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- [00:00]
Jocko Willink
This is Jocko, podcast number 465 with Echo, Charles, and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.
- [00:05]
Jim Lechner
Good evening.
- [00:06]
Jocko Willink
As we advanced, each one of us could see that all around us, the Somalis were coming. Every second, resistance and enemy fire began to increase. The cracks of Somali rifle fire were constant. Now. Overhead and around us, the Somalis were massing, and we could see the crowds still blocks away but beginning to surge towards us. Adid's militiamen aggressively moved through the alleys around us and along the walls, firing and rapidly closing. They were reinforced by men and boys from the neighborhoods joining in and carrying their AK47 rifles, rushing forward through the increasing fire. The assault force quickly covered two blocks, then turned left. We headed north toward the crash site, still a few hundred meters away and beyond our vision, but directly ahead. As we turned the corner and began to move north, we became awash in combat. Bullets zipped along the walls around us and cracked incessantly. Overhead, dust rose as Somali gunmen fired and ducked behind cover or were cut down by the Americans. Now, as the firefight began to rage, there was no hesitation over the rules of engagement. At the same time that we closed with the attacking Somalis, our column remained spread back toward the target building. It bogged down to a stop when the fight erupted in earnest. All around us, the Rangers and operators in the assault force were taking cover, firing and maneuvering against the numerous attacking Somalis streaming into the streets. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called With My Shield, An Army Ranger in Somalia, written by retired Army Lt. Col. James Lechner. Col. Leckner served 27 years in the army, and he fought around the world in addition to fighting in Somalia, where he fought the battle that was recounted in the book and the movie Blackhawk Down. He was actually on the aircraft flown by Mike Durant, the pilot who was eventually shot down and captured by Somalis, who was on this podcast number 312. But Jim Lechner fast roped off that Hilo fought in the battle, was eventually wounded, but he survived. He recovered, and he carried on and fought in Bosnia, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq. And in Iraq, I was honored to serve alongside him in the Battle of Ramadi, where he was the deputy commander of the Ready first Brigade and helped lead the fight to secure that city from insurgents and turn it over to the peaceful citizens of Ramadi. And it's an honor to have Colonel Lechner here with us tonight to discuss his experiences and lessons learned. Jim, thanks for joining us. Good to see you.
- [03:16]
Jim Lechner
Oh, thank you, Jaco. It's an honor to be here. Great to see you again.
- [03:19]
Jocko Willink
It's been. It's been a while.
- [03:20]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [03:20]
Jocko Willink
I guess I haven't seen you since I left in Ramadi in October of 2006.
- [03:26]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. Almost two decades. Yeah.
- [03:28]
Jocko Willink
Goes by quick, doesn't it? Before we jump into this book, or I guess as we jump into this book, you and I were. I had to put the brakes on even talking to you because as we. Once you showed up, I just wanted to talk about a million different things because everything you've done since you first joined the army and when you were with me and you did so much more after that, so, so much to talk about. But let's get. Let's start at the beginning a little bit. So you're. You're from upstate New York?
- [03:53]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, I was born in a town of Chai just outside of Rochester, upstate, about 55 miles from Canada.
- [04:01]
Jocko Willink
That is definitely up north. And your mom. Did your mom work?
- [04:07]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, she was a nurse. Okay.
- [04:08]
Jocko Willink
And then your dad worked for Kodak, which is pretty common up there.
- [04:11]
Jim Lechner
Yep. He did four years in the Marine Corps, and then he got out and worked for Kodak. That's right.
- [04:15]
Jocko Willink
What do you do in the Marine Corps?
- [04:16]
Jim Lechner
Aviation. He was an air crew.
- [04:18]
Jocko Willink
What years was he. Was he in Vietnam or was he earlier, just.
- [04:21]
Jim Lechner
Just prior to Vietnam? 56 to, like, 59. So there was some UN missions. They went on in Indochina prior to the Vietnam thing kicking off in 59. So he had one or two missions. But just prior to Vietnam, how much.
- [04:34]
Jocko Willink
Did he talk to you about the Marine Corps?
- [04:36]
Jim Lechner
A little bit. You know, he was always proud of it. He was. Worked for Kodak and he was a volunteer fireman.
- [04:41]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
- [04:41]
Jim Lechner
He's a battalion chief in the local fire department, and so parades and all that. He'd be in charge of drilling ceremony. And so he always, you know, wore his hair high and tight and he was proud of being in the Marine Corps, but not a lot, but he's proud of it.
- [04:55]
Jocko Willink
And then your. Your dad was from a devout Catholic family.
- [04:59]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [04:59]
Jocko Willink
But your mom was Southern Baptist, so you got a little bit of a mixture there.
- [05:03]
Jim Lechner
Oh, yeah.
- [05:03]
Jocko Willink
The best of both worlds.
- [05:04]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. Really interesting because my mother's family were all Mormons out in Salt Lake. And then her mom got killed in the car wreck when she was 2, and so she got sent back some family. And the aunt that raised her was Southern Baptist. Otherwise they were all Mormons, so. Yeah. Raised Southern Baptist, my mother was.
- [05:21]
Jocko Willink
And then you also had this interesting point in the book that you were in the Boy Scouts and your Boy Scout leader was this old German immigrant.
- [05:31]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [05:32]
Jocko Willink
That was raised in the Hitler Youth.
- [05:35]
Jim Lechner
His Boy Scout experience was the Hitler Youth. Yeah. And his dad was smart enough in the 30s to get them out and go to Africa, but he did a number of years in the Hitler Youth and still had his Hitler Youth knife.
- [05:47]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. You were saying he'd bring that thing out on patrol with you guys. And then you went to Gates Chile Public High school.
- [05:57]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. You know, like most places, they pronounce it Gates chili.
- [06:02]
Jocko Willink
Oh, okay.
- [06:02]
Jim Lechner
I didn't know that they pronounce words differently than everybody else, you know, so, yeah, Gates Chili. That's where I went to school. Wrestled a little bit, played football, did well in history, did not do well in math.
- [06:14]
Jocko Willink
So how into wrestling were you?
- [06:18]
Jim Lechner
Just a couple years.
- [06:20]
Jocko Willink
And then. What about football?
- [06:21]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, I played football all the way through. You know, I'm not that big, so I just. It was a lot of fun, like to hit, but yeah. And then I did a little bit of track, too. Just getting ready for the military a little bit. Get some more running in there.
- [06:33]
Jocko Willink
So that was an interesting thing. In the book you talk about, you would tell people, I want to be a professional soldier, which is an interesting term. It's not, you know, because I always tell people when I was a kid, I wanted to be a commando.
- [06:46]
Jim Lechner
Right.
- [06:46]
Jocko Willink
And maybe I would have said soldier, but I never would have thought of the words professional soldier. That's next level. You must. And where did that. Where did that idea come from?
- [06:57]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, so I liked doing army stuff, you know, shooting and all. And I like Boy Scouts. Like I said, intensive Boy Scout troop, to say the least. But I was into history also, so I'd studied Patton and generals and their professional careers. That's where I kind of get the idea. I just wanted to follow in their footsteps. I wanted to be a soldier, but I wanted to be a professional officer, you know, kind of in the. In the genre of patent and all that.
- [07:23]
Jocko Willink
And so then you after your junior year of you enlisting, and you go to boot camp your junior year.
- [07:29]
Jim Lechner
That's right. Yeah.
- [07:29]
Jocko Willink
And that's that. Do they still do that? Can you still do that?
- [07:33]
Jim Lechner
It's. It's the programs change year to year based on recruiting. But, yeah, at the time, you could be 17 years old, your parents could sign, you could still be in high school. They'd send you down in the summer, and you'd knock out basic training and then come back and finish that's what I did. And I was, I enlisted the National Guard. So I just wanted to get in as soon as I could. You know that at that point, I just want to be in the army and be a soldier. So that was the quickest way to get in. I knew I was going to go to college and go regular army, but that was just the quickest way to get, get in and get some training.
- [08:02]
Jocko Willink
So a kid that I knew did that.
- [08:04]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [08:05]
Jocko Willink
And I, he was older than me, and when he was down there in boot camp, and this is my, this is kind of my origin story here. Echo Charles. I'll give you my origin story. He was down there at boot camp, and they're kind of almost done with boot camp, and they're standing out on some parade field down at Benning, and there's a guy running around the track with like, you know, cami pants, no shirt, a ruck, long hair. And my buddy goes, hey, drill sergeant, who's that guy? And he said, the. His drill sergeant didn't even look at him. Just, just kept looking at the guy that was running, didn't look at my buddy. And he just goes, Delta. And my buddy goes, drill Sergeant, is there anyone tougher than Delta? And the drill sergeant goes, without looking, just says SEAL team. And so that's what. When I heard that story, I was probably like 13. I was like, all right, I know what I'm doing. Of course, no, no offense to the Delta guys and everybody else, but the, that idea of going in your junior year is, is pretty epic. And you, you write this in the book. The trainee platoon to which I now belonged was a typical cross section of America. From inner city blacks and Hispanics to Kentucky hillbillies. We'd spend nearly every minute of the next nine weeks eating, sleeping, training, and working together in our platoons. We got to know each other well. And while individual personalities carried on among, especially among the recruits, it was my first experience with the true concept of a melting potential. Wearing our uniforms, we all look the same. And our lives were regimented to the minute by ever present drill sergeants. The accents, attitudes, and many of the differences faded, giving way to the traditions and military culture of infantry soldiers. Along with the rest of my platoon, I spent that summer as a young infantry trainee in loud, mostly one way discussions with drill sergeants, tactics instructors and infantry officers. They taught us the basic skills of the trade, along with the lore and ways of the U.S. army. In basic training, the Army's version of boot camp, this mainly consists of spending days and nights in the sandy hills and pine forest, Marching, running, shooting weapons, digging foxholes and placing mines, learning first aid, and a myriad of other combat tasks. I walked for miles with the ruck on my back and carrying a rifle until it felt like part of my limbs. In basic training, we carried the M16A2 rifle, a slightly updated version of the weapon made famous during the Vietnam War. Many of our leaders at Fort Benning were Vietnam veterans, as the last US Troops had left that war torn country less than a decade before. As these veterans helped turn us into soldiers, they passed on lessons learned not only from the army field manuals, but also through their own combat experience. During basic training that summer, many of them inspired us by their example leading from the front. One of these leaders was our brigade commander, Colonel Steve Siegfried. He had taken a machine gun bullet through his hip in Vietnam and thus limped along, but he was always out in front of us on our unit runs. At the same time, we caught occasional glimpses of some of the Army's newest combat veterans from the 75th Ranger Regiment, which was then forming at Fort Benning. An entire regiment of Rangers was being established by the army to include the newly formed 3rd Ranger Battalion. This expansion of the Ranger regiment was a direct result of the previously established 1st and 2nd Ranger Battalions having proven their value by successfully spearheading the invasion of Grenada less than a year prior. The first two Ranger battalions of the modern era had been formed less than a decade before on the heels of the trauma in Vietnam, and were now simultaneously the Army's spearhead for combat operations and the leading force in its revitalization. These Rangers were role models and living icons not only for young infantry recruits at Fort Benning, but for the entire Army. Eight weeks after arriving at Fort Benning, I completed basic training and went back home to upstate New York to finish my senior year in high school. So there's your kind of introduction to the Army.
- [12:08]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [12:08]
Jocko Willink
Did. Was it easier than having a Hitler Youth commander of your Boy Scout troop?
- [12:13]
Jim Lechner
In some ways I didn't get beaten, you know, so, yeah, in some ways it was easier.
- [12:19]
Jocko Willink
And then what's it like when you're. When you get to do that boot camp experience and now you come back home and you're going to your senior year of high school? You must have had money to buy a car or something like that, at least.
- [12:32]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, it was almost like a couple steps back, you know, to get back into high school now, and it's like, really, do I have to go back? You know, to do this kind of almost like games, you know what I mean? But ready to go. It was just basic training, so I'm not saying we were fully trained, ready to go to war, but definitely a different level of responsibility and achievement, maturity and already looking down the road. So went back and it was easy. High school. I went right back into double sessions of football. That was easy. It was kind of fun because everybody else was, like, laying out, all panting and dying, and I was just standing there ready to go to the next drill. So I was already in shape. So that was. It was a good experience doing that and then doing the rest of my senior year and ready to go.
- [13:15]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And there was a plane crash in the Potomac. You talk about in the book air Florida Flight 90. And this guy, Arland D. Williams, he was some people, a very few people survived the crash, but they were kind of had made their way out of the plane, and they were waiting to get picked up in the freezing water. And this guy, Arland D. Williams, when they put a rope down to rescue people, he didn't take the rope. He handed it off to other people, and eventually the plane sunk and he went down. And the news anchor pointed out that this guy, Arland D. Williams, was a graduate of the Citadel in South Carolina, and that school's harsh discipline had prepared him to be a hero.
- [13:57]
Jim Lechner
That's right. So as I mentioned, History Guy, and I was always kind of looking at West Point, Annapolis, and guys like Patton, and I knew through Patton and some things that there was another school called Virginia Military Institute. But I was looking around to see what else there might be. And I wasn't even aware of the Citadel until I was watching those events. And it just kind of struck me the way they described that the harsh discipline had prepared him to be a hero. That really stuck with me. And I thought, this is a place I want to check out. So down in Charleston, South Carolina. And then, of course, I'm in upstate New York and South Carolina sounded pretty good. So went down there and checked it out. And I knew that the minute I rolled into the. Into the gates, I knew that's where I was going to school.
- [14:37]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, this is the Citadel. It was originally the South Carolina military academy in 1842 is when it was originally established. And you got some pretty cool history that you cover in the book, by the way. I haven't said this. Get the book, everybody. I'm obviously going to read a couple highlights, but there's so much detail from. From this experience for you. Just get the book. It's an outstanding book. And one of the things that you cover is a little bit of the history behind the, the school. And this school, the South Carolina Military Academy, they actually had a, a cadet battery on Morris island. And when President Lincoln sent down the USS the Star of the west, which was a ship, the first shots of the Civil War were actually fired by cadets from the South Carolina Military Academy. That may have, that may have worked out well for the South Carolina Military Academy, but they lost the war. Eventually the, the school shut down for 10 years and, and then after losing the war, it was shut for 10 years and then it reopened 10 years later and then now they renamed it the Citadel.
- [15:48]
Jim Lechner
That's right. Yeah.
- [15:51]
Jocko Willink
Really, it seems like a next level of harsh discipline. And that's, that's, that was sort of what you experienced there.
- [16:00]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, without a doubt. You know, kind of apples and oranges or iron and nickel, I guess would be a better way to describe it. Because army basic training, you know, very pragmatic, very physical. You know, like I say, marching in the sun, shooting weapons. The Citadel, you're not doing a lot of that. That's, it's, it's mental, but it's a.
- [16:20]
Jocko Willink
Not.
- [16:21]
Jim Lechner
At the time you went through the plebe system or the Knob system was nine months long and it was 247 and there was no getting away from it. It regulated everything you did from. You couldn't have civilian clothes, very little time off, and very intensive rooms had to be kept in inspection order. And then very, very intensive pressure on you, just getting chewed out constantly. Very harsh corrections made. You know, they didn't, didn't necessarily hit you so much, but you're doing a lot of push ups. You're doing a lot of different exercises and punishments and corrections and being, you know, pointed in the right direction. And like I said, you couldn't get away from the Citadel. That's one of the big different things. Even in the military, there's usually you can get away from stuff. You've got your room or you got somewhere you can go or there's a break. There's no break for nine months with the Citadel. So at that time, in the early 80s or mid-80s, it was, it's, it was a different system and it was, it was very intensive and it, and it was a great, There's a, there's a couple different seminal points in my timeline of my personal development, and that's definitely one of the, one of the big ones. And it wasn't just a negative beat you down and Then build you back up thing. But the whole aspect, at least for me, and this gets to the history that we're talking about with the Citadel, the long history that I talk about in the book is why it's so important to me is it really establishes a standard of what you should live up to. Your dedicated service to the nation, self sacrifice, never complain, never advance your own interests over your teammates or over your nation. They really beat that into you. And that is the standard. I mean, again, and it's 24, 7 they beat into you that you've got to live up to.
- [18:08]
Jocko Willink
And so when you go to the Naval Academy or you go to West Point, the. At. At the Naval Academy, they call it plebe summer.
- [18:15]
Jim Lechner
Right.
- [18:15]
Jocko Willink
At West Point, it's called the beast.
- [18:17]
Jim Lechner
Right, right.
- [18:19]
Jocko Willink
Those are probably like nine weeks or something like that. And for you, for you at the Citadel, it's nine months. You're living like that, right?
- [18:27]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, we, I mean, different military schools, even VMI and the ones you mentioned, you can all discuss and debate about who's tougher, who's better, et cetera, et cetera. But we had quantifiably, the longest system. No one was as long as us. I mean, VMI's was about two months shorter than ours, I think, at that time. So we could bragging rights to the longest system and arguably the toughest system in the country at the time. And I was all about that.
- [18:56]
Jocko Willink
So I had to square my meals, which I read about you having the book when I went to officer candidate school, which was only 13 weeks, and we only had to square our meals for, I think, think probably about four weeks. By the way, I lost £20 squaring my wheel meals. What that means. Echo, Charles, you can't look at your plate. You just have to look straight ahead and put your fork into the plate and, you know, come straight up in front of your face and bring it in. It's real hard to eat. Did you have to square your meals for. For that many months?
- [19:23]
Jim Lechner
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And they kind of take you to the next level. You're only allowed to sit in the front three inches of your chair. You've got to do this. What looks ridiculous, but is a good tool called bracing. So you have to, like, tense up your whole body and pull your chin in as hard as you can. An exaggerated position of attention. You had to eat like that. So, you know, you're getting the food up, trying to square it away. And also you're required to keep everybody else's food. You're the server at the table. And so, you know, the upperclassmen, you're serving them and they know and they're putting the pressure on you. So it's all about building stress. And we talk about that in the book. And I know this is something you're more than familiar with, but it's all about building stress to see if you can persevere. And so at the Citadel, while you're not going through swamps and marching 20Ks, there's other ways to induce stress, and that's. That's definitely one of them.
- [20:13]
Jocko Willink
Was there any challenges?
- [20:15]
Jim Lechner
First of all, how many people quit at the time? I think we had about 30% attrition rate.
- [20:22]
Jocko Willink
Okay. But that's because people had applied and they know they're going to get a good career out of it. There's also, I think the Citadel has a really high percentage of people that actually go into the military.
- [20:32]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, at the time they did. So it was. That's one of the weird things about the Citadel is you don't have to go in the military. And South Carolina is a whole different tribe within the United States, as some people know. But, you know, South Carolina kind of sees that as their military service, going to the Citadel, which is not right, but they think that it is. And so a lot of guys would just do their four years and get out. So you didn't have to go into the US military, but eventually 65, 75% did. So it's pretty high rate.
- [21:03]
Jocko Willink
And like you said, you'd already been through boot camp.
- [21:06]
Jim Lechner
Right.
- [21:06]
Jocko Willink
So you're just a. You're just a glutton for punishment doing this stuff.
- [21:12]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [21:13]
Jocko Willink
Was there any. Anything that was significantly challenging for you?
- [21:17]
Jim Lechner
The academics, you know, And I found out now because now that I've got a couple master's degrees and teach college, you know, being 18 years old, I just. That's what I was focused on. I was trying to find every opportunity to get a rifle in my hands, to get out in the field, you know. You know what I'm talking about. So that's what I focused on. And what I really should have focused on was maybe studying math a little bit more. And I'd get up in the morning at 4:45 and PT we actually had a sergeant from the Ranger battalion there, and he ran a program. And so I'd get up in the morning, PT with him, and then I'm falling asleep through class all day. So maybe a little more. Little more, you know, balance, a little more pragmatic approach to things. It's great that I could do my, my PT test, but you probably need to pass that math test to graduate, you know, so.
- [22:05]
Jocko Willink
And, and this whole time you're still a National Guard soldier, so you get done. You get done with your knob year, which is your freshman year in college, and then you go to the infantry course at Fort Benning.
- [22:19]
Jim Lechner
That's right, yeah.
- [22:19]
Jocko Willink
So you, you were a heavily indoctrinated individual.
- [22:23]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, and I won't say I was thrilled to get those orders at the end of Knob right back to the infantry school. But no, I was. And it was a great experience. And so I was doing National Guard on the weekend. They had a cadet Ranger company that this guy from, from 175 ran. And I do that like every weekend. And so, yeah, not. Not a whole lot of balance going on there. And then after knob year, I went right into the infantry school and that was, it was good training in those years. It was Reagan years, a lot of money still. Vietnam vets running it. Very good. And then I, I got selected to come back to the Citadel and run the cadre. Run the training for the freshmen. So I had to show up early. So I went basically right from the infantry school to that. So, yeah, non stop, non stop process.
- [23:07]
Jocko Willink
You were, like I said, a heavily indoctrinated human.
- [23:11]
Jim Lechner
That's a good word. Yeah, indoctrinated. I was indoctrinated.
- [23:14]
Jocko Willink
And then you end up serving on the National Guard unit, mechanized unit, right there outside the gates of the Citadel.
- [23:19]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, I'd walk right out, right out the gate and go to drill. And we do that for one weekend a month.
- [23:24]
Jocko Willink
And as you're getting ready to graduate or any other big. Any other big things, takeaways. I mean, again, you talk about this in the book, but anything you want to mention about the Citadel in general before we get to your graduation, again.
