482: Roll Up Your Sleeves and CHOP THAT S**T UP. With Sergaent Major Daniel Pinion.

Summary

Jocko Podcast Episode 482: "Roll Up Your Sleeves and CHOP THAT ST UP" with Sergeant Major Daniel Pinion**

Introduction In Episode 482 of the Jocko Podcast, retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink teams up with Echo Charles and Sergeant Major Daniel Pinion of the DEFCONF Network to delve deep into the realms of discipline and leadership across various facets of life, including business, war, and personal relationships. Released on March 19, 2025, this episode offers an unfiltered look into Pinion's military career, leadership challenges, and the profound lessons he learned on and off the battlefield.

Early Life and Military Beginnings Daniel Pinion opens up about his upbringing in Newton, New Jersey, highlighting a stable two-parent household despite his biological parents' divorce. Growing up with a twin sister and two younger brothers, Pinion credits his close-knit family and community for shaping his foundational values.

• Notable Quote:

  “It takes a village to raise a child.” (04:41)

Pinion discusses his discovery of being left-handed at age 13, which influenced his participation in sports, particularly baseball. Unlike Jocko, who describes himself as naturally unathletic and academically challenged, Pinion was naturally smart and athletic but struggled with discipline and laziness.

Joining the Army and Basic Training At 17, influenced by his father’s push and a recruiter’s prompt, Pinion enlisted in the National Guard. His enthusiasm for structure and challenge was evident during basic training, where he thrived under the rigorous demands, gaining significant muscle mass and mastering weapons handling.

• Notable Quote:

  “Watching drill sergeants yell at you to try and change and have you become a team... I immediately started trying to pull people together as a team.” (10:06)

One pivotal moment from his basic training involves a humorous yet profound incident where Pinion and his platoon faced a daunting inspection challenge involving an oversized turd. This experience ingrained the motto “roll up your sleeves and chop that shit up,” symbolizing perseverance through obstacles.

First Deployment: Bosnia Herzegovina In 1995, Pinion's platoon was deployed to Bosnia to enforce the Dayton Peace Accord. This mission marked his first major deployment, where he learned the complexities of international peacekeeping and the relentless nature of combat operations.

• Notable Quote:

  “We would enforce the accord and allow people to put their war-torn country back together again.” (27:25)

During this deployment, Pinion faced intense stress and witnessed the psychological toll on his fellow soldiers, leading him to prioritize mental health and support mechanisms within his unit.

Second Deployment: Iraq and the Battle of Ramadi Pinion's recount of his deployment to Ramadi in Iraq provides a harrowing glimpse into modern urban warfare. Serving as a platoon sergeant, he highlights the constant threat of IEDs, mortar attacks, and the ever-present danger of insurgent activities.

• Notable Quote:

  “During your career, you will hit many obstacles that won't go away on the first try. When that happens, you can give up and walk away or simply roll up your sleeve and chop that shit up.” (21:43)

One of the most significant moments shared is the loss of Sergeant Marquis Quick during a grenade attack, a sacrifice that deeply impacted Pinion and underscored the immense pressures and unforeseen challenges of combat leadership.

Leadership Challenges and Personal Struggles As casualties mounted, Pinion grappled with maintaining morale and leadership efficacy amidst the chaos of war. He candidly discusses moments of emotional breakdown, the impact of losing close comrades, and the internal struggle to remain strong for his men.

• Notable Quote:

  “I physically couldn't stand up that day... I stayed at the field aid station and waited for the arrival of the body so I could go through the process of paperwork and identifying them.” (130:06)

Pinion's experiences led him to advocate for better mental health support within the military, emphasizing the importance of leaders recognizing and addressing the psychological burdens carried by their soldiers.

Post-Deployment and Writing "Chop That Up" Following his deployments, Pinion faced continued battles with mental health, ultimately leading him to seek therapy and develop coping mechanisms. Inspired by his experiences and the untold stories of his fallen comrades, he authored “Chop That Up,” a memoir aimed at honoring his soldiers and providing insights into effective leadership under extreme stress.

• Notable Quote:

  “The book is my final salute to those I served with, and I hope I made them proud and told their stories with accuracy and honesty.” (168:01)

Legacy and Ongoing Efforts Pinion dedicates the proceeds from his book to scholarships and awards in the names of his fallen soldiers, ensuring their sacrifices are remembered and honored. He also emphasizes the importance of supporting current service members through mentorship and mental health resources.

