240: Your Fight Against Inertia--A Body At Rest Tends To Stay At Rest. Combat Lessons 2, with Dave Berke.

This is Jocko, podcast number 240 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

And also joining us tonight once again, Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. All right, last podcast, which was podcast 239, in case you couldn't subtract one from 240. And I suppose we should give out some kind of shout out to the 240 Golf. I don't know why, but we should.

Shout out to all you machine gunners out there that ran that 240 golf. Last podcast 239, we covered the first edition of Combat Lessons. Rank and file in combat, what they do and how they do it. That was number one. And you know, to be honest, when I got done with that one, I said, you know, that's cool, but there's more of them. And I kind of thought to myself, you know, well, how many combat lessons are there, right, That I remember. This is 240 podcasts worth of combat lessons. But I was leaning towards, hey, probably not going to cover more of these things because there are more of them. And then I started reading number two. And as I read number two, kind of out of the gate, section one, which is called leadership, and you just get, you just start reading it. And before I knew it, I couldn't stop. And there's more lessons, more perspectives, more angles, more knowledge to make us better. And I was really coming at this one. I was really thinking about life a lot, all aspects of life. And I think it's the opening of this that gave me that sort of mindset going through it. I was thinking about life. The parallels are everywhere.

All right, let's, let's go to the book. And I think, Dave, coming out of the gate, you're going to realize what, where, why I got so sucked into this thing just out of the gate. So the first section, like I said, it's called Leadership. And then, and then the first subsection is Leaders versus Inertia. I was already. I was. You had me at inertia, as they say. Lt. Col. Re O', Brien, cavalry observer with the 5th army in Italy. Here's what he says. In spite of the fact that I observed many interesting things in practice, in the practice of tactics and technique, still the one lesson that stands out in my mind above all others is the one that is so well known by military men that its statement here amounts to little more than a platitude. I mention it, however, because it had such a profound effect upon me. That lesson is the importance of and need for adequate leadership. So cool. I got through that fine. I wasn't quite there yet. And then I read this.

The effect on most men of the impact of battle is to cause them to want to do nothing.

A determined effort must be exerted to accomplish even simple tasks, and men are likely to neglect duties which they know must be performed. So think about that. Right. Right out of the gate, right there. The effect of men in battle is that you're going to want to do nothing. And again, this is why I was talking about how this started making me think about life a lot. Think about that. When it comes to life, how many people are just drawn towards the easy path? Not doing what you're supposed to do. Duties that you know must be performed, but you neglect them?

Yeah.

That's. That's the difference between success and failure in life. By the way, did you guys say in the Marine Corps, why. Why stand if you can sit? Why sit if you can lay down? Did you guys say that in the Marine Corps? Similar. What'd you guys say?

I'm trying to think of the phrase, but it's the same alignment of, like, why do this when you can just do that? I can't remember exactly what we said, but when you said. As soon as you said that, you were saying. I was a little thrown off by the title because you said leadership versus inertia. And I was thinking to myself, leadership kind of creates inertia. And when he's saying stand, and the people who follow, like Newtonian physics, are going to laugh me out of the building. But seems like what he's describing is the opposite of inertia. Sitting there doing nothing rather than moving in a direction.

Yeah, yeah. Or it's the. You're fighting to keep it going. Keep the inertia moving. Yeah. He says there is no force other than a driving leadership to overcome this inertia. Yeah. So he talks about inertia as this static being, not moving, this tendency to carelessness, and to infuse a determination to succeed in the minds of the individual men. When this spark of leadership is present, the individual knows that others feel it too, and that his effort is not alone. However, I was not a leader in this campaign. So I will quote an officer who is a successful commander in an infantry regiment, the wearer of a Silver Star, an officer who has a fine reputation in his division. And here's what this officer says.

This. Tell your people when you return that the hardest job they will have here is getting things done. My men know their weapons and tactics Thoroughly. My effort is simply to require them to do the things they know must be done. Posting security, dispatching patrols, seeking a field of fire, retaining their equipment, and making sure that. That it is in working order. You have to check all the time.

I believe it was patton that said 90% of your job as a leader is making sure that the orders get executed, making sure that the things actually get done.

So that opening right there is what kind of made me just say, we need to talk about this because.

It'S applicable so directly to us as human beings. And, you know, I always talk about the. The gravitational pull. You ever seen the chart of the gravitational pull of when the space shuttle or something launches? I guess it's not the space shuttle, it's. It's SpaceX.

Sure, SpaceX.

Elon kicking those things up into space. But they use whatever some massive amount of their power is to get the first whatever mile up. That's where they use 50% of the. I don't know what the percentages are, but it's a massive percentage of the power is to break free of the gravitational pull of the Earth at once they're FL free of it. Then once they're moving, they're okay. Like, so much of the effort of a leader is just to get things to go, get things to move, and we're going to get to this. There's definitely some things here, and we're about to roll into them where it talks about.

You know, so much reliance on the leadership. And in certain situations, you can see them leaning towards.

A micromanagement, you know, a hey, if I don't make this happen. But in other parts of the, of this book, they start talking about how the way that you're gonna win is through individual efforts and individual leadership. So you get into decentralized command a little bit later. But. But I think it's one of those dichotomies. I think it's one of those dichotomies. As a matter of fact, I know it's a dichotomy that sometimes the phrase I used to use a lot, and I used it a lot on this podcast, was force of will, right? Hey, you know, as a leader, dude, I'm just gonna make this happen. Is going to be a force of will. We are going to win this thing. We're going to go, this is. I'm going to make this happen. And that's what he's talking about here. This force of will that you have to exert to make things happen, even things that people know they should do.

Next section discipline. So right out of the gate we're talking leadership and discipline. I was, I was in there. The keys to success in combat. The key to success in combat. Commanding General. In a personal letter to Lieutenant General McNair, I would like to mention a few things I consider important in getting any prospective units ready for duty in Southwest Pacific. The first of all requisites is discipline with a capital D. I refer to discipline in all its phases. Water discipline, malaria discipline, personal appearance, military courtesy, the wearing of the uniform, personal and collective sanitation, carrying out orders in general, general assumption and proper discharge of responsibility throughout the chain of command, etc. There is an inclination for men as well as some officers to go native in the tropics, to let down mentally on material and spiritual values. So discipline is especially needed here. Needless to say, I consider an aggressive offensive spirit always goes hand in hand with good discipline.

So that's one of those things where, you know, we're talking about imposed discipline in some ways there, right. Make sure your weapons are clean, make sure you're cleaning yourselves. There's a whole list of things. Make sure you're drinking water, make sure you're cleaning your feet. Isn't that a weird one? Have you ever been in the water or in the bush long enough to get like really bad feet? No, I got, I got a minor case of trench foot. Yeah. And when the guy who is my swim buddy during this particularly long SNR operation where we were a two man pair out there, just a training operation, but he got actual trench foot. He got, he went to medical and they're like, oh yes, you have trench foot. It's weird that things like that, you know when you see talk to guys about Vietnam, one of the main things that the officers would do is check guys feet because they wouldn't check on themselves.

So even something that seems so obvious like you'd want to take care of your feet, people will not make that little extra effort. The inertia for them is to say, you know what, I'm just going to go to sleep with my boots on and they're wet. I'm not going to dry out my feet. And by the way, you can sleep with your boots on. I did. We would sleep with our boots on in the field, but we'd take our socks off, we'd unlace our boots. So our feet are in there just kind of loose so they can kind of dry out a little bit. Hang your socks on a little tree or something nearby. But you don't want to get Rolled up. Echoes looking puzzled. You don't want to get rolled up in the field without your boots on.

Okay, that makes sense.

If you get rolled up in the field without your boots on, you got some problems to deal with. And BTF Tony, you know, you take one boot off, you fix whatever you got to fix, then you put that boot back on. Then you don't take both of them off. You're just sitting there, John McLean style, basically naked. Oh yeah, that's a movie.

Die Hard.

He runs on the glass.

Yes. He wound up running over glass.

And how come he, how come he got caught without his boots on?

Because when he arrived at Nakatomi Plaza, he, at a request, not request, a recommendation from a friend, take off your shoes and you make fists in the carpet with your toes. It de stresses you. So that's what he was doing in the middle of this hijacking scenario.

Interesting. You know, see there I was thinking that this book had knowledge in it.

Next. Lt. Col. Clifton F. Khan, 77th Field Artillery in Italy. The great stress placed upon discipline and the chain of command is not an overemphasis and never can be. We have found again and again that the highest standards of discipline are absolutely necessary in and out of combat. In no other way can you be assured that the individual soldier will care out orders without supervision. And in combat, this is essential. So again, we're talking about very stringent discipline and we're talking about imposed discipline. I mean we are, let's call it like it is.

Yeah, but the connection he's making is what I was thinking as you're talking that last passage. It's that connection to the imposed discipline that I'm going to start with, that's going to get you to recognize over time what you need to do, the self discipline you need to create. And if your plan is like, I'm just gonna make my folks self disciplined, you're actually gonna skip the part where they learn why you have to do it. And sometimes that starts with, you're gonna do this. You can explain it. But you asked me if I ever had immersion foot or trench foot. I never spent enough time in the right environment to have to deal with that. But I'll tell you, my very first forced march, which was a five mile.

Force march, like a very short force.

March at Officer candidate school in 1991. We stopped, 50 minutes into it, we all change our socks. That's what we did. And so that's one example of. But it was totally imposed on us. But I was able to make that connection from these other people. And so you're telling the story about people that were non combat ready because of that. But those lessons are all over the place in the military. And it all starts the same way, which was sit down, take your boots off, change your socks. And then over time you make the connection of, oh, I understand what I need to do this. So no, I never had it, but I was taught that lesson very early on.

Yeah, there's.

Some sort of obvious religious overtones too of. Right. Of like taking care of your men's feet. Right. That's just a powerful thing.

Next, the basis of good discipline. One of our problems has been to get junior officers and young NCOs sufficiently hard boiled to exact from their subordinates a meticulous obedience to every order.

We must ingrain in all ranks the realization that orders are not to be treated as suggestions, but as concrete facts calling for the utmost effort until they have been carried out.

So many people seem to feel that orders which are inconvenient or unpopular are to be disregarded. And this is one of those things. Hard for me to read this because we're always telling people, look, the military is not this thing where just someone barks orders at you and everyone just obeys. Which it's not.

This state of mind is a disease and must be eliminated. So what what this section says or what this individual is saying, and I don't know if this is the same guy talking because it's not broken out, but then it says this, then it says this, on the other hand, so we got dichotomy. And elimination presupposes that all commanding officers and staffs take care that the orders they issue are consistent, correct and capable of being carried out. So that's a very discreet way of saying, if you give me an order that's not consistent, not correct, and not capable of being carried out, I'm not gonna follow it. That's what that says. They do it in a very roundabout way. They're very cautious about how they said that because they know they had Colonel Pogue in the room. They were writing this and Colonel Pogue said he's bending to listen.

Because Colonel Pogue comes up with the best plan every time.

Master your job. Lieutenant General Walter Krueger. Discipline and, and the leadership of small units are the things which require constant emphasis. The enlisted man or officer who does not follow instructions and orders implicitly during training or prior to reaching combat areas, and who cannot do everything every member of his unit might have to do is not properly Qualified, the squad leader must know exactly what each of his squad should do in each type of operation. The platoon leader should have the same knowledge concerning his squads and the company commander of his platoons. Officers must not start worrying about the big picture until they have mastered all the details of the little one. It's an interesting one. I can tell you right now that.

It would be impossible to know everything that the sniper knows. It would be impossible to know everything that the radioman knows. It would be impossible to know everything that the point man knows. It would be impossible to know everything that the breacher knows. Do you need to understand them? Yes. Should you be able to set up that breaching charge and clack it off if you have to? Absolutely. Should you be able to pick up that radio and make comms if you have to? Where it take, might take the communicate, might take the radio men four seconds to do it. It might take you three minutes. Should you be able to know how to do it? Yes.

At some point, if you're worrying about the details of the little picture.

You might be doing a disservice by thinking too much about the little picture and not enough about the big picture. So I think officers should start thinking about the big picture from day one and understanding how things fit together. Now, you can't get lost in that, but you gotta, you gotta start thinking about it early. Otherwise your habit is just worry about the little things. Your focus becomes looking down and in instead of up and out.

So little. That one's too strong for me. Too strong for me. And I talked about that in leadership, strategy and tactics. Like you got to know what to do.

But.

There'S a, there's like a very discreet place in the military where you go from being tactical, they call it operation, but where you start being strategic. In the Marine Corps, it's called being a company grade officer, which, like a junior officer, brand new lieutenant to a field grade officer. Yeah. And all of a sudden there's this magical moment that when you get promoted from. In the Marine Corps, it's captain to major and it fits in the Navy from lieutenant to lieutenant commander. Well, all of a sudden, overnight, you are now a field grade officer. And you're supposed to think strategically. And this transition point actually is a big source of friction for a lot of folks. And the people that struggle the most going from company to field grade are the ones who have never thought about the big picture before. And it's not to say that as a second lieutenant that I've been in the Marine Corps for six months. I need to walk into the CO's office and start talking strategy. But you have to start thinking very early on about the impacts of what you do to the big picture. And the sooner you can make the connection, the easier that transition is and the longer you hold on. Because it's just kind of like this cool bravado of like I'm a tactician and it sounds really cool and I.

Just want to fly the airplane and.

I don't really care about the big picture. Well, when the time comes you get promoted and you probably will. It was really clear the ones who never really thought about what they were doing and how that fit in the larger world when you made that promotion, then all of a sudden you actually became highly incompetent at being a field guard officer because that's when you were starting and you were being outmaneuvered by guys who had been doing it since they were brand new officers.

Yeah. You know what's really interesting about that is there are some people that have a personality and, or skill set that is more suited to be a tactical officer and there's some people that have a personality and skill set that is more suited to be a field grade officer or a strategic thinker. That's, and I see this in companies too. You know, I've worked with companies where the CEO that got that company from whatever position, you know, got them to go public or got them perched or poised to go public, as soon as they're going public, that guy's out of there or maybe even before they go public. Because this guy, he's good at making things happen. He's dynamic, but he's not polished, he's not clean. He can't brief up the chain of command well. He doesn't articulate himself at the next level level. Because some people can flow from talking to a platoon like, listen up, hey, this, what's going on. Like you're you, you can be in that mode and then you can walk, turn around and talk to give the general a brief on what the impact on the cultural moment or the civilian populace and all those things. Some people can do both, some people do one, some people do the other. And it's very interesting. It's very interesting because.