- [23:38]
Jim Lechner
Just to emphasize, you know, there's different ways to train people for combat. And the Citadel is not a real physical place, but it's a very mentally grueling place. And it's all about finding ways to make you make the individual reach down and persevere and keep pushing. And especially building that concept that if you quit, you're letting down the guys to your left and your right. And that's really what's an important thing that I was taught throughout most of this training, the Citadel especially.
- [24:10]
Jocko Willink
So you graduate when you graduate. I'm going to go to the book here. You say earlier that year we had filled out forms to request which branch or job we wanted to enter through the form. Though the forms had spaces for us to list 10 choices to be ranked in order of our preference, I only filled in one with infantry. When our branches were posted that spring, to my shock and dismay, I was assigned to the Field Artillery, a branch I had not requested further. It seemed like an unlikely match given my recent struggles with math. I protested using the chain up through the senior army leadership of ROTC at the Citadel, but to no avail. I would follow my orders and march off that summer to the U.S. army's artillery school in Oklahoma. So that had to be a bit of a shock.
- [24:58]
Jim Lechner
Oh yeah, very shocking. You know, obviously math wasn't considered when you talk about artillery officers. You know. No, no math involved there US Army. But yeah, it was my first taste of army bureaucracy. And I think anybody that's been in the military can attest there's two different sides to the military. There's a bureaucratic side and there's a field or actual the soldier warrior side. And so this is my first taste of bureaucracy. Just putting pegs in holes is all they were doing. And that's what I. And so I quickly, I learned from that though, as we'll see later on. But yeah, the bureaucracy just stuck me in the artillery now as it turns out, fantastic experience, broadened my mind hugely. I got practical application at math. So I'm actually not too bad at it now and really enjoyed it and gave me a three dimensional view of the battlefield. But no, I'm an infantryman, I always have been. And that's one of the things I always tell people that talk to me about the military. I'm like, never let the military tell you what you're going to do. And while you may not have the maturity and education to know all the aspects of the military, if you're going to sign up and present that black check to the military and to the nation, then you should at least do something that you want to do that's going to make you happy because you're going to sacrifice a lot one way or the other. And so don't do some job that you don't want to do. I mean, you should at least have the, you know, the job experience or the pleasure of the atmosphere that you want to have. And so, I mean, I was an infantryman from day one and so that was what I was called to do. And so I wasn't going to give up on that. And I wasn't, wasn't going to let the army tell me. And this is, that was the last Time that I let the Army. I didn't go to the army and tell them what I was going to do as opposed to them telling me. I always had set the deck beforehand. So it was a good lesson to learn.
- [26:45]
Jocko Willink
I think they're a lot better about that now. I know the Marine Corps used to just. You just signed up to be a Marine.
- [26:52]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [26:53]
Jocko Willink
And you. That was it. You were going to get whatever they gave you there. The Marine Corps does a lot better with that now. But everybody. All the service branches do it better now because they realize if you got a guy that actually wants to do the job, you put him in, he's going to do a better job. But, yeah, you definitely have a lot more. You know, you can, especially when you're first joining the army or first joining the military, you don't think you have any say, but you actually do. Yeah, you can make things happen. So you end up reporting summer 1989, you go to the U.S. army Artillery School in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. This is sort of the epicenter of artillery training. You get Marines out there as well, and you learn the art and the science and the physics and the ballistics of it all. And you end up learning about Ford observers. So tell us a little bit about Ford observers and what they do.
- [27:42]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, Fo so always interested in. In Rangers and within the artillery, you know, you can shoot the guns and do all that types of thing, or they have forward observers that go with the infantry. And so I wanted to be in the infantry, and I knew that was as close as I could get. So I focused on trying to be a forward observer, an artilleryman that would go up with the infantry units and then control the artillery and other fire support. So that's what I kind of gravitated toward. And then I would see that the Rangers did that even a little bit differently. Instead of somebody from an artillery unit, they would actually have these forward observers in the Ranger battalions. And so I knew that's really where I wanted to go.
- [28:21]
Jocko Willink
And so you start volunteering for Ranger school.
- [28:23]
Jim Lechner
I did. Yeah. I 100 was going to do that. That was a good way to go back to. To the infantry. But went into the program they ran at Fort Sill, again run by some Ranger regiment guys, the program to get selected to go to Ranger school. And unfortunately I was.
- [28:39]
Jocko Willink
So you get picked up for Ranger school. Fast forward a little bit in the book. After the bending phase, those that remained moved to nearby Camp Darby. Densely wooded with forests broken by creek bottoms and swamps, Camp Darby is located in a remote corner of Fort Benning. It was named after the hero of the Ranger regiment and founder of the Rangers During World War II, Brigadier General William O. Darby. At Camp Darby, we made. We began long foot patrols and constant cycle of Ranger missions that ran on for days, keeping us tired and hungry. We carried weapons, blank ammunition, heavy packs, and scant food through the waning heat of the days and into the cold nights of the Georgia November. The grueling patrols at Camp Darby proceeded, Preceded by the first weeks of physical training, constituted the bending phase of Ranger school. Though the bending phase was primarily designed to cut the class size down by attrition, I made the grade on the first patrols at Camp Darby and successfully continued on to the next phases of Ranger school. In the mountains of north Atlanta and the frigid swamps of Florida, not only are Ranger students pushed physically through forest and mountain marches, but they are constantly on edge, being assessed and graded around the clock by their Rangers instructors. The RIs are veteran rangers whose job it is to teach military skills and constantly monitor students for weakness or failure to maintain standards. During each phase of the course, Ranger students rotate through the jobs of leading patrols and raids with each position carefully assessed and graded. Arranger student must not only make it physically to the end of the phase, but must pass the rise formal grading and assessment in order to proceed further on in the course. Additionally, the Ranger student must make the grade in the eyes of his fellow students. This test comes in the form of a peer evaluation survey ranking each student in the group with the bottom 10% being cut at the end of each phase. This becomes a lottery with the pool growing smaller as time goes on, a reality that keeps the Ranger student constantly on edge. Do they cut the bottom? I thought they. I thought it was like if somebody gets ranked the bottom a bunch of times in a row, they get rid of them. I didn't know they just slopped off the bottom 10%.
- [30:52]
Jim Lechner
Well, as I recall it, yeah, it was. It was the bottom out of ten the tenth guy would get. Would get. He would either get a mark against him or he'd get moved to another platoon. And. But again, it's stacking up against you and everybody's accumulating different demerits or marks against him, and that's just another one. And that gets you moved out of your squad and can really set you back. So it's tough. And the other course, tough part about that is in the first couple phases, I mean, you're getting rid of the guys that need to go the dirtbag so everybody that's left is pretty competent. And so now you got to go through the competent guys and cut the bottom. And, you know, but. But people aren't dumb. And so you start to rig things mathematically, and they take the best guy, rank him 10th, and. Yeah. So anyway, there's some things you can work around, but it's still. It's a lot of pressure, and you don't know. And it's. You got to build coalitions, and it's. It's an interesting dynamic to it. Pier Vals are.
- [31:39]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. From. From guys that I've talked to. Basically, they say, like, you're a good guy. I'm a good guy. Okay. Put me.
- [31:46]
Jim Lechner
That's.
- [31:46]
Jocko Willink
Rank me last this time.
- [31:47]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [31:47]
Jocko Willink
We'll rank you next. Last time. Echo. We're late. And so that way, none of us are getting cut. But if we actually don't like someone.
- [31:53]
Jim Lechner
Oh, yeah.
- [31:53]
Jocko Willink
And they're a dirtbag, we can just put them at the bottom and they're gone.
- [31:55]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [31:56]
Jocko Willink
Which is. Which is pretty. I think that's. I think that's great.
- [31:59]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [31:59]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. This. How much weight did you lose going through Ranger school?
- [32:03]
Jim Lechner
I lost. I mean, I didn't have a whole lot to lose going in, so I lost a good 20 some pounds. Yeah.
- [32:10]
Jocko Willink
And what did you think of Ranger school compared to now? You've been through all these other courses. You know, you spent four years at the Citadel. You did nine months of that plebe or knob situation.
- [32:21]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. This must be.
- [32:23]
Jocko Willink
You must be pretty freaking tough to annoy at this point. You pretty much take anything.
- [32:28]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. I mean, good thing I was so young. I didn't know any better. You know, I kind of thought that's just what life was. So now that I know that's not the case, I'm not sure it'd been so easy. But actually, Ranger school was really a good culmination because I could put a lot of the mental challenges from the Citadel together with a lot of the physical challenges from infantry school. And, you know, again, it's at 2:00 in the morning, and they just give you a change to the mission, and you've got to figure things out and get people moving and everybody's asleep. That's when you got to really reach down as, you know, and motivate yourself and then motivate everybody else. And so it was a good. It was a good almost culminating event to be able to put those skills together, so. Because again, it's very physical and very mental all at the same time Ranger school is.
- [33:09]
Jocko Willink
Any major challenges while you were there? Did you make it through in one shot?
- [33:12]
Jim Lechner
I did make it through in one shot, which is really fortunate, and most people don't. But that's not bragging because I got dinged up along the way with quite a few. Quite a few demerits and got saved a couple times by people. And so I. But I think my strength was that I did well on patrols. And so, you know, and I also learned kind of that ethos to the more you help other people, the more you help yourself, you know, and that's a good thing. So I was. I was in tune to that. So I didn't make it through, but I got quite a few demerits and write ups. And so it was stress.
- [33:46]
Jocko Willink
Now you end up getting orders to the 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea.
- [33:51]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. And just to kind of go back to one of the other points the army had told me. So I wanted to go to the lightest infantry unit that I could go to. Well, where does the army want to send me to a lance missile battalion, which is like. Like going to NASA. And I wasn't having any of that. So I used the Citadel network. I found a Citadel kernel. I said, hey, man, I want to just. I want to go to a place with light infantry. And he said, we got this slot in Korea. So I took that. So. So that was the first learning, you know, I'd learned my lesson there and set the conditions and told the army where I was going to go. So that was good.
- [34:21]
Jocko Willink
You were able to make that happen. You arrive In Korea, it's 1990, and that's. That's kind of a good place to go at this time frame. You know, being on the DMZ is as good as it's going to get in 1990.
- [34:34]
Jim Lechner
At that time, at that month, it was the. It was the hottest place to go, you know, to face off with the North Korean army, because there was no wars going on at that time.
- [34:42]
Jocko Willink
Of course, By August of 1990, you know, in the book here, you talk about it, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. Now you end up securing a spot in the 82nd Airborne because you were. You were maneuvering. You seem to be doing some maneuvering to try to get to go to war.
- [34:58]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, definitely the army came down and said, nobody's leaving Korea. You know, you're going to stay stabilized there because of mission. But I wasn't having any of that. So as the army was deploying off to the storm, I was working the system and working the system. And again, I wasn't going to let anybody down. I was going to make sure that there was, because I knew the army would say one thing and then there was reality underneath. And in reality, they had more guys coming. My replacement was coming. And so why should me and my replacement both sit there? And so I was staying very in tune on that. I was up at 2:00 in the morning, calling back to D.C. and worked it. So I got my way all the way down to a unit that was already deployed in Desert Storm. And then, and then, you know, life had, the Lord had other plans for me.
- [35:38]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, the other plans was that you had screened for or applied to be. To go to Ranger. To go to the Ranger regiment.
- [35:44]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [35:45]
Jocko Willink
And sort of at the same time you get both sets of orders offered to you and you go in the book here, would I take the orders I had in hand to go to war with the 82nd or airborne, or follow my original dream and join a Ranger battalion? Convinced none of this was happening by chance, and bolstered by my belief that there could not be a war without the Rangers, the Army's spearhead combat unit, I accepted the assignment to join 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. So your thought was, well, 82nd Airborne is, you know, they're already there. But if I'm going to Ranger Battalion, of course I'm going to war.
- [36:25]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [36:26]
Jocko Willink
And you were wrong.
- [36:28]
Jim Lechner
I was wrong. Yeah. Yeah.
- [36:31]
Jocko Willink
The war was over a little too quick for that.
- [36:34]
Jim Lechner
And 3rd Battalion had been lined up for a special operation to secure the US Embassy and some hostages. And when that, when Saddam Hussein let those people go, then 3rd Battalion came off that hook. But, but the other battalions were already lined up to go. And so we were, we did not go.
- [36:51]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward a little bit. In the book you say we spent the next few months watching the returning soldiers of the regular army strut around Fort Benning brashly pointing at their combat laurels and asking us, where were you? We knew this was a one off for the regular army and that at some point that the 911 call would come in again and the fire bell would ring for us. Meanwhile, the Rangers returned to cycle of week in, week out training like we were going to the Super Bowl. So that had to, that had to sting.
- [37:20]
Jim Lechner
Oh, that stun. It still stings. It still stings. But I, I had a great, a great story though. And St. Patrick's Day, Savannah, Georgia. It's a huge, huge event. The population of city doubles and first Range of battalions in Savannah. So I was in third, so I went down there to watch the parade. And 1st Ranger Battalion always has a company march in the parade. Well, in that parade, all the Desert Storm guys were there and they literally like, were running around and had their hats on sideways and I mean, really kind of clowning it up, you know, but. But just jubilant that they were home. So good on them. But then after the clown show kind of passes by, the crowd just hushed and you could hear marching. And here comes a company from 1st Battalion with bayonets marching by. I mean, just looking fantastic. And somebody in the crowd said, here come the real fighters. And so that kind of pumped me back up a little bit again too. It really is really cool to hear that.
- [38:14]
Jocko Willink
Now, before you got here today, I was telling Echo Charles that life of a Ranger. The day to day life of a Ranger is about as spartan.
- [38:26]
Jim Lechner
Oh, yeah.
- [38:27]
Jocko Willink
As you can find in the US Military. Talk to us a little bit. So you're now at Ranger Battalion. What's. What's that like? What's day to day life like?
- [38:35]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, for the whole battalion. For the whole unit. That's just. It's 100% focused on the mission. I mean, getting ready for training, but that training is focused on being ready to go. You're on an 18 hour notice and that wrote, that's a rotation, kind of like firemen in a firehouse waiting for the bell to ring. So the battalions rotate that responsibility, but they have a responsibility to be able to respond in 18 hours. So that's really an incredible timeline to have to meet. When I say respond, that means in an aircraft, wheels up, going downrange to a mission. And so you literally have to be like 30 minutes response to get to your unit and get your stuff and go. And that rotates. But that's a big part of your life. And so you really have to be 100% dedicated to it. Um, there's no, I don't feel good today. There's no, hey, my kid's birthday is today, so I can't come. There's none of that. And the Ranger battalion has to, has to be like, the rest of the army is not like that.
- [39:30]
Jocko Willink
No, the rest of the military is not like that.
- [39:33]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [39:34]
Jocko Willink
So that's why, that's why the Rangers, most Rangers don't stay in for a long period of time. And when you meet a guy that's been in the, like, I've met guys that were in Rangers for 22 years and they're just like hard. They're a different type of human right there because they've been living the same way like a Spartan for 20 years.
- [39:52]
Jim Lechner
Oh yeah. And I, that's a great point because, you know, I'll meet some that say, well, I did four years in the army or four years in the air force. I'm like, good, good on you. But you know, that's not that huge a thing. But if I meet somebody that said they were in battalion, I don't care if they were in there for three years or 30 years. I mean, you were in battalion, so that's, that's a different, different lifestyle. And I would say again, I was a lieutenant, so, you know, I had to meet all those standards. I had to conform to that. But again, I was more treated like, more of, like a gentleman, we would say. But the privates, the young guys that are there, it's, it's just like the guys at the Citadel, except they are getting smoked physically around the clock and they've got to be completely dedicated to it. So you're right 100%. It's the probably the most spartan lifestyle. And that goes on for them similarly for like a year until they go to Ranger school. And when they graduate Ranger school and come back with a tab, then they start getting treated more like a human. But it's, it was a year of that for those guys. I, my hat is off to young guys raised in battalion.
- [40:48]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, no doubt. And then I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. In 1992, Colonel Dave Grange Jr. Took over as a commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment. And a fast paced training cycle became even more intense. Colonel Grange was the son of one of the army's legendary generals. Colonel Grange's father, Lieutenant general Dave Grange senior, was an infantry officer and three war US army veteran who cast a long shadow. His son, Dave Grange Jr. Was intensely competitive and strove to equal, if not outdo, his father's legacy. By 1992, he was well on his way. Having served as a recon platoon leader with the 82nd Airborne in Vietnam, then becoming a special forces officer and later an army helicopter pilot, Dave Grange Jr. Had a career path not even possible in today's Army. One that represents quite an accomplishment. As a captain, Dave Grange Jr. Commanded the company from the 1st Ranger Battalion that had gone into Iran in 1980 as part of Operation Eagle Claw. He next tried out for the army's elite and secretive Special forces operational detachment Delta and was selected to serve as one of its senior officers. An experienced veteran Ironman, triathlete and inspiring leader. There were few men who could equal Colonel Grange's reputation or drive as the 75th Ranger Regiment commander, Colonel Grange made it clear that chief among his priorities was to get the Ranger battalions into action and take on America's enemies. So he just comes in, steps it up even more.
- [42:15]
Jim Lechner
It was incredible. You want to turn a freight train into a bullet train. That's what happened. And at least in the life, the tempo that we had is you would go to the field, you come back, and then, you know, you might have a. What we would call a little downtime, like maybe going to the range and doing some training and things, but none of that even compared to when Grange came in. And so, I mean, we literally were loading aircraft, flying to Europe, flying to Korea, flying to South America and coming back and cleaning gear and then loading the next aircraft and going again. It was just an unbelievable pace.
- [42:51]
Jocko Willink
And by the way, when you. When you say you fly, flew, got an aircraft and flew somewhere, you jumped like you guys were just jumping in everywhere.
- [42:58]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, that was not a commercial flight. That was getting into a C141. And I love the C17 today, but again, it's nothing compared to the 141, as far as, you know, comfort that the C141, as you. As you well know, was just a metal tube with a. With a net. And we would pack guys in so tight, I mean, you were literally compressed, and you had your gear all stacked on you, and then you'd. At some point, hours and hours and hours into that flight, you know, you would have to make enough room to wiggle into your parachute, strap it on, and then hook up and parachute out. It was just an unbelievable experience. Unbelievable.
- [43:36]
Jocko Willink
No doubt about it. You guys are pushing real hard. And you say this in the book. Invariably during intense, realistic training, there are accents in the swirling dust of Nevada. That fall, B Company lost Rangers, Sergeant Jeffrey Palmer, who was accidentally shot when he crossed into the fire of another of other Rangers. So you guys are pushing hard. Live fire. There's another training mission you talk about, the Great Salt Lake. The trail aircraft of this formation was a U.S. air Force Special operations helicopter containing a number of key leaders to include the U.S. air Force squadron commander and the commander of the 1st Ranger Battalion, Lt. Col. Ken Stauss. With Staus in the helicopter, with Staus in the helicopter was my commander from 3rd Ranger Battalion, John Keneally. Am I saying that's right?
- [44:24]
Jim Lechner
John.
- [44:25]
Jocko Willink
John Keneally there to observe and provide feedback, bringing up the Rear of the tight formation. Flying under night vision goggles, the US Air Force pilots could not discern the causeway and struck it at over 100 miles an hour, causing the aircraft craft to crash into the lake, killing most of the US Servicemen on board. Miraculously, one of the US Air Force pilots survived the crash floating in the lake until he was rescued by legendary Ranger medic Doc Donovan. Donovan had been monitoring the exercise at a nearby air force base, waiting for the live fire to begin. But upon learning of the crash, he rushed to the water's ed. Seeing the. Seeing the burning aircraft about a mile out, he commandeered a tiny rubber boat and paddled through the darkness and frigid waters to the wreck in time to save the struggling pilot. Colonel John Kennely had not only been a commander, but a mentor to many of the junior officers, and his loss was a hard one. These were not the only losses suffered in training by the Ranger regiment that year. More rangers were killed that year during intense training than most units lost in combat during Desert Storm. Yeah, pushing the envelope on that training.
- [45:35]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, I think that that says it all, you know, and, and we were as careful and all that as we could be, but, you know, paramount above safety, and we were going to be practical and safe. Right. But paramount among safety was we were going to be able to accomplish the task that we had to do in combat as realistically as possible. So there wasn't any. Well, it's too dangerous to. If we had to do it in combat, we were going to, we were going to rehearse it. And unfortunately, tragically, you lose guys. And so that's what happened.
- [46:03]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, there's definitely a very fine line to walk when you're, when you're in charge of training. And because you have to push hard, you have to make sure that the guys are ready to execute in combat. And when you're shooting live fire, you're flying out of helicopters, you're fast roping, you're parachuting, you're diving. Like everything that you're doing, there's risking every single one of those things. And you have to take some level of risk to, to train properly and be ready. Otherwise, you're going to go on the battlefield and you're not going to be effective.
- [46:33]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [46:37]
Jocko Willink
By the way, again, this, this information. Get, get the book. You, you, you. Meadow a woman. During the June block leave in 1993, Beth and I were married at 1600 hours. And another Ranger officer friend of mine, Captain Jim Klingeman, married his bride, Kathy at 1800 hours. It's pretty funny. So you guys are going block leave, right? And everyone needs to go line up and get married.
- [46:59]
Jim Lechner
That's exactly how it was. Yeah, yeah, because we all went on leave at the same, same two weeks together. And so that calendar is filled up. You just had to get your. You got your time slot at the chapel and got married. So yeah, again, I. Because I was an officer, I got a little more downtime than the average ranger. And so, you know, when I had time, I go out in town, met Beth, she was a local there in Columbus, Georgia. And about six months later, we got. We got married.