• Notable Quote:

  “Suicide is continuing to always be an issue. So I continue to talk depression and seeking treatment or help or reaching out.” (170:47)

Conclusion Episode 482 of the Jocko Podcast presents a raw and heartfelt narrative from Sergeant Major Daniel Pinion, blending personal anecdotes with invaluable leadership lessons. Through his journey from an average upbringing to the battlefields of Bosnia and Iraq, Pinion exemplifies resilience, commitment, and the profound responsibility of leadership in the face of adversity.

• Closing Quote from Jocko:

  “Roll up your sleeves and chop that shit up.” (206:57)

Key Takeaways:

1. Resilience Through Adversity: Overcoming obstacles requires determination and the willingness to face challenges head-on.
2. Importance of Mental Health: Leadership involves recognizing and addressing the psychological strains on team members.
3. Sacrifice and Honor: Honoring fallen comrades is essential for personal closure and maintaining the legacy of those who served.
4. Leadership Evolution: True leaders adapt and grow through their experiences, continually seeking improvement and betterment for their teams.

Final Words For those who have not listened to the episode, “Roll Up Your Sleeves and CHOP THAT S**T UP” serves as an inspiring testament to the complexities of military leadership and the enduring spirit required to lead effectively in life’s toughest battles. Daniel Pinion’s story is one of courage, sacrifice, and unwavering dedication, offering lessons that resonate beyond the battlefield.

To dive deeper into Sergeant Major Pinion’s experiences and leadership philosophy, be sure to listen to the full episode and read his compelling book, “Chop That Up.”

Transcript

[Jocko Willink]

This is Jocko, podcast number 482 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

[Echo Charles]

Good evening.

[Jocko Willink]

Once we arrived at Camp Ramadi in June, everyone could tell we were not in the north anymore. Mortar attacks occurred daily and we were located right against the enemy held parts of the city. I said that correctly. The enemy controlled over 75% of the city for from government buildings to hospitals and neighborhoods. However, we held the edge of the east and the west sides of the town. We had a transition of authority scheduled around June 2006 from their brigade to ours. We would officially assume control of the operation and they would go home. About two weeks before the turnover, Captain Bima was reassigned to a tank company. This is a backward move for an officer. They do their initial command in the tank unit, and if they are the best of the best, they are selected to command the likes of us. However, for our brigade and the mission in Ramadi, this was one of the best decisions that Colonel Sean McFarland, the brigade commander ever made. Captain Mike Main Gun Baima had the perfect amount of arrogance, competence, courage and audacity to do what needed to be done as a tank company commander. The plan was set. The night of turnover, our brigade would attack the city. We would simply push from west and east and meet in the middle. No matter how long that took, our unit was again attached to another battalion and we were still serving conventional roles. But as a bonus, we'd be in a close relationship with SEAL Team 3, tasking a bruiser and begin planning for our small kill team operations. And that right there is a little excerpt from a book, an outstanding book, which is called Chop that Up and we will get to the meaning behind that title. It's written by a guy named Daniel Pinion, who is a retired army command sergeant major. He served for 28 years in the army and he led infantry, he led armor, he led cavalry soldiers at every level of leadership. He's been awarded the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars, Purple Heart, five Meritorious Service medals, nine Army Achievement Medals, and a slew of other personal and unit awards. His brigade, recon troop in the Battle of Radi was deployed constantly into points of friction, and his troop suffered the highest casualty rate of any company sized unit in the entire brigade. And yet, under Dan Pinion's leadership, they never wavered, not one time. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to to share some of his experiences and lessons learned. Dan, it's great to see you man, and thanks for joining us.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. And Jocko, this is amazing. Thank you so much, Echo. Awesome to see you, brother. I look forward to telling some of these stories. Thank you.