You might not make it to field grade officer even though you, you might be, you might be good at it, but you just don't have the, you just don't have it. You know, you just don't have it. So think about that when you're working with, you know, when you when you got people, subordinates that you're working with, you might have somebody that's not maybe the best tactical leader.

Are they. Can they do the job? You know what I mean? Look, they might not be able to do. They might not be the best at it, but maybe they can get through that job and they can do a good job as that at the next level up. And some people, they might be incredible at getting after it in the field. And you can't let them brief. You can't let them brief the boss because they're gonna mess it up. So. So the good thing is if you're, if you're one of these humans out there, if you're one of these potential leaders, think about where you are and think about modulating your personality, depending. I can promise you, if you watched me debrief a SEAL platoon.

And then you watched me brief the Secretary of the Navy, those two guys, like the Venn diagram, overlap was pretty small. If you were just to take the words that I said, just a manuscript or whatever transcript of what I said, the core things that I said, the, the. I wasn't saying anything different. I wasn't saying. I wasn't giving. I wasn't lying to the big boss and I wasn't lying to the troops. But the, the method of delivery was different because I was talking to a different audience who understands things differently.

Good thing to think about.

A couple of these here. Trial by fire.

Trial by fire. There's. There's incredible stories inside these books about what men do, and they're definitely worth. Look, this is another one from. We read one from this last time. This is from the. The Battle of the Attu island, which is those Aleutian Islands up in Alaska fighting the Japanese.

This is a citation.

The company led by Captain Thomas B. O' Donnell was thrown into confusion by the strafing of hostile airplanes while it was forming to attack under heavy enemy ground small arms fire. Seeing the immediate need, Captain o' Donnell moved from his squad, from squad to squad, restoring order, and then led his men to the assault, during which he received a severe wound in the neck and shoulder and was evacuated three days later. Upon hearing that his company was again scheduled to make an attack, he insisted upon returning fight. Although weak and suffering severe pain from his wounds, he led his company in attacks on the enemy until five days later when he was mortally wounded while moving about in advanced positions encouraging his men.

One of the. One of the. One of the lessons that I taught, specifically, I taught it to a bunch of people, but the first time I remember teaching it, someone was. Was to. Was to Seth Stone, the Delta platoon commander who, you know, when you're doing immediate action drills, there's. There's standard operating procedures, and you follow. You follow those standard operating procedures, and he would, you know, he would follow what the rules were, and that if that meant that he was going to his next position that he was supposed to go to according to the standard operating procedures, was behind a berm where he couldn't see anything. That's where he was going. And, you know, I just said, hey, man, why are you going there? You know, because this is where we're supposed to go. I said, can you see anything? No. Can you make a call? No. Can you. Can you lead your men? No. Okay, move. Move around. Go see what you got to see. You can move around. You could. You don't have. You don't. You can't break the SOPs. There's a difference, right? You can't break the SOPs, but you don't have to follow them perfectly. So there's a big difference. Breaking the SOPs means you get out of your lane, and now you can get shot by friendly fire. Not following the SOPs means you're staying within the confines of the rules, but you're still moving around and telling people what to do. And you can imagine this is the perfect example of what this whole thing started off with, which is, look, this guy, in order to get his troops to go, he had to personally get out there. And, you know, why would you risk your life to. That's what it says. Encourage his men. Why would you risk your life to encourage your men? You know why? Because if you don't do that, your men aren't going anywhere.

That's the breaking. The inertia you talked about at the beginning. If you don't do that as a leader, you're going to sit there and you're going to. You're going to. Eventually you're going to get rolled. You're all going to die in that position. You cannot stay there. But the path of least resistance that human nature is. I like this foxhole. It's going to hang out down here. This is good for me. And he's like, no, we can't stay here. And leadership is the only thing that gets people to see that.

That, that is that those are the times when you have to lead from the front. You got to make things happen.

Doubling in brass. And I have no idea. I don't know if there's some weird 1940s idiom that I don't know about, but this the title of sections doubling in Brass Citation, 37th Division, New Georgia. While Private Blair F. Hertz was performing his duties with the maintenance section in the vicinity of the unit ration dump, they were attacked by Japs who had surrounded them. He grabbed a bar, advanced on a Jap machine gun that was delivering intense, accurate and extremely effective fire into the dump. Private Hertz was able to silence this machine gun and then continue to aid aggressively in the defense of the position until reinforcements arrived. Just getting after it. Just in the rear, getting after it.

When a citation starts with a private, you know, you know, this is gonna.

Be a good one.

You know, he got some.

Yeah. You know what's too bad is, you know, in the Navy, you have rates where you can tell what the guy's job was. This guy's just a private, but, you know, his job was probably, you know. Well, it says, mate his duties with the maintenance section. So this guy was changing oils and vehicles or something, and then all of a sudden he's grabbing a bar and just getting some. Here we go. Dichotomy of leadership. Oh, no, sorry. This section isn't called that. It's called something else. It's called be brave intelligently.

This is a weird one to read. Lt. Col. Ari O', Brien, cavalry observer with the 5th army in Italy, a prisoner of war, a German light machine gunner asked an interrogator whether Americans took stimulants to make them foolishly brave. When asked to explain what he meant, he stated that he and an assistant gunner were in position with a good field of fire one afternoon when a group of American soldiers was observed approaching. He fired several short bursts and began preparation to displace to the rear. When he saw the American soldiers rise to full height and start charging toward his position over a hundred yards away, he reloaded his gun and opened fire, killing 11 men. He then withdrew because he was sure the charge was made to conceal an envelopment. But none was made. Unit commanders found it necessary to direct their men to make full use of concealment and covered approach. Continued emphasis on the necessity for dispersion and the use of COVID and concealment is essential. So this is what we don't want to have happen. We don't want people to be so brave that you charge over an open area, a machine gun nest.

And the comment here says, in the interest of efficiency, bravery must be supplemented by brain work. Dead heroes are of little further use to their units. Aggressive fighting men trained to apply the most efficient technique to combat problems. Willing to accept any necessary risks and conscientiously avoiding unnecessary risks are the backbone of the army.

Gotta be brave, but you gotta be smart. There's the dichotomy. What was the original? Original statement on that was brave but foolhardy. Brave, but not foolhardy.

Combat in towns as major campaigns develop in Western Europe, combat in towns assumes increasing importance. Cities, towns and villages control the established road nets which must be open for the movement of guns, heavy equipment and supplies necessary to support the advance of infantry. Combat in towns will often be the key not only to our successful advance, but to successful d. Defensive actions. Just talking about Mount in 1944 attack of towns Captain W.E. harrison Harrison parachute Infantry, Italy the theory of attack of a small town or village is to work groups around the flanks, cut the retreat and move in with patrols. In this hilly country, however, we have found that where there is any high ground behind the town which dominates both the town and the line of retreat, the best way is to work the the entire force around the town undercover, seize the high ground in the rear and firmly establish ourselves with 60 millimeter mortars on that dominating high ground. We take enough food and ammunition for to last us 24 hours. And the Germans usually pull out during this time. From our position, we can prevent reinforcement and inflict heavy losses on them during their withdrawal. So we're flanking people and we're taking high ground.

I didn't think of anything new.

I didn't think of anything new.

Lt. Col. L.G. freeman, parachute infantry Battalion Commander In Italy, we learned at Altavia to avoid the direct attack of towns. It's too costly. We now work around to the rear with a large force and seize the dominating ground of the the rear. We did this at Callo, Machia, Fornelly and several other places, the names of which I've forgotten. I like it when you're just forgetting major battles that you've had. It worked every time. Get yourself within 60 millimeter mortar range of the town on dominating terrain in or near it, and the Germans won't stay in it. And then it says this. Here's the comment. I like these comments. The fact that the Germans have been known to withdraw without a fight from towns in the rear of which we hold dominating terrain, does not necessarily mean that such will invariably be the rule. However, this possibility, plus the fact that the seizure of such high ground will greatly facilitate any subsequent attack on the town proper, suggests that commanders should give serious consideration to these tactics where the terrain permits. It also should Be remembered that if such high ground is held by the enemy, our attack on the town proper will invariably be crossing costly and the town itself untenable. That's how important high ground is.

In planning the attack of a town proper, the following considerations should be borne in mind. One, reduced observation and limited fields of fire in place.

Of heavier stress on close combat. So you are going to get some. Two, controlling of attacking troops will be difficult and much depends on individual initiative and aggressiveness of small unit leaders. So there you go. We opened up talking about how you better follow all these orders, and now we're on page eight and we're talking about, hey, you know what? It depends on the.

Initiative and aggressiveness of small unit leaders. Making things happen.

Where possible. Towns should be bypassed, isolated and attacked from the flanks or the rear. Why are we even attacking this position if we don't have to roll around it? Imagine if you made that part of your everyday sort of scheme maneuver. I can beat my head against this wall or I can walk around it. That seems like a good.

At least it seems like a good idea to me. I don't know. Echoes over there shaking his head.

Like a lot of times when you say every, you know, you use those, what do you call those words that are real?

Like real permanent.

Yeah.

Like do that in every thing. You know, Every time you say that, I think I triggered id.

I took some. I took some heat off of it by saying it. Seems like, yeah, that would be a good thing to do in part of your everyday plan.

Yeah. Yeah. Then that's what kind of triggered me though, to think like, of all the things that it probably or maybe wouldn't work.

Yeah.

I don't know. Would you treat your workouts like that? Let me sidestep this workout, maybe flank it.

You're on dangerous ground right now.

Going at it.

You're potentially right about that one. I'm just saying, usually when it comes to workouts, I'm going to smash the workout. Let's face it, you know, I'm going to go ahead.

Frontal assault.

Yes, sir. Well, I would think so anyway. Unless, I mean, guess it depends on what you mean by flank. Like, I guess you could flank your initial feelings about the incoming workout if you don't feel like doing it, you know, you could maybe maneuver that way maybe. But. Yeah, maybe, maybe not. I don't know, maybe just direct assault. Workout. Smash it, get it done.

I like it. There are times.

There are times. So maybe not everything in life, you.

Know, Maybe not everything. Yeah, but maybe if you're dealing with other people. It's a good call.

Yeah, that could be the case.

This section here starts talking about like how you actually clear towns and it goes through and then it gets to a point where it starts just telling the comments about the story. So I'm not going to dump into the story or not going to go deep into the story here, but just some of the comments here about the defense of a town. The defense of a town must be prepared to meet the methods of attack which may be employed by the enemy. Since this must include the possibility of flanking attacks and encirclement, it follows that an all around defense must be the rule. The following points not covered in the experience quoted above, which is the one that I didn't read, which is why you should read these things yourself should be borne in mind in planning the defense of a town.

1. Avoid, if possible, placing principal centers of resistance close to landmarks or at the edge of a town where the enemy adjustment of artillery or mortar fire will be facilitated. Positions either outside or within the town should be chosen. And I read this whole section to, to read this and it's something that we talked about the other day on EF Online and I don't know, you were. If you were on the call and I talked about don't give away your position. Yes. Yeah, totally. I went into a whole.

A whole explanation of not giving away your position. And it's weird. It's a weird thing to talk about because it seems real sneaky, right? It seems real like, oh, it seems real sneaky. Especially when people love so much to talk about, like being transparent. But here's the deal. If you have an idea, Dave, and I have my own idea.

If I just put my stake in the ground and say, my idea is this, I'm giving away my position. Now if we were going to go attack a, an enemy outpost, I would do everything I possibly could to avoid giving away my position. Because once I give away my position, well, now you know where to attack me on. So what I would rather do is listen to what you have to say.

Hear.

Let, let me understand what your position is because then it allows me to maneuver and change my position. And also if you're an offensive person and your ego's out of control, as soon as you see my position, guess what you're going to do? Attack it. So I gave you my position, now you're going to attack it. Now what do I do then? Dig in. Now what do we have? A standoff. We have extra casualties. We don't need. So why am I giving away my position when I'm having a conversation and this is. It's one of those things. It sounds so manipulative, right? But then I took it a little bit further on EF Online, I said, this is the facts. The reason I don't give away my position is because I don't actually have one. I'm not rolling in there thinking that I know everything. I'm thinking I may have some ideas that could. You might be able to calculate and estimate approximate where I am, but I'm not going to go in there and say, dave, I believe this because. Not just because I want to hide it from you. That's not why. It's because I actually question my own beliefs. I actually am not looking at you thinking, I know the best thing to do. I've got some ideas. But you can't lock down my position because I'm not going to stay there. I'm not digging in.

Being transparent. This authenticity doesn't have to be in opposition to what we just described either. Being transparent could be. Hey, I'm gonna. I'm gonna have a conversation to tell you a whole bunch of things that I'm thinking about that are things for.

You to consider as well.

For me, maybe thinking. What I don't want to do is sit here and go, hey, you've mentioned three things that I really feel like I want to give you feedback on, but I don't want to tell you those things.

For whatever reason.

Being transparent is not the same as digging your heels in those. The authenticity of that. There's this. You would know this echo. There's this social media thing where, like, somebody says some statement, it's like a meme, and then it says, prove me wrong. It'll say, like, martians colonize the moon.

Prove me wrong.

Or louder with Crowder situation, whatever.

I don't. I should know more about it. I know that you probably know enough. But there's this little. What kind of. Underneath that is this idea like, you're not going to change my mind. Yeah, I know that you are not going to change my mind. Being fully transparent here. This idea of transparency doesn't have to be the opposite of what you just described. You can be fully transparent. And if I actually. My relationship is strong enough with you, you know what you're going to do when I'm being transparent? You're going to listen to me, and then you're going to come back with some things. Oh, that's a good point. And then actually, together what will happen is we'll come up with the right plan and then we'll go execute it.

And it'll be awesome. Yeah. The idea of not giving away your position, you don't give it away. Not because you. Not because you're hiding it. It's because you're truly. Don't.

Don't know.

You don't lock yourself into it.

Yeah.

So I'm not walking into conversations. I know. I know what to do. Not doing that.

And if. If you're in a leadership role, if you're in an actual leadership role, how much do you think your people really want to engage with you if you announce your position out of the gate?

Like, what's the chances of them giving you great feedback? Being transparent.

Yeah.

