Transcript
Jocko Willink (0:00)
This is Jocko, podcast number 472 with Echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.
Echo Charles (0:04)
Good evening.
Jocko Willink (0:05)
So we'd been in Ramadi for a little over a week, I would say, and we had gone a big chunk of guys from Tasking Abuser. We'd gone over to Camp Corregidor, which is on the east side of Ramadi, with the first of the 506 band of brothers. And we're planning a big giant operation, a battalion sized, A battalion plus sized operation. And we're going to be there for a few days planning, and then we're going to conduct the operation. We're going to go home. But we've been there for. So we'd been over in Corregidor for maybe like a day or two or something like that. And as soon as we got there, Camp Corregidor was under attack all the time through mortars and indirect fire, but also the surrounding area, there'd be IDs in place, there'd be rockets launched at the base. And so as soon as we got there, of course we had a bunch of snipers and tasking a bruiser. So they have towers around the perimeter of Camp Corregidor. So we put snipers in the towers and pretty quickly, like couple. Couple SEAL snipers killed some insurgents putting IDs in and whatnot. And so that was like the first day we were there, first 24 hours they were there. So now we're there. And now I'm over talking to one of the company commanders, the Charlie Company Commander, this guy. Gunfighter 6. The guy's a total pro. Just, he's been in Ramadi, he's been fighting, he's been leading his troops. They called him Crazy Joe is another nickname he had, but his call sign was Gunfighter 6. I won't say his name right now, but hopefully I'll have him on the podcast at some point. Just great guy. And his. His Charlie Company, they'd done a. They'd done a massive amount of fighting. They had taken a massive amount of casualties. And, and he was just a outstanding professional soldier and combat leader. And so I'm in with him and we're talking about how this big operation is going to take place and the types of things he was doing. Why I'm saying he's so professional is this was before everyone had a helmet cam and before everyone had, you know, a GoPro on their weapon and whatever. He had rigged video cameras on his Humvees, or at least his Humvee and so he would record every time he'd be out in the city. He would record every. Everything. And then he'd come back and he'd watch it. So, you know, he knew every wall and every curb and every building, and he just would look at them and was more familiar with the terrain in order to be as familiar with the terrain as possible. And there's a bunch of reasons for that. Are people having IDs there? Is that a place where they could put weapons cache? Is that somewhere where you could maneuver or could maneuver? So he just was that engaged, and he understood the mission, and his troops knew the mission. So that's what we're doing. So I'm sitting here with this guy, and we're in, like, a little Quanson hut where his company planning space was. And as we're in there, we hear, like, a pretty good run of machine gun fire. And, you know, I'm trying to act cool, because I'm trying to act cool. You know, you don't want to act like. Like, whoa, what the heck was that? You know? So I kind of, you know, give him a nod, and he kind of gives me a nod because he's trying to act cool, too. You know, we're like two guys in the military trying to act cool. And so then more machine gun fire comes. I'm like, oh, okay, that's a lot. And I still, like, try and carry on. Like, I'm talking like, hey, it's no big deal. And then all of a sudden, they're just, whoa, whoa. Two massive explosions, which is RPG hits. And when. As soon as the first one goes, you know, we start running and we go outside. And when we get outside, where this Quonset hut was, it was kind of on the border, and it was right next to one of these towers where, you know, where we had perimeter security and the. The. You know, these explosions. We come outside, and now there's kind of smoke coming out of the tower. And I look at Crazy Joe, and I said something like, hey, don't worry about it, man. I got snipers up in these towers, you know, as if to say, dude, like, don't worry. I got this. And right as I finished that sentence out of the bottom of this sniper tower, when the sniper tower was, like, concrete, kind of like concrete pipes that were on their side and had, like, ladders or whatever stairs built inside of, and then a little thing on the top. But it's big. Basically a big concrete structure. And right as I get done saying, don't worry about it, I got snipers in the tower. Right as I finish that sentence, two guys come pouring out of the bottom of this tower, like stumbling and disheveled. And one of them I instantly recognize because he's got red hair and I can see he's wearing a seal, you know, camouflage uniform. And I know it's one of my guys. And I look to look in his face and he kind of looks like, damn. And which is understandable because I'm looking, as I look at him, I can see that his, his rifle, his sniper rifle had been blown in half. And so he had one, it was dangling from around his neck. The two halves of his machine, of his, of his weapon were dangling around his neck because his weapon had just been blown apart by an RPG and he was lucky to be alive. And, and that's exactly what had just happened. The rpg, machine gun fire to get people's heads down. They fired RPGs at this tower. On those towers. They had basically like metal screen, like almost like a chain link fence to, to stop RPGs from coming in, but it would also detonate the RPGs. And so that's exactly what happened. It detonated in front of him and blown his, his weapon in half. He was lucky to be alive. And then less than 24 hours later, that same guy, Matt, was in the middle of the blue on blue friendly fire incident that, that we wrote about, that I wrote about in Extreme Ownership. He was in the middle of that. He was on the rooftop, he had hundreds of 50 caliber rounds fired at him from a distance of about 35 meters. And he was actually hit by frag in the face from one of those 50 cal rounds. And then after that, and this is a story that Leif wrote about this same guy, Matt, fell probably 20ft through a roof onto his back in the street. And look, he survived all these scenarios and many more scenarios throughout his, throughout the battle of Ramadi and then throughout the rest of his career. And. Well, it's an honor to have him with us here tonight. Sniper, machine gunner, lpo, chief, senior chief, frogman, and my brother, Matt Hasby. Matt, thanks for joining us, man.