[Jocko Willink]

Nine army achievement medals. So I thought I was pretty good because I have five Navy achievement medals, you know, Echo, Charles, you can get an, you can get an army achievement medal or Navy Achievement medal for like some very interesting things. And I think I got, I think I got four of them as an enlisted guy. Then it would be like this is during the 90s and I get Navy Achievement medal, you know, because I ran a course of instruction that included 13 hours of training or something like that. You get a Navy Achievement medal. So. But nine of them.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I might have got one for showing up the formation on time. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

That's awesome, man. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. This book is, this book is amazing. It's just an outstanding book. It, and we'll, we'll, we'll talk about how you wrote the book and everything. But let's, let's get into the book a little bit and, and go through what your life was like before you started your army career. I'm gonna go to the book here. It says I grew up average in almost every possible way. Although my mom divorced my biological father when I was little, I grew up in a parent 2 parent household from the age of 5 and count my stepfather as my dad. I have a twin sister, two younger brothers and cousins who lived only 30 minutes away from us growing up. It takes a village to raise a child. And we had that with our family and community. And this was where in New Jersey?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, New Jersey.

[Jocko Willink]

Whereabouts in New Jersey?

[Dan Pinion]

Was it Andover, New Jersey? Newton, New Jersey. So way up north.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Dan Pinion]

Right against Pennsylvania Dell Water Gap. So if you ever eat M M's, I'm looking at you too. You guys obviously don't eat M M's, but.

[Jocko Willink]

No, let's not jump to conclusions here. I could get busy on some M and M's.

[Dan Pinion]

If you ever eat some M M's, the made right in town next to us in Hackerstown, but right up by the Del Water Cab country. In fact, we're so country they used to come saying Old McDonald had a farm when they come play us in sports. Corn fields and dairy cows.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. That's awesome. You say. I considered. I considered us middle class, big house with a yard, woods for days behind us, a friendly and safe neighborhood and hard working parents who seem to make everything possible for their kids. My mom couponed during the week with my aunt Barbie and then woke up, woke me up every Sunday to Help deliver the Sunday paper while listening to Elvis on the radio. My dad, who to this day never sits still, worked in the garage or at work from 6am until 11pm almost daily to help us make ends meet. I also think he simply liked tinkering with cars and listening to the eight track player. What did he do for a living? Was he a mechanic?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, mechanic basically diesel mechanic, self taught, never school train and probably, I mean people call him to this day about mechanics. I'm a, this guy, dad, I love it. This guy. I'm amazed at how smart he is. He's amazing.

[Jocko Willink]

And, and then. So he worked in a shop and then you guys had a, a garage home. He was constantly working on stuff all day.

[Dan Pinion]

Correct. He just got himself another car that he's fixing up.

[Jocko Willink]

What do you get? Do you know?

[Dan Pinion]

No. It's old though. It's like 1920s, 1930s. He's going to fix it up and he sells it.

[Jocko Willink]

That's awesome, man. Going back here, I was taught to hunt, fish, explore, dig fence posts, garden, build retaining walls, etc. The end of school year meant going to the local flea market and picking out new work boots and a mall to split firewood. My dad would cut down trees. My sister Debbie and I would load the wood and bring it back. And in the summer I would split the firewood with my sister while my sister stacked it on one side was last year's wood dried out for the winter coming and we would split and stack next year's wood on the other side. This is just a northeast thing. That's what we're doing.

[Dan Pinion]

Gotta get ready.

[Jocko Willink]

So you're playing sports, you play baseball?

[Dan Pinion]

Correct.

[Jocko Willink]

And you're left handed?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. I realized I was left handed when I was 13 and my uncle saw me tossing pebbles at my grandparents house and I couldn't throw pebbles right handed even though I played sports right hand. And he looked at me and said why? I said I can't, it's too small. It didn't feel right. Saw me throwing left hands like getting a truck. Took me down, bought me, said you're left handed. And I started playing baseball left handed from that age.

[Jocko Willink]

What other sports do you play?

[Dan Pinion]

You know, you grow up playing basketball, you try it all. But I've, you know, I dropped basketball after I think my freshman year of high school. And then I always love, we always love baseball. My entire cousins and I, we always played baseball.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, you, you played a lot. And you say that you were mentally tough and physically athletic but you lack the discipline to make Your dreams come true. Because the dreams, of course, being Yankee.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, absolutely. New York Yankees. Go Yanks.

[Jocko Willink]

And it sounds like you say my relationship with academics was the same.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. So I was lazy. It was just call it what it is. Naturally smart, naturally athletic, lazy.