Yeah. How does that encourage transparency from the troops? Answer. It doesn't. Well, and if it does. Hey, Dave, that sounds like a great idea. I fully support your idea. You're so smart. Yeah. Which is the last thing you want as a leader to be told how smart you are by your subordinates. You want to be told, hey, I don't agree with you. Oh, great. Tell me why.

Where practicable form salience by organizing outlying buildings to cover perimeter of town with flanking and on filleted fire. I had to look up the word salience because I didn't know what it meant. It's like a little projection that's sticking out of the battle line. So you, in order to get a little better cover, you can. You can take an outlying building and you can set up a kind of a fort there.

The noun. A salient.

Yeah. Form salience.

Because there's a word salient, right?

Yeah.

It means like significant or. What does that mean?

I think it's like a clear point.

Yeah.

Which is. The other is the same thing, Right. A clear point. Well, here I am making this. It's like a projection. It's a point. Something that sticks out. But that was a salient point. Yeah. Meaning. Oh, yeah, that was a good point. I understand what you said. Oh, we built a salient out there. Oh. It's a little point where we've got the solid coverage.

Kind of like monolithic. Kind of the same deal.

Yeah, I guess. Kind of. Kind of the same deal.

Like there's a. There's a monolith, which is the noun version of monolithic kind of kind of thing.

Yes. There are all kinds of words that are based on other words.

Hey, I'm just trying to understand this whole deal.

Every once in a while echo says something, and then once he says that he writes down a little note and that means he's gonna go back and edit himself out. I don't know if that made the list. I think he's gonna hold it. I think he's going to strong.

No. Hey, May, that'll probably help some people as far as far as salient and salience goes.

Yeah, and. And also help people realizing that there are multiple versions of the same words in the world.

Yes, it's true.

I'm a jerk.

That too is true.

In addition to a central reserve within the town, provide if possible for a concealed mobile reserve, preferably strong in armor to be held outside the town to counter enemy flanking maneuver. And once again, what is the root of that right there? Don't give away your position. The root of it is, hey, hide this element, which is smart. Keep it mobile. Wherever adjacent terrain features dominate the town, they should be secured. Obviously, this use of high ground may be key to successful defense. That's funny, they say dominant terrain and then they just call it high ground within the town. The construction of street obstacles or barricades to impede enemy movements and the organization of groups of buildings into strong points should be carried out as extensively as time available will permit. Strengthen your defenses in delaying actions. The defensive use of towns will prevent the attacker from determining the strength of the opposing of the forces opposing him. It is not normally advisable to organize a town as an isolated strong point except under terrain conditions which prevent the enemy bypassing it. So don't stick a town out there on its own, don't stick anyone out there on their own unless the terrain allows it.

So then there's a.

I didn't cover one of these, one of these sections, but this one when I started reading it and as I read through it I, I said to myself, this is such a great example of simplicity. And the way this, this battalion attack happens and then the way it gets debriefed is all very interesting. So I'm going to burn through this real quick mission. This is a battalion attack in Italy mission. Lt. Col. Earl Taylor, infantry battalion Commander in Italy on October. On 11 October, my battalion was ordered to make a night march pass through the 2nd Battalion, which was about three miles east of the Italian town of Guardia, north of the Calor river and seize the high ground in the vicinity of Guardia. We were then to continue the advance contact. As we approach Guardia, our leading company made contact with the enemy at a. And there's a sketch that they go through this. It enveloped with one platoon, but was stopped by heavy machine gun and direct 88 millimeter fire from point E, F, and D, and was unable to advance. I immediately moved to the high ground. So basically they get into a big gunfight and they can't, they can't move forward. And here's, here's what I like. I immediately move to the high ground 200 yards north where I could observe the enemy position. So right now we have observe happening. Getting on the high ground. Love that. Observe. What's he doing? Why is he observing? Well, because he's got to figure out what to do. Now. He gets up in this observation position and he says, the enemy had all of the high ground to the front and I could see it would be impossible to advance frontally. So what does that mean? Now he's orienting himself to the situation. Oh, the enemy's got all this high ground up here. I can't advance friendly. So then what does he do? So I decided to make a double envelopment, sending Company I over the hill to the right in Company K on a wide left. Envelopment contact was to be maintained visually. So there's the action. He's. It's actually happening. So he goes through the OODA loop in like four sentences, which is totally legit.

Base of fire. Five tanks were available for the attack. Realizing that the tanks could not move down the road to Guardia, which is the only tank approach due to the streams and high mountains, and because the enemy had 88s and armored cars at F, I decided to emplace the tanks along with my eight heavy machine guns and six 81 millimeter mortars. As shown in the sketch results. The attack was successful by order. The tanks and other supporting weapons opened fire five minutes before Company L started its advance. That is called cover and move. We got tanks and supporting weapons firing, and then Company L starts their move. After five minutes, 15 prisoners were captured, 25 enemy killed. Our casualties were approximately 10 killed and 15 wounded. Which, when you think about the assault on a, you know, in an urban environment, you're going to take some casualties. And those are certain, certainly some casualties. But those are not as bad as you might imagine going into a city when you consider the fact that if you don't know anything about urban combat, one enemy with a machine gun can kill dozens and dozens of troops.

The enemy strength, as determined from prisoners, was two rifle companies, each reinforced, supported by tanks, armored cars, and 88s along the road. These prisoners stated that their force was so completely disorganized and demoralized by our volume of fire, that and scheme of attack, that it was impossible for them to make a counterattack and regain their positions. Planning. It took about two hours to make plans for this attack, which was very carefully studied, planned, and coordinated. It's funny, sometimes the US military spends months making plans for an attack, and he's saying this took two hours, but it was carefully studied, planned, and coordinated. That's what he needed, was a solid two hours. It effectively utilized the terrain features. Every weapon available to the battalion was used. In such an attack, maps must be prearranged with critical points and phase lines. Once the attack is started, the basic plan cannot be changed. It must succeed. That's an interesting statement. And the word that I underlined was basic.

You're nodding your head, Dave.

Like, yeah, my immediate reaction is, must not be changed. I get tense, like, well, that's that. But, yeah, you're right. The basic plan, it doesn't say we can't change. So rather than sort of get all excited that he says he can't change anything is to. He's right. Especially at night. And when you look at this whole situation, you actually want to limit the amount of replanning and recoil. You want to limit a lot of things now, not the individual actions of the teams and maneuvering and things like that, and let them make the adjustments. But you don't want one element to go, you know what, let's cancel the envelopment and just do something different and abandon your portion of the plan. You actually can't do that. So you actually need to keep the basic plan. That, that clarity actually made a lot of sense.

Yeah, that one word. Yeah, that one word makes a big difference. When you start thinking about what they're doing. You've got, what is it, eight heavy machine guns, and those guys are doing a fire, a fire mission on this town for five minutes before you enter the town. That's coordination. You can't start thinking, well, you know, I think I'm gonna go early, or whatever it is. You're the basic plan. You gotta stick with that basic plan. Then I, I, this is something that I lived by.

If I, if it was possible to stick with the basic plan, I was sticking with the basic plan. Like, it would have to be something really. Now we would have a contingency plan. Hey, but if I could avoid using the contingency plan, I would stick with the basic plan that we, that we rehearsed, and we would rehearse the contingency too. But people expect what they're going to be doing.

We had the exact same philosophy. We had contingency plans. But the part of that that made that possible is our plans were usually really fluid. Some key limits. You had some limiting decisions inside there. But our plans weren't hyper detailed and super down to the. So you could stick to the basic plan we used to have. Just a joke, stick to the plan. That was what we always said, like, what do you do here? Just stick to the plan. That didn't mean you don't think, you don't make changes. But the idea that what we planned and how we coordinated, stick to that. And then make smart decisions along the way to reinforce that as opposed to you get halfway there and then, hey.

You know what we should do?

We should come up with a new plan. Like, there's no time to come up with a new plan. Once you cross the line of departure, you kind of need to stick to the plan. The basic plan, which also drove our plans to be basic. We had very basic big picture plans.

Yeah. Simple and flexible. If, you know, if the three of us were going to go and take down a building and we say, okay, here's the way it's gonna go. Once we get to the front door, Echo, you're gonna open the door. Dave, you're gonna go left, I'm gonna go right. And then Echo, you're gonna go left. And we. Okay. And we rehearse that 10 times. I promise you that as we approach that building, there's gonna be a civilian in the front yard that Echo's gonna have to deal with. And all of a sudden that whole plan's out the window. So you can't go to that level of detail. And you definitely need to have flexibility there. But the basic plan of, hey, we're going to approach the building. Totally. That's not going to change because we know where the fire support is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Estimating the situation and planning should be emphasized in training. Comment. And this is. I found this interesting, too.

This account is a good example of fire and movement on the battalion. I have no idea. I guess. I guess I got it from Roger Hayden. Why. Why I use the term cover and move instead of fire movement? Because of the same thing. But I. Same thing. Cover and move and fire movement are the same thing. This account, at least as far as I know. Does it. Am I. Am I missing something?

I don't think so.

We.

We use the term fire and maneuver. Yeah, that was the one element moves, one element covers and I think it's synonymous.

Yeah, yeah. However, it should be pointed out that a double envelopment is a rather ambitious scheme of maneuver for a single battalion and should be used with caution. And I loved seeing that because.

What you're talking about, Echo Charles, is you're talking about a double envelopment. You're basically surrounding a target, which means you got good guys on the flanks of bad guys. And if you start shooting at the bad guys in the middle, you can shoot yourself. And it's really problematic. The, the thing about this, and there would be occasional SEAL platoons that would go, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna just surround the target.

It works when nothing goes wrong. It works when the enemy doesn't start shooting. It works if you have, on the positive side, it works if you have a terrain feature that prevents friendly fire, which is possible. You can have a, you know, a ravine that allows you to be in a certain position, but when you, when you do these battalion sized operations, you're actually getting out of the, you should be moving outside the range of your own weapons, which is what the goal is. Right. You know, we're really far away and, and as long as we are shooting our weapons at the enemy, there's a very small chance that our weapons are going to hit our friendly forces. So be very careful about double envelopment.

And same thing with going to a enemy's rear. Like, if you're going to do that, well, then you've got to pay attention to how that's going to work out. It is a lot harder than it looks. No mention is made of the constitution of a reserve force. Such a reserve must be retained under the control of the commander to enable to counter unforeseen enemy reaction as the attack progresses. Troops committed to a plan of action cannot be considered as available for this purpose. The division of the battalion into, into approximately three equal attack forces is open to criticism, but it worked in this case.

A schema maneuver should include a determined determination of the direction of the main effort and the preponderance of the force should be available to support this effort. Here's an interesting story. So one of the great tactical lessons learned of my life, which I learned in training when you. So we would set up, you know, to, to do target assaults. Typical is any army manual, any, any Marine Corps manual how you do a target assault. You know, you set up a base element and a maneuver element. So the base element is going to engage the target. It gets in position and it shoots at the Target. Once it's shot at the target for a certain amount of time, the assault element then gets up and maneuvers towards the target. When they get to a certain point, the people shooting at the target shift, fire off the target, but they keep shooting, and eventually they move. The assault team moves through the target. And I was watching a young junior officer, I was in training at Seal Team 1, and he. He said, okay, what we're going to do is for our base element that's going to do all this shooting at the target area. What we're going to do is we're going to take our machine gunners from the other. From the assault element who has to move. We're gonna move the machine gunners into the baseline. We're take some of the riflemen and put them in the assault element so they can move easier, they can get through the target. And I said, I was thinking to myself, that's pretty smart. Smart guy is gonna get a really strong base element.

Vietnam vet said, what are you doing? He said, well, you know, you know, master Chief, I'm gonna go ahead and put heavier, stronger base over here in the machine gun element and put all my machine guns over in the base, the of element. And I'm like, I can already tell. I'm glad I wasn't coming up with.

This plan.

But why is that? You know? He says, well, because I want to have more machine gunners. I want to have more firepower in my base element. And then the. The master chief in one question said, what happens if the assault element gets compromised on the way in?

End of discussion. Because now we don't have any machine guns. And. And by the way, what should happen is if we have machine guns in the assault element, the assault element just became the base element. That's what just happened. So. And the thing that. The other lesson that I learned from that was that what you really get to do. The other benefit, which I actually would say is an even bigger benefit, is we have unit integrity, which I love. Unit integrity. That squad or that platoon is always working together. The machine gunners are there, they can break off, they can assault things they can do. They can do all kinds of things where when you pull those machine gunners out, they're not. They're way less capable.

So apply that to your business, to your team. How do we keep the teams together? How do we keep the teams together? How do we keep them both? How do we keep them most capable? That's what we want to do. Setting up little specialty moments is a risky call. Factors contributing to the success in this attack were prompt estimate of the situation by the commander, including a study of the terrain based on personal reconnaissance. Development of a definite plan of maneuver based on the seizure of key terrain and outflanking enemy positions. Detailed planning of specific orders. Utilization of maximum firepower where available. Maintenance of control over the elements.

Little section here on fighting in wooded terrain. Lt. Col. F.L. walker, Infantry Battalion Commander, Italy. The area in which my battalion operated was covered in thick scrub trees and fruit orchards interspersed with frequent farmhouses, many stone walls six to eight feet in height, and numerous sunken roads. Field of fire was greatly restricted. Average Observation was only 50 to 100 yards. Enemy delaying groups with machine guns were widely scattered and impossible to locate until arrival within 100 yards or less. It was found necessary to place heavy weapons out in the front line or very close up to avoid hitting our troops. After encountering hostile fire, it was found very effective to spray the entire woods ahead with a massive concentration of mortar and machine gun fire for about one minute, followed by a rapid advance of rifle platoons under assault fire to cover all the trees and house windows where snipers might be hiding. In each case, Germans pulled out rapidly, leaving weapons and ammunition behind, although we had been unable to locate them previously. However, the tendency of troops is to wait for definitely located targets before they will open fire, which results in allowing very small groups of enemy to shift position frequently and keep up a demoralizing rate of machine gun fire to cause a great delay. The continuous rapid fire delivered by our heavy machine guns had a particularly demoralizing effect on the Germans.

The remarks of this battalion commander emphasized the importance of barrage covering fire. The firepower of available weapons in this instance substituted for an artillery barrage. But the principle remains the same. Covered move. Losses will be minimized by following closely the mass fires of available weapons delivered in areas from which enemy fire is expected.

I think the enemy might be there. I'm putting rounds into it.

And isn't it interesting how that one dynamic. Think about that, learn that lesson learned of realizing, hey, what we need to do is lay down heavy fire where we think there might be enemy and push forward as quickly as we can.