- [47:25]
Jocko Willink
Again. So much stuff. Great, great information in here, but I'm going to fast forward a little bit. The US Led United nations mission to feed starving refugees in the chaotic failed state of Somalia had begun with the. Begun with an initial invasion by U.S. troops in December 1992. Under the orders of President George H.W. bush. The mission had achieved initial success, securing the key cities of Kismayo and Baido and the capital Mogadishu. Once U. S. Troops had become established on the ground, the rival Somali militias faded in the background, and the stage was set for the UN to provide humanitarian aid to the starving refugees. In addition to the food and relief supplies, the U. S. Led coalition was able to bring relative stability to some of the major Somali cities. By early February, the initial mission with its objectives of humanitarian relief had been achieved. But by this time, President Bush had left office. Under his successor, Bill Clinton, the mission soon began to change. Pressed by the UN Secretary General for aggressive disarmament of the Somali militias, and emboldened by early successes and relative ease of securing the country, Clinton began to gradually implement a plan for nation building to attempt to reestablish a modern civil society in Somalia. How much attention were you paying to that?
- [48:46]
Jim Lechner
Just a little bit, because again, we were training, flying, going to all these different countries, but at the same time, we were always looking to see is there anything that we can get in, anything that may pop up for us. And so kind of similar to Desert Storm, we watched units roll out to Somalia to go do this peacekeeping thing, this humanitarian relief thing, engineer units and all that. And we were kind of hoping. And then, you know, months and months went by and nothing happened. And so we just. It kind of faded into the background, but so not as much. That's why we got caught a little bit by surprise.
- [49:19]
Jocko Willink
It's interesting, I've had guys in here that were in the naval academy or at west point in like 1965, 1966, they didn't even know anything about Vietnam. Like it was just so off the radar for guys until I guess it was like 1965, Battle of I drank valley. But that's where it really started to hit the news. But people weren't even thinking about it. Yeah, they weren't even thinking about it. So yeah, the chance of being thinking about Somalia.
- [49:43]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [49:44]
Jocko Willink
However, summer 1993, over in Somalia, two American Humvees. Humvees had been ambushed and four U. S. Troops had been killed. Today, that news would barely make the headlines. But in 1993, after decades of relative peace, this is a major event that rippled through the nation. As we sat in our tents and absorbed that news, our company commander came in looking crestfallen. A special operations task force was being formed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina to deal with the deteriorating situation in Somalia. And 3rd Battalion had been ordered to send one Ranger company to join that task force. Our neighbors in bravo company had been selected for the mission. That news hit us in alpha company with shock and wave of disappointment, but I barely had time to absorb it as a runner arrived with a message from the battalion headquarters. I was being urgently called to report to the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel McKnight. Not having time to think about what was going on, I hurried off to the battalion headquarters. Tent is a real hard thing for people to understand, for civilians to understand that a call comes in that one company from the battalion is going to war and you're not in that company and just help pissed you're going to be.
- [50:52]
Jim Lechner
Oh yeah. And again, it's the difference between a ranger special ops unit and the regular military. I mean, that's, that's why we're there. You know, we're there waiting for that. And this, that's a really interesting passage. And again, I mean, you couple that to a couple other things that happened in my life, such as Korea getting diverted to the ranger battalion from the 82nd at the absolute last second, then this. It's, it's beyond, as I talk about, it's beyond just coincidence. It's beyond just planets coming into alignment. Because my. As we're going to talk about, my counterpart in b company had just had just departed four hours before to go home on emergency leave. And so that just that window of opportunity is so small, it's beyond coincidence.
- [51:32]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. So there you go. You get called into the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Danny McKnight greeted me cordially but with an air of seriousness when I arrived at his tent. As I knocked and walked in he asked me, are you ready? When I immediately gave him the standard Ranger answer. Who, sir? He quickly got to the point. McKnight informed me that the lieutenant who was my fire support counterpart and Bravo Bravo Company had departed Fort Bliss just hours before and gone home for a family emergency. Bravo Company would be departing to join the task force now assembling at Fort Bragg in a few hours. The battalion commander then informed me that I would be his replacement. So there you go. Fast forward a little bit, the tension and excitement. So now you're going to go get with Bravo Company. The tension, excitement and Bravo Company were palpable as preparations for departure were underway. I checked in with the company commander, Captain Mike Steele, and his first sergeant, Glenn Harris. Captain Steele was a hulking former college football player. He had been a starting lineman at offensive tackle for the University of Georgia when Herschel, Herschel Walker received the Heisman Trophy and they had won the college national championship in the 1980s. 1981 Sugar Bowl. I'd only dealt with Mike Steele a couple of times back at Fort Benning where he'd been on the battalion staff before he took over command of Bravo Company. He had a reputation for being gruff and stubborn, but also for being a completely dedicated Ranger. So you knew him?
- [52:51]
Jim Lechner
I did, yeah. And you're checking in with him from staff work? Yeah. So I went over to, you know, meet the company commander. I'm going to be his right hand man for fire support. Meet the first sergeant, try to innocent green of the company. It was all happening very fast and.
- [53:04]
Jocko Willink
Like, like you said, it's happening fast. Next thing you guys are on a C1, C141, you're heading to the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC and you are gonna go and integrate with Delta.
- [53:19]
Jim Lechner
That's right, yeah. So I'd move from A company and we were on a deployment on exercise and so in the middle of that exercise, move over to B Company, literally pick up my gear, my pack and go over and get in the line and get on the plane and then we fly into Fort Bragg and, and start linking up with, with Delta at Bragg.
- [53:37]
Jocko Willink
And then how's that? You, you talk about the integration with Delta as you guys show up there. So I mean, let me give a little precursor.
- [53:45]
Jim Lechner
Sure.
- [53:46]
Jocko Willink
A Delta guy has been in for a long time, right. They get obviously the best training in the world. They're highly selected and they're, I mean just straight up older, you know, and so Rangers like we were talking about these, these kids can be 18 years. You can you can be in a Ranger Battalion, be 18 years old.
- [54:06]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [54:07]
Jocko Willink
And, and there's a lot of rangers that are 18, 19, 20 years old. That's young. A lot of them are on their first enlistment. You know, maybe they've been in the army for two, three, four years at least. The, the frontline Rangers. Every Delta guy has been in the army for 10 years or a much longer period of time.
- [54:25]
Jim Lechner
Right.
- [54:25]
Jocko Willink
So immediately there's a little bit of a, just a discrepancy on, on that. You just got two different cultures. The other big cultural difference is Rangers are freaking, as we talked about, just Spartan. Yeah. Troopers.
- [54:39]
Jim Lechner
Right.
- [54:40]
Jocko Willink
And Delta, they're professionals and they have more training, more experience, and they have more liberty with how they operate.
- [54:51]
Jim Lechner
Sure.
- [54:52]
Jocko Willink
So that's to kind of set up what you're walking into.
- [54:55]
Jim Lechner
Sure.
- [54:56]
Jocko Willink
Is that accurate?
- [54:57]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, oh, yeah, 100% accurate. And I would also agree with the point and emphasize maturity, you know, so that there's a lot of maturity there with, with Delta. And then there was also more of a hierarchical thing, and it's a literal and a figurative hierarchy in those days. You know, even the Rangers who are going to fight alongside. Well, we don't talk about Delta. You can't even discuss Delta. It's so secret and so, you know, kind of black that you can't even talk about it. And so we were trying to discuss amongst ourselves and what do you think the mission is? I mean, how are they, how are they going to. We're trying to figure things out. We weren't even supposed to discuss it. And so that's kind of how. So almost like an oppressive heat. You know, it was so such a black thing that we couldn't even discuss it. And I can see in retrospect now, I mean, that's, that's a very difficult professionally, that's a very difficult way to integrate into a team if you're that in the dark, literally, about how somebody works, what they want you to do. And then we show up and we're trying to integrate.
- [55:55]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And then like right out of the gate again, you're, they're, they're treating you guys like, okay, this is what we're going to do. You know, here's how we're gonna hit the target. You're like, what target? Yeah, you know, like you guys literally did not have any information. And it's, it's, it's, it's a rough kind of out of the gate integration, I would say.
- [56:17]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, very much so. And it's It's a really interesting study in. In the dynamics of organizations. So we knew that there had been a mission being considered for Somalia, special operations mission, for, you know, a couple months now. We were basically aware of that. We hadn't been briefed on it, but we knew that they were looking at some sort of special operations mission. And obviously Delta was aware. Specifically aware of it, and they were read onto it and they were training for it and they were making their plan. But we as B company 375 had not been briefed on that plan at all. And again, there was this culture of, well, you can't even say the word Delta. You can't even discuss that. So when we show up on the range at Fort Bragg, they didn't know that. They thought, oh, we've been briefed, and we were planning already and ready to go. And so they're like, well, we're going to live fire right now. We're like, we don't even know what we're live firing. We don't even know what the mission is. So just some organizational frictions right out of the gate, difficulties to overcome. And so we dug into it and started.
- [57:18]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, it's. It's just the combat experience and lack of combat experience because no one had. I mean, I don't know what. I don't know what percentage of Delta guys at this, on this operation had like a ton of combat experience. I doubt it.
- [57:35]
Jim Lechner
Was.
- [57:36]
Jocko Willink
Not sure. They might have had some lingering. It's 1993, you know, Vietnam ended in. In what, 1971? 72, 73. There was a couple people still there, but a lot of those guys were either very, very senior or they'd retired or gotten out or whatever. So, like, I mean, in. In the SEAL teams, we had very few Vietnam guys left when I got there in 1990. And so having guys with combat experience, and we had guys that had been in Desert Storm, right. And back then, we would look at it like they had combat experience. Me, now, I look at it like it's a different thing. It's a different level of combat experience. It's like someone that had been in a street fight versus someone that was a professional MMA fighter, you know, like the street fighter. Oh, the guy's been in a street fight. Okay, cool. One time versus someone that trains every day. And that's what, you know, what. What we end up getting for combat experience in the global war on terror. So again, I think there's a lot of. A lot of things that you learn in war that probably were not front of mind at this time with anybody in the military.
- [58:52]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. And it's, as you said, as we've deployed now for decades, there's just trends and things about combat that we know intuitively that we just didn't know back then. And so I think the number one thing is you can't ever make an assumption. You can make an assumption that somebody's going to know something or understand something. You know, getting everybody on the same page is really, really key.
- [59:15]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. Yeah. So you go through this, and you go through this. You guys go through a spin up and a stand down and a spin up and a stand down and just echo Charles, you might not know what spin up, spin up is like, we're going. We're launching now. Stand down is like, all right. No, we're not going spin up. Oh, no, we're launching. And this happens a lot. And it definitely happened in the 90s a lot. And you guys. You go through that a bunch of. And again, it's really great to your. Your debriefs in here about this integration and the challenges and the rehearsals and how you guys finally get kind of unified about what you're doing. And meanwhile, this whole thing is spin up, stand down, spin up, stand down. And you. You guys actually get stood down to the point where they go, okay, this is not happening. And they put you all on aircraft and send you back to Texas. Yeah, like, this is not happening.
- [60:03]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, we did all that training for a couple weeks and got briefed on the plan, made our plan, and then live fired it and did it over and over and over again. I mean, once the training train got going, it was. It was very good. We rehearsed it from all angles. And then all of a sudden, the commander brought us in and said, okay, it's scratched. And. And that's kind of a fairly reg. Normal thing. Not. Not out of the ordinary and special operations. So we got back on birds and flew back to Texas.
- [60:30]
Jocko Willink
You guys get back there, you say. As I walked in the Alpha Company area and began to settle in, providing short answers to all inquiries just as we had been directed. But before we could unpack our rocks in what was now becoming a pattern in this drama, a messenger arrived from battalion headquarters. A new order had come from Washington. We were to immediately rejoin B Company. The mission was a go. But there are also more changes. The Additional Rangers from 1st Platoon, Alpha Company had been cut by officials in Washington, saying good, quick goodbyes to a disappointed 1st Platoon. And my FO Sergeant Lesnar, we headed back to join B Company. Within hours, we were again reloading the waiting US Air Force transport aircraft and were soon flying back across country to Fort Bragg. So there's a couple things that I, I mentioned there which I hadn't mentioned yet, but there was actually an additional Ranger platoon that had been added on. So they were going to have a little bit of a bigger force horse. Right. That means you'd have just more ground.
- [61:28]
Jim Lechner
Right.
- [61:28]
Jocko Willink
Combat power.
- [61:29]
Jim Lechner
Combat power.
- [61:30]
Jocko Willink
And that got cut. And there's some other things that get cut which, which we'll talk about, I'm sure. Fast forward a little bit. I had not completely digested the shock and excitement of the last few days with all the dramatic ups and downs. Just over two months ago, I'd been single. Now I was married with a baby on the way. And instead of had heading to a classroom room at Fort Benning, Georgia, I was with B Company and Task Force Ranger about to embark on the odyssey of my life. Fast forward. The next day, the entire task force was broken down into groups of deployment chalks, then moved to the airfield aboard buses driven by personnel from support personnel from Delta. Fast forward. Almost immediately after the C5 took off, one of the engines had a mechanical failure. So now you guys have to land, you have to get a delay, and you end up being the last aircraft. And fast forward. Finally, near the end of August, the huge transport touchdown on the worn Runway and into the reality of Mogadishu. So you finally show up there.
- [62:33]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. The good, the good news was even though we got jerked around a lot once we got back to Texas and got off the plane, but they immediately told us, you're going. The train didn't stop then. I mean, once we got back on the birds and flew to Bragg, we were only at Bragg for like 24 hours. And it was all the standard stuff of get your last minute shots, write your last letter, hand that to the chaplain, and then get on the C5 and go. So that train moved pretty quickly. And that was, that was good. That was, that was a good part. Yeah.
- [62:59]
Jocko Willink
And it's wild too. Again, thinking about the war on terror. Op tempo. Like, you know, here we are talking about the word coming from Washington. This was just day to day life, you know, during the war on terror. Just, that's what, just what was happening. And that's, it's funny too, because when I was a young seal in the 90s, everything was about training for what we called the big Miss One mission.
- [63:25]
Jim Lechner
Right?
- [63:25]
Jocko Willink
Like we would hope and Pray to be able to get one mission. The big mesh we called it, which was. Which was actually a mindset that we had to change because we realized, you know, once the war started, it's not one mission.
- [63:42]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [63:43]
Jocko Willink
It's going to be night after night after night after night. That's what we're doing.
- [63:47]
Jim Lechner
It's a marathon.
- [63:49]
Jocko Willink
By August 26, the entire task force had arrived in Mogadishu. In the talk, we soon met Major General Bill Garrison, who was the commander of Joint Special Operations Command. It would now command the overall effort of Task Force Ranger. The same leaders who assembled with us at Fort Bragg, Lieutenant Colonel McKnight, the 3rd Ranger Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Harrell, the C Squadron commander, and Colonel Boinkin commanding Delta. Each had his role to play and would assist Major General Garrison. But the overall responsibility command was his. You give a good description. Tall, Texan. He was a guy who was in Vietnam. He was in the Phoenix program. He helped found Delta under Colonel Beckwourth. And then you talk a little bit about some of the other kind of ad hoc things that were going on. Our primary intelligence collection platform was a US Navy P3 Orion Anti submarine warfare plane. So this is. Yeah, some of the integration issues that we have is like all of a sudden we got this random no, again, of course, the US Navy P through Orion anti submarine warfare. They're awesome at anti submarine warfare.
- [64:55]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [64:56]
Jocko Willink
And that's their perspective. That's what they're looking for. And we're asking them to do something different.
- [65:00]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. And this is actually one of the reasons I wrote the book. And it's, you know, not to be the critic, but to show how things were back then because they're a lot different than they are today. And the good news story, and we'll talk about this, the good news story is the US Military has used this and really, especially JSOC and really evolved the capability. Really gone back and looking what we did wrong and really fix things. And so, you know, one of the aspects of it was it was really a pickup team. And even though we did a lot of training and we tried to, we thought we were integrated. We weren't integrated at all. And so really we didn't integrate with Delta. The Ranger company didn't integrate with Delta until we showed up at Fort Bragg that first time. And so just a couple weeks before now, you start going to the task force level and building that task force capability. And it was really a pickup team, guys that had never worked together before. And to the extreme point of bringing very professional air crew in from those that P3 Orion. But nowhere in their training had they ever dreamed they were going to be hunting some Somali general through the streets. They were looking for Russian submarines. So almost a bizarre aspect to the task force. But again, I don't mind criticizing and bringing those warts out because JSOC's really learned and really built an incredible capability based on a lot of these shortcomings.
- [66:20]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward a little bit. You guys get mortared, one TF soldier gets wounded. The actual talk gets a, gets around on the roof. And you write. As a fire supporter, part of me was perversely thrilled to be mortared for the first time, but I tried to respond. Cooling of professional train.
- [66:39]
Jim Lechner
Right. You know, again, I was, I was only still in my 20s, but this had been, I'd focused on since I was, you know, since DNA, basically. And so it was, it was, the whole thing was just fantastic to be there. And you know, everybody's, everybody's only fear, instead of getting killed, our fear was we were going to get cut and sent home. So it was the whole, the whole thing was just like a once in a lifetime thing.
- [67:02]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And you, you have the feeling of like, we're so good.
- [67:07]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [67:08]
Jocko Willink
And we're so awesome and we have such great firepower and we train so much and we'll just, you know, this is going to be, for lack of a better word, it's going to be easy for us. We're going to go and high five and we'll knock out these operations and it'll be no factor.
- [67:24]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, that's a great point. We talk about it a little bit in the book, but you know, your day to day experience or executing these operations is so much confidence, you know, so much of a feeling of like you just said, hey, we're with Delta and they're the best in the world. And we just, we just won this big war against Iraq, I mean, crushed them. And we've got more firepower and technology. And so it actually took a lot of effort to be a professional and sit back and say, now hold on, the enemy gets a vote. And so what happens if, and what happens if we get in this bad situation? And you actually had people, people like, oh, why are you thinking about that? Why do you think about getting ambushed? Or why are you thinking about if, you know, we're not going to be surrounded, we're not going to get an aircraft shot down. You had people like pushing back on that. So it took a lot of Professional effort to really go through contingencies and overcome that, that hubris, I guess you could say.
- [68:17]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, that's one of my main complaints about politicians is they think that. They think everything you just said, like, of this war that we're about to start is going to go exactly how we plan and that's what's going to happen.
- [68:31]
Jim Lechner
Right.
- [68:31]
Jocko Willink
And when we get bogged down and you fast forward, it's been two decades of war like you, no one thought of this. No one thought that we might get bogged down. It's, it's totally ridiculous. And yet that, that stuff happens and that attitude of like, you know, sort of, what are you worried about? You know, when you come to me and say, well, hey, what if one of our aircraft goes down and, and I go, hey, quit being a wimp. Yeah, like, what are you talking about? What are you scared? Yeah, like that thing, you know, no one wants to be called a coward. And when you say, hey, what about a contingency for a vehicle getting blown up, who are you worried about? We, we'll tow it out. No factor. Okay, well, if one vehicle gets blown up, couldn't two vehicles get blown up? And then where are we? Like having the wherewithal to ask those questions of like, no, hold on. This doesn't make sense. And there's definitely stories that I've heard where no one in the room, People in the room had the thought. Yeah, but they were, they didn't want to raise their hand and be the, be the coward to say, well, hey, hold on a second, why are we doing this? Or wait a second, what if this happens? So, yeah, like you said, it takes a whole nother level of professionalism, especially in the 90s. It'd be hard for a guy that grew up in the, you know, guy that joined in 2002 that just meant, you know, his whole career at war. It'd be hard for them to reverse their mindset into like that, oh yeah, 90s mentality. Or for me, it was the 90s mentality. You guys get mortared and you immediately like you, you say the TF began a knee jerk reaction. They send a platoon of rangers out on patrol. They don't run into anything, and then there's some intel comes in and that we're gonna go launch a mission against the Haber Gitter. Am I saying that right?
- [70:33]
Jim Lechner
Yes.
- [70:33]
Jocko Willink
Haber Getter, which is like a clan type group, and then the sna, which is the Somali national alliance, you guys are gonna go out and do a hit. You had Some intel. You get these coordinates, there's a guy draws up the sketch of what you're gonna go do, and then boom, you go out and you go load up your aircraft. And again, I'm kind of fast forwarding through some of this stuff. Super 64, that's your bird you're gonna be on. And fast forward a little bit. This would be the first real world mission for many of us. Fortunately, it passed with few hitches. By the time we sorted out the Ranger blocking positions in the dark, the Delta operators were well into the clearance of the buildings. The Rangers established the perimeter and we caught glimpses in the dark of the Delta operators moving around the target building. They soon emerged with a handful of prisoners, blindfolded and with their hands tied with thin plastic flex cuffs. The Somalis timidly knelt against a wall guarded by Delta operators as the clearing teams began to come out of the target building. After about 30 minutes on the ground, Delta had completely cleared, had the building completely cleared. The Somali prisoner secured and were prepared to move. The decision was then made to extract the entire force on helicopters, which would land in a small adjacent courtyard. Fast forward a little bit. After a short flight back, we landed in the still dark airfield streaming off the aircraft. The key leaders broke off and quickly moved toward the talk to conduct our post mission. Hot wash brief. While the rest of the operators and Rangers headed to the hangar. Our Somali prisoners had been lifted out before the assault force. Immediately flown to the airfield. They had been processed and moved to a small razor wire enclosure adjacent to the hangar. Mood in the talk was calm and almost anticlimactic. The UN headquarters had responded to the raid with a surprising report that identified our prisoners in as UN workers and that what we had hit was their office.