[Jocko Willink]

I was the. I was the opposite. Naturally unathletic, naturally dumb, and just hard working and stubborn. So then you. You end up talking about the army, I guess. Your grandfather, Frank Richards was in World War II. Uncle George was also in the army. He was in Hawaii during the Vietnam War. But did you, as you started thinking about it, was it like, when did. When did the army start to start to enter your mind as a possible plan?

[Dan Pinion]

Wasn't even an idea until I said we were cutting firewood. And my father brought it up and he was like, hey, I don't think you're gonna make it. Basically, in baseball, you just don't have the drive or, you know, that you need. And we were cutting firewood, and he's like, I need you to talk to my buddy Ali, the state trooper who's also in the National Guard. And Ollie's like, yeah, talk to this guy. He's a recruiter of mine in the same National Guard unit. And really, like, 48 hours later, I was in the National Guard.

[Jocko Willink]

Dang.

[Dan Pinion]

I mean, I put no thought into this thing. I took a test, and they're like, hey, man, you scored off the charts as fab. Way up at the top GT score. Near the top. I think it was like a 122 or something like that. And then they're like, hey, you can have any job you want. But National Guard's like, hey, here's what you want. I saw a video of scouts doing reconnaissance, making grenades in the, you know, trip wires. And I was like, yep, that's me, buddy. Let's do it. I hated getting my hands dirty at the time. I was like, nope, that's what I want. And two days. Yeah, 48 hours later, I was in national.

[Jocko Willink]

That's wild.

[Dan Pinion]

You go 48 hours, no thought whatsoever.

[Jocko Willink]

It is also awesome that you can be a kid. How old were you, man?

[Dan Pinion]

About to turn 18. I was 17.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, you can be a kid. Signature, no plan whatsoever. And all of a sudden you can have your whole life kind of, kind of planned out at that point.

[Dan Pinion]

Absolutely.

[Jocko Willink]

How's basic training? What was that all about?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I. I don't. I absolutely loved it. I had no. I loved it. I have never realized how challenging and fun it could be. Like, I realized I needed structure like that. So Getting yelled at. Like, I loved watching people not fail mentally break because they didn't realize that it was a game. Like to me it was a game. Watching drill sergeants yell at you to try and change and have you become a team. I immediately playing sports, realized what they were trying to do and try and get us to do something and work together. So I was naturally trying to pull people together as a team, like informally and try and get us. And then watching people who couldn't understand that concept and then like, oh, they're yelling at me. And then break, I couldn't grasp. Like, have you never not been yelled at or have something hard? And then being physically tired, I think I gained 30 pounds, 40 pounds of muscle. Like I went in 150, like 6 foot and came out like 6, 2 and 190 or something like that. So the challenge, the structure, I was tired. And then the paycheck. Oh my gosh, I couldn't believe they're paying.

[Jocko Willink]

Richest guy in the world.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I couldn't believe it. Yeah, I could. 700 bucks or whatever it was a month. I, I loved it. It was amazing. And then I remember shooting that machine gun the first time and I think, love it.

[Jocko Willink]

First sight, boy.

[Dan Pinion]

I was hitting rounds on target, five to seven round burst on the M60 machine gun. And I remember the drill sergeant slapping me with the range rod on top of my helmet and I thought I did something wrong. And next thing you know, he's like, more ammo, more ammo. And I started watching barrels start to fall because I kept hitting the barrels at like 200 meters. Knocked all the barrels off. And they just kept giving me more ammo and I knew, right. Like I'm in heaven.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you shoot left handed?

[Dan Pinion]

No, I was right handed, thankfully. Yeah, I was right handed. No, I don't, I don't need, I don't need brass and going everywhere. Brass deflector.

[Jocko Willink]

60, bro.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, no.

[Jocko Willink]

This is what you say in the book too. You. So you come home, you're, you're like a thick, thick guy. You say my shoulders were broader and I look good, but National Guard is one weekend a month, two weeks a year. What do I do with the rest of my time? I did what any cool high school graduate would do. I went to my local high school basketball game to show everyone how cool I was and see the ladies. As stupid, as stupid as it sounds, this is where I realized I needed to be a full time soldier. That's like a good wake up call. You're like, what am I doing here?