Think about that lesson learned. Like, think about the first time it happens. The first time it happens. You're like, oh, where are they? Where are they? No one's shooting. And then someone goes, hey, put down fire and advance. And guys start laying down fire. And they start laying down fire where they think there's enemy. And then that allows you to get the enemy's heads down because they are somewhere out there and you get their heads down, and now you're. You're maneuvering, and when you're maneuvering, they're not. And now you win. But can you imagine that that's a little bit off of our instinct, right? As a human, if you don't. If you don't. If you don't get trained that way, your instinct is not, hey, I'm just going to shoot where I think there's bad guys. I'm going to shoot in that little dark corner over there. I'm going to shoot in that window over there. I'm going to shoot near that stone wall over there. You haven't seen one enemy, but that's where you're shooting. And now you have a whole company of soldiers doing that. That's a lot of firepower going downrange, and it allows you to move, move, because somewhere in one of those positions, there was enemy.

But think about what it took to learn that lesson and how valuable that lesson right there is to be able to tell people.

And it also talks about the importance of speed, which is the next note. Regimental Commander, Infantry, Sicily. I believe that the individual soldier now realizes that a relentless, steady advance saves casualties and that he is now imbued with the knowledge of the importance of speed. Every man in this regiment is firmly convinced that the speed of our recent operations saved us from huge losses down to the lowest. Private. The feeling exists that we would still be at Kanasadi if we had not pushed the enemy off balance and kept him that way.

You know, how often are we sitting there waiting for the perfect plan, the perfect whatever. And what we should be doing is moving. Right? You want to just bring this down to working out. Echo, Charles, since that seems to be your main topic for the day.

All right. Yeah, cool. Yes.

So let's look at two options. 1. All right, what I'm doing is I'm going to go and research on the Internet. You know what the max time under load I need to do for this particular workout? Time under tension.

Right. But come up with my periodic periodicity.

Period, periodization, Periodization for my workouts.

Right? All these things that you could spend two hours researching and then writing and mapping out, or you could go do a bunch of cleaning jerks. Just go, yeah, there is an advantage to doing cleaning jerks. Look, I'm not saying you got to be an idiot.

No, no.

But there are some. Some positive things to just going.

Yes.

And keeping moving and firing where you think it might. Hey, I don't know about the. The. The the.

The internal bicep head or whatever, the brachial head of the bicep, which I know you probably got some little high tuned exercises. Yeah, there you go. So you do certain types of curls with the easy bar to hit that target, right?

Yeah.

Whereas you could just say, hey, let's face it, go do some curls.

Right? Yeah, yeah, actually, you're right. I actually agree with you 100%. I agree with that philosophy in working out. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things you want to know. Otherwise you're just kind of, you know, moving around with, with no specific direction which, you know, teach their own. But yeah, I think that actually is a very good analogy. You know, you see, sort out what am I trying to do here? Get a few basic methods on, try to, you know, how to achieve it and just go.

Especially when you start coupling that attitude with the fact that we don't want to move in the first place. Right. That inertia is. We're just trying to stay still. And now we can, we can, we can focus on that by just doing a bunch of planning. Like, hey, I'm just waiting to see where the bad guys are. I'm just waiting. No, freaking lay down fire. That's, that's the way you wake up in the morning. You wake up in the morning saying, I'm gonna put down fire.

Yeah, just kidding.

That's what I'm gonna do. That's a good plan.

Yeah, very good plan. Yeah, you're right about that too. How you, you're like, oh, wait, what? Oh, wait, let me try to remember what I was gonna do today and be like, well, I should. Maybe I should do this because tomorrow I'm gonna do this, so maybe I shouldn't do this. You know, I shouldn't do it that hard. Or. And you've spent all this time and then it's like, well, shoot, if I do the whole workout now, shoot, dinner's like in like 45 minutes, so maybe I should, I don't know, I'm just saying, depends on when you work out, I guess.

Sure.

You know, not in your case, for sure. Maybe a breakfast or whatever. But yeah, then you're like, oh, that's 45 minutes. That only gives me like 10 minutes to work, like, or one minute to warm up. And maybe, man, I might as well just do this tomorrow. That way I could get the whole thing done. You see what I'm saying then? Yeah, bro. All that planning, not only did it, Not a lot of that, not mad.

Meanwhile, weakness is winning in your body, meanwhile, weakness is winning, man.

And then there's that to avoid. Yeah. Is that. I think it was you who talked about, I don't know, whatever. But yeah, when you let the weakness creep in, you give that weakness a precedent, you know? So the weakness is sort of like, oh, yeah, I approved my. My, My. My presence kind of thing.

I was talking about this on EF Online the other day. I've been doing this lately in my head.

So.

And I haven't quite figured out what this means, but I know it's been very functional.

When you have, like, an option of doing a bad thing or just not doing the bad thing.

That reaction of just not doing the bad thing isn't strong enough. I've actually been trying to do something good.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

I think.

Let me explain again. So, example. Oh, there's a donut over there. You know what? I'm not going to eat the donut. That's not strong enough. Not only am I not going to eat the donut, I'm actually going to go and do 20 burpees.

Yeah.

And, you know, it doesn't even have to be that extreme because guess what? You're working or whatever, and you're just like, I just want to have a dough. No, no, no, I'm not going to eat that donut. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go and get my desk cleared off right now. Yeah.

Kind of on top of that.

Yeah. Doing something actually proactive.

Right.

To crush.

To crush that weakness.

Weakness that's wanting to grab it just. It's like, if. It's like, you know, if I says, hey, Echo.

Echo, you know, you. You wanna. You wanna come by my house and grill up some steaks? And let's say you don't really feel like doing it. And so you're like, well, you know what I mean? I'm gonna pressure you, but if you're like, negative. I'm already doing something. I'm like, okay, that. Case closed, right? Case closed. You already won.

Yeah.

So I'm just saying. Going a little bit harder at the weakness.

Yeah.

The little trend I'm in right now.

Yeah. And that works. I mean, it depends on what you mean by works, but that's a good move. That's like, yeah. You know, like. Yeah, I'm about to like. Okay, I've. I have burpees at the end of this workout. I finished the workout with 100 burpees. We'll say. I'll be like, man, that workout was pretty solid. You know, I don't know about those burpees. You know, we'll do those burpees another time. We're going to skip the burpees is what we're going to do. Then it comes time to skip the burpee. Like, you know what? No 150 or 200 now, just for thinking that, you know, oh, yeah, you're.

Going hard on weakness.

Yes.

I think that's a positive.

I think you're right.

I'm going to start like this. This ties in for me. I'm gonna start laying down fire now. I'm start being even more proactive. I start seeing weakness, I'm laying down fire. I'm putting some mortar rounds on that stuff immediately. What'd you write down, Dave?

I think we went so far away.

From what I wrote down, I'm not.

Sure I can bring us back.

We're talking about burpees and bicep curls, bro.

You talked about bias before, so actually, there might be a little connection here if we think about it for a second. You were talking about. Well, you actually weren't talking about bias. I had the word bias in my mind when we had a plan. Hey, we're gonna go into the building, you're gonna go to the east stairwell, you're gonna go to the west. And, hey, we. That might not happen. We might have to do something different. We used to brief, get on missions, these general missions. Like, hey, all things being equal, I want you to bias to the south. And if, you know, we get additional pressure, you're gonna be the element that biases to the south. Now, look, something may come up where you can't do that, and that's fine. You may go to the north. Go and let me know. But our plan is that, all things being equal, we're gonna bias in this direction, which allows me to keep my plans, like, really general.

Yeah, that's about as general as it gets.

Yeah. And it's. But it's not completely, like, out in nowhere where you don't have some idea, but it's like, hey, these are the things we anticipating, and all things being equal. I want. You were. You were. We were talking about the.

The inertia thing, which has kind of bugged me from the beginning. But I actually was thinking about. As you were saying it, as, you know, he's talking about, like, the laws of physics. Whereas objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion. And the hard part is getting the staying at rest and getting it to the motion. Like, once you get the motion going, actually, it's not that hard to keep it going. It's the friction of doing nothing. And it's that connection, like you said. I know you didn't invent it, but this idea of default aggressive, this bias for doing something, is the hardest thing to get, which is the natural bias of doing something. And when you made that comment about when I see weakness or I feel weakness, the natural bias is, oh, no, I'm not gonna give in to that weakness. I'm gonna do nothing. Which everybody's like, that's the win. And you're like, no, actually, that's not the win. The win is not to do nothing. Now, is it better than eating a donut? Yes. But we're not here to just not eat donuts. That's not the game we're playing over here. The game we're playing is just not to eat the donuts. And he started. The very first thing is leadership versus inertia. It's that how hard is it to get the movement to do something? But once you have that bias, that bias to maneuver and that starts, it's not that hard. It actually gets easier every single time. So that's my connection to things you were saying. And, yeah, I'm gonna let you guys talk about what it is you talk about, but that's what I was thinking about, is that what that bias really means to tie back to. The very first thing that I kind of thought about was like, what did he talk about? Because I was thinking, inertia is movement. Inertia is not movement. It's just the state that you're in. Inertia could be doing nothing. And that's what he's talking is breaking out of that and the bias to move, which is the most challenging thing.

Yeah, I talk about pushing a train, you know, and I'm always like, hey, if you're gonna push a train, the first. Getting that thing to start moving is the hardest part. And you start pushing, you push, you push, and it eventually starts to move a little bit. And then you get to a point if you keep pushing that thing where you can actually, like, grab onto the railing and hang on for a second, it's just gonna keep going.

You started it when you were talking about blasting a rocket ship out of here.

Exactly.

You can actually use 90% of your effort to get that. And you. Only you don't need 90%. You can coast the rest of the way. Once you break free of that gravitational force of like, literally, I'm just gonna. I'm just on the train now.

Yeah.

Now, look, if you can just jump on a speeding train, go for it. But most of us. Most people have to actually get that train from a dead stop and move it.

Yeah.

You ever see those guys roll up a frying pan?

Like a.

Like a piece of paper kind of thing? I think that's like the. The method.

Really.

Yeah. Like you hit it like real hard that initial. But. And then it like heats up the molecules so it becomes more. Yeah. If I'm not mistaken. Unless I got tricked or something like that. And it's one big trick. But I'm pretty sure that the. Because it's always a strong man. Right? It's a strong man doing it.

Like the guy rolling up a frying pan. I'll tell you that.

It's usually like a feat of strength.

Stunning.

I wonder if it's like you're seeming to bring it to some sort of molecular level, which I'm not sure about.

That was the explanation. For real. They're like, this is the trick. This is how you do it.

You know what? I do not know if you're right and I do not know if you are wrong. I'm gonna just leave it hanging and people will let us know and we will get someone with a frying pan posting it and telling us, hey, echo Charles is 100% right. Or echo Charles, some bro.

The most likely outcome of this is neither of those.

It's bro.

Echo. Talking about frying pans when we're talking about combat, that's the most likely outcome.

These concepts are everywhere.

There's only so much I can do to keep us on topic here.

Echo.

I'm just saying if it can work with a frying pan br. It's good. And rocket ships and whatnot. It can work with like, everyday stuff.

And I actually think Echo is the premier example in the world premiere example of. In the world. In the entire world of.

If you know the way broadly, you see it in all things. You're seeing combat in a frying pan.

These ideas are everywhere. But there was the. As far as feats of strength go, there's the ripping. The phone book one. Right. I think there's a little trick you gotta like, unbunch them or bunch them.

But I think to your point is that. That initial. The initial breakup is the hard part.

And that's where you use technique.

Okay. How it went was the cur. The. The rolling up of the frying pan. How. How it's explained Is you hit it with that first force of the rolling action. But you just can't. Like, you can't hit one and then regrip and hit another one. It's not like that. You got to hit it once and just keep, keep going. Don't let, like, the momentum stop because the molecules are still heated up for that moment. It makes it more malleable or whatever. That's how it was explained to me.

We're going to look up. You're going out on a limb. I like it. You got no problem taking risk. I like the way you roll. Next one. The herd instinct. Major Robert Wilson, observer with the X Division. They don't name the division in Italy. Our troops. Echo's taking a note. Maybe he's concerned. That's getting edited. Oh, you're going strong today.

All good.

Our troops showed a decided tendency to bunch up under fire. This was observed on several occasions. One prisoner wore a German forward observer for an 88 millimeter battery, was interrogated concerning his technique of adjustment. It seems he had been told that American troops congregated when under fire. When he saw American troops advancing, he would call for one or two rounds in their vicinity and observe the area where they congregated. Fire was then shifted to that area. The prisoner stated that he conducted very effective fire in this way in several occasions on Italy. Don't bunch up. Don't bunch up. Leadership strategy and tactics. Talk about this from a leadership perspective. Let the leader lead. You don't need to jump in there and crowd the leader. Everyone get in there. Let me tell you my opinion. Listen to what the moss has to say. If you want some suggestions, give it to him. Don't crowd. Don't bunch up. Base of fire. Lieutenant colonel JM Fan, infantry battalion commander. It was found that so long as Japs could keep us ducking from aimed fire, their position remained secure. But once the jab was made to keep his head down and the Americans could get to his feet and attack, it was merely a matter of walking up to the position and tossing in grenades. To make this possible required the coordination of fires down to and including the riflemen. It is important that commanders and leaders realize this. Otherwise, troops will remain down when is not necessary.

So amazing. It's so amazing. Cover. Move.

Teamwork down to the lowest level.

Yeah, and I just said teamwork. And guess what the next section's called. And I. I did not. Look at this. The next section of teamwork. We would have a rifleman point out a pillbox using tracer ammunition, then a 37mm gun would take them under fire with high explosives. Oftentimes a pillbox crew would attempt to evacuate to a safer place and the light machine gun would mow them down.

Isn't it interesting when we talk about teamwork and we talk about COVID move? The reason that it is such an incredible metaphor is because if you don't cover and move, you don't win. It's as simple as that. If you don't have one element that's shooting at the Japanese while the other element is walking up and if you don't do that, you lose. That's what happens, you lose. If you do that, you win. If you work together as a team, you win.