- [72:27]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So, yeah, a couple of things there. Obviously our mission was to go over there and try to neutralize the leadership of the Somalis that were pushing back on the UN effort. And it wasn't all the Somalis. It was actually only one tribe out of five, and that was led by Mohammed Farah Deed. So that tribe was the hopper getter. So you're talking over half a million people in that tribe in Mogadishu. And their political and military group was the Somali national alliance and Nadeed was the head of it. So the mission, go in and capture him. And the national level leadership thought that if they did that, then that would collapse the resistance. I mean, we knew that wasn't the case, but again, we weren't going to argue. We just wanted to go. But the interesting thing about this, too, again from a 90s perspective is. And all special operators now, I think, are so used. Used to going in and everything's so developed. You got your intel systems in place and you got your targets developed, and you go in and start picking and choosing and hitting things. Well, that wasn't the case here. I mean, we started from, like, not even a cold start. And we basically had to take the intelligence lists from the regular UN and regular US army units that were there and say, well, where do you guys think the enemy's at? And they gave us this list. And this is in the first couple days on the ground before we got our systems in place and we learned how to do it, because there was a lot of learning going on back then on how to do this targeting. And so basically they gave us this list. In the top place was this Lig Lagado compound, and we hit that only to find out that it was owned by the Somali national alliance and they would rent it out to the UN during the day. So, yeah, just kind of a crazy situation and trying to sort our way through that. But again, I look at today versus then. I mean, we just did not have an intelligence system in place. And we were trying to get it in place and learn how to do it, which would be very foreign to. I think anybody in special operations would go somewhere today.
- [74:22]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I always tell a story about my first deployment to Iraq. I was in Baghdad, and we went out and, you know, we had the mission tasking come, and I get the. I get the map and there's a, you know, a satellite imagery shot and there's a red X on the building. Like, this is what we're going to hit. And I'm like, cool. We go hit the building and we hit the building and we don't. You know, it's like a totally normal person's house. And. But we start talking to those people and they go, oh, we know what you're looking for. Go two doors down. And so we hit building two doors down. We find ID making material and all that. But I come back from that operation and I said to myself, and I said to my intel guys, I'm like, who put this red X here?
- [75:01]
Jim Lechner
Who.
- [75:01]
Jocko Willink
Who. Who put this red X on this building? And they're like, well, we got it from them. And I go, okay. So I went to. I just followed that chain until I found the guy. And it was like a E4 intel guy that had been told to Put together the thing and he pulled the, you know, through various sources. But when he told me how he put the red X on that building, it was very obvious that it wasn't corroborated properly. And he could have easily corroborated it, but he didn't. He just was like, you know, he had to get it done. And hey, the things do. And so he put the red X and boom, sent it up the chain, and boom, here I was an idiot. Went, cool, bad guys, we'll go get them. And so that's a lesson that I learned, and I never made that mistake again. Not that we never hit the wrong target building, because sometimes things would happen, but for the most part, I knew the reason. I knew who put the red X on the building.
- [75:53]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [75:53]
Jocko Willink
And this is a very important thing. But that wasn't passed to me. Like, that's not lesson that got passed down. I tried and pass it on. Hopefully someone listening this podcast right now goes, huh, that makes sense. But what happens when you're. When it's the 90s and you get tasked with hitting a target, bro, you don't care where that target came from.
- [76:12]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [76:13]
Jocko Willink
I wouldn't have.
- [76:14]
Jim Lechner
But that's. And that's a great point too. Like you said, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So even. Even with our really robust systems in place, you know, just. Just like you, we've all got stories like that. That's a great point. And it just. Again, it's. I carried that with me all my career is verify where this came from, figure out what they're. You know, why they said this should be the target. Pull that string. Because the more you pull that string and it's on you as a commander to do it. When I was that young, I didn't know that you had to go verify and kind of check other people's work. But if you're the guy kicking the door, you got to check everybody's work.
- [76:48]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, there's no doubt about that. Fast forward a little bit, you say. While the media gleefully described our first raid as a quote, bungled operation and the UN expressed their displeasure, Major General Garrison took a patient step back and exercised mature discretion. The task force had reacted, in part, to a deeds goading with the mortars and probes and had failed to immediately grasp the subtleties of tracking him in the city, we quickly realized that on this type of operation, there would be no loot looming, forts to assault or flags to capture, only careful study of patterns and vulnerabilities while waiting on opportunities for a quick strike would lead to success. This would be accomplished by continuing to weave our intelligence net, casting it throughout the city and building a picture of where to find a deed day after day, week after week. Fast forward a little bit. September 6th, we received a promising lead. As usual, the birds with the Delta assault teams landed first, followed closely by Ranger Blackhawks and landing Delta operators cleared the building and again get the book so you can get the details of this stuff. Somalis began to react. They come looking and now you get kind of your first contacts. RPGs, some heavy automatic weapons. Fast forward a little bit. The Ranger platoon's response was violent and overwhelming with 50 caliber machine guns and Mark 19 grenade launchers shredding the smally position. The short, almost one sided exchanges had been the first real contact for the rangers. One of the rangers in the convoy, Specialist Joe Harowski, received a light wound to the leg. Sergeant Mike Pringle standing in the turret of a battalion commander, some V had his helmet spun around by a machine gun bullet. Later intelligence confirmed ID had been there but avoided capture. So you guys getting your first contact?
- [78:41]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, we're closing in, starting to put some pressure on.
- [78:44]
Jocko Willink
And the weird thing about contact like that is for most people it doesn't make you feel more vulnerable, it makes you feel less vulnerable, right? Like oh look what we did. They took their best shot and we were able to come out on top. What was the op tempo just talk about because I'm kind of skipping or I'm fast forwarding, but what was the op tempo like?
- [79:12]
Jim Lechner
So isn't it? And continuous flow of intelligence coming in. As we developed our system better and our network out there, we're getting all kinds of reports and some of them would start to get traction, like there might be a meeting here today, he might be at this house tonight, we might know where he's going to drive, you know, this afternoon. And so that was continually starting to mature. And as a, as a mission would start to crystallize, you know, they'd start to say, okay, it's looking better and better that he's going to come to this meeting. And we'd start to, the task force would start to strap up, get everything on, move towards the aircraft and then waiting on, you know, what we call the triggers now on something to launch the mission. For sure he's going to be there and the conditions are set, we can go in. But there's a continuous process of you're in the talk, you're watching the intel you're making a plan. Okay, that's not going to work. Now here's another, another report and we'll start doing the same thing on that. And these would get to different levels of maturity and then sometimes we would actually launch. So continuous kind of roller coaster of stand up, stand down, stand up, stand down, and having to watch the intel. It's very fluid. And so, you know, again, one of the things we talked about, and it takes a lot of patience and it would be very easy to just say, hey, let's go breach that place and go in guns blaze and just to, just to expend some energy, you know. Some, some. But it takes a lot of patience to let things develop. And that's another thing that I learned. General Garrison, as you mentioned, very good at that, very good at being patient. He had plenty of combat under his belt, so he didn't have anything to prove. But you know, we were all just like, why don't we just go strike this target. We can see something there. Well, it's, it's a, it was a patience game and that's what the op tempo was like. In addition to that, we learned that we were a helicopter born assault force. And so when the helicopter force would take off out of the airfield, you know, everybody knew something was going on. So in order to reduce that signature, they'd have us fly, no matter what, two or three times a day. And so that was a blast. I mean that was, it was a roller coaster ride flying rooftop level around that city two or three times a day, sitting on the side of Blackhawks with the best pilots. But, but it kept us busy and.
- [81:18]
Jocko Willink
Only because I think we've kind of, I kind of skipped by this. Your job. Describe your job. So you're the, for, you're kind of in charge of this, this team of forward observers who are attached with each one of the Ranger chalks that are out there.
- [81:31]
Jim Lechner
Right. So my job still associated with the artillery. And so specifically I had forward observers with each of the Ranger elements and their job was to control fires. Normally that would come from like an AC130 or a helicopter gunship or from mortars. In this case, we had two Blackhawks with snipers on board. And again, this is the kinder, kindler, gentler, trying to take a reduced approach to things. So they had snipers on board and then in reserve we had four attack helicopters with rockets and Gatling guns. And going back to some of our previous discussions, I had to go through and I had to kind of fight with the chain of command to get them to put rockets on the helicopters. They say, oh, you're not going to need that. Those Gatling guns are plenty. I kind of had to fight with them almost on a mission by mission basis, as we're going to talk about, to get them to put rockets on. But that's basically the package that we had. We would have snipers, and so my forward observers would see a threat, and they would call that in to the snipers on board the Blackhawks, and they would fly over with the snipers and try to engage that threat on the ground. So that was their job as forward observers. As a lieutenant, I was with the company commander. I controlled all those guys with all each of the positions. And then I tried to make sure we deconflicted and gave assets where they needed to be given.
- [82:49]
Jocko Willink
And at this point, it sounds like you guys had a fairly solid sort of standard package that you were going to do, which look like, correct me if I'm wrong, Rangers are going to go in and isolate the target building basically in four different corners of the building or the target area. And then Delta would come in, hit the target, get it cleared, and then you'd either collapse into the building and get extracted via helicopter or extract via the ground force.
- [83:17]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, and. And that is essentially what the. The template was with Rangers as a security element on the outside and then Delta hitting the target on the inside. One of the things that we did, and Delta made this decision because potentially we'd be doing it in daylight, and the potential threat on the ground, they didn't want that. You know, they didn't want to. They wanted the initial surprise to be on their side. So they would go in first. So the assault element would go in on the target. On whatever building we were assaulting, they would assault that first. So little bird helicopters and Blackhawks, Delta would go in and hit that target. And then as they were doing that, the Rangers were fast roping in all around them, establish a security perimeter. That's one of the reasons the deed was able to squirt out on the mission you talked about. But again, for the safety of the assault force going initially, that's the way we decided to sequence it.
- [84:06]
Jocko Willink
And the use of vehicles. So I love to tell the story. In the 90s, I used to do training missions on what we called Hilo trucks, meaning we couldn't afford or we couldn't coordinate to get us to use helicopters. So we would pretend that our vehicles were helicopters, not ever imagining, not me ever imagining that I would only Conduct real operations my whole career from vehicles. So the fact that you guys were using vehicles, how well did you guys plan for that back in the States?
- [84:46]
Jim Lechner
So the Ranger battalion does have some vehicles, but we don't. At that time, we didn't drive Humvees or five ton trucks. And so that's one of the things we got to brag. It's like, hey, guess what? You're going to use Humvees and five ton trucks. And so we had to teach guys to drive those kind of a little bit different. And the other interesting thing was these were not armored. So these were soft skin, same level of armor as my F150. So we were going to do the mission with that. So in addition to the helicopter assault force, we had a platoon, probably about eight vehicles, five ton trucks and Humvees that were going to drive from our base out to wherever, whatever target we were hitting. And that convoy would come, link up with us, and then it would give us an option that we could drive out on those vehicles or we could load prisoners on there or they also mounted the.50 caliber machine guns and Mark 19 grenade launchers we talked about. So it brings more firepower to the fight. But yeah, it was just a regular convoy, a soft skin we call vehicles. And the Rangers had to learn to drive those at Fort Bragg and then employed those in Somalia. So it was an interesting. Another asset.
- [85:51]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward a little bit. On the afternoon of September 24th, 24th, Osman Otto was positively identified. And he was like the number two man in the SNA underneath the deed. He was positively identified. Entering a small white sedan accompanied by a single bodyguard who drove the car. The assault force launched, but maintained a distant orbit while the recon birds discreetly tracked Otto through the crowds. Looking ahead along the vehicle's route, the task force laid a trap on relatively broad thoroughfare, just a few closely spaced buildings. Delta Assault element was put on the ground after the a. After an AH6 little bird stopped Otto's vehicle with a burst of warning shots into the road ahead of it. As Delta assaulters stormed up the vehicle, the driver brazenly came out of the car with an AK47. He was immediately neutralized with a leg shot. This is another example of the relative restraint that characterized our approach to the missions at the time. As the assaulters dealt with the driver, Otto fled into a nearby building. Assault teams began to secure and clear that and other nearby buildings, sorting through a number of Somalis they encountered. As the Delta assaulters questioned one of the Somali males, he confirmed he Was in fact, Osman Otto. As the Delta assault teams worked on the ground, Somalis in nearby neighborhoods began to react and converge on the intersection where the action was occurring. Fast forward a little bit. Upon landing, the leaders quickly moved to the talk and received news that Otto had been positively identified. This was a major score for Task Force Ranger, boosting our confidence and simultaneously increasing pressure on a. So it's a pretty good operation. Little vehicle interdiction, guy squirts away. It's interesting that these. The guy gets out of a vehicle is AK47, and they shoot him in the leg. Delta guys are. Delta guys aren't shooting someone in the leg unless they're aiming to shoot someone.
- [87:34]
Jim Lechner
Oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100.
- [87:36]
Jocko Willink
So that's just.
- [87:37]
Jim Lechner
I talked to the guy after him. He said he did that intentionally, which is kind of unheard of today.
- [87:41]
Jocko Willink
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [87:42]
Jim Lechner
I mean, absolutely.
- [87:43]
Jocko Willink
That guy would be. Would not be a living human getting out of that vehicle.
- [87:47]
Jim Lechner
And this mission, you know, there's a. There's a number of learning points for things that this mission illustrates. You talk about that confidence that we had. So one of the contingency plans we had was I mentioned there was two aircraft with snipers that would orbit over the top of the mission. And if one of those aircraft came out of orbit, and in this case, it came down and picked Otto up and flew him away. One of the contingencies was my aircraft that I was flying on Super 64 would come in and backfill that. So you would always have two Blackhawks. So we did that on that mission. And I mean, so I got a ringside seat flying in Super 64, because we didn't get put on the ground. I had a ringside seat to this mission. And it also shows the Somalis were really wily. I mean, they were really smart about how they did business. They changed their profile all the time. Sometimes they'd ride in big, heavily armed convoys. Sometimes just one man, one bodyguard, always changing that signature. We just happened to pick up Otto that day. And so they didn't put the whole assault force in. So I'm riding in Super 64. 64 comes in, becomes the second aircraft in the orbit. So I get a ringside seat to watch all this. And we're taking lots of ground fire. We can hear the machine gun rounds cracking around us. We can hear the RPGs going by as they're trying to shoot at us. But all that told me was, well, they can't hit us. You know, we're as good as we think we are, and they can't hit us.
- [89:12]
Jocko Willink
Speaking of which, fast forward just days later when a Blackhawk from the regular US forces supporting the UN was hit by an RPG and shot down while patrolling over the city. Two of the crew members survived the crash but found themselves alone among the gathering Somalis. Fortunately, the crash had occurred not far from the neighborhood of a Somali clan friendly to the un. The survivors were able to escape and evade the hostile abergeter until they reached a nearby haven where a Somali family hid them until contact with the UN forces could be made. So there was. Even though, even though you had that high confidence, but also this is a regular US aircraft, not a TF160, which are the best pilots in the world.
- [89:54]
Jim Lechner
They are. But you know, you're, you're alluding to exactly the point that I'm making is when you, you know, you do this in combat though, you, you rationalize things to, to motivate yourself. And we were young guys and so we thought, oh, we're, we're Rangers and that's Delta and these are 160th guys, so they can't get hit. Yeah, the regular army can get shot down, but not our guys. So we're rationalizing that a little bit.
- [90:16]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. What we did not know was that a shadowy Saudi extremist named Osama Bin Laden, then based in nearby Sudan, had offered a deal. The assistance of his group, Al Qaeda, made up of Islamic terrorists. Some of the terrorists had been in the Afghan war against the Soviets and brought them brought with them experience in modifying RPG launchers to enable them to be fired into the air. The shoot down of the US helicopter was in fact a result of this Al Qaeda assistance. So this is going to war with Al Qaeda. Fast forward. While we were always postured and standing by to respond to an alert, on Sunday, October 3, the commanders gave us a break from the intensive training and daily signature flights. So you guys are in a little bit of a stand bound, stand down scenario. Then you notice a bunch of activity around the talk. You know that this means we're spinning up. Fast forward. According to the intelligence, A group of ADID's top leaders were meeting near the Olympic Hotel in the vast Bacara market in the center of Harbor Gidder territory. However, the Somali spy was providing the information did not believe that a deed was present. Fast forward. Another significant report was that a large group of about 400 militiamen who had been previously sent to Sudan to train with Al Qaeda at the invitation of Osama Bin Laden had recently returned to Mogadishu. These 400 newly trained fighters were now set up not far from the Bacara market. All of this information warranted our professional consideration. But to not overly concern or intimidate us, we had faith in our plan, knew our time limitations, and we're taking over 200 of the best fighters in the world. We also knew the 1/60 would be overhead and the time considerations. This is another thing that you mentioned that we didn't cover, but basically you guys realized you had like an hour to get the job done. And it. And the Somali resistance couldn't organize quickly enough. If you were in and out in less than an hour, they wouldn't be able to really put up a decent fight.
- [92:21]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, that's. That's exactly right. So we would rehearse this so many times that no matter how we hit the ground, we could do it in under an hour. We could, even if, like Osam or Osmondo did squirt it out, we could track him down, get him on a bird, get out, collapse the whole thing. No matter what, we could do that in under an hour. And so it was really a well oiled machine. Now the other important part of that clock though, is with my ringside seat to watch an Osmond Otto getting taken down. As you could see the Somalis assembling, and you know, it just takes them a while because they don't have communications and they're just trying to get everybody in the neighborhood together. And so they would throw tires out in the street, the tires would burn, everybody would see the smoke and then they would kind of react like militiamen or like minutemen and come to that and then try to get their act together and organize and get in the fight. But that was going to take them more than an hour to do that. And we could see that. We could see the resistance increasing as the clock was ticking on Osman Otto. And that mission took about 50 minutes. And in about 50, 55 minutes, as the last guys were getting on the birds, the snipers were starting to engage threats, they were starting to take some ground fire. And you could see people coming, I mean, literally crowds coming down the street and people maneuvering to get in. So we knew that our template, our hour clock on the mission was valid.
- [93:41]
Jocko Willink
In the book. I think at this point there's been like four or five missions on the ground. Is that about the right number?
- [93:46]
Jim Lechner
Yes, six total. Up to, up to before October 3rd, there have been six missions. That's right.
- [93:53]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward as the briefing Went on standing off to the side, consulting with Colonel Boykin. Major General Garrison weighed the wrist. He too realized the dangers, but shared our faith in the plan. And this was too lucrative a target to pass up. While this new Somali intelligence source seemed somewhat tentative, the information he provided added up. The decision was made to launch. As the intelligence rep concluded his brief and made his last comments, the leaders began to move toward the door. I noted the heavy Somali security element again moved again and moved over to Colonel Boinkin to ask if we would go in by getting rockets on the age sixes today. He looked me deliberately and answered, yes, Jim, you're getting the rockets. So there you go.
- [94:35]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, so that's equivalent to before, right?
- [94:37]
Jocko Willink
Get to get these rockets on, level.
- [94:38]
Jim Lechner
Of security at the target. Right.
- [94:40]
Jocko Willink
The hangar soon echoed with orders to get it on and the chunks moved out quickly through the mid afternoon heat, you know, and you guys had done a lot of spin ups and scratches. You call them here. And this happens again, you know, you guys go out, you get on the aircraft, then you're back off the aircraft, back on the aircraft. Finally it looks like you're going hurrying back to Super 64. I climbed into the hang into the back and squeezed into place, packed in among the other rangers and waited. As I got settled in, I looked out the right side of the aircraft and noticed Bill Garrison moving among the birds. He had walked out of the talk with the assault force and was now shaking hands and giving encouragement to operators, Rangers and pilots as they saddled up in the aircraft. It struck me that he'd never done this before. The assault force was soon reloaded and set aboard the aircraft.
- [95:28]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, it's an interesting situation. You know, we did some of the, many of the missions we did or most of the missions we did were within the hopper getter territory and we knew kind of the conditions out there, but again we had a lot of confidence and six missions we felt like we'd validated the things that we were confident in. But this one, you know, it's a great point that we had actually spun up and stood down like three times in two days before this, over a 24 hour, about less than a 48 hour period. You know, gotten our stuff on, got onto the aircraft. Nope, scratch. So we were used to that. But on this one, I will say it had a different feel. And we could see the level of security. I mean we'd did not usually see that many Somali fighters on the ground of the actual militia guys that were there pulling security. And the place that it was located next to a lot of activity that was going on very close in the Bakara market. Lots and lots of Somali fighters there. So we knew it was high threat. I mean, we could feel that it was high threat. And he, obviously, he knew it, too. And because that was just one of those kind of. Kind of ravens that fly into the picture, you know, he came out, shook all our hands goodbye.
- [96:42]
Jocko Willink
Getting into it. Fast forward. As the first wave of helicopters cleared the area, the four Ranger Blackhawks continued to come in slowly toward the target, trying to remain steady and allow the billowing dust to clear. Super 64 seemed to inch forward, still high above the rooftops as the pilots struggled to keep stability. Finally, we realized our Blackhawks were just renewing the milky churning storm. It was obvious they could not get any lower. When the order was shouted for ropes out, there was another delay as one of the long, thick green ropes got hung up on a telephone wire. As the pilots jockeyed the bird forward to untangle it, crew chief Bill Cleveland leaned forward out over his minigun, then finally called the rope clear. And on the ground, we still seemed too high. Far above the rooftops, as the aircraft began to hover in the cloud over the engine noise, we suddenly heard, go, go, go. But the Rangers in the doorways hesitated for a brief second as we seemed far too high. Then the orchestrated surge began. As I pressed forward in the sequence, I watched the Rangers slide down, instantly disappearing into the milky cloud of brown. As the aircraft rotors thundered in my ears, I could see the rope swaying in front of me just far enough out that I had to commit my body weight to reach it. So had you guys been in Brownout before on these other missions?