[Dan Pinion]

No, it is. All right, all right, all right.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, yeah, McConaughey.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, but it really, really is, you know, so I went back. It's December, so I graduated right before Christmas. So exodus. I go back and what do you do? My friends are coming back from college, but I don't really relate to them. And you start separate. We didn't have cell phones. You didn't have texting. So you start naturally separation from your friends that way. The ground war had. The buildup had started. So everybody's watching the news for Desert Storm. You know, this is 90. So I go to the high school basketball game to try. And that's what I know. And I remember them playing the national anthem, and I go right to attention and I'm stracked and the flag's there, and I just remember everybody talking, and I remember just burning inside. And now I can look back and understand it, but I remember right then, like. Like, I need to get out. I need. I'm in the Army. I need to get out of here. I need to go serve. And I knew I was learning the army values so that 16 weeks of basic training and serving your country and a bigger cause, like, was starting in my blood right then. And I felt it. Yeah. And I need to put myself in a position to do something. So I went home. I was like, hey, I'm joining active duty and I'm going to serve my country.

[Jocko Willink]

And I'm. Was it. Was it hard to transition over to active duty?

[Dan Pinion]

No, not at all.

[Jocko Willink]

Factor.

[Dan Pinion]

No, because I thought active duty was basic training. I thought I was going to drill sergeants. Like, I showed up in California, Fort Ord, Monterey, California. And I remember asking him, like, where's the drill sergeants? They're like, what? Ain't no drill sergeants here.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. That's what you think the whole military is like.

[Dan Pinion]

Wow.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So this book. Just a little bit about this book. This book really is. Even though I started with, like, this first chapter where you're talking about how you grew up and stuff, the book isn't. It's not like a chronological of your whole life. It's not autobiography or anything. It's more some of the highlights that I'll hit. Some of them that. That where you learned big lessons. Right. And. And the name of the book, as I mentioned, is Chop that Up. And so this comes from you are now. And where. Where are you? What. What was your job at this point?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. So this is Fort Ord, California, my first duty station. I've just Gone active duty and I'm a private, know nothing about life, the army.

[Jocko Willink]

And you guys are getting an inspection, correct?

[Dan Pinion]

You know, so this is the army in the 90s where they inspect your rooms every day. You have to clean everything. And our platoon was responsible for the latrine. And remember, this is, you know, shower heads, you know, six to 10 shower heads, 10 toilets, sinks and whatever, you know, open bay. You didn't have your individual bathrooms. And our platoon is responsible for cleaning that common area. It's great.

[Jocko Willink]

And, and it sounds like you're, you're, you're very motivated at this point, like you're into the game and you kind of take charge of cleaning the heads, cleaning the, cleaning the bathroom. And you say in the book here, so you go to, you, you're looking at the, the first sergeant, you know, he's kind of on his way. And the. In the first stall toilet, you say this. We were staring at the biggest turd I'd ever seen in my life. Whoever deposited this monster needed to see a doctor to get their butthole fixed because it had to be tore up. I can't do this turd justice. It was so big, it was just sitting at the bottom of the toilet bowl and it could easily touch each side of the rim. It was longer than an M7 bayonet, if that helps.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I'll help the crew out here.

[Jocko Willink]