Here's Lt. Col. T.F. bogart Infantry Officer, Italy. One night in the vicinity of Avellino, the battalion established an outpost line around the high ground to the northeast of city protection. Patrols were ordered up several roads leading out of the city. All company commanders were informed of the dispositions. The patrols went out before the outposts were posted. A few hours later firing was heard at the battalion CP which increased in tempo and kept up most of the night. Soon reports were sent that sent in that German patrols were operating in front of the outposts. I'm sure you all know what's coming. Next morning it became apparent that our own patrols and had been fired on as they attempted to return to the outpost line. Comment the constant recurrence of such reports indicates the necessity for closer coordination of patrol activity with the outpost of with the outpost system. Positive steps must be taken to ensure that the routes of returning patrols are known to the outpost and that recognition signals are arranged.

Blue on blue. No one thinks it's going to happen.

No one thinks it's gonna happen.

I never, never even thought about blue on blues. It was like such a. It seemed like such a. I shouldn't say we never thought about them but it seemed like such a foreign idea. You think how could that ever happen the way I.

No one ever thinks it's gonna happen to them. They always know it happens, but it always happens to somebody else, some other team, some. It never happens to them. I mean even that comment is like the common occurrence or the common debrief that we got on this and whatever you said, like how often they heard that same exact story.

Notes from other arms. There's another one about just staying off the skyline, right? Don't give away your position.

I just had to highlight this. There was a section about what it was like when they had an anti aircraft versus when they didn't have it. And the title of the section is Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder. And what it was like, and what he says in here is that rarely would the anti aircraft actually hit a German aircraft that was strafing them. It would rarely happen. But when the anti aircraft wasn't there, the German aircraft would just come down and just hammer free reign.

Radio discipline 1st Lt. CE plays Air Corps Sicily flyers coming into the combat zone had no conception of radio discipline. Dave.

New pilots use the radio indiscriminately. Men returning from missions yet use the interplane radio unnecessarily, which jammed up the ban for other planes still on a mission. Failure to observe radio discipline is a major problem for both air and ground units in combat. Each individual believes his case is a special one, not bound by established rules. This tendency must be discouraged by positive action. Radio discipline is established to facilitate essential communications during contact combat and is not a peacetime play thing to be discarded when action is joined. And this is. This is Task Unit Bruiser. We were freaking awesome at radio discipline. We did not talk on the radio. In fact, there would be operations where some, some task units might use two or even three separate radio nets to coordinate. And in Task Unit Bruiser, we would use use one and it would be almost completely silent. So. Yeah, and, and how does this translate into regular life? It's talking all the time. It's not having discipline. What the hell you say? Just feeling like you gotta throw in your 2 cents all the time.

And yes, for those of you that aren't seeing this on YouTube, I'm looking right, right at my friend Echo. Charles.

Whatever, bro. Freaking. You know, when I talk, I think. Anyway, I don't know, I. I could be wrong here. Maybe I'm trying to just support the point, you know, bring it down to the everyday level. Right on. See what I'm saying?

I think there's a. You have a lot of supporters out there. At least a dozen of them. Yeah, yeah, the radio discipline thing. Isn't it weird too, this. This idea that everyone in combat, each individual believes his case is a special one? That's such a derogatory statement. And you know what's funny about that? Derogatory statement?

Everyone that hears it thinks they're talking about someone else. Like, that's not me, but it is you. You are talking and no one wants to hear you. And what you have to say isn't that important.

Is that kind of like talking about your dreams with your friend?

I have no idea.

You ever liked you ever get your friend.

But I guess I tell you what, I'm about to have an idea.

No, if I could, you know when your friend is like, hey, I had this dream last night and it was about.

And.

And it's not about you or nothing, but it's like, this is just the weirdest dream. Aren't you like, bro, who cares? You know? But if you ever find yourself telling whoever about your dream, yeah, it seems like it's so interesting. It was just so bizarre and all this stuff. Meanwhile, the person like, bruh, be quiet, you know?

Radio silence resounding Metaphor complete.

Ah.

Captured documents. Big section about.

Upon searching the bodies, they found a map of the second lieutenant and dispatched immediately to the regimental command post by a runner. Next day, the translation of this map was returned to 1st Battalion. It showed the Japanese defensive plan and proved very effective in eliminating Japanese from that area when they attacked. It not only marked maps, but also documents of less apparent importance may furnish the key to enemy plans. When combined with other information, the necessity for prompt forwarding to higher headquarters of all captured documents must be impressed on all ranks. And I'll tell you why I wanted to bring that up. Because this is something we get told about intel all the time, is, you know, hey, look, you might find a piece of paper that's got the word purple on it.

And you bring that, you know, hey, this is what I found on target. That could be some code word that you didn't know about it. And it's, you don't know. So whenever you think you know you're wrong. Whenever you think, oh, that doesn't mean anything, you're wrong. And so when someone is talking to you and you think you know you're wrong, you don't know. They got some perspective that you don't know. So listen to it. Listen to it. I have to put myself in check sometimes when I'll get asked a question, like working with a client and someone will give me a question, and I'm telling you, I have. I know you. You have to experience this too. Dave. Someone. Someone raised their hand, hey, I want to know when it comes to cover and move. If I'm working with another department and they don't, we already know where that question is going, right? There's like a 98% chance that we know that they're going to say, hey, this other department doesn't care about me and they don't really support us. So what am I supposed to do then? Just keep. We've heard that question. We hear that question. A lot. I always have to put myself in check because just because I think that's what they're going to say doesn't mean that's what they're going to say. It doesn't mean that there's not some nuance to it. It doesn't mean that I can spit out some module about how you, you know, well, you continue sport. They'll know. Listen to what they're saying. Don't stop them from talking.

You know, the minute somewhere I see this in group dynamics. You know, there's a discussion going on and someone's talking and someone else, someone else in the group will cut them off.

And this is another thing I talked about on EF Online.

Think about how disrespectful it is to cut someone off, right? Like, you might not say anything to me, but if you're talking and I just jump in, cut you off and just, just without regard, just, just start, you know, cut you off. Think about how do you consider that disrespectful? Echo Charles.

Yes, sir, I do.

Most people recognize that that is disrespectful. And so they try to stop themselves from doing it. They can't always control their egos. They can't always, like, let it continue. And I'll tell you, I think being on podcasts, have you ever noticed when two people that have podcasts are on the same podcast, they'll let the other person talk and it's sort of let the person complete thoughts. Because podcast is sort of an amplified version of if all of a sudden we're talking over each other, it's just painful to listen to. But then if you get someone that's not really a podcast type person or haven't, hasn't done a lot of, they'll be jumping in and wanting to talk and, and it makes it hard to listen to. So to me, I think that's enhanced.

My listening, right? Cause if I have a guest on here and they want to talk, it's like, okay, I'm going to let them complete their sentence. And what I've realized over the years is that when I let someone do that, there's usually some nuggets in there that I didn't know about. So I'm actually going to listen to what you have to say. And the minute when I hear someone at a, we'll be working with a company and you'll hear someone say, you know, someone's mid sentence and boom. Gets cut off and overrun. And here's what I was explaining on EF Online the other day. We all recognize that as disrespectful, but it's seldom that we recognize the opposite, which is, when I'm listening to you, I am showing you respect, and you subconsciously know that, like the. The person that you're talking to, when you listen to them, they subconsciously feel respected, which is a good. Which is a great thing, because we're trying to build a relationship. We're trying to build trust. And it's incredible how this tool of listening is so powerful in increasing the trust in relationships that we can work better together as a team, and yet it's neglected all the time, because I think, oh, I already know what Dave is going to say, so I'm just gonna butt in and start to tell him what I think. Well, I am disrespecting Dave. Contrary. If Dave is talking and I listen to him and I nod my head and say, yep, I hear what you're saying, and I let him complete his thoughts, not only am I not disrespecting him, I am respecting him. And damn, if you don't see some just mayhem, go watch the news. It's insanity. It's total insanity. Not just the newscasters themselves or the guests that they have come on for three minutes to yell at each other, but, you know, go watch some, you know, two people in this day and age or five people or 100 people arguing with each other. No one's listening to anybody. Why jump into that bar fight? Right? This is a verbal bar fight, which obviously can escalate into real fights and real problems. Nowadays, we're seeing all kinds of mayhem out in the streets, and that mayhem is being caused by the fact that no one's listening to each other. And it starts with the disrespect of, I'm not gonna listen to you. And by the way, when you. When I cut you off and then you try and cut me off back, what's my response? I get louder, and then you get louder, and now we're escalating. Next thing you know, we're throwing punches. Next thing you know, we're hucking bottles and bricks and shooting tear gas, and we got a real freaking problem.

Because we don't listen to each other.

Yeah, the. A lot of times, though, when. Well, when I witness that or see it or whatever, I think, anyway, it comes not necessarily overtly disrespect, but it's almost like an absence of respect, because more like they're just distracted or maybe just focused on their own. Like what they have to Say, or their own significance or whatever. Right. So how you said, yeah, because if I think I know what Dave's gonna say, I'm gonna. To cut him off. And that's true. And even if it's subconscious, it's true, you know, because if I don't know what you're gonna say, and I'm, like, kind of curious, I'm gonna. I'm gonna wait to hear it, you know, But a lot of times people, they're either think they know what they're gonna say or they're too eager about what they want to say. Right. So it kind of. A lot of times it comes back to, like, what kind of person you are, you know? So if you're like, hey, everything that comes out of my. My mouth is just go, go. You'll probably interrupt people more like, I tend to see that kind of pattern, you know, for sure.

And.

There'S. I will say the main time when I jump in on somebody is like, I've got something flashing through my brain and I don't want to lose it.

Yeah, you don't want to forget it. Yeah, there is that too. Yeah. And, yeah, that actually seems like a legitimate, like, reason to interrupt sometimes.

Yeah.

But it's one of those things that I think, like you said a couple times, where it's like, oh, yeah, it might. Must not have been that important or whatever, you know, if you forget it. But here's the thing, though, there's a little dichotomy on that one too. What if Dave's over here talking, like, so much. He said so many things that, like, straight up required me to interrupt and be like, hey, I gotta stop you there. You know, like that kind where it's like, hey, that's not. I gotta stop you there, you know, kind of thing. But I didn't. I just. Just let him go. Meanwhile, he left me with 47 things that require my rebuttal or whatever, and I didn't interrupt them.

It's kind of like, yeah, that's a challenge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, big picture, you might as well just be like, well, at least I listened to Dave and everything he had to say.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, we could break down. Start to break down the social dynamics of situations where, you know, if I have some disagreement with you now, I will tell you I am much better off if Dave is saying something that I disagree with. I am much better off most of the time letting him say what it is that I disagree with, rather than just jumping in and being like that. Look, it's. It's disrespectful. I'm clearly not listening to you. Right. I'm cutting you off. Yeah. So why am I behaving that way? It's not good. Look, if you. If Dave wants to talk for seven minutes and rattle off, you know, like you said, 47 points, maybe at some point I go, you know, maybe at some point I say, hey, can I just. Can we. Can we kind of address these things one at a time? Because you've. You've just said three different things, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna get lost in what you're saying, and. And I want to talk about that first thing. I think you could do that respectfully.

Yeah. Like, you got to put effort into the respect respectful part of it. Like, I can respectfully interrupt.

Yeah.

Really. But if you're just throwing out interruptions. Yes, disrespectful.

There's certainly different modalities of interruption that are. That are, you know, wildly different from. And you know, what's cool, what's interesting is when you are face to face with somebody, you can tell when the person wants to say something. Right. You can just look at their face and they. They get a face and they have a nonverbal communication telling you, I got something to say right now. And if you. If I'm. If Dave's giving me that look.

My. My respect to him is to go, he's got something to say. Time to give him a moment.

Yeah. And the.

I think, well, I'm speaking from experience, and I don't have much, but. Well, actually, no, I do have a lot of experience listening to people talk. But if you. If you have a situation where, okay, the person's talking and they're saying all crazy stuff. Right. That kind of requires some correction or some interruption. Right.

Or some discussion at a minimum.

Yeah. So unless you guys are actively working on solving a specific problem. We can. Which can happen, like, in work or in a family or whatever. But you know how some people, they just like to talk, and we're just having a friendly conversation, whatever, and they're just blabbing at the mouth, saying things that are just. Some are true, some are not true, and they're just going on and on like, they're all correct. Right. And they won't be quiet. You might as well just not say anything because at the end of the day, it. It does you better to just listen to everything they said. And you know, you know the old saying, like, yeah, you don't want to talk, you want to listen because now you know everything you already know and then you know what they know kind of thing. You ever heard that one?

Yeah, that's, that's from this podcast, is a matter of fact.

Oh, there you go. Boom. So. So it's like that kind of situation, you know, like you're not, you're not tasked necessarily to effectively change someone's mind every single time, so you might as well just keep your mouth shut a lot of the time.

I mean, let's face it, if you're going to have a discussion with someone to try and try and consolidate your ideas together to become, to come up with a, the. The strongest idea, then you have to converse with them. And whether they're a subordinate or a superior or a peer, at some point, you know, in order to progress ideas, you have to converse with them and just sitting there and remaining silent. When people are saying things that you totally disagree with, or to put in a better way, you don't fully understand their perspective, then we have to uncover that perspective a little bit. And you do that by asking questions and trying to figure out where they are coming from.

Yeah. You know, I'm totally recalling a very specific situation recently where I was in the middle of this straight up argument, debate, social situation about political, quasi political things, and I just witnessed just mayhem.

Going back and forth.

I didn't say anything.

And I was like, well, yeah, that's just jumping into a bar fight that you're not.

But I'm thinking like, hey, either one of you guys could easily just be quite quiet and listen and not say anything for the rest of the whole time or whatever. And this whole, like, we'd all be better off. It's kind of like one of those situations. So I'm totally projecting that right now onto this situation.

What do you write down, Dave?

Dude, there's a lot. There's a lot in what you just.

Said.

Your thing that you were just talking about. When you're sitting there watching these other two people, and when you're watching these other two people have what is kind of like a ridiculous conversation where they're arguing, you're just sort of the news or whatever. And we're all just sitting there as observers, and it looks completely ridiculous to us as observers, you see it escalating, you see it going nowhere, you see people digging in, and when you're just watching it, it's obvious how completely ridiculous it is. The comment earlier is like that feeling that when we have something to say, it's different and this needs to be said. Remember that when you're about to open your mouth, somebody else is gonna watch it and you're gonna look every bit as ridiculous to them as they did to you.