- [98:04]
Jim Lechner
We had, but not this intense. It was just gnarly for this one, for whatever reason, it was just. It was just the most amount of dust we had we'd seen. And we, obviously, we were trying to do things at night, so I'd say only one or two of the missions before have been in the daytime, and just for whatever reason, the conditions were much better on those. So we didn't have that much brown on this one. Like I talk about, it was classic assault, though. We came out of the. Came out of the west, out of the setting sun, you know, and then started inching in and just an unbelievable altitude that we were at. I mean, again, I relate it in the book, but we just could not believe they're going to put us out at that altitude.
- [98:39]
Jocko Willink
So it's like 90ft.
- [98:40]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, it had to be the full length, the fast stroke, because we were. There was multi story buildings, and we. We were far above those. And again, after a point, you couldn't see the ground, so you knew you were still way up there. And we were waiting for them to go down lower and settle in, and they never did. They're like, go. And we would. A little bit of disbelief, but then Rangers are Rangers, and they just went. And it was on.
- [99:07]
Jocko Willink
I finally crashed in the street. I took a few disoriented steps, slamming into a wall before getting my bearings amid this swirling dust and thunder of the helicopter above me, I heard another sound. Sustained gunfire. As the Rangers around me on the south corners of the target buildings began to sort themselves out. It was obvious that those to the north were already in contact with the enemy. Fast forward. All around me, the Rangers at R1 on the southeast Ranger blocking position were set facing outward amid the tight alleys and debris of the narrow street. Captain Steele and his radio operator, along with the Air Force CCT sergeant, clustered by a telephone pole a few feet behind me. So it's on when you guys get on the ground?
- [99:43]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. And that was unique too, because, you know, the element of surprise, the fact that we could go anywhere in the city, that gave us that element of surprise. And so we never really had to assault into a fight. It would develop afterwards as Somalis kind of figured out where we were at and start probing. But probes are a lot different than attacks. And because of that security element that was on the ground, unfortunately, they all didn't stand and fight, but enough of them did that the fight was on, at least on the north side, pretty much the minute we hit the ground. Another kind of interesting point I want to make here about the template. So it's kind of hard to understand or visualize, but I never really knew where I was in the city, and I didn't have to. We had this template that we rehearsed over and over again. So I always went into the same place. I was always going to be at the southeast corner. The same teams went to the same locations around the target building. So all I had to do was know that's the target building right there. And I was immediately oriented. I knew I was in the southeast side. I knew who was on the northeast, northwest, southwest. I knew Delta was inside the house, so that's the orientation. But I never really knew where I was in the city. You know, if you'd asked me to pull out my map and show you what street I was on, I wouldn't I wouldn't have been able to do that. All I had. All I knew. All I knew was what the target house was, and if I was in the right spot, I was locked into that template, and that was my orientation.
- [101:00]
Jocko Willink
So looking back now, would you do more map study going in?
- [101:09]
Jim Lechner
Oh, yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, without a doubt. And I would encourage the convoy leaders to do a lot of map study.
- [101:16]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, right. We were really paranoid. So my first deployment to Iraq, we were in Baghdad, and so we'd operate all around Baghdad. So we would get in a little bit of a similar mindset where we would basically know the target building and then a few blocks around the target building, and there would usually be some kind of a reset point. You know, we'd come across a bridge, or we'd come to a big intersection with a big mosque on it. So I would always have at least one really good landmark in my head where, okay, now we're three minutes from the target, or it's two turns away, right? But in Ramadi, what was as awesome was just operating in the same streets all the time over and over. And, you know, you'd know the battle map. You'd be looking at. That's building 19. Oh, that's building four. Like, we had that familiarization. But looking back, I would say to myself, I should have had that much familiarization on all these operations when I was in Baghdad. And from Baghdad, we hit other. Other cities as well. So just a good lesson learned for combat leaders out there, man, get out that map and do a study and know of some landmarks, because if you get turned around out there, it is a nightmare. Now, one thing that was really interesting for us was that first deployment to Iraq for us, the big army had these moving maps inside their Humvees with Blue Force trackers on them and stuff, right? We didn't have those yet. We were a little bit ahead. We had been ahead probably six months ahead of the technology, and we'd got these Panasonic laptops with. We had figured out a way to put the satellite imagery on our laptops and put our GPS into those things. And so we had really good awareness of what was happening. And then our. Because we still had a little paranoia of the technology, we would build what we called Pace Notes. So Pace Notes is something that we used to do for Land Nav. So for Land Nav, Pace Notes, I would say, okay, I'm going from point A to point B. In 80 or. Or in 200 meters, I'm gonna go down a river Then after that I'm gonna notice on my left hand side there's gonna be this thing. And I would write these pace notes down so that it would keep me from getting lost. Well, our navigators started making pace notes for our, for our transits, for to targets. So those were so helpful because you could take a look at the pace notes and they'd actually print them out. So they would print out, here's the intersection, here's what it's going to look like, here's the next, you know, here's the bridge that we're going to go over. There's going to be a sharp left turn. And so in my head, I could kind of follow the pace notes without even looking at a map. So I think those things were very helpful and I was very appreciative of my point, man, that would put together these pace notes and kind of give me like the quick brief, like, here's what we're going to see, here's what we're going to see. Again, these, these to me are just notes for combat leaders, man.
- [104:02]
Jim Lechner
Right, exactly right.
- [104:04]
Jocko Willink
Those are good things to know.
- [104:05]
Jim Lechner
And I think the other aspect of that is it goes back to checking other people's work, you know, because your life depends on it, your mission success depends on it. And so kind of some of the context though is we weren't what we call the battlespace owners. We didn't own the ground out there. There was United nations forces that owned the ground. We were coming into their area, hitting targets, and it's the same template that we carried on to Iraq and Afghanistan. So I think it's a really good, you know, technique. Like you're talking about a thing that you gotta do is check other people's work. We were, we were dependent on them as the battlespace owners, that if things went sideways and we were gonna be fighting outside of the target area, that we would be depending on them. Well, you know, again, your life and your unit success is dependent on it. So you should, you should check other people's work and get familiar with their area and not just be dependent on them to, to be able to bring the situational awareness to the fight. So it's a great point.
- [104:59]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And going to shake the hands of the people that own the battle space 100% is highly recommended. And pulling out your battle map now, it was nice in Ramadi because we all got eventually coordinated on one big battle map that everyone had the same thing, but, you know, we'd roll in. I learned this early in my first Deployment, we'd roll into some battlespace, go meet the company commander, and he had a battle map. So now we got our battle map. He's got here his battle map, and we got different names for different buildings. That's a problem.
- [105:27]
Jim Lechner
Oh, yeah.
- [105:28]
Jocko Willink
So sorting that thing out is. Is really important. The way you do that is coordinating amongst the. The conventional units. The other. This is just, again, for the young combat leader out there. I used to ask these young SEAL leaders, I'd say, what's the most important piece of information you can have on the battlefield? And they'd say, where the enemy is, how many weapons they have, how many people they have, what their scheme and maneuver is. I'm like, no, none of that stuff matters compared to where you are. Yeah, you need to know where you are on the battlefield. If you don't know where you are, it doesn't really matter where you think the enemy is, because you don't know where you are. So again, young combat leaders out there, do good map study, make some pace notes. It's going to pay off. Fast forward a little bit back. Behind me, further to the west, I could see Sergeant First Class Sean Watson, the team leader at R4, directing his Rangers. I did not have visual contact with the rangers at the R2 position to the north, but confirmed I had comms with my forward observer at that position by checking in with Specialist Joe Thomas on the radio. Similarly, Sergeant Jeff McAuliflin at R3 on the other side of the target building to the northwest, and Private First Class Jeff Young at R4 next to us to the west, checked in on the radio as they covered those positions. So those are your direct guys?
- [106:41]
Jim Lechner
Yep, those are the forward observers at the four different. Different elements on the ground.
- [106:45]
Jocko Willink
And you have good comms with them?
- [106:46]
Jim Lechner
Got good comms.
- [106:47]
Jocko Willink
Are they passing their requests through you?
- [106:50]
Jim Lechner
Yes.
- [106:51]
Jocko Willink
Is that. There's the standard operating procedure.
- [106:53]
Jim Lechner
They would. They would identify a threat, and then I would hand the asset off to them, and I would deconflict and set priorities. And.
- [107:00]
Jocko Willink
While Delta continued to clear the building and the Rangers held our blocking positions, there was various activity involved, Somalis around us. We were not in heavy contact now, but we were being targeted by individual gunmen lurking in the windows of the buildings and on the streets around us, taking occasional pot shots. You, you know, this is. You can just start to feel the escalation here starting to build.
- [107:21]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [107:22]
Jocko Willink
Gunmen persists. Sergeant Bourne dueled back and forth with Somalis using well, well aimed shots and controlled bursts of fire. In the middle of this exchange A Somali woman walked across the intersection in front of our position. Seemingly oblivious to the firefight. She casually raised her hands in a don't shoot manner. But then she began gesturing and porting towards our location. So this is going to get ugly quick.
- [107:42]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. And that's something I've in six wars I've never seen this again is the civilian population, I think just so used to fighting going on around them that they weren't, you know, number one, weren't, weren't afraid to get involved. They're just walking through our positions. It wasn't a huge firefight, but there was, there was some shooting going on and people were just walking in the middle of it and it just, you gotta step back and say I can't believe I'm seeing what I'm seeing. But she would just, in this case she just walk in between the elements firing back and forth like she wasn't gonna get shot. And then she was really scouting us out and pointing us out and really brazen and you know, just one of these things. The first time in real combat you're just not believing what you're seeing.
- [108:24]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. Again going back to Armady, it's like the women and kids weren't coming in the streets at all.
- [108:29]
Jim Lechner
No.
- [108:33]
Jocko Willink
You guys, you start dialing in some assistance. Some support from the snipers on Super 61 fast forwarded Delta assaulters had captured a number of key targets and we're now bringing them down onto the street. We had one Ranger seriously injured on the north side on the insertion. As the pilot struggled to keep the aircraft stable, Private First Class Todd Blackburn had missed the swaying fast rope and fallen approximately 90ft to the street. The chalk leader there at R3 in the northwest, Sergeant Matt Eversman had his hands full working to move the unconscious Blackburn to a safe position, coordinate medical attention and deal with the contact going on around his blocking position. Delta medics had moved out to R3 from the target building to assist and now continued to work on Blackburn. Sergeant First Class Bart Bart Bullock, a hulking dark haired Delta assaulter and medic, assessed the 18 year old Rangers injuries as life threatening.
- [109:30]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, so a lot, a lot going on here too. And just to set some context, so I've along with the rest of my position, the guys in my position had fast roped in. We got the security perimeter around Delta in the assault building as they're going in and detaining all of a deed's lieutenants. There's some contact going on but the fast rope in. I'd mentioned how High we are and that we were browned out. Well, one of the difficulties of that, that I hadn't mentioned yet is that, you know, anybody that's a pilot knows you have to have frame of reference in order to fly, especially maintain a hover in a helicopter. Well, in that brown out there, we were literally in a cloud of dust and the pilots had no frame of reference for horizon in order to keep that helicopter, you know, stable and hovering. And this goes into fast roping. So a lot of people, you know, in special operations see fast roping and you're not don't have any equipment on and, and you can basically do it one hand and swing it around. Well, that's not how our fast roping was. When we're wearing body armor, we're wearing our radios, we're wearing weapons. I mean, we're loaded down with about 100 and some pounds. And when you try to fast rope like that, it's a much different, different dynamic. And the other aspect of it is, you know, you don't have that rope while you're in the helicopter. You got to jump out onto that rope in the current rate in the rig that we were using in the Blackhawk. So you're basically jumping out of the Blackhawk, catching that rope and then you're sliding down and you're not going to be able to control how fast you're going. But in any case, with the pilots unable to keep that hover, that rope is moving. And so now you're at 90ft and that rope is moving with the helicopter and you're trying to time it so you can catch that rope. And Blackburn, we got video of it. Blackburn missed that rope and fell 90ft. So he's critically injured down there.
- [111:12]
Jocko Willink
Colonel McKnight felt he had enough vehicles in the convoy to cut three loose and send them back to the airfield with the stricken Ranger. So they kind of make that call, let's get him out of here.
- [111:21]
Jim Lechner
They did. And so again, the other part of the context is the convoy that we talked about. The five ton trucks and the humvees with the heavy weapons had driven from the airport. They go out to the target building while we're getting the security, you know, we've helicoptered in while we're getting the security perimeter set up and assaulting that convoy links up with us, wasn't that far a drive. And those vehicles are now waiting to take the prisoners out, to take us out. And the Ranger battalion commander who's with that convoy makes the decision to cut out some vehicles Blackburn's injured, they're going to send them back to the airfield field. So he gets immediate attention.
- [111:59]
Jocko Willink
Those guys take off. This is interesting. You mentioned some of the Rangers mistakenly believe that Strucker's team was turning away from the growing contact and abandoning us.
- [112:09]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, I'll never forget that. I mean, they're furious. They were, you know, just couldn't wait till they could catch up with him because they thought he ran away. And so just, you know, interesting fog of war stuff.
- [112:17]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I've, I've talked about on this podcast, there's like massive, not surrenders, but retreats that took place in World War I because a runner was going from the front line to pass word and they had to eventually tell runners like, don't run back because it would cause, it could cause panics. They see one guy running, then another guy runs. Like the runner runs. I mean he's literally, he's called a runner for a reason and he starts running back to pass information. Someone sees him running, oh, we're running. And they could cause those panics to happen. Going back to the book. Along the route of the three Humvees working their way through harbor Gidder neighborhoods, the Somalis were beginning to assemble and react en masse. The appearance of the US vehicles in their midst drew hails of gunfire from buildings and alleyways along the route. The machine gunners in the turrets, the Humvees were firing constantly now, slewing their machine guns around to hammer windows and alleyways. Specialist Dominic Pilla. Pia or Pilla.
- [113:17]
Jim Lechner
Pilla.
- [113:18]
Jocko Willink
Pilla, a tall, boisterous Ranger from New Jersey, manned a M240 machine gun in the back of Strucker's truck. He swung the machine gun around toward a Somali militia man approaching from the alley. They fired simultaneously and the gunman dropped to the street. But Pilla also fell to the floor of the Humvee. He had been killed instantly by an AK47 round to the head. The small convoy sped on, firing nonstop but being shredded by the fire from the neighborhoods. What seemed like a lifetime later, Stryker Drew Strucker drove his bloody and bullet scarred vehicles through the gates of the airfield, moving directly to the Task Force Ranger compound. Meanwhile, back in my position at R1, Cliff Walcott called me to say he was coming back in, coming back in over our position to take one more look at the Somali for the Somali gunman who had been harassing us. As I watched the Blackhawk come in low about two blocks out as it turned to scan the streets. When Super 61 passed in front of me, I briefly turned away, and as I looked back, I heard a muffled bang and metal grinding as the aircraft began to slew and twist unnaturally, trying to process what I was seeing. I initially tried to reason that Cliff was turning hard for a shot, but in reality, I felt doom. As the aircraft spun, I caught a glimpse of Cliff and his co pilot, Donovan Briley, through the windshield, fighting to maintain control. Then someone in the back of the bird lurching forward. Super 61 spun off to my left and out of sight to the north. Seconds later, I heard the ominous crunch of the impact. The calls began to reverberate across the radio net. Six one is down. We have a Blackhawk down. So what are you thinking now?
- [115:08]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, so again, lots going on, almost. It was controlled chaos, for sure, but we were within the confines of our plan, our template. So it was moving forward as we needed it to. But now you cut off an element from the convoy. They're racing back. They got their own saga that we talked about. We didn't even know about that at the time. Like I said, some guys thought they were running. They didn't know that was a whole another mission going on and drama for them. As I mentioned, I'm with my forward observers. We're trying to deal with threats. We had a threat in front of us. They'd stopped firing. So I said, I told Cliff, who was the pilot of Super 61, one of the sniper birds. I told him, end of mission, go back up to a safe altitude. But. But, you know, again, these task force pilots are different than most pilots. They. They were just as aggressive as anybody on the. And Cliff's main focus was to get the snipers and door gunners in position for a shot. So he came over again, wanted to keep taking a look, and unfortunately got tagged, you know, and like I said, your brain's trying to tell you one thing. Oh, it's okay. He's just trying to take a better shot. But it's like watching a car wreck, you know. You know, things are going out of control violently and dramatically, and that's what was happening here. We lost that bird, but yet the mission's continuing. We're still on the timeline. We're still in the template. So we're focused on getting the prisoners, the detainees out of that building and into the convoy and maintaining the perimeter, because at the same time, the clock's ticking and that resistance is increasing. So we still got firefights starting to grow all around us.
- [116:34]
Jocko Willink
Do you feel like you still have the momentum and the upper Hand at this point, we did.
- [116:40]
Jim Lechner
Obviously, this was going to be a huge bump in the road. And again, it goes back to knowing where you're at. And I knew where I was at. But now we got a bird down four blocks away, and I don't even know. I don't even know what part of the city we're in, really. And he's down four blocks away, and we know we're gonna have to deal with that. And so now these things are starting to creep up in your mind. You know, you've got the plan that you're trying to stick to, and we're still executing that. But now the enemies had a vote, and the chaos is starting to come in, creep in just a little bit more and a little bit more.
- [117:11]
Jocko Willink
But you still feel like you have, like, kind of the upper hand. Like, we're. We're still gonna handle this.
- [117:18]
Jim Lechner
Oh, without a doubt. I mean, we still were, you know, a cohesive force. We still had 40 assaulters on the ground and 70 some Rangers. And so we knew, as you know, the task force was still intact. And again, really, I can't emphasize, you know, enough. We could take on whatever we felt like we could take on whatever came, whatever they want to throw at us, we could take on. And that it gets down to one of the themes of the book is because I knew the guys to my left and my right were not going to quit, and they were going to attack just as hard as I was going to attack. And so when you have a unit like that, with that kind of cohesion, you know, we were professional. We knew there's thousands of people out there, and so we weren't looking to stir that hornet's nest. But we also felt like whatever they throw at us, we're ready.
- [118:04]
Jocko Willink
So when 6:1 goes down, the pilots heroically had kept it together as much as they could, but when it. When it hit. When it impacted the ground, hit a wall and it killed. Killed both the pilots. You end up with the crew chief. And the Delta snipers are on board. One of the. One of the survivors, Dan Bush, he could be seen immediately climbing out of the wreckage. He ends up going back. Jim Smith, another Delta sniper, pulled Dan back from the corner. They're just, like, fighting it out. And finally you get one of the little bird pilots, Chief Carl Meyer. Am I saying that right?
- [118:52]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [118:54]
Jocko Willink
He goes in, makes a landing. There's wires and there's rubble, and there's all this stuff and the wreckage itself, he puts down cover fire. Jim Smith. Loads Dan Bush up there into the helicopter, the helicopter takes off and then you get. I'm going to the book here. Despite having just survived the crash with serious gash in his face, Jim Smith refused to get on board and remained behind to help hold the position. Like, these are the kind of. These are the kind of human beings we're talking about. So. And you get so, so many details in here. Get the book, fast forward a little bit. When the call came in that super six one was down, a number of pieces in the contingency plans were ordered into play. In addition to Super 64 coming in to replace Super 61 in the orbit over the target area, the combat rescue team, to include my fo, Butch. How do I say that?
- [119:48]
Jim Lechner
Galiot, Galia Gilliatt.
- [119:50]
Jocko Willink
Butch Gallia was called in. So this is what you were talking about earlier. There's some contingencies that are going to start happening.
- [119:57]
Jim Lechner
Right?
- [119:57]
Jocko Willink
And so they start happening.
- [120:00]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. One of the amazing things about this battle is it's all on videotape. And so even though it's chaos and there's all these moving parts and more and more moving parts as the battle goes on, it's all on videotape because we had that P3 Orion filming it. We had our own reconnaissance aircraft filming it in color. And so you can watch all this. You can watch Dan Busch crawl out of the rug, the rubble, the wreckage of the aircraft to get on the corner fighting, take around. You can watch all these things happen. Karl Mayer flying in. So, yeah, really amazing. Cliff and Donovan Briley and Super61, some of the best pilots, you know, ever in the world. They keep that aircraft stable enough so that it can flat land, it can pancake in, but it hits a wall, crumples on top of them and kills them. But they kept it stable enough so that the guys in the back survive, which is really amazing. Like I said, like we just read, the snipers crawl out, the crew chiefs crawl out. But again now the context is there are four blocks outside of where the target area is. All these Somalis, that's where they're gathering. So they literally land like in a hornet's nest, immediately start fighting. We did have one more ace up our sleeve and that was a combat search and rescue team. We had one aircraft dedicated with Air Force PJs and Rangers and medics on board. We immediately put that aircraft in. They fast roped in. One of those guys was one of my guys, Butch Galliette. I'd actually brought Butch with me from a Company. So he and I were two of the only guys from A company that were with B company that day. But he got committed with the combat search and rescue team and now they're fighting on that objective.
- [121:32]
Jocko Willink
And was he one of your guys being a forward observer?
- [121:35]
Jim Lechner
He was, he was a forward observer. He was a E5, had just graduated Ranger school not too long before that, was a sergeant and he was a Ford observer with that team.
