Where you're like, I've said it.

No New Year's resolution.

No New Year's resolution Today. Now.

Right now.

Yeah, yeah, I've said that many times and I believe it to this moment.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's the Diswinker's Freedom Field Manual. The. The audio version of that is not an audible. It is on. It's an MP3 thing. ITunes, Amazon Music, Google Play, Extreme ownership. That's the first leadership I wrote book I wrote with my brother, Leif Babin. We Followed that up with the dichotomy of leadership, which is possibly better. Anyways, you, you should check it out. It will teach you how to pragmatically apply the policies put forth in extreme ownership into your world.

We also have a leadership consultant company. We solve problems through leadership. That's what we do. It's me, Leif Babin, JP Dinell, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochran, Mike Cirelli, Mike Baima. And if you want to find out about that, go to echelonfront.com we will come out and work with your company and get your leadership aligned. Also we got the muster in 2019. There's going to be one in Chicago, there's going to be one in Denver. And if you want to come to the muster, they've all sold out. So if you want to come, try and Register early extreme ownership.com and we have EF Overwatch which connects spec ops vets.

And aviation combat aviation vets with companies that need leaders, tried and tested leaders. And any you MARSOC raiders out there that have gotten out, hit it up@efoverwatch.com and we can get you connected to a job where you will be in a leadership position in the civilian sector. Again, that's efoverwatch.com if you want to hang with us still after this on the Interwebs. First of all, Derek, like I said, he left but Twitter, Derek Carrera, Instagram, Derek Underscore, Herrera, Facebook, Derek Herrera, Derrick Herrera.com and also the Marine Raider Foundation. Again he talked about all the things that the Marine Raider foundation does and if you want to go to that, the link link is marineraider foundation.org and then of course if you want to talk with Echo and myself on Twitter, on Instagram or on Facebook E Boha Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all our military personnel out there holding the line.

We can do what we do because you are doing what you do and we will never forget that. In special thanks to the Marine Raiders for your legacy of bravery that will never be forgotten. And obviously Derek Herrera for his service, his sacrifice and like I said to him, the incredible example that he sets. Thanks to police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, correctional officers, border patrol, all first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe here at home and the rest of you that are out there listening.

I know things don't always go the way we want them to go.

But.

I think just listening to Derek today.

I think there's no doubt that that is the attitude you take. You don't focus on what is wrong. You focus on what is right. You don't focus on what you can't do. You focus on what you can do. You're thankful that you have these opportunities.

That so many didn't get.

Then you take that attitude and then you go out there and get after it.

And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.