When you're talking about listening. And I have learned this in my life. I have learned to have a bias to not talk. I learned that skill. I wasn't born with that skill. I don't think anybody would accuse 20 year old Dave of having a bias for listening. That's a learned thing that I have done in my life. The trick there is what you have said a thousand times is you actually have to listen because of what you said before, which is if I'm talking and you're letting me talk and I think you're listening to me, I'll talk, I'll keep doing my thing. But the second I catch you, the eye roll, like the heavy breathe or whatever you're going to do, I'm like, dude, this guy's listening into me. You actually have to listen. And the only way you will truly listen to what the other person says is if in your mind you believe that you might get something out of it. Because if you think you're like, oh dude, here goes echo, he's gonna just go do what he does and it's gonna be a complete waste of time. The minute I do that, I'm gonna miss something.

And.

The actual listening part is a lot harder than it sounds because the conversation having in your head, which is, I know I'm right, all these points are wrong, all these things are saying are just complete waste. The active listening piece better come from a place of authenticity or you didn't get found out in a second because your body language is going to give the whole thing away. And then you might as well just cut them off right there because they're not listening. Because he knows you're not listening to me. Yeah, there's a lot with that. And as simple as it sounds to listen, if it was so easy, we wouldn't have to say it over and over again.

You're all fighting the urge like to it. Yeah, yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it can be.

Check.

Little section here about.

Just, just fraternization with the prisoners and, and that they could not do that. Which is the reason, the reason I said that is because here these guys that are trying to kill you. For me this is just shows you.

The.

The predominant spirit. Spirit of the American servicemen. It says here it was necessary repeatedly to warn the troops against incorrect practice of fraternizing with prisoners and giving them cigarettes, which interfered with the proper interrogation. Troops had to be warned not to remove pay books from the prisoners because these books furnace a check to the interrogation officer of the prisoner's statements in regard to his organization, previous service. So there's just these. You wouldn't think that after these guys are trying to kill you that you'd want to give them a cigarette, right? And yet.

Respect.

Speed marching.

Commanding General 3rd Division Sicily the importance of physical condition cannot be overemphasized. Speed marching proved of great value in developing physical condition, eliminating the unfit and instilling confidence and pride in the individual. As a general training objective, all units prepared for landing on defended beaches and an advance inland of about 5 miles. Speed marching continued, each unit being required to complete five miles in one hour, eight miles in two hours and 20 miles and five hours once a week. This training was largely responsible for the speed with which the assault of this division was executed.

There you go.

Physical conditioning it. He points out this, and this is so obvious.

Instilling confidence and pride.

I mean, what a factor, what a factor. Way the warrior kid books, you know, get a kid that doesn't can't do a pull up, right, and all of a sudden you can do a pull up, you can lift your own weight, you can stand up a little straighter and get your team working out. That's what I'm saying.

Writing messages, reports and messages. Major Robert Wilson Field Artillery, Italy the who, what, when, where and why were often not contained in reports, both oral and written. Battalion Regimental S2s and the men themselves indicated that during maneuvers and in training problems, they had thought that this subject had been mastered, but that in combat it was ignored or forgotten. As to clarity, the axiom of a message can be understood. It will be miss. If a message can be misunderstood, it will be misunderstood was well proven. The comment here, writing messages during a unit training program is one thing. Writing clear, specifically worded messages, messages and orders under combat conditions is quite another. Theoretical training and message writing must be supplemented by constant practice and supervision in the field.

That is why I was an English major, so I could learn how to write.

Section here on dirt breeding infection. Half the evacuations from the battalion was due to infection caused by minor scratches. And to that I would say, get yourself some warrior kid soap so you can stay.

Oh, come on. This is another one of those life ones. A foxhole in time saves lives. Lt. Col. Bogart Infantry 5th Army Italy although the average American soldier will dig a foxhole or slit trench when the artillery or mortar shells are falling in his his vicinity. Only a few of those I saw would dig them Prior to that time when they did dig them, they were usually quite shallow. It was always very easy to tell a German foxhole from the American. The former were always much deeper. Many casualties occurred from shellfire which I believe would have been avoided had proper foxholes or slit trench been dug in. And this is, you know, the code, the evaluation, the protocol. Are you prepared for life emergencies? Are you prepared for emergency situations? We as Americans, I totally agree with this. We don't like to worry about anything until it slaps us in the face. In fact, in the SEAL teams, I used to tell my leadership, no one worries about anything until they get slapped in the face with it. Like no one's really concerned about that until you get hit with it. And all of a sudden you got to execute that mission and you don't have the gear that you need. So let's get the gear we need. Let's get. Do the rehearsals we're supposed to do. Be proactive.

I can kind of go for little things too.

Oh it a hundred percent goes to little things.

Well, yeah, so these and these little things kind of. So the other night, I'm at home, it's bedtime, we'll go sleep right in the middle of the night air. Beep. You know what that is, right?

No idea.

Perimeter security detector.

Your fire detector with a 9 volt.

Battery that's dead, that's dying.

Exactly Right. And bro, you say you think you can if you don't have nine volt batteries at what, 3am and know where they are. And know where they are. Yeah, but let's say you don't have them straight up. I mean, let's face it. Do you just have random 9 volt batteries in your, in your house?

Yes, I know exactly where they are for each fire detector in my house.

Here's the thing. I'm a father now. So. So do I. Oh yeah, so do I. But I'll tell you this. Before I had kids, before I had a thing, life, whatever.

I didn't have nine volt batteries. Just hanging around straight up. Didn't have, didn't even think about it years. Oh yeah, 100%.

I guess my wife, when she was growing up, they. They didn't have batteries like you know, the, her mom and dad just. Batteries weren't on the list. Yeah. And so my wife is a battery hoarder and stockpiler. You want a 9 volt, you want a AAA, you want a double A? What do you want CD? Open up that cabinet. They're in there.

They're ready, bro, I'm with you. My wife's the exact same.

She gets a little bit excited when the batteries run out on something. She gets a refill. You know, it's like, hey, the battery's out on this thing. Oh, hold on.

Yeah.

And she goes and digs out a CE 2325. For my watch.

Actually, I think my Watch is a 3232.

Yeah, this was gonna say that's the C3. That one's. I think that's a scale. You put that in one of those.

Little scales, it might be that. Well, I don't know either way.

Yeah, I don't know either. But I do know that I did have a 9 volt battery that night. But I was thinking to myself, bro, what if I didn't have a 9 volt battery? Fred, no, we're not sleeping tonight. You, you're not sleeping then that. And it doesn't have to do just that night. Now you got the whole next day you got to contend with. See, I'm saying really very.

This is because you're paranoid.

No.

Of fire or. That beep is bothering you.

The beep is gonna keep you up.

I'm with you, man. That's. That's because I'll tell you what happens. It turns out that that fire detector that beeps every 60 seconds can't be destroyed.

Yeah.

You could take a sledgehammer to it and just breaking it without it will still beep. So what you're talking about, that's the slap in the face, which was you were totally unprepared for the situation. Now you're up all night, you think you solve the problem the second you get into bed. Lights all covers, babe. I got a sort beep and then you're up again. So I'm with you. It's true. I learned this lesson 30ish years ago. So I've got those 9v at the ready.

Yes, sir. Yeah, in. In one time. You know how I found that out that you can't. You can't stop that thing? I was like, okay, well, yes, no problem. Like, I'll just take out the battery. How can it beep with no power? Simply can't be. Can't happen. So, like, you know, where does it get the power to beep from? Where does that come from? Apparently they thought ahead. You know, in the case of a real emergency. It's one of those things and a little bit more important than your Sleep that night if you're unprepared, you know. So it made sense when I kind of thought through it, but nonetheless, I was still faced with this problem like this. Beep. Sleeping. Lucky it wasn't in the middle of the night, but whatever. So I was like, yeah, I gotta.

I would have a real problem that day, bruh. I had to put it in the drawer. You could still hear it, but it was just way, way more quiet. So when he got a battery or whatever, later on found out, yeah, it can't be disabled. That's the whole reason it beats destroyed. Cannot, can't, can't be bargained with either. But yeah, man, nonetheless, that's the point. It can go for small things too. You see, I'm saying it, bro.

Just be, be prepared.

How about this? How about just keep some 9 volt, 9 volt batteries, all good. This thing beeps 3am, 3pm whenever you go. Okay. Oh, batteries, batteries low, you know, we good over there.

Ecu Charles with that. All right, let's move on.

Section three, mountain operations. They go through a big battalion attack here. Go into a lot of detail. It's another, another from another perspective on the battle on the Attu Island. And there's, there's some detail, there's some maps and charts and you should go check it out online so you can kind of get the full benefit of that. But I just wanted to hit a couple highlights. And going back to communications here, A rather elaborate system of communications was established to enable the battalion commander to control the fire of supporting weapons in furtherance of tactical plans. The artillery radio. Radio as well as telephone was set up at the battalion commander's OP on top of the Hog back, which is one of these little terrain features. A sound power telephone was run from the mortar op back to the battalion commander. Likewise one from the 75s. A telephone was also run from the op to the officer in charge of all 37 millimeter firing. Radio and telephone control was run to all companies in the battalion. So the reason I highlight that, that's a lot of communications. And if we're counting on all those communications, we may not get what we, we might not get what we want.

Goes into this here. They get into contact. We saw the first one at 0430 in the morning. He was a sentry and we were within 50 yards of him. He stood up against the skyline and was shaking out a grass mat. Lt. Brown Motion to us to get up a little under the ledge to our front. And then he shot the, the shot Must have awakened others. As we worked up over the ledge, a Jap machine gunner began firing at us. We stayed down until the first excited burst had gone over. Then we raised up and returned fire. Several Japs had holes near the edge of the ledge we were under, and they began to throw grenades over. But the hill below is so steep that most of the grenades rolled down and exploded out of range. Below us, the machine gun was firing again, but several of our men were close enough to. To the ledge to lob grenades over. The machine gun itself was out of grenade range, but some of the Japs near the edge caught hell from the grenades.

Are you feeling lucky when the people that are throwing grenades at you, they, like, bounce over your position and don't hurt you? I think that might have been my whole point there. The radio fails. So this is why I get concerned about.

About communications. And as a former radioman, it definitely freaks me out. Lieutenant Brown tried again and again to contact battalion headquarters or the artillery, and I'm fast forwarding a little bit, or the artillery with the radio. But the set refused to function. The radio man worked with it and tried again, but failed. The platoon was reorganized and we started up again. They're assaulting the sill. We got as high as the ledge once more and had started over the top, the table above, when the Jap opened up with machine guns again. We needed artillery and needed it bad. Every time we stuck our noses up, a hailstorm of bullets cracked across them. The radioman was trying frantically to contact anybody in the valley below us, but the set remained silent. Several men had crawled around to the left and threw grenades at the Japs near the edge of the table. But the machine guns remained out of range. Our men were driven back to the COVID of the ledge with several wounds. Artillery. If we only had artillery, we could observe the fire. We knew where the guns were. If we could only get some fire, we'd walk over the damn mountains. The radio man was desperate. He tried to set again, but it was silent. In a rage, he threw it down the hill.

Yeah, so there's a bunch of things to think about there. Just, you know, your communications cannot be relied upon. You have to have some kind of backup plan. And if you're. If you're expecting you can be able to make communications when. When they're really going to be made needed, that is the time they're going to fail. That is Murphy's law. If you say, okay, Dave, here's what's going to happen. We have this whole complicated plan and then when you get to this point, radio me, and that's when we'll execute that radio call. Has a 4% chance of making communications if everything hinges upon one call. The weight of that hinge just. Just has carmatic. Is that a word?

A karmic.

Karmic impact on that communication system. And it's not going to work great. So.

Their attack gets repulsed. He says. He said. We heard the guns in the valley begin firing. The attack was on. We. We had failed and we felt bad about it. About it. They had the drop on us. They're going through the main attack.

The japs were holding the pass on the high ground on both sides in the front two. The ones on the right could fire into the backs of the attackers of the left and vice versa. It was rough going. Lieutenant Clevzy got me up, and we went around the second section to get them started up the hill. The attack was going okay, but it was an awfully tough one. Bullets were flying all over the hillside. Just uphill from the second section was a JAP 37 millimeter. We had watched them fire from that position several days before, and we knew there were Japs in that trench. The main attack was moving around to the left as we started up the hill. Finally the fire got so heavy that the machine gun squad took cover in a little draw until we could grenade the trench above us to clean it out.

Then they were to come on up. Sergeant Tom Kovic, Private First Class William Marshall and I started up with Lieutenant Klebsey. We had crawled on our bellies to within 25 yards of the trench when a sniper raised up and shot Marshall in the air. We shot at the sniper. We threw grenades into the trench. We crawled up rapidly then ready to move in behind our grenades. And another sniper popped his head up out of the hole just above us. Lieutenant Clevesy fired his carbine just as the Jap fired. Lieutenant toppled over a little bank and lay still. He was dead. I was just bringing up the rifle as the Jap. My rifle as the Jap ducked. Then from across the valley, the Jap spotted us and they gave us hell. Machine guns, rifles and 37 millimeter began pounding the area. Finally, the intense shelling slowed down and we dashed for the open end of the Jap trench. We had grenaded the trench, led around to the point of the hill. We crawled down the trench and found where the Japs were located. When we stuck our heads right up in the face of a burst of machine gun fire, some men from company f Had come over to help us but were stymied. We couldn't raise up long enough to fire. We couldn't get close enough to throw grenades. Finally we decided to see if we could get some mortar fire on the position in some way. Corporal Alfred heyman started back up to check on the mortar possibilities. And while we waited and rested, the Jap position was slightly below, below us at about 100 yards further into the pass. They were firing almost constantly at the troops we could see moving out in the valley and on the opposite side of the pass. We were quite high up on the side of cold mountain. After nearly two hours of lying in the trench and waiting, we heard one of the men behind holler, here, Heman. Up here, Heman. And a man from company h, the infantry were crawling up along the little ravine laying wire. They had found a company h mountain mortar and had a line right to it. The big fight up on the mountain had almost gotten to the top, but the forces across the pass were getting hell from the guns below us. We got the phone all set up and carefully poked a little dirt, a little hole in the dirt side of the trench so that one man could see the whole Jap position below. Then we called mortar and the fun started. We were only about 100 yards from where the shells were striking and the ground shook. They fired several rounds, close, close, and then they began to drop right in the position. Finally we called and told them we were moving in and not to fire. The position was like a big wheel, was a big wheel like affair with holes all around it. And the spokes were connecting the trenches With a big center installation in the hub. Two Japanese machine guns and the 37 millimeter that had fired at us during the previous week were captured and destroyed there. We tossed six dead japs out the hole and brought them, brought up our guns up and set them in the Jap holes. We, there we sat that night just daring the little so and so's to come up, man what positions they had.