- [121:44]
Jocko Willink
And, and speaking of the, the video and everything, and I for, I forgot to mention this, but you mentioned in the book when you hit the ground you pulled out a camera.
- [121:51]
Jim Lechner
Oh yeah.
- [121:51]
Jocko Willink
And took one picture. And apparently it's the only photograph taken from on the ground in the whole battle.
- [121:56]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, little 99 cent disposable Kodak camera. I'd taken one or two pictures out of the aircraft. But I kept telling myself, you got to remember to take a picture of a target. And so as soon as I got down, dust settled. I snapped off one picture of the target.
- [122:12]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward a little bit. While the combat rescue team was fast roping onto the crash site, back at the target building, I watched the Delta assaulters coming out of the gate into the street. They loaded the prisoners on the five ton trucks. As the Ranger convoy prepared to move and we began collapsing the perimeter into the tar around the target building. Then a new order came down from the command aircraft over the radio net to assault to the assault force on the ground. Along with the combat rescue team now fighting to secure the crash site and Lieutenant DiTomasso's group moving in that direction, the remainder of the assault force would consolidate in the street and move by foot to secure the area around the crash.
- [122:49]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, so I keep saying it, a lot going on. One of the decisions the commander made was to take one of the Ranger blocking positions and send them over because from their position they were the closest friendly force to the crash site. So they sent some of those guys in the direction of the crash to help out. Because again, we stirred that hornet's nest up over there. They're fighting the minute they hit the ground with the wrecked helicopter, the crashed helicopter. At the same time we're collapsing the perimeter, we're dealing with some enemy pressure, getting the prisoners on the convoy, getting ready to roll up the mission and extract. So these are the things that are going on, that's the decisions but made and what they're getting ready to make decisions. What are we going to do next?
- [123:31]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, when you say there's a lot going on, you know, I watched the movie Blackhawk Down. I think many people watched the movie Blackhawk down and they, the. I think the way they try and convey it is just through a lot of chaos and it's hard to tell what's happening, but there's just these little mini engagements happening all over the place, heroic actions taking place everywhere, decisions being made. Like it is, it is full, full freaking chaos.
- [124:03]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, yeah, this is, this is where we started to feel though, you know, the plans start to coming off the rails. You know, I talked about if we're, if we operate and execute in accordance with the planet Plan and we get out within under an hour, everything's going to be smooth as silk. You know, we might have some little bump in the road like Blackburn falling off the rope, but we could control all that. We had plenty of combat power and training and rehearsal to control all that. But now is when we start to feel it's starting to come off the rails. We got the CSAR teams gone in, we're trying to collapse the perimeter. We're still fighting. Not a lot of fighting at this point, but there's still more fighting than we didn't experience any other mission. So we're getting pressure on the perimeter and we're getting on the convoy and we're starting to feel a little overwhelmed, you know, because again, you're only talking about, you're talking to less than 150 guys on the ground. And we, and we knew full well the numbers of the enemy.
- [124:58]
Jocko Willink
Back to the book. I looked down at this Seiko's Seiko divers watch strapped to my wrist, luminous dial showed 1630 hours. And I realized we, we had been on the ground for nearly an hour. This is what you were talking about. The world began to tilt now out of the rehearse sequence of the plan and registering the shock of contact with the enemy. Almost immediately, the assault force of Rangers and Delta operators began pushing east along the narrow streets. My stomach was in a cold knot now as I moved alongside Captain Steele. I knew the chances of survival were slim for the crew of the crashed helicopter. And now we get into. It's kind of what I started the book with or started the podcast with this. When you can tell, things are just starting to escalate. There's enemy fires constant, the crowds beginning to surge towards you guys. And this is what I was just talking about. You say. At this point, the small unit training and leadership of the Rangers and special operators began to play a critical role for each small group of Rangers. Their world became centered on the street corner or alleyway. In front of them, the fighting narrowed down through tunnel vision to just a few meters. In this type of combat situations, soldiers are forced to focus on the fight immediately around them. At the same time, they also know that the battle is raging well beyond their small piece of ground and the enemy is out there closing in. They have to trust the men to their left and right, knowing they are standing fast and will not break, just as they are doing for their comrades. Yeah, the pressure is increasing.
- [126:27]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. And this is, this is where I really like the symbolism of a shield wall. And I get. Lots of people always talk to me about, oh, we got this technology, we got drones, we got this, and then got that. Well, you know, I've lived the example of that's not always gonna. Gonna be enough. And it comes down to just like it did 2500 years ago, like a shield wall. And you've got to fight what's in front of you, and you've got to trust the guys to your left and your right that they're going to fight what's in front of them or you're all done. And you know, the interesting thing is I never again. I was young and naive at the time, but I never felt like we were going to get overrun. It never occurred to me that, oh, you know, we're all going to get killed here. I never felt any kind of panic like that because I just had so much faith in the guys to my left and my right. I was worried about Galliette, I was worried about Cliff Walcott and Donovan Briley because I knew somebody was going to be dead that crash. So I was worried about that and be able to get there to help those guys. But I never was worried about being overrun or that somebody was going to run and we're going to collapse.
- [127:27]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, that's the name of the book with my shield, you know, and that's what you talk about here, is that Spartan shield wall. Survival comes not only from holding the enemy to your front, but dependence on the men around you. To take a step back or falter and leave the man beside you is exposed is inconceivable, you say. I continued forward in the middle of the street alongside Captain Steele and his radio operator. As I advanced, I came across a wounded Ranger lying on his side in the road. Immediately in front of me. I was surprised to look down into the face of one of my forward observers, Sergeant Mike Goodale, missing that right.
- [128:04]
Jim Lechner
Good in my Goodale.
- [128:06]
Jocko Willink
He had taken an AK for 47 round through the hip and was in pain, but seemed more surprised and frustrated at being hit than anything else. Without pausing, fixated on pushing forward to the crash site. I stepped over him and kept moving, knowing that a medic behind me would patch him up. To this day, I think back on that moment with waves of guilt, but also knowing it was the tactically correct decision to not stop and help him.
- [128:33]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, there's a lot that comes back with that, but, you know, that's one of the things though I'm trying to convey, and I convey more in some of the other examples is not many cases, I mean, very, very few cases of guys being panicked or hysterical or scared of the fight and getting out of the fight. Like Mike, I looked down. His reaction was, you know, damn, I'm out of the fight. I don't want to be out of the fight. I want to be back in the fight. And so that's lots of reactions like that that day. So really, really hard to convey to people that don't can't understand the attitude that Rangers and operators bring to the fight.
- [129:12]
Jocko Willink
The fighting continued and grew in intensity as the assault force began to move forward relentlessly. Nothing was going to stop us from reaching our comrades at the crash site. All around me, Rangers were rushing forward to cover, fighting to clear their corners. Throwing grenades are hammering down alleys with automatic weapons. Behind me, guarding the rear of the column, Watson directed his team's fighting to hold back the growing waves of Somalis. Watson's Rangers fought from positions along the street while they anxiously awaited for the rest of the column in front of them to move forward. His machine gun teams roared almost continually now as he calmly directed their fire, conserving precious ammunition when possible. Sean Watson was an old school Ranger and a plank holder, meaning as a young private, he had joined the 3rd Battalion when it was originally formed in 1984. Now he was a consummate Ranger platoon sergeant with a strong personality and sarcastic dry wit that was legendary in Bravo Company. He was the driving force behind his Ranger platoon, and his calm but forceful leadership was now holding them together in the dusty streets. As the battle grew in intensity, one of Watson's machine machine gunners, Pete Nethery, saying that right, yep. Was firing from a good position while covering the streets in front of him when an AK47 round suddenly tore through his arm. Almost simultaneously, Doc Strauss, the Ranger platoon medic with chalk Three, was also hit by a round. Fortunately, the bullet struck one of his smoke grenades Strauss was carrying, setting it off in a small explosion, engulfing him in a white cloud of Smoke. Strauss emerged from the smoke and debris with his uniform and equipment badly torn. Otherwise uninjured, he immediately rushed across the street to Nethery. The incoming Somali fire cracked all around Strauss as he dragged the wounded Ranger to a safer position and went to work on his mangled arm. So the casualties are starting to mount up here.
- [131:03]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, guys are starting to fall all around us as the fighting is picking up. And it seemed to me like every step we took, every second that went by, just. Just increased level of fighting and intensity of the combat. One of the things about that passage, too, is we talked about the young guys in the battalion, a lot of 18, 19, 20 year olds, but we also had, in our rank structure, platoon sergeants, our first sergeant. We had a lot of senior guys, and they're absolutely the critical glue that held everything together in the way the mission was laid out. Sean Watson was a sergeant, but he was in charge of that blocking position. But when the con, when the assault element came back together and started moving towards a crash site, you know, he was in charge of the rear guard. And he literally was back there doing What Ranger senior NCOs do best, is just controlling machine guns, controlling the fire. And it wasn't like a lot of Hollywood heroics of up yelling and follow me. It was very calm, very cool under the most intense conditions, but just controlling those machine guns and taking out fire. And a lot of it explained close range because now they're starting to close with us. And just very calmly and coolly just directing his guys and just a rock of leadership, Sean Watson back there. And I, I got a lot of this from Kenny Thomas. You know, one of the great things about writing the book is I've told the story a bunch, so I wrote that out, but then I had to go back and research and fill in some gaps. And Kenny Thomas, one of the squad leaders there, wrote a book. And I. And I got this from talking to Kenny and from reading his book. And so it was happening, like within meters of me. And mean, I could almost see it out of my peripheral vision. But like we talked about, I was focused on what was in my front, very close to me. And Kenny and Sean Watson, those guys were fighting right behind me. And so I had. I talked to them and got some clarification. So that was one of the great things about writing this, is I got to research it and fill some gaps in.
- [132:47]
Jocko Willink
And the distance that you guys are trying to travel is four blocks, is that right?
- [132:50]
Jim Lechner
Totally. About two blocks to the east and two blocks to the North.
- [132:53]
Jocko Willink
And what worries me here is as you take casualties, obviously your mobility slows down. Now you're trying to get people to move. You're trying to move them down. Moving down men again. Speaking of, Hollywood is a hell of a lot harder in real life than it is when you see a guy in a movie, like, throw someone on their shoulder and run like it's no, no problem. So that's gonna. You're starting to get bogged down, right?
- [133:17]
Jim Lechner
Definitely slowing us down.
- [133:20]
Jocko Willink
Continuing on here, around Watson's Rangers, shooting down the streets and pouring fire from the upper stories of surrounding buildings, the Somalis continued to hammer into the column of Americans across the street from Watson. Sergeant Kenny Thomas fired at the darting Somali gunman while throwing hand grenades over the walls around his position. Fast forward. As the rear column under Watson held fast, the Delta assaulters up front continued working their way forward. And then fast forward. I moved up a few steps behind a team of Delta assaulters working their way forward along the wall to our right. Suddenly, they began to jerk and twist like they were being stung by bees. As bullets ripped along the wall. The assaulter in the lead, Joe Vile and friendly Earl Fillmore, dropped forward and hit the ground with dead weight. Fillmore and the rest of the Delta assaulters wore blast black plastic hockey helmets rather than the heavier bulletproof kevlars. Fillmore had just taken an AK47 rifle round the forehead, killing him instantly. The rest of the team behind him was wounded in the same burst of fire. They dove for cover in a narrow alley to the right, dragging Fillmore's lifeless body with them. Fast forward. I realized I should be talking to my ford observers and their helicopter and the helicopter gunships to bring in fire support rather than engaging in the firefight with the Samaritan mollies behind the berm. But the question was, why were none of my forward observers calling just minutes prior around the target building, I had clear communications with the helicopters above and my forward observers on the ground. But now all I was getting in my radio headset was faint static. Moving back from the tree toward Captain Steel and taking scant cover behind a slight rise in the road to my front, I began to go through my checks. I pulled out my handset. I pulled out the handset of my backup radio and was met by a roar of calls from my forward observers. So you had a bad radio radio been hit or was bad?
- [135:20]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. So this is really interesting part of this. When we first got formed up into the task force, and I'll get a little technical For a minute, but it'll, it'll, it'll all work out.
- [135:30]
Jocko Willink
Is this the uhf?
- [135:31]
Jim Lechner
This is the UHF VHF thing. So, you know, God bless the Air Force, God bless CCT guys. But that's who did fire support for Delta. And again, being the junior partner to come to this task force, we were told, you're going to switch from our FM radios that we use to uhf, which is what the Air Force uses. But we had used FM radios. I mean, that's what the army uses. That's what guys on the ground use is FM radios. And we trained that way forever. And the 160th guys were used to that. They worked with us on it. But the, the CCT aspect of Delta said, no, we're going to use UHF radios. And we protested, but to no avail. I was told, you know, taking your new radio and so they gave you.
- [136:11]
Jocko Willink
A full new radio.
- [136:12]
Jim Lechner
Oh, yeah. Every one of us had to get a brand new radio. And we were familiar with them, but, but that wasn't our standard. It wasn't so much the equipment, it was the frequency. Right. So. But we had to get new radios in the training at Fort Bragg and integrate into that. So we got out there and started doing our missions and. But, you know, again, this is standard again for the junior leaders. This standard communications planning, pace plan, have a backup plan. So we had a number of backups, and that's standard. But I also didn't trust the UHF radios. And so we carried fm, little handheld FM radios in our cargo pockets of our pants as a backup means for communications. Now the problem was fight, you know, on the ground with the UHF radios that I carried on my back. I had it in a head and I could monitor it. And so it's in my ear continually. And so I'm able to monitor any calls that I might get in. It's not like I had to reach down and get a handset. It was in my ear already, but I wasn't getting anything. And so, you know, then I had to start thinking, why am I not getting anything? I know something's going, you know, wrong here. And that's when I went to my backup and found that they were on the backup radio. The UHF radios were not working on the target. We can go into why. So what we didn't know. And you're not going to know because you don't, you know, if you hadn't trained on it, hadn't gone through it extensively, you're not going to know things like this that happen in combat. But when aircraft get shot down, they have a UHF emergency transponder beacon and that beacon puts out a signal of where that crash site is. Well, the transponder beacon on that Blackhawk that was right in front of us was going off and it jammed every other UHF frequency or. And so as we get close to that black off that emergency transponder jammed our radio so we could not talk and we had to go to the backup black, the backup FM radio.
- [138:02]
Jocko Willink
Back to the book. I focused on the calls from Specialist Joe Thomas, who is now in position at the crash site with Lieutenant Tom Di Tommaso. I approved his request almost immediately for support from the age 6 gunships that I knew would be orbiting overhead waiting to assist. You guys start doing some danger close calls, you tell the guys get their panels out, like that means we want you to know exactly where we are. This was a good point. I remembered veterans of Operation Just cause telling stories about the invasion of Panama and the tragedy involving the gunships during the, during that past operation when Rangers had called in AH6 gunships for support, a miscommunication had caused a fracture site event where at least two Rangers from 3rd Battalion were accidentally killed by friendly rocket and minigun fire. Although they were not to blame for the tragic incident in Panama, I knew this was. This weighed heavily on the pilots of the 160th as they demonstrated. Now they were risking everything, even to the point of recklessly exposing themselves and their aircraft to enemy fire in order to prevent, prevent it from happening again.
- [139:12]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, unbelievable event. I finally got the gunships on the, on the radio. They were standing by, ready to go. Transmitted. I knew those guys had known them for three years, trained with them for this mission, immediately ready to go. And I thought, okay, here we go. We're about to get all this firepower coming in and what I get is a helicopters flying rooftop level right over the top of us and every Somali gun pointed up in the air and shot at those helicopters. But all four of them did it because like I said, they, they were not gonna shoot friendlies. They were gonna. No matter what happened, they recklessly exposed themselves to make sure they knew where we were at and keep us safe.
- [139:55]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward. While I was talking with the gunships, a Delta operator, Sergeant Norm Hoot Hooten, appeared in doorway immediately, immediately to my right. He yelled for Captain Steele and me to come in off the street and take cover. As logical as that seemed at that moment, we could not. Rangers were fighting in the streets all around us and as leaders we had to Remain there exposed along with them. Just as importantly for me, I had to be in position to observe the impact of the gunship rounds and confirmed they were on target and sat and striking safely outside of the friendly positions. I could not do that from inside the building. As seconds passed and I waited for the gunships to come around and line up again, another voice broke in on the radio. It was a faint call saying that Super 64 was down south of the objective and needed assistance. Minutes before, when Super 61 had been shot down, our Ranger Blackhawk Super 64 flew back into the target area in accordance with the pre established contingency plan. Now Super 64 had also been hit by an RPG and crashed about a mile south of us. So now you must feel even more of that tilt of things going sideways.
- [141:05]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, and it's, it's a case of, you know, again you're fighting what you got in front of you but, but things are spinning out of control and you're getting overwhelmed. And so, you know, I knew the contingency of Super 64 coming in but did not know they were shot down until somebody broke in on the radio net with that call sign. But you know, again this is chaos going on, controlled chaos and you've got to disregard that. I had to cut them off and disregard that and say, hey, we're prosecuting a fire mission. I mean they're getting ready to shoot right now so you've got to get off the net. I did get a message from the command and control aircraft that there was, they were working on some sort of contingency and I was able to pass that to them at some point. And again it turned out to be Gary Gordon and Randy Shugart on the ground that I was talking to. Didn't know that at the time, but you've got to cut them off, I mean almost brutally because I got, I got an aircraft coming in shooting right now and it's a lot of lives on the line.
- [142:00]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I mean you say in the book. Just seconds later I finally heard the H6 firing with chainsaw sound of Gatling guns followed by the rip and boom of 2.75 inch rockets. The firing was so close that spent shell casual rained down on us and we could hear the shriek of the rocket motors before impact. From my position I raised my head to observe the strikes impacting the vicinity of the Somalis just past the berm to my north. Reaching back down for the hand mic of the backup radio, I quickly checked in with my forward observer specialist Joe Thompson confirmed He responded fire for effect, telling me the rounds were on target and hitting where we wanted them.
- [142:36]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, just the geographic context, you know, Joe Thomas is like right on top of the crash site. So the aircraft is like, literally right next to him. I'm only like 50 meters back. I'm not. I'm not far back at all. But I'm. I'm far enough back that my radio wasn't getting jammed. His was. So he's talking to me on the handheld, relaying to me just about 50 meters away. We're all under the same direct fire, but he's right up next to the aircraft. And I was able to get through my UHF and talk to the attack helicopters. And for me, that's the critical point of the battle right there.
- [143:06]
Jocko Willink
When you guys finally started getting the helicopters dialed in and they started laying down that fire.
- [143:12]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, because there was so much chaos going on. I mean, everybody's fighting, and we're talking about fighting at ranges of like 10 meters to 50 meters. We, you know, with only a small number of us and thousands of Somalis converging. It was. It was getting to the point. It was more than we could handle. Like, even ammunition wise, ammunition wise magazine, I mean, you didn't have time to change mags. That's how. That's how close it was. It was so many guys coming at you. But when we got that firepower going, the attack helicopters just crushing that neighborhood, what that gave us, it didn't kill everybody around us, but it killed people coming. And so it allowed our guys to deal with everybody that was in the perimeter. Clear out the wall right in front of you, clear out the building just to your right. And then the guys that would have been coming to backfill them, they were getting engaged by the attack helicopters. It gave us some breathing space.
- [144:05]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward a little bit. Even as the little birds torn to the Somalis approaching the crash site, there were still numerous gunmen all around us. Just seconds after I sent my last transmission to Barber 5 1, I felt bullets cracking very close to me and watched them punch two holes in the wall of metal shed just feet away from my rear. Knowing that Sergeant Kenti, Kenny Thomas and some of the rangers in his squad were just beyond the shed behind me. I was afraid they might be firing across my position. I called out, ranger, Ranger. Which was our verbal recognition signal between members of the task force. As I was trying to yell above the growing din, I felt an impact on my right leg like an electric shock followed by. Followed instantaneously by an explosion of Blood and bone. I had been hit by an AK47 bullet, which shattered my leg and felt like being struck full force by a sledgehammer. The firing came from a Somali gunman who was hidden unseen behind a stone wall on the other side of the street and just feet away to my left. He had popped up with his AK47 over the wall and snapped off a ragged burst as he fired down into our position. The third round had struck me in the leg. When the gunman started firing, Mike Steele had immediately rolled violently away to his right, then pulled his operator, his radio operator, with him. His reaction had been automatic to the bullets peppering the streets and walls around us. Both men ran in, ran the immediately ran into the immediately adjacent building, which Delta assaulters had just secured minutes before. Now I found myself lying wounded and in agony in the dusty street. In shock, I prayed to be able to get home to see Beth and my unborn daughter. I began to drag myself, trying to follow Captain Steele toward the building to my right. Then Delta medic Bart Bullock came charging out of the doorway toward me. As the firefight raged, he grabbed the heavy strap on the back of my armored vest and dragged me out of the firing and through the doorway into a tiny courtyard. Another one of the sergeants pressed me down and tried to reassure me. As I struggled to control the pain, blood poured from my shattered legs, spreading out and to a pool around me on the dirty floor of the courtyard. Bullock immediately went to work, reaching into the wreckage of my leg, packing the multiple holes with fists full of a special clotting bandage. Quickly, he pushed the needle of an IV of fluid into my arm to replace my blood loss. Then he then half rolled me over, cutting away a flap in my pants to expose my backside, and injected me with a shred of morphine. The drug rolled in and pushed the intense pain away. He told me to make sure I let any other docs who treated me later know I'd already been given one dose of the powerful painkiller. After a few minutes, starting to stabilize, I asked Bullock if the bleeding had stopped, and then for his assessment, he said it was bad. There were a couple big holes in my leg, but amazingly the bleeding had stopped. Can they save it? I asked. He was noncommittal, but said it may be possible. The initial sight of my blood flowing around me and the damage to my leg left me shocked, but I thank God for the miracle that the bleeding had stopped. So now you're hit.