One little fight within a battle, you know, one little tiny fight within a battle. And think of all those decisions that got made and all those actions that took place and the mistakes that had to be covered for and the initiative that had to be shown and the bravery and the courage. I mean, it's just.

It's leadership. That's, that's what it is, it's leadership.

They, they go through a bunch of this information.

Continuing on. They. There's another group that takes another point and, and again.

Look, these guys I can pretty Much guarantee are no longer alive. But this is. These are quotes. These are what these guys are saying happened.

You know, things like Lieutenant Wolzak saying, check your bayonets as they get ready to do this assault.

And there's just. So there's some. Some other little battles within fights within battles that they cover. And then it gets into this comment section.

These accounts bring out some of the characteristics of mountain warfare in which success depends more upon proper adaptation of available means to the terrain than upon their power.

So the, the way you adapt is more important.

It continues. Maneuver of small units and the initiative and leadership of subordinate commanders are of the highest importance in mountain warfare. The actions of small semi independent units in seizing or defending heights or in fighting to seize or block passes become of increasing importance.

So once again, even though this book starts off with extreme dichotomy of discipline, of following orders, it comes back always to decentralized command. An individual initiative by subordinate leaders to make things happen.

He's talking about mountain warfare there and, and getting to this idea of. I mean, that's it. That's leadership, right? It's. Leadership is going to be the deciding factor here because the terrain is so.

It's so impossible to predict. There's so many different things in places and outcroppings and all these different. And even tell the story what great position they had in that previous example with the Japanese.

Life is more like mountain warfare than it is. There's gonna be these big open fields if your life gonna just reveal themselves and you're just gonna plan your move down, down the road. There are so many things that are popping up when we're talking to companies right now. They're describing that same terrain in their business lives of all these unpredicted and unexpected, unexpected things. And it isn't the strength of their brand and it isn't, you know, the quality. It's the leadership that's navigating these companies through. And we're talking about the terrain of mountain warfare.

That's what life is. It's not just this easy straight road from A to B and you just march down and everything is clean. And how crazy that has to be, that at every single turn something comes up. And the tool, the only tool that you have to get past that is leadership.

And you know what I like also about this analogy and the way it ties into the entire concept of.

Yes, of leadership, but really even more specifically to ownership and extreme ownership. And that is this. This is what's so beautiful about this.

You can't Move those mountains.

You cannot do. You cannot. Those mountains are what they are. And that's what, that's what triggered that thought in my mind was you said there's all these variables, but what's interesting is you're looking at them, you know, for days. You understand? You can see it on the map. You can look at it. There's this mountain, and you know what? You can't move that mountain. And what you have to do is you have to move yourself. And this is, you know, we talk about this in Jiu jitsu when someone's across the side on you. I can bench press you an inch, you know, maybe two inches. I don't care if you have a 500 pound bench press. When you've got a person that's mobile and they're, they're securing you and they've got your chest compressed like, you can't bench press them off of you. You can move them just enough, then you have to move. It's incumbent upon you. And so we can't move mountains. What we have to do is adapt. What we have to do is figure out how to utilize those things and what the important thing is, even though we can't move those mountains, the person that figures out how to utilize that terrain is the one that's going to win. You utilize the terrain. It's something that I have no control over, but I control how I interact with that mountain. And I know where I need to be and I know, I understand the angles and I understand what ravine will give me cover and I understand where it exposes me. Well, even when he was talking about, hey, this the way the Japanese were set up, it was like, oh, they can hit these guys here in the flank and they can shoot these guys in the back. That's the position that they have. That's a freaking horrible situation to be rolling into. Horrible situation to be rolling into. So when you look at things, instead of sitting there and going saying, I wish the market was different, I wish the competitor would do something different, I wish my employees would act in a different way. These are all things that you can look at and you can wish all day long, just like you can wish that mountain moves, but that mountain's not going anywhere. So you need to maneuver, you need to take ownership of that situation and make things happen.

There's a whole bunch of sections here, engineer operations, tanks, infantry notes, and jungle operations.

One, one section. Your Japanese centers of resistance were bypassed and isolated. Again, how often do we say, oh, Dave doesn't like this part of my plan. So I'm going to attack him on that instead of saying, okay, Dave's going to dig in right there. Cool, I'll maneuver around it.

Right.

Bypass. I'm gonna start thinking about that a little bit more often in my daily life. How can I bypass? Maybe not when it comes to working out, because Echo Charles pointed out, that might not be the best plan. But if it's things that I don't want to engage in, why am I engaging in them if I don't have to? If I can isolate and bypass and not make it part of my gig, that's fine.

Frontal attacks were uniformly successful.

When assisted by a flank attack.

On many occasions, the flank attack preceded the frontal attack, coming into Japanese positions from the rear and completely disrupting their defense plans. In almost all cases, the maneuver used by units of all sizes from division to squad was the envelopment of one or both flanks.

Yeah.

Resistance was made by. Resistance was bypassed, encircled, and reduced later.

So the frontal assault works when it's not actually a frontal assault. That's awesome. Frontal assault works when you're doing something else as well.

Yes, that's so legit.

Section on.

Section on automatic weapons Night operation Security measures Security at night. Lines of communication Patrol reports In general, the distance covered by the patrols was much less than expected of them. The difficulties of terrain caused by many patrol leaders to feel that they had covered two or three, three times as much ground than they had actually covered. This must be taken into account when evaluating patrol reports. These are people that think that they know, like, hey, I was there. Isn't that crazy? You could be looking at me, totally convinced that you went two kilometers. And it turns out when we retrace your steps, you went whatever, 700 yards. 700 meters.

One last section to cover here.

Yeah, this last section is very interesting. Evacuation methods Informal report Solomon Islands evacuation of casualties was by hand carry litter bearers, cable litter slings across jungle gullies, improvised sleds or drags down steep inclines, improvised litter racks on quarter ton jeeps, small boats on mountain streams or along the coast, and finally by field ambulances to clearing stations or hospitals.

How's that for a nightmare? When you, when you were in Fallon, did you, were you ever a down pilot? Yeah, yeah. Did you get carried out on litters?

Yeah, you go out in a helicopter, you stage there and then they come.

Out and get you.

Like the metal, the. It's like a metal basket, basically, yeah, the litter.

Did you ever get carried by a seal platoon? Like 8 kilometers?

No okay, I know exactly what you're talking about. I was never the, I was never the downed air crew that got actually physically pulled right.

It's not fun when you're getting carried because you're getting dropped, you're getting slammed, you're all over the place. And usually we would stick guys with IVs, you know, like we would try and do some medical training on them as well. But good lord, I want you to think about everything that I just said. Hand carry cable litters across jungle gullies, improvised sleds, drags down steep. So you're wounded and what's the method of doing, okay, we're going to drag you down a steep incline. Improvised litter on a, on a quarter ton jeep. Imagine that thing bouncing around small boats. Think about a new nightmare.

And this is where you start to realize what a nightmare I'm talking about. Evacuation by litter bearers was difficult, tiring, timec consuming and involved distances averaging 2 or 3 miles and 5 to 6 miles in some instances.

Many more litter bearers had to be utilized than under ordinary conditions. Litter carry in many cases required as high as 16 carriers per patient over almost impassable terrain and can be counted as least efficient.

So it takes 16 people to evacuate somebody 2 miles or 3 miles.

Where evacuation by litter was necessary, bearers worked in relays, eight or even 16 men accompanying each litter, leaving one another in litter carry and in cutting narrow paths through the dense jungle.

16 people to move a wounded man, I mean that's just crazy.

And obviously it wasn't all of them, but they're saying, hey, sometimes it was eight. And I'll tell you the reason, I was asking you if you'd ever been in that position. Number one, you get beat up. But you know when we would do desert training, when I was running desert training, man, those guys would do some down man carries. And I'm sure some of the guys that are hearing me saying that now are smiling with pleasant memories of going 8km through the Imperial Valley desert carrying and eventually like the first, you know, if we had a, a troop that hadn't been through before or didn't have any experience. Oh yeah. Hey, what's your, you know, what's your casualty evacuation plan? Oh, we're just going to put two guys on them and we're going to do I forget the name? There's some name, there's a couple carries, you know, there's a standard fireman's carry. Oh, we'll just kind of fireman's carry. Okay, cool. See how that, see how that works out for you. You can't, I mean, it's, it's, you can do it for 100 meters, 200 meters, 300 meters.

400 meters. You're on night vision, you're in the worst freaking terrain. Rocks, shale rocks, all all over the place. And it was great because as we would do these drills and as guys realized what a traumatic impact it was when you took casualties and how you had to adjust what you thought you'd be able to do because you can't just freaking Rambo, you can Rambo somebody up. I mean, I've done it like, okay, grab a guy and I'm gonna carry him 150 meters, 200 meters. By the time you get to that 200 meter mark, like you're, when you get to the spot, you're just falling down with the guy. 300 meters, you're just falling down and you're exhausted and you've lost your weapon and your night vision and his gear is gone. It's a disaster until you figure out, okay, when this happens, here's, here's some procedures that we need to do.

Talks about the improvised jeep, ambulances, talks about evacuation by water.

Physical fitness. The arduous and fatiguing litter carrying demonstrated the need for physical fitness on the part of medical department personnel, which should correct the impression that, that physically impaired individuals can be utilized throughout medical department activities.

So this idea that you can have a bunch of, you know, guy that's injured or hurt and have him working in medical being a stretcher bearer is completely and utterly wrong. And that's. Well, that's a, a wrap on the highlights that I had from this.

And you know, I, I don't know when I think about this whole thing and we've been referring back to it the whole time, the, so many good lessons. But the, the, the, the key takeaway for me is that whole idea of leader versus inertia. And you know, as soon as I said that today, Dave, I looked at you and I saw you had about a thousand thoughts going through your mind on what that means and how many ways that we can apply that. It's like the world is conspiring against us.

And it's human nature to neglect our duties. And I know that sounds crazy and sure there's some outliers out there that are proactive, going to make things happen, but you've got to assess as a leader that human nature.

Is to be lazy and to be careless and you need to definitely look in the mirror because it's not always just going to be the people that you lead. It's going to be you.

And that section where they talk about the hardest job that you have as a leader is getting things done. Getting things done by people who know that they're supposed to do them. And even in some cases, know that those things could cost in their lives. Failure to do things, failure to take action.

So don't allow that. Be on the lookout. How nice is it sometimes when you make the connection.

Between something that's there that you've always known was there, but you never pid it, and by that, echo, I mean positively identified. Like, hey, I know now everyone that's listening to this today now knows.

That that's a problem. And look, we all kind of knew it, right? I mean, I talked about a dispute. Equals freedom.

Field manual.

Hey, you know what? I want to move. That's a real thing. I get it. We all kind of get it. But how about pid on it? And now when it starts happening either with you or with your team or with your family or with your friends, you can p. ID it, and then you can address it properly. And you can start with yourself.

You can start by making things happen.

Speaking of making things happen. Echo. Charles.

Yes.

How can we do what we're supposed to do, what we know we should do?

On top of piding it?

We pid it all day.

Yeah. Same thing with complaining right now. We pid that long time ago. Complaining, blaming, another one.

Yeah, those are two. Those are two good things. Once you recognize. Once you pid those things, man, that blame one.

Oh, yeah. Because if you don't pid the blame, it'll, like, sneak in. Sort of get away with it, too. Really? Oh, yeah. You can be like.

You can.

Yeah. Hey. Yeah, I really shouldn't have done that. You know, it could have helped, you know, if you would have given me the heads up or whatever. But you're right, I shouldn't. Shouldn't have done that. You see the blame. I snuck in.

Stupid mountain was totally blocking our position. Yeah.

Kind of make it. Makes it kind of harder. But no, you're right. I should have done it. You see, I'm saying, see, me taking ownership but slipping in the blame. When you pid the blame, you can see it. That's what I'm saying. Anyway, so don't do that when you're working out, which. Okay. So I worked out today. Actually, no, no, I thought about working out today, but then I got into this deep conversation with my wife.

Okay.

About some important Stuff.

Mm. The window closed.

The window totally closed.

Oh, it closed.

It straight up closed. Yeah. Cuz the conversation went long. I had to come here, you see.

I'm saying, yeah, I had a window closing last night. It was.

I had something. My wife was making dinner. I was like, I can fit in a run right now before dinner.

Oh, a late workout?

No, just a run I already worked out.

So run's not a workout for you.

So late night. So my wife was cooking dinner. I had like a 40 minute window. My wife says, oh, by the way, someone's coming over to grab something. I'm like, okay, the run's not happening now. The windows just. I'm kind of, I'm kind of shrugging it off. Like, oh, well, you know, window closed.

You know, no run.

But then I PID it and I said, you know what? I ate dinner, which I hate. I ate dinner and then I ran just to punish myself.

I pulled one of those before Brad. That's so true. Right there. So that right there, what you just did, what you went, what you, what you experienced, same deal, right? You got the 40 minute window for running, right? Because you got it all planned in your head. It goes beyond the run. It goes like, the stuff you did before is in your mind, stuff you're gonna do after the run, dinner, all this other stuff. And the stuff after that in your mind does not include the run because the run is already done. That's it. That's the whole formula right there in your mind. So now that little window closed, Boom. Where's that run gonna fit in? I already know in my mind what I'm gonna do after dinner, which is after the run, which already happened. Right. What I'd do. Put the run there. No, it's already occupied in your brain. You see what I'm saying? But the thing is, it doesn't work like that. You put it there as essentially like an excuse.

Yeah. You know what's crazy? So as I was running, so Now I'm running 20 minutes after I get done eating. I don't think I've run on a full stomach for.

15 years. Think about that. 15 years. I don't think. And I don't think I'll run on a full stomach again for another 15 years because it felt freaking awful. And I don't roll. I don't work out on. On a full stomach. I don't like doing any of that. I mean, I can get away with like a workout depending on the workout. Not squatting on a full stomach because that's just not good. But maybe I can do some pull ups on a full. But yeah, I was running on a full stomach. I won't do that again. I. I would next time because I wanted to, you know, like eat with my family, you know that like let's eat time. I would have eaten one fork full of food and then not eaten and put it in the. And then go for hang with the family, go for a run, come back and eat. Yeah, that would have been the power move.