- [147:14]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. Priorities start to coalesce, you know, survive. That's the first thing. And, you know, this jocko. But, you know, in a close firefight like that, I mean, you're feeling it more than you're seeing it or hearing it. You know, as far as the rounds, that. The energy of those rounds going around, you know, you're feeling that crack, that gunshot itself is a secondary thing. There's so much energy. And so that's literally what I felt. I felt the energy of three rounds going by me. And that third one hit me. And, you know, you get these guys talk about, oh, I took a round through the arm. I didn't even feel it, man. I want to know how they did that because. Because I felt that one. I mean, it. It hit me hard. And, you know, it's an important part about Mike Steele being there in the street next to me and reacting to contact. I mean, that's again, that's something you train. You train how to react to gunfire like that. And that's what he did. But it doesn't change effect. I mean, next thing you know, I'm by myself and pretty badly wounded and all that. All I'm doing, you know, emphasize there is a Bart Bullock, for Bart to come out and to get me. I can't emphasize enough how much I owe him for that.
- [148:20]
Jocko Willink
I believe the expression is you owe me your life.
- [148:22]
Jim Lechner
I do owe my life. I do owe my life.
- [148:24]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. What a beast. Fast forward. Outside of the room where the medics worked on my leg, Delta Delta assaulter Norm Hooten was firing out of the window down the street. Now Hoot went into action using the M203 40 millimeter grenade launcher. He blew a hole through the wall where the gunman who had shot me was hiding, charging across the street and through the hole. Norm took the gunman out, then race back through the Somali fire and into our building. Who would eventually earn the silver star for his heroism that day. How'd that morphine affect you mentally? Like, are you are. I've never. I've never been injected with morphine before. Is it like, is it a drunk thing? Is it a. Is it just a lack of feeling thing?
- [149:08]
Jim Lechner
No, it's. It's not a drunk thing. That's. That's the amazing thing is, I mean, when. Especially with, obviously dealing with pain, right? So you got such intense pain and all of a sudden that pain starts to recede, right? And you start to calm down and that pain's receding. And what I had to. What I actually had to fight against was thinking that I could do stuff that I couldn't do. And again, with those gunships and calling that stuff in, you know, you didn't need Jim Lechner on morphine trying to do that. And so that's what I had to fight against, is I want to be back in this fight. But I really. And I went at one point I thought I could stand up and that's when Bart said, you're on drugs. And literally you're on drugs, you know, so that's, that's not going to happen. So I mean, that's, that's the thing, is it, it's difficult with your judgment.
- [149:53]
Jocko Willink
Did it hit bone? The round hip bone?
- [149:55]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's why it hit me so hard. So I lost 4 inches of my tibia with my shin bone. I just exploded and that became shrapnel and shredded my leg. And then it followed my tibia down and came out by my ankle. But that, that bone, that four inches of tibia was quite a bit of shrapnel that, that blew a, a grapefruit size hole in the front of my leg. And then the bullet tore up the breast of my leg. So.
- [150:18]
Jocko Willink
And, and yet the bleeding, it seems like it didn't hit our artery or something.
- [150:23]
Jim Lechner
Well, the other interesting thing the doctors told me is that it turns out I have three arteries and I, I had three arteries in that leg and the bullet actually took out two of them. So if it, if I'd only had two arteries, they would have had to amputate. But I had one artery running down the back of my leg that most people don't have. And so they were able to save the leg. But yeah, it was arterial bleeding. It was.
- [150:45]
Jocko Willink
Oh, so it did hit arteries.
- [150:46]
Jim Lechner
Oh, yeah, it took out.
- [150:47]
Jocko Willink
Did they tourniquet?
- [150:49]
Jim Lechner
You know, that's the, it's the miraculous thing. He didn't tourniquet me. He was able to get quick clot stuff into the hole and he had pressure pants on me. But he didn't have a tourniquet on because, you know, today, immediately right to the tourniquet. Well, I probably would have lost my leg because it was, wasn't 10 hours later till I got to the hospital. So in a way I thank God that, you know, we weren't doing then what we were doing today. So it was able to stop the bleeding with that quick clot. I, I don't really know how. Again, two arteries blown out. But that's kind of the miraculous thing. If you go to, people have gone to Fort Benning, the museum there, and my Boot that I was wearing on my, on my left leg is in that museum. I donated it. And there's a blood stain on the back of it that's about 3 inches thick and that's the depth of the blood that we were laying in the pool there. Most of it was mine.
- [151:44]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward a little bit. At this point, the age six little birds were focused on supporting the fight around the first crash site. This left Super 62 and the other Blackhawk carrying the Delta snipers as the only available aircraft to help. One of Super 62's crew chiefs, Manning a door gun was wounded. Delta sniper bat Brad Hauling immediately jumped behind the door gun to take over and continued firing. Super 62 began to take more hits and that pilots knew they would be unable to stay in the air much longer. The entire task force waited for the reaction force, but confidence in their arrival began to ebb. Everyone on board Super 62 as well as those listening on the task force radio net knew the situation. The promised help was showing no signs of arriving soon, and based on our previous observations of other incidents in the city, its timely arrival would be unlikely. Knowing this, the two remaining Delta snipers onboard Super 62, Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shutgart, repeatedly requested that the pilots put them on the ground near the second crash site to assist our wounded comrades of super six four. Twice these requests were relayed to the officers in the command bird and twice they were denied. Observing the now approaching crowds of Somalis and out of options to save the crew of Super 64, the commanders finally relented and soon Super 62 landed near the crash. Gordon and Shugart jumped out of the Blackhawk and moved quickly through the alleyways and debris to locate the wreck of Super 6 4. Moving to the front of the aircraft, they simultaneously engaged approaching Somalis and lifted Mike Durant out of the cockpit. Placing Durant under an overhang, they left him with a rifle and moved back into the fight. Armed only with their sniper rifles, the Delta operators returned to the wreck taking weapons from the aircraft and continued to engage Somali gunmen who approached the crash site. As the Somalis pressed in, Randy Shutgart heard the sound of Gary Gordon cry out as he was hit on the other side of the wreckage, he wished Mike Durant luck and moved back into position with an M16 rifle he had secured from the wreckage of the helicopter. Holding as long as they could, the Americans at the second crash site were finally overwhelmed as the gunmen and mass of the crowd overran the site as they had done with the Pakistanis and Nigerians. Earlier in the summer, with brutal and cowardly savagery, the Somalis killed the wounded Americans. Amid the wreckage, the Somalis beat and tore at the bodies of the dead American soldiers. The crowd swarmed across the crash site and pushed to the spot where Mike Durant lay, injured and nearly helpless. Off to the side, they immediately attacked the badly wounded pilot with their fist sticks and rifle butts. The snarling cloud of Somali faces parted, and Durant felt something heavy smash into his face. Looking up from the ground, he saw that one Somali had begun to beat him with the severed arm of one of the dead Americans. Suddenly, gunshots rang out, warning the attackers away. There was momentary hesitation and some argument before the crowd closed back in and seized Durant, lifting him above their heads out of the wreckage and into the nearby streets. Randy Schuchart and Gary Gordon.
- [155:28]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, so that account actually comes from a number of different sources. Me talking to Mike Durant, you know, my knowledge of what went on, being on the radio with them, probably one of the last people to talk to those guys on the radio when they tried to call in. And then from your podcast, from listening to Mike Duran on here, I did not know some of those details until. Until Mike talked on your podcast. So I got some of that. And I've mentioned before, this is one of those battles. Every time I listen to somebody talk about it, I learn more stuff. So that's where that account came from. Another thing, another blessing about writing this book was I had to go back and research, and I talked to a bunch of the air crew, the guys from Super 62 that are alive still today, and some of the operators, and learned a bunch of things about that, that attempt to save those guys on the ground. So there's a lot of things, a number of things in the book that no one was able to connect the dots on before. Some new. Some new information.
- [156:26]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, no, it's a. It's a great account. It really is the heroism from those guys. Just. I mean, it's Medal of Honor for those two warriors.
- [156:38]
Jim Lechner
Absolutely. And, you know, one of the key things here on that account is a lot of people just think that they were just going to go down there and do their best, the two of them. But there was actually a plan. The plan was Karl Mayer, who had previously lifted Dan Bush out of the crash site, had dropped Dan off at the hospital and he was going to come back. Well, he did. He came back and they located that second crash site. And then he landed his little bird about four blocks South. And the plan was they were supposed to, Randy, Gary Gordon, Randy Shugart were going to extract the crew and get down to Karl Mare's aircraft and be evacuated. That's what they were trying to do. It was a long shot, a forlorn hope, but they did have a plan and they just weren't able to execute it.
- [157:21]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward a little bit. While the drama played out at the second crash site with Super 64, the Ranger convoy continued on its own tragic odyssey. The convoy had been in contact with the enemy since its arrival near the target building earlier in the mission when they had first arrived. As the vehicles waited to be called forward in the target building, the Somalis had begun to fire on them. A rocket propelled grenade struck one of the large three, one of the three large five ton trucks and disabled it. The driver and his partner were able to escape the vehicle and load onto another truck. The overall mission had then changed with the downing of Super 6 1. The convoy was now ordered to move to the crash site of Super 61, bringing along the Somali prisoners and some of the assault force who were already loaded up and on board the trucks. But events began to conspire against the task force at this point and the convoy suffered the brunt of the consequences. The Somalis were experienced street fighters in the heart of their home ground. They barricaded the narrow avenues, approaching the crash site with burning tires and the wrecks of cars. The clock was also working against us as we now been on the ground for over an hour. And the Somalis were massive in the thousands and approaching the contact area Gazard, guided by the usual system of burning tires. As the trucks departed the initial target building, moving along the main thoroughfares, they were met with a storm of small arms and RPG fire. The convoy passed through this gauntlet of fire, exposed in the unarmored vehicles and halted, unable to turn down the narrow and barricaded road to the crash site. Trying to navigate with only general references through the streets and under intense fire, the convoy commander, Lt. Col. McKnight, pleaded for assistance from the aircraft overhead to find a viable route. As instructions were sent down from the various aircraft, including the P3 Orion surveillance surveillance plane. They had to pass through multiple layers of communication from the command bird before finally reaching McKnight. Anyone who's led a convoy knows this is a difficult proposition under the best of conditions. In. In a maelstrom of enemy fire and chaos of combat, it is all but impossible. The Rangers assigned to the vehicles, along with those who had jumped on board with the Somali prisoners fought back desperately against the fire coming from all sides. The Convoy's heavy weapons, the.50 cal machine guns, Mark 19 grenade launchers mounted on the trucks, roared continuously as other Americans fired their weapons out of the windows and over the sides of the vehicles. But the concentrated fire of the Somalis began to take its toll. Some of the vehicles were hit and disabled by rocket propelled grenades, forcing the Americans to bail out under heavy fire. Delta operators and Rangers began to fall in the street and onboard vehicles. Yeah, this is, it's mayhem.
- [160:02]
Jim Lechner
Mayhem, yeah, it's a perfect word for.
- [160:04]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I, it's, it's, you know, we got so good at this sort of ground operations and convoys and convoy operations and how to operate and how to do and what the risks were like that, that just became part of our, you know, part of what we do in the global war on terror in our, in Iraq, especially in an urban environment. You know, we also eventually got armored vehicles. We had, you know, jamming things for, for landmines. It was like a totally different game. And these guys out here, you know, even, even like the fact that we would drill like a freaking NASCAR pit crew to change tires to rig for tow. We had, our whole vehicles were set up. If we needed, we could, we could get a vehicle rigged for tow in like 30 seconds. We could get tires changed like a, like a NASCAR pit crew. We like, everyone knew how to drive the vehicles, everyone knew how to operate the vehicles. We just were, we were really experienced at it. These guys in this chaos and in totally unarmored vehicles, it's, it's, it's, it's horrifying to read.
- [161:13]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, just learn to drive them. About a month before. Yeah, like I said, unarmored. And then the other thing too, in the context of Afghanistan, Iraq, at least in Iraq for sure, you always had a battle space owner, you know, and, and they may have been a good distance away, but you knew where you had checkpoints, you knew where you had outposts that you could rely on. We didn't have any of that in Mogadishu. There wasn't any, especially where we were at. And we knew we were striking enemy territory, but inside that enemy territory there wasn't any friendlies and anywhere near us.
- [161:44]
Jocko Willink
So yeah, that's one of those things. I remember Leif, you know, you know Leif because he was with us in Ramadi, but Leif was, he'd gone back to talking to, to some, some of the junior officers and they were kind of theorizing about calling a QRF and and they were kind of, they were given a brief and they were kind of brushing off. If I remember the story correctly, Leif was telling me, it was like they were kind of brushing off, like, well, if we need a qrf, we'll come over here. And Leif asked a couple questions like, well, hey, where, you know, where, where exactly? And, and what is their recognition symbol going to be? And where are their lanes of fire going to be? They started drilling down and the guy kind of was like, well, I mean, it's not like we're really would ever have to call the qrf. And Leif was. Life said, I've called the QRF so many times I can't remember.
- [162:33]
Jim Lechner
Right.
- [162:33]
Jocko Willink
And. But that's the kind of thing, you know, you. When I was a young SEAL in the 90s, the QRF was one part of a brief. It was two words. Oh, we'll call the qrf. They're going to come to this point of we didn't think about who they were, what weapons they had, how to, how to manage their fire, what, what lanes of fire. Everyone's. We didn't think about that stuff because we just didn't know.
- [162:54]
Jim Lechner
Doesn't become important till it becomes important.
- [163:00]
Jocko Willink
Continuing on here, Sergeant Casey Joyce took an AK round 47 through the backwards protective vest, had no armored plate. Round went through his body, struck the front plate, bounced back into him, fatally wounding him. Corporal James Caco, am I saying that right? That's right. Provided covering fire with a Mark 19 in one of the truck turrets. Suddenly, Ko was also struck by a round and died as he slid down inside of his vehicle. Yet another situation. Rangers of his platoon picked him up off the street and threw him in the back of a Humvee, which also held Delta operator Master Sergeant Tim Grizz Martin. Martin was well known in the task force partly due to his badly scarred face from a previous accident, but also because he was one of the most amiable and competent Delta operators in the assault force. He'd climbed on board the truck back at the target building to help secure Somali prisoners. About that same time, about that. Aboard that same Humvee, another one of my Ford observers, Private First Class Chris Carlson, provided covering fire as the injured Rodriguez was loaded under the truck. Carlson had felt an explosion rock the truck, deafening him as another RPG struck and Blue Grismartin and Rod out of the back of the vehicle. The rock rocket wounded Rod again, tearing off the back of his left thigh. But Grizz took the brunt of the blast in his lower Half of his torso fatally wounded, somehow managed to still cling to life. Convoy situation was not improving. It had now cleared the main gauntlet of fire, but missed the turn again. The aircraft orbiting overhead, far above the chaotic maelstrom of the battle, directed to turn around and go back the way it had come, Things now began to all but disintegrate for the convoy. More vehicles were hit and disabled as there were more casualties every minute. When a Ranger manning a 50 cal machine gun in the tur of one of the humvees trucks went down with a wound. He was immediately replaced by Ranger Sergeant Lorenzo Ruiz. Minutes later, Ruiz took an AK47 round to the stomach just under his bulletproof plate. Tough but amiable, Ruiz insisted he was all right, but died later alongside Griz Martin in the casualty collection point on the airfield. One of the two remaining five ton trucks in the convoy was being driven by Private first Class Richard Kowaleski. Vehicle rocked with the impact of us of a rocket propelled grenade that slammed through the driver's side door. The round hit Kowaleski square in the side, severing his left arm and killing him instantly. The rocket had penetrated the seal door but failed to detonate, remaining impaled in the young Ranger's chest, tail fins and nose protruding out either side of his body. Convoy situation now became a question of survival. Down to one barely running five ton and a few shot up humvees, almost everyone, including the Somali prisoners had been hit. So this is just, I mean it's a maelstrom.
- [166:10]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, yeah. And it's just some context too. So again, as things start to change at the target building, the convoy had arrived as we'd mentioned, and some of the assaulters with the prisoners that had hit the target initially got on the convoy with the prisoners and one of the blocking positions also got on the convoy. So when we were directed to move to the crash site, the assault element, the guys that had gone and hit the target, initially the operators and the Rangers from the helicopters, they were told to walk, you know, two blocks east and two blocks north. The convoy couldn't do that because the streets were such so much wreckage and so tight. So the convoy had to find a different route. So now you got another group going in a different direction. And again, some of our guys, some of our combat power had gotten on that convoy. So the assault element that had gone to the crash site was much reduced and a lot of those guys were on that convoy, among them Grizz and some of the other guys that gotten killed. So.
- [167:14]
Jocko Willink
Going back to the book here a little bit forward. Decision was made to call off the attempt to reach the crash site and turn back Gallagher, which. This is Sergeant First Class Bob Gallagher. He's a platoon sergeant for the Rangers. Gallagher took the lead now and the convoy and pushed south toward the airfield, still fighting, but crawling along with just a few vehicles left running, including one truck pushing another that had been disabled. Every vehicle is loaded with casualties. Back at the airfield, the tactical operations center personnel watched the raid and then the widening battle unfold on video screens. Major Craig Nixon, my former company commander and one of the Ranger staff officers, strove to put together a second Ranger convoy to join the fight. To form this convoy, Nixon was able to scrape together a handful of other Humvees, a few of which were lightly armored, and even those couldn't stop a rifle or automatic weapons fired. Nixon quickly put together a convoy with the task force had left for manpower. Joining the vehicles and crews from the infantry, platoon, cooks, supply sergeants and clerks now volunteered to join the new convoy. These Rangers illustrated the ethos of the 75th Ranger Regiment. While it is the job of the infantry line platoons to conduct combat operations, every Ranger, no matter what his specialty or specific job, must be prepared to fight and display the warrior spirit. The extreme circumstances and maelstrom of the battle on this day in Mogadishu would now require them to live up to the Ranger creed. So that's it. All the boys are getting in the game.
- [168:44]
Jim Lechner
Everybody. Yeah, everybody's getting put into this next convoy now because we, as we talked about, they cut forces before we deployed to Mogadishu. So we went in there very lean, and everything was in the fight. And we only had so many ace cards we could throw. We threw the combat search and rescue team. We threw the ground convoy. The ground convoy fail. So now we got to put together what we got left. And literally guys coming out of the talk, the operations sergeant major, the clerks, literally those guys getting on board and trying to go back out.
- [169:16]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward. Major Nixon, the senior officer, quickly briefed the convoy and immediately they set out. They're heading towards the crash site of Super 64. As the second convoy approached the traffic circle, smoking military vehicles could be seen approaching from the south. Nixon brought the convoy abruptly to a halt and directed them to temporary positions. The turret gunners kept covering fire as what was left of the first Ranger convoy, now led by Gallagher after McKnight had been wounded, began arriving at the traffic circle. The sight of the first convoy was shocking, with vehicles piled high, carrying heaps of wounded on top of the dead at every vehicle badly damaged. As the two groups of rangers began to link up, it was obvious the situation was critical for the survivors of the first convoy and they needed assistance to make it back to the airfield. Nixon, McKnight and Gallagher briefly gathered around the vehicles in the middle of the street near the traffic circle. The decision was made to help the first convoy get its survivors back to the airfield and reorganized, organized there for another try to reach the crash site of super six four. That's a scene.
- [170:21]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [170:22]
Jocko Willink
These, these one, this one convoy just all shot up. A bunch of wounded, A bunch of dead, killed in action, wounded in action. And they happen to cross each other at this intersection and have a quick pow wow.
- [170:37]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. And again, obviously I was out with the assault force. You know, we were doing our thing on the crash, on the first crash site. But I got most of this account from the guys that I mentioned in the, in the, in the book, did a bunch of interviews with them and from what I'd seen and I've read from the ARS and all that. So that's where I was able to pull this account from together talking to most of the guys that were there. And one of the, one of the reactions to that convoy that I get universally when I talk to people is just like stun shock. You know, when you see a number of convoy of vehicles roll up in bodies just stacked and blood literally pouring out of the vehicles just to stun shock.
- [171:19]
Jocko Willink
Once back inside the compound, the rangers of the 2nd Convoy and Base medical personnel swarmed around the damaged vehicles, carrying off the wounded and unloading the dead. The scenes inside the bullet riddled, blood covered vehicles were hellacious, stunning many of the Rangers and operations operators. While the casualties were quickly unloaded, the Somali prisoners who remained unhurt were put in the holding pen after doing what they could for their wounded comrades. The second convoys began. The second convoy began to reform. They were rejoined by surviving Rangers and operators of the first convoy. So these boys that just came back from the first convoy barely load up again.
- [171:57]
Jim Lechner
That's right. And you talk to them and a lot of them will tell you that's what really took reaching down, knowing you're gonna go back into the same thing with the same odds. It really took some reaching down, but, you know, knowing that we were still out there motivated him.