And that's actually one of many power moves. Really. The other power move is. How about this? Yeah, good for you. You didn't run in on a full stomach in 15 years. Freaking run on a full stomach. Oh, I did. That's what I'm saying though. You know what I'm saying? Like there's all kinds of things that you can just push through and still get it in is what I'm saying. Even all the way down to hey, who kicks cares if you're there, if this person is coming over. Yeah, that's the end of the world, huh? If you're not there, you know, not.

The end of the world. But maybe not the best move at that time.

Okay. Then we shift to the full stomach situation.

We did it.

You know, or maybe the half stomach. You know, I'm just saying the opportunity is always there.

You know, this was in line with sort of this evolving attitude that I have now of.

Kind of a going hard against the weakness.

Yeah.

I was like, not only am I gonna run still, I'm gonna run on a full stomach and just want to puke the whole freaking time because that's.

How you know, so. But I did the same exact thing, but it was, it was less complex for sure, but it was like the window was closing. Like I can't get my full workout now because dinner time. Like, yeah, you know I'm gonna eat.

Dinner with you ever just do something super short and psycho though? If you let the window close be.

But.

But you don't want to let it shut. So you're like, okay, cool. Oh, you want to be like that? Cool. Yeah. Go in here and do like may mayhem for 18 minutes. Yeah. Cuz you can get a freaking good workout in 18 minutes.

Yeah, it's probably not going to be the planned workout in my century, but yeah, yeah, I'll do that. A few, I've done that a few times when I had to like come here somewhere where if I'm late it kind of affects other people. You know, it's like, it's My fault anyway, you know, so I'll. Oh, yeah, I'll do that kind of stuff for sure. But I did it with the dinner thing and I did a metcon on a full stomach and I even told you about it the next day. I was like. I was doing. Anyway, it's a long story, but. Yeah.

Well, speaking of timelines.

Let'S rock and roll, man.

Yes, sir. All right. Okay, look, we're doing workouts. We're not doing excuses. We're. What? Fighting against weakness. Punishing weak. Weakness. Thoughts. We're punishing ourselves for those thoughts or considerations. But when you do that, you know, your joint, your body's take a beating. Specifically your joints from time to time. Okay. Joco has supplementation for that. So supplements are Jocko fuel. Joint warfare for your joints. Super Krill oil for your joints. Vitamin D. Is it super vitamin D? We'll just say it's pretty good. How about that?

Yeah, super.

Super.

It's not called super vitamin D. Maybe we need your help with branding on that one. No, man, like you helped us with Super Krill.

I didn't help you.

Kind of funny.

Either way, it's vitamin D. Nonetheless, I'm.

Gonna change the name too.

Super Vitamin D all day. Yeah. 100. So, you know, get on that one also. Cold War.

Wasn'T it called, like some cold killer or something?

Yeah.

Where. You can't say that. Can. You can't say that because it kills colds. You can't say that.

You can't say that. That's.

Bad advertising. What's the word?

Like making some kind of medical claim or something.

Yeah, medical claim. So we can't say that, but we can go to war against colds.

Yes. Missile defense. Tank. What is it, David?

The tank.

Cold War missile defense.

I say that. Cold war missile defense.

Yes, sir.

Oh, you say that.

I do all day.

I fight the war against colds every day.

Also discipline, regular discipline. And the supplementation. Discipline. Cans, powder, pills, whatever you need, whatever your modality.

That little. Yeah, Big time little psychological hitter. Little bit of. Little bit of go.

Jocko Palmer taking the lead.

Sorry, is it taking the lead?

It's leading right now.

It's leading. I agree. Yeah, I agree.

As far as flavors go. Yeah.

I had the long drive to Montana.

Sure.

17 hours. Drove all one go. One go.

One go.

No, I mean, I stopped for gas. Fuel.

Of course. Yes, sir.

But the cool thing was just kind of. FYI, for your research in the future, two discipline go cans. Just one.

At about.

Wanted. About.

Midnight, maybe one o' clock. In the morning and I had another one at like two or three. That's the. That's the kind of. That's the. That's. Once the sun's coming up, you're good. Yeah, once the sun coming up, a rock and roll. But there's. I guess it's maybe around 4 o' clock in the morning. Like you don't see. As soon as you start seeing sun, your body goes, oh, cool, we're awake now.

Yeah, it's day.

It's that 3:30. 4, 5 4:30. Where your body thinks you should be asleep right freaking now. Yeah, get that hitter boy.

17 hour drive. So when. What do you time it? Like, when do you leave? Like nighttime, essentially.

Yep.

Yeah. You arrived.

Dinner, departure.

Okay. I dig it. I don't think I've ever driven 17 hours. Ever, ever.

Cool.

Not sure how valuable that information is, but those are the facts.

You do know how valuable it is.

Thank you.

Yeah. So mulk. Don't forget about molk. Don't forget about you. You probably need extra protein. I had a mulk before I came here today. Just because I have doms.

Sure.

And I was like. Meaning delayed onset muscle soreness.

Sure.

Little heavy on squats yesterday. And I have a lot of dom, so I just kicked down some milk, a little extra protein. Plus I was in the mood for dessert even though I didn't have any lunch.

So anyways, all this stuff, Jocko. Yt, kids, kids, Warrior Kid Mok. You get all the stuff at the vitamin shop.

We also make at. Or also you can get it@originmain.com. if you want to support this podcast, if you want to support America in general, which if you want to support America in general, good on you. Get yourself some quality items. Get yourself a GI for your jiu jitsu. Get yourself a rash guard for your jiu jitsu. T shirts, jeans, jeans.

American denim boots. You guys have the Delta 68, then the. What's the regular one called again?

The Factory jeans.

Factory jeans. Is there like another. What do you call it?

A model? No, that's the two models right now. Factory jeans, heavier. Delta jeans lighter. Which I know this is a little strange, but, you know.

No, man, I dig it. You know, Delta 68, somebody in Montana.

Was wearing a lightweight hoodie.

Not you, though.

No, it wasn't me. But they told me like to tell you that they supported approved in Montana, by the way, which is surprising.

You can't argue with the people. I mean, it's just, you know, it goes against your whole thing, you know. Anyway, yes, origin main.com. that's where all this stuff exists. Get something American made. Fully. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called jockostore.com. this is where you can get discipline equals freedom. De core.

Good.

Where it's all death core. Technically. Technically, for sure. So, yeah, discipline. Hoodies, shirts, hats. Lightweight hoodies, as it were. Rash guards, for sure. Got some new stuff. New stuff?

Oh, you've been plotting all kinds of stuff over there.

We have a few new things. Really good stuff. Utility and.

More utility.

We. We have a shirt coming that may become sort of like the shirt. I'm not making any predictions just for me personally. It might be. Become the shirt that I end up wearing a lot.

You literally won't wear anything. It'll be like, remember back in the day when you still always wear Victory even before the podcast? Like, yeah, I look at all the old pictures of ourselves. Victory shirt.

As long as you've known me.

Yeah, it's like you can't even recognize you if you don't have that victory shirt on. If even a picture like that even exists, which I don't think it does. It's gonna be one of those.

Well, we've had victory for what, 10 years?

Yeah. And so for a long time. And we've been doing the podcast for five. Something like that. Coming up on five. So that means for five complete years before this podcast, the. The one free T shirt I had, which I had a lot of them actually. John Dudley asked me that the other day. We were up in Montana, like the. The fifth day in a row I posted up in a victory T shirt. He said, do you just wear that or wash it or you have a thousand of them. I go, not a thousand of them, but I got 10.

Oh, yeah, we have the light one and the dark one. Either way. That's why you have the light one and the dark one of this new shirt. I'll let you make it, you know, I'll let you. What do you call it? Roll it out, as it were. Reveal it anyway.

Reveal.

It's Jocko's Jam. Big time. Anyway, Jocko store dot com. That's where you can get your. That's where you can get your stuff to represent while you're on the path, put it that way. Some new stuff. So keep that in mind. Look, if you wanna know about new stuff, or how should I say, I.

Wanna know about new stuff. Dave, what shirt is that?

This is a Defcore shirt.

But it's available.

It's absolutely available.

It's called Ops. You have black ops.

You're wearing it.

And he has.

I know I have the black one declassified. The classified version. But here's the deal. The difference between a white shirt and a black shirt in the California sun is extreme.

Yes, sir.

So I like to wear a white shirt. I don't have this one. Echo. Charles.

Yeah.

E.C.

Yeah, thanks. That must suck. Really. But hey man, you know, I know a guy and maybe we'll get you one.

Cool. Yeah.

Yeah. So yes. If you want a death core, black ops or d class classified chocolatestore.com call it declassified.

Yes, I like it. I, I like it when you sort of mingle with military terms.

And you say you have some misses Normally if you're suspect you, you contact me.

Yeah.

You say hey, what would this be A correct usage of the word whatever.

Yeah. Or appropriate. Yeah.

Yeah. Oftentimes I say yeah.

Not really. Yeah. There was one thing I did and I think yeah, it was you. Oh, the high speed low drag. I was going to use that in some. It wasn't a shirt but it was in some other stuff I was doing and you're like hey, don't do that, don't do that one because it wasn't like appropriate.

Yeah. I forget what it was because high speed low drag is definitely a term.

Yes.

And it has a meaning. I forget the way you used it.

I used it in a more serious way than it should be used.

Oh yeah, that's not, not a serious term. You're not like that guy is high speed, low drive.

Yeah. Like for real.

It's kind of like you might say it about a pair of Gucci looking shooting glasses. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's what I learned. Yeah. So anyway back to what I was saying. Hey, if you want to get be in the know, we have an email list on jocko store if you want to be in the know about some stuff. I, I don't abuse this list at all. In fact our. I underutilize it. Actually I tried try my best to save it for important stuff. The stuff that I think it's important. So if you want to know about a new product, some new board shorts that may or may not be on the way or something like this. If you're on the email list you will get notified before everybody. I'm not saying our stuff sells out.

What if you have important.

What if you have important information about rolling frying pans?

Well, you know, hey look, does that make the list usually stuff like that? No. Thank you though for inquiring I mean, we do have to clarify, I guess. And so that's correct. But important in information about Jocko Store. Sign up for that email list. Hey, we'll get that info to you and you'll have it before everybody else and boom, we'll be all good.

Will you put the new T shirt on there?

Yes, I will. Yeah.

Or is that. You said that was mine to announce.

Yeah, that might be yours to announce. Or you just send the email. How about that?

Okay, I'll send an email out when the new shirt is heliced. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. We also have some other podcast. We have the new podcast which is isn't on its own channel yet. It's called the Unraveling. It was called the Thread. We had to change the name. We also have the Grounded podcast. We also have the Warrior Kid podcast. We have a YouTube channel, by the way, we have a YouTube channel.

That has all these podcasts on them. You can see us except for the first seven. Because the first seven there was no video involved. It's just voice. Oh yeah. Even though we did the first podcast on like some kind of live stream. If you were.

Yeah.

If I remember we were having some trouble. Technical.

Yeah. So anyways, or. And then also some of these are. There's some excerpts in there as well. And there's also some things that echo Charles experiments with random and very over the top special effects on. On just normal videos. And he'll put 98 special effects into a two minute video. But this video right here, which is going to be three hours and 40 minutes long, there will be no, no excitement other than just watching me crack up at my own jokes at the end of this podcast.

No additional excitement needed in my opinion so far.

There could be so many good little ex like extra additions and Easter eggs or whatever you call them in this particular podcast. Talking about flanking people, mortars, 37 millimeters, 88s, grenades. Just think of all the cool stuff that could be flying around in here.

It's possible blowing up anyway. Also Jocko has or we have an album with tracks called Psychological Warfare. You know, if you don't know what this is, don't worry. This, this is gonna help you. It helps us. So we're talking about inertia, right?

Object that is in state. Rest, stays at rest, tends to stay at rest. And it's. If it's in motion anyway. If you're battling to get into motion when you're currently at rest and it's hard sometimes it's hard. I got you. This will help. That is what I'm saying. Psychological warfare. Okay, Jocko. Telling you what to do, not necessarily what to do, but why you should do what you should do. It's about accurate, right?

Yeah. That's available wherever you need MP3s. Also, if you want a visual representation of those types of messages, go to flipside canvas.com My brother, Dakota Myers.

Makes stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books. The Code, the evaluation, the protocol, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Field Manual. Way The Warrior Kid. 1, 2 and 3. Mikey and the Dragons. Discipline Equals Freedom. Field Manual, Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. You can get those books pretty much anywhere books are sold. We have a consulting agency for leadership.

And what we do is we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. If you can't get with us live, that's fine. Go to efonline.com where we get granular with these things on a regular basis. Where you want to talk to me, you want to interact with me, go to efonline.com you will ask me questions me on a zoom call. You want to talk to Dave, you want to ask him something, go to efonline.com you will interact with him. You will ask him questions. He will give you answers. That's what we do on that channel. There's a bunch of training on that channel. There's a forum on that channel. So go to efonline.com for that. We also have the muster coming up in Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th.

And then Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Check extreme extreme ownership.com for details. We've we're gonna be doing these looks like with social distancing, so there's gonna be less seats available, which means they're gonna sell out faster.

We have EF Overwatch, which is our placement firm. We're taking people from the military and placing them into businesses. So if you are a vet looking for work or you are a company looking for leaders to come into your company that understand the principles that we talk about here, go to efoverwatch.com if you want to help out veterans around the world, service members around the world, go to America's mighty warriors.org that is Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, helping all service people out. You can go there and you can either donate or you can get involved. And.

If you just can't get enough of my interminable tirades or you need a little bit more of Echo Charles's preposterous postulations.

Or maybe you just like to hear one more of Dave's jangling juxtapositions.

Then you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, Instagram and on Facebook. Dave is at David Burke. David R. Burke. B E R K Echoes at Echo Charles. And I'm at Jocko Wheelink. And of course, thanks to all the men and women in uniform who allow us to live our lives the way we want to, and that is in glorious freedom.

And to the police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and Secret Service. Thanks to all of you for protecting us and for keeping our nation a nation of law and order, not a nation of chaos and anarchy.

And to everyone else out there.

Just, just remember that the effect on most men of the impact of battle is to cause them to want to do nothing.

And it's the same thing with the slings and arrows of life. We get pushed to toward inaction and inactivity and indolence.

And the solution to that is that a determined effort must be exerted to accomplish things, to accomplish tasks. And that is on you.

And you know what that means.

It means get out there.

And get after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jocko out.