- [172:13]
Jocko Willink
As the convoy rolled out of the gate, it was immediately engaged by heavy gunfire from the Somalis. It soon became obvious they would be unable to penetrate the second to the second crash site with Little. No hope of success on their current attempt. Nixon ordered them back to the airfield. Rangers and Delta operators who survived the first two convoys now began integrating into the larger United nations effort. Finally, late in the night, various American units were combined with the Pakistani tanks and Malaysian armored cars, and the convoy set off north of the city. And that's with the 10th Mountain Division. So this is when we finally get the. And there's a lot of political things going on here. You know, you talked about the ownership of the battle space. This is a UN Battle space.
- [172:58]
Jim Lechner
Right.
- [172:58]
Jocko Willink
And to get the support that they needed, it took some time.
- [173:04]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. And there's a lot of interesting dynamics, you know, in the UN coalition that we talk about in the book. But one of them is you had, like, Pakistani military units and Indian military units, Greek military units and Turkish military units. And so now you're trying to ask enemies to come together and fight. So I'm actually very appreciative of the Pakistanis and the Malaysians because they didn't sign up for qrf. That wasn't their job. And they just got kind of woken up in the middle of the night and said, hey, can you bring your tanks and bring your armored vehicles and go out into this fight? And I'm very appreciative the fact that they did that, but the difficulties in trying to get that together. And again, we have a different, different culture of wanting to go into that fight. There was a little bit more hesitancy to go out into that fight, let's just say across the board among people. So it took some urging to get them all to go out.
- [173:59]
Jocko Willink
Back at the first crash site with the assault force, more wounded were brought into the casualty collection point laid all around me. The Rangers and Delta operators continuously continued to furiously and methodically clear of the streets and courtyards immediately around us. The devastating fire of the little birds continued to chew into the neighborhoods as we fortified the short stretch of buildings we occupied and consolidated into a tight perimeter. Daylight began to fade, but the fight continued. The decision not to bring night vision goggles is now proving costly. There were a few sets available, mainly taken from the wreck of the helicopter. Still, the night gave us other advantages. We put our strobe lights out and use lasers, actually making it easier for the orbiting aircraft to identify our positions in the daytime. It's a big lesson learned. We never. That one definitely got passed down. If you're going out, bring freaking night vision. Doesn't matter what time it is.
- [174:48]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, 100%. And again, I can't say it enough. Given the choice again I would have brought my night vision with me. But I do want to say there was a bit of a rationale. And so let's go back to the 90 foot fast rope. And so every single mission we went on we had to evaluate what are you going to bring because we're maxed out on gear and you know you're going to be sliding down. There's only so much you can carry on that fast rope. And so 3:30 in the afternoon we made the decision to bring more bullets and hand grenades. So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a case of being lazy or negligent. It was am I going to bring water, night vision or bullets and hand grenades? And that day I chose bullets and hand grenades. And in retrospect I certainly would have brought water and night vision.
- [175:32]
Jocko Willink
How much water did you bring?
- [175:33]
Jim Lechner
I didn't bring any. Didn't bring any. And so I got to, I got to sample the, the you know, the fruits of local sewer water. So you know, thank God we did have a few tablets we could put in the water. But yeah, we drank out of the, basically out of the well right there in that house that we stormed into. So again, I mean everything was geared toward I got a slide down this rope with this weight and so what am I going to bring again? Can't emphasize enough. Have night vision with you and water.
- [176:00]
Jocko Willink
You ever been a heat casualty?
- [176:05]
Jim Lechner
Just about.
- [176:05]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I, I almost was. I was in the mountains of Arkansas and we did like a link up, you know, over one mountain ridge with a, you know, fire team that we linked up with the squad. Then we linked up with the tuned. Well you know it started off solo operation so I linked up with my swim buddy and then eventually but we kept going over these. I'm looking at my map, I'm like okay, over this next ridge line. When we get down to the bottom there's a stream and I'll be able to refill my canteen. One no stream.
- [176:34]
Jim Lechner
Yeah.
- [176:35]
Jocko Willink
Next, next. You know, eight hours later, another ridge line. Sweating like crazy. Get down to the bottom of the next one looking for the stream. There's no stream. This happened three times and I was out of water and was like oh, oh no, I'm going to be a heat casualty. Yeah, like I'm majorly because I sweat a lot anyways. And after that I, I like I was so paranoid about water for the rest of my freaking career. Cuz I luckily we got to the fourth ridge line to the fourth gully or Whatever. And there was a stream. And boy, I was the. The. What was I, the squad leader. And I'm like seven.
- [177:11]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. I'm like, set perimeter.
- [177:14]
Jocko Willink
And we stayed there for a good while. Yeah, refilling and drinking. Meanwhile, Blackhawk approached, trying to provide some resupply. It almost could get shot down. While unavoidable, this decision, because now. Because now once this resupply HALO comes in and it almost gets shot down, it's like you're not getting any, any Casablanca.
- [177:36]
Jim Lechner
It actually got damaged so badly it crashed back at the airfield. Was, Was out of commission. So, yeah, yeah, they said, no, we're not going to extract anybody.
- [177:45]
Jocko Willink
While unvoid, unavoidable, the decision proved tragically fatal for corporate Corporal Jamie Smith, who had sat to my right on Super 64 and had been alongside me in the perimeter. Early in the day after we'd moved away from the target building as the combined group moved toward the crash site, Smith had pushed ahead with other members of his squad during the furious fighting around the crash site, and AK47 round tore through his pelvis and severed his femoral artery. Smith had fought to hang on for hours, but despite the medic struggled to keep him alive in the dark hours of the night, he finally gave his life. From the time we established the perimeter and continuing throughout the night, the question was repeatedly asked about reinforcements. When we get. When will the QRF get here? Through the night, I lay in the casualty collection point, my leg a dull throb through a morphine haze as I listened to Captain Steele on the radio. Our position was an island in a sea of Somali attacks. We knew that our comrades continued to fight around us, would never give up or let up, let anything penetrate into our tiny perimeter. We also had the little birds overhead with the comforting rip of the Gatling guns and boom of their rockets. But we needed help, more Americans to get in the fight and help get our wounded and dead out and back to the airfield. Over the coming hours, as the assault force hung onto the perimeter around the first crash site, we slowly received reports of these efforts and continued to wait. Finally, we heard the thunderous approach of the relief convoy. We could mark its progress as it drew closer by the amount of firing we could hear. The noise grew in intensity to crescendo as it crept forward from intersection to intersection. The convoy was laying down a tremendous amount of firepower as it moved slowly and methodically through Somali neighborhoods. Our anxiety rose as the last thing we wanted to wander was to get blown away by the 50 cals. And mark 19s of the 10th Mountain troops and the mixed force of the UN convoy. Deliberate instructions and warnings were passed to the convoy before one brave Ranger ran out from the crash site to mark our position with additional chem lights as a recognition signal. A few more minutes pass until we heard vehicles racing up the alley. American Humvees arrived first and moved through our position and passed us to the wreckage of Super 6 1. Next came heavily armored cars from the Malaysian Army. Finally, as the morning broke and the sky began to get lighter, everyone who could be loaded was loaded and the convoy lurched forward. Somali fire increased and the Malaysian gunner above me in the turret squeezed off bursts of his machine gun, raining me with hot shell casings. Riding inside those vehicles. What we did not know was that there had not been enough room on the Humvees and armored cars for all of the task force. The unwounded Rangers and Delta operators were forced to trail the convoy on foot, running through the streets and across intersections. The final push to safety has become known as the Mogadishu Mile and is often current. Commemorated today with road races and endurance events. After a tense halting drive out of the neighborhoods with the Somali fire increasing, things suddenly began to grow quieter. Outside side, the Malaysian vehicles made a last turn and surged through the gates of the soccer stadium before coming to an abrupt halt. We were inside the stadium housing the Pakistani army contingent. And I knew that a portion of our ideal of our ordeal was over. What time is it you get back there? It's like 6 and 6 or something like that?
- [181:38]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, sometime between 6 and 8. Sometime. The sun was definitely up. And that's. It's just again, one of those kind of metaphorical things almost is when the back of that armored vehicle opened up and the sunlight came in, it was just kind of amazing. I mean, the world was different and huge relief to look down out and see guys, guys from the task force. And we didn't know the whole story and we didn't know what going on, but we knew we'd survived. We knew what happened to us and we'd survived. And then it just kind of started to hit us there, you know, the impact of. As we assembled back at that, at that stadium and began to see kind of the results of what had gone on and.
- [182:18]
Jocko Willink
But a lot of the other casualties have been taken back to the airfield, is that right?
- [182:22]
Jim Lechner
Well, some from the convoy, okay, so some from the convoy have been taken back there, but basically everybody that had been wounded out at the target building and in the, you know, the Fight around. Our crash site was there at the Pakistani Stadium. So, you know, we talk about it in the book, but there's. There was stretchers lined up on both sides of that soccer field. I mean, the whole. It just really was an impact to see that. To see that many stretchers lined up on both sides of the soccer field and then look down at the end and see, you know, the guys had been killed, wrapped up ponchos, and we'd heard about a couple guys getting killed. You know, as reports are coming in things. We just didn't have it. You didn't know the scope or scale of the fight until you saw that. That's when it really hit me.
- [183:07]
Jocko Willink
Fast forward a little bit. Almost immediately, medics approached me and began to check my wound. I was still worried about the bleeding, and I knew I'd lost a lot of blood. As the medevac helicopters began to cycle into land on the soccer field, I told the medics I'd hit the day before around 1700. So then you get labeled a priority. They put you on the next U.S. helicopter. You end up the 46th Combat Support Hospital. Straight to pre op. Fast forward. I woke hours later being wheeled into a long, green army tent and immediately recognized everyone in the beds around me. The tent was full of wounded Rangers and Delta operators, most of them heavily bandaged with every kind of wound. That night, we heard incoming fire in the distance and machine guns on the nearby guard post opening up along the perimeter. With no weapons and wearing only a hospital gown, I began to feel vulnerable again. The next morning, things got better when more visitors from TF Ranger came over from the airfield. It was reassuring to see our comrades from TF Ranger still confident and ready to take the fight back out to the enemy, especially where our missing comrades were concerned. The Rangers and Delta operators in the hospital, who were lightly wounded, were similarly anxious to get back to the unit and into the line. However, we had been profoundly changed and were still absorbing the shock of battle. On missions prior to the raid on October 3, we had made scattered contact with the enemy and even taken some wounded. But we were not convinced. That made us, quote, combat veterans. Those encounters just didn't seem to meet the threshold of our expectations. Passed on to us from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. But after the battle on October 3rd and 4th, the issue was beyond doubt, as if we had passed over a chasm and there was no going back.
- [185:01]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, the other thing is, too, that really started to be imbued or was imbued in us at this point. Was very tribal. I mean, there was a lot of other units and a lot of other people involved, but I just wanted Task Force Ranger guys around me. And when I was in a position like I was in the hospital and I wasn't protected by Task Force Ranger guys, I was very. Got a lot of anxiety and it lasted all the way back to the U.S. you know, so. And that manifests itself today. But, like, anytime I come across a guy from Task Force Ranger, what, you know, whether I liked the guy or not, whether, I mean, it was. There's this immediate bond like, oh, I know you got my. Got my back. So. But that was, that was really a. At that point, there was a lot of apprehension about that because I needed Task Force Ranger guys around me.
- [185:47]
Jocko Willink
You end up on a C141 transport that when you end up in the hospital, you get a tv. And this is where you see Mike Durant for the first time. He's on. You know, that's all circulating around, tracking that story.
- [186:02]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, and it's, it's again, I'll bring it up again, too. You know, we all, we know the story now because we see everybody seen the movie and 30 years later, but at the time, we didn't know probably 50% of this story. We knew a few things that had happened to us. Things were slowly coming together. But I did not know what had happened to Super 64. I knew it got shot down, but that's all I knew. Didn't know if anybody survived. And so to see Mike come across on the, on the news like that was. Was shocking and really relief at the same time.
- [186:32]
Jocko Willink
How do you feel about his, like, chances? Because I know when I saw him, I was like, oh, this is. There's no way this guy's going to stay alive. No offense, Mike, if you're listening, but that's what I was thinking at the time. What were you thinking?
- [186:47]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, you know, again, it's, it goes back to. We just didn't have a lot of faith in the overall system. You know, we went in there with all the faith in the world that, you know, the United States in general is invincible. And now it coming down to it's all about Task Force Ranger. And so I wanted to think there was going to be an effort to get him out, but again, I was apprehensive. Like you mentioned.
- [187:12]
Jocko Willink
You eventually get some good advice, so you get. Probably worth bringing up. You know, you, you'd mentioned earlier that the Army's not always going to look out for your best interests. And one of the doctors told you that all hospitals were not created equal. And if you could get to Walter Reed Army Medical.
- [187:26]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, best, I would say one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten. And so kind of the theme, one of the themes of the book at this point is just to sing the praises of the military medical system. You know, there's a lot of support units and combat guys joke about support pokes stuff. But the medical service and the medical, military medical system is absolutely outstanding. I mean they are just, they really are the best military trauma care in the world. And again, I didn't know any of this at the time, but what somebody told me was, you know, all hospitals aren't the same. Walter Reed on the, on the east coast and Tripler on the west coast are the tip of the pyramid. There's a hierarchy and a tip of a pyramid. And they were 100% right. I mean, I just can't emphasize that was the best care I could have ever gotten was to go to Walter Reed. So I was fortunate to be able to make that choice and go there because what they were offering you was go home to your home station and be dealt with. That's got to be tempting, very tempting to go home and see my wife and my family and get back there to my stuff, you know, my home. But be treated at the local Fort Benning hospital. And it's not a dig on the Fort Benning hospital. They just don't have near the resources. Walter Reed is equipped to be the superpower of medical centers. And so I took that choice to go up there because my, the issue with my leg was, you know, they didn't know if they're gonna, gonna be able to keep it or not. So.
- [188:47]
Jocko Willink
After spending the Thanksgiving, Christmas holidays with my family, I returned to Walter Reed for the next round of surgeries, continuing rebuilding my leg. While the surgeons had been able to close the massive wounds, there still remained the problem of a 4 inch gap in my tibia or shin bone. My team of orthopedic surgeons decided to rebuild my leg using some extreme and near miraculous medical procedures. During hours of surgery, they started by opening my back near the waist. Then they hammered chunks out of my pelvis until they got enough bone material to pack in and fill the gap between my intact upper and lower parts of my tibia. Over time, the living bone would fuse with the material that had been packed into the gap, recalcifying and eventually completely, completely absorbing it, creating new bone. While this miraculous process eventually succeeded, it was a very tough Surgery that not only included reopening my leg wound, but now my back and pelvis as well. It was successful, but left me unable to get out of bed again. With new wounds in my back, I was restricted to lying on my side. That's crazy.
- [189:52]
Jim Lechner
Yeah. Two steps forward, one step back, you know, Again, miraculous medical treatment that they came up with at Walter Reed, Some of the stuff was the first time they'd ever used it on some of our guys. They put a. What's called an Elizarov device on my leg. It's like two bicycle rims. And then they would drill the spokes through the bone to stabilize that and create this cage that I could walk on. And then what was tough about it was I could get to a point where I could walk again, and. But then I had to go back in for more surgery, and that just knocked me right back down. So I was just bedridden again. So. And this is over a period of months and months and months. So it just. It just took a lot of. For me, it took a lot of fortitude to try to work my way through that and to keep trying to come back.
- [190:37]
Jocko Willink
You're at home in Fort Benning for March. Your wife gives birth to your first daughter.
- [190:43]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [190:44]
Jocko Willink
Carolina.
- [190:44]
Jim Lechner
Carolina.
- [190:46]
Jocko Willink
You get promoted to captain, and you get to do that in front of two companies of your Ranger brothers. And meanwhile, the Army's being cool to you. You say, no bureaucratic pressure from the army, but the clock's ticking on your career. You have to go to advanced infantry, Advanced Officer course. You graduate and go on to make a full recovery, continue to serve in the infantry and airborne units for many more years and many other wars. And I'll close it out with this again. Get the book. There's so many details in here. You say, the Lord had answered my prayers. He had not only called me with near miraculous timing and circumstances to join B Company and Task Force Ranger, but it sustained me through the battle. He had brought me not only through the desperate fight and home to see my family, but the struggle afterward to recover. I knew that there was a reason for not only my survival, but my perseverance, and that the Lord had a continuing plan for me. So that's kind of the start of your career.
- [192:03]
Jim Lechner
That's right. Yeah. That's the first big.
- [192:07]
Jocko Willink
That trial by fire was only the beginning. Yeah. You had a lot more work to do.
- [192:12]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [192:13]
Jocko Willink
You have a lot more wars to fight. And I actually, in reading this, recognized that you and I would have a lot More to talk about. And we've already been over three hours.
- [192:23]
Jim Lechner
Wow.
- [192:24]
Jocko Willink
So we're going to save the rest of your career for the next podcast that we'll record directly. Echo. You got any questions?
- [192:32]
Jim Lechner
Oh, yeah, quick question. So your leg, they got bone from your hip, right? Yeah. Kind of rebuilt, essentially. The missing bone that's right. In your shin. All fused together and created a new bone. And how is it now? In some ways it's. It's stronger than it was. Amazingly, I parachuted on it. I've went back to the infantry, so I road marched on it, ran two marathons on it. So, yeah, I mean, I. I have some problems, but I don't think I have any problems that every other 58 year old. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I can't. Nothing I can complain about. So when you say problems, like what? Like, yeah, back stuff and my knees feel messed up and all that stuff. But again, I think it's just par for the course. Yeah, that's just how so. Dang.
- [193:15]
Jocko Willink
Usually they put like a rod or something in there.
- [193:17]
Jim Lechner
Yeah, something like that. Yeah. There just wasn't enough left. Well, there was a gap, so it was nothing for them. They had to have some bone material to create to fill that 4 inch gap. So that's crazy. And it is crazy with like a limp or not. No permanent limp, nothing like that? No, no, not. Not perceptible. And I have a reason. I have an excuse for being slow on the run. So kind of good to go.
- [193:39]
Jocko Willink
All right, cool. Yeah, Good to meet you right off.
- [193:41]
Jim Lechner
Thank you.
- [193:42]
Jocko Willink
Jim, Any. Any closing thoughts for this, for this chapter?
- [193:48]
Jim Lechner
Just a lot of themes. You know, I appreciate you saying get the book because there is a lot of, a lot of detail in there that we didn't cover. And there's a lot of themes. But, you know, again, I wrote it for a number of reasons. I wrote it one, because I found over 30 years now, even though Black Hawk down was pretty famous, there's a lot of people that haven't heard the story and it's not my story I want to tell. I try to go into detail about the guys we lost because they deserve that. You know, that's. That's why I think when you talk to a lot of guys, one of the things they hope is that people will remember them and appreciate their sacrifice. So I felt very strongly about trying to tell that story, trying to clarify a few things. Like I said, the leadership or in the research I got to do on the book helped fill in some gaps. But I also think our society today, everybody talks about making progress and being progressive. And there's obviously things in the military that have improved from a socio perspective. But I also think we've thrown out a lot of the things that were important. And I try to highlight that in the book. I mean, there's things the military have done for 2,500 years since the Spartans, and there's a reason that we've done it. And, you know, the military should not reflect directly society, no matter what society comes up with, what they want to accept and how they want to approach things and diversity and things like that. But there's a reason that there's a brotherhood. There's a reason that there's brutal and harsh training. There's a difference between abusing people and then training them for combat. And so I think our society today has thrown a lot of those things out. You know, the baby with the bathwater. As we've made progress, we've forgotten about what it really takes to build a unit. And I've had a lot of experience with this, you know, post army and as the military has started to evolve. And again, I just, I just think the army and the military have taken the wrong direction. The citadels taken the wrong direction on throwing out the good things and the historic things and the things that make units ready for combat. So I wanted to try to highlight some of those themes in the book and I, and I hope it's done that. So I appreciate you plugging that and I hope people will go out and read that.
- [195:55]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, we'll. We'll get into some of those lessons learned on the next podcast here. And yeah, the book With My Shield, An Army Ranger in Somalia. You're also on, you're on Twitter X at Lechner. It's L E C H N E R underscore. Jim, how much do you do on Instagram?
- [196:17]
Jim Lechner
I don't do a lot on X and Instagram. I started that when I became a correspondent for Newsmax. I started all my social media stuff up. But now it's a fine line on the different stuff that I do. So.
- [196:30]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, well, you're there. And again, I couldn't agree with you more. You know, sometimes as I see the way certain things go in society and the military and you watch them going in a certain direction, and sometimes I ask myself, if we keep going in that direction, who's going to fight the wars?
- [196:51]
Jim Lechner
That's right.
- [196:52]
Jocko Willink
Because it takes a certain type of humans that are going to step up and fight the wars and that's one thing that is so clear in your book. You, you did such a great job showing that in this situation, this terrible situation, these, these men stepped up with unmatched bravery and went above and beyond all of them to take care of their brothers out there on the battlefield. So it's an amazing book. Thanks for writing it. We'll get a little bit more into it on the next podcast and then we'll talk about the rest of your career, which is plenty more to talk about. Everyone that's listening, thanks for listening. You can support the podcast by going to jockofuel.com originusa.com jockostore.com echelonfront.com we're also on the Interwebs. Echo is at Echo Charles. I'm at Jocko Willink. And thanks again, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner for your service and sacrifice and all our military personnel out there with a particular salute tonight to the Army Rangers. Thank you, outstanding soldiers in every way who earned their motto. Without a doubt, rangers lead the way. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders, thanks to you for keeping us safe here at home. And to everyone else that's listening, remember that attitude from the Rangers Creed. I will shoulder more than my share of the task, whatever it may be. That's the goal. That's the standard. So train hard, be ready, and no matter what, fight on. And until next time, this is Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner and Echo and Jocko out.