Pinion, this is yours to fix. My gunner ordered me. As we heard, first sergeant, this is the guy that's coming to inspect you. As we heard first sergeant slowly progressing from the stairwell to the NCO latrine at the end of the hall. Only the hallway left, and then us. It would take minutes at least to fix this. So you start to flush the. Flush it, you flush it again. And the turds not going anywhere. And finally you come up with a plan which is just lock the door, the stall door from the inside, crawl out from underneath and you'll talk your way out of it. And so that's exactly what you do. And then here's, here comes the first sergeant. First sergeant was six three, broad shouldered man with an airstrip style, flat top haircut. He was drafted in the army during Vietnam and proudly displayed his draft letter on the wall behind his desk. A Huey door gunner in Vietnam. He claimed he had been shot down three times during combat. He looked like he could kill you by looking at you. Good morning, first sergeant. Welcome to our fine dining establishment. So clean you can eat off the floor. My bullshit mode was in full gear this morning. Shut up Pinion, get out of my way. Everyone has failed so far and I don't see you bucking the trend. We were screwed. At ease. I yelled and everyone inside the latrine snapped to parade rest. This is to indicate respect when an NCO is the senior person entering a room. Carry on, troopers. He commanded under his breath. First Sergeant immediately moved towards the first stall, as was his routine. Why is the door shut? Who thinks it's okay to take a dump during my inspection? Pinch it off and get out of the stall, Trooper. First Sergeant, it's empty. I calmly stated over my right shoulder while stationed at the door's entrance. It's broken. What's the matter with it? First Sergeant asked. And here I made a mistake. I had yet to learn that the First Sergeant was responsible for maintenance and work orders for the buildings in our unit. This was about to get ugly. It won't flush, First Sergeant. I hesitantly responded. Open it up, Pinion. Oh no. Here we go. I crawled back under the stall wall and glanced at our enemy. He was still there, with a hint of a smile forming. You son of a bitch. If I saw any soldier walking like his butt hurt, I was going to kick it for this. I unlocked the door. As it swung open, I held the door against the stall wall with my back and stood at parade rest with the First Sergeant on my left and the toilet on my right. Holy shit. The First Sergeant screamed as the few soldiers behind him giggled. Roger that, First Sergeant. I said defeatedly. First Sergeant squeezed into the stall next to me at parade rest and him staring at the most giant shit in the history of soldier turds. He reached over and flushed the handle. Nothing. The big smiling turd refused to move. First Sergeant turned his cold eyes toward me. You know what you have to do, Pinion? No, First Sergeant. First Sergeant held his right hand in front of my face and formed the famous knife hand used by every NCO and drill sergeant during their career. Also used in a karate chop. First Sergeant took his hand from my face, turned toward the toilet and still looking me dead in the eyes, chopped his hand in the toilet. You have to chop that shit up. He said confidently. The other soldiers in the latrine were gagging or full out laughing now. I was in shock but still at parade rest, refusing to look at the hand to hand combat taking place in the toilet. First Sergeant stared at me the whole time. He finally lifted his hand from the destruction, reached over and hit the toilet handle. The most beautiful sound of swirling perfection took place and the itsy bitsy chopped into A thousand pieces turd drained away. The first Sergeant straightened up and stared into my eyes again. Pinion, this is a life lesson here today. During your career, you will hit many obstacles that won't go away on the first try. When that happens, you can give up and walk away or simply roll up your sleeve and chop that shit up. Understand? Yes, first Sergeant. I replied as first sergeant wiped his combat proven hand on my left arm and shoulder. After his hand was clean, First Sergeant winked, left the latrine and said we had passed the inspection.

[Dan Pinion]

I can see it like it was yesterday.

[Jocko Willink]

So he wiped his freaking hand on you too now.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, now just look, he's like this, huh? And gets done and then is wiping like this.

[Jocko Willink]

But that mentality is real though, isn't it? Got a problem? What are you gonna do?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I mean there's many metaphors and obviously, I mean I live this and what a lesson to learn. And I was almost 19. I mean some people say how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, it's the same metaphor. And this is this. And I have used that mentality my entire life since that I was just doing something, a task two weeks ago and I was chopping it up. Same thing. And that's how I look at all obstacles in life. And that first arm taught me that at 19 and I would not have been successful in of my military career without that lesson and that toilet and that visualization that I've carried the rest of my life. And now you have it.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, now we all have that lovely visualization. That's awesome. Fast forward a little bit. In October 1992, I reported a Freeburg, Germany where I was assigned to a reconnaissance scout platoon in 4th Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment. This was very different from my job at Fort Ord where I was genuinely light and served as division reconnaissance for the 7th Infantry Division. Here I would learn to complement heavy units and tanks. So this is your. How'd you like when you get to Germany when you show up there?

[Dan Pinion]

Well, I loved it. You know, one, I came away with a German wife, so for 30 years it worked out perfect.

[Jocko Willink]

So that's a win.

[Dan Pinion]

Yes. And two, I've been fortunate. You know, I'm sure we'll talk about. But I've been fortunate. As a 19 Delta cavalry scout, I have been blessed to be light heavy helicopters, Bradley's Humvees. You know, I've seen the realm of what reconnaissance can do. So I wasn't just funneled in one area or became special in one area. I've seen the 360 of our job. So I was fortunate in that knowledge. Space heavy, special. It's different.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it was, it was interesting from my perspective. So for us, when I grew up in the SEAL teams and for us, reconnaissance meant there's only one thing. When I thought of reconnaissance, I only thought of one thing. And that was a small, very small group of guys foot patrolling somewhere very clandestine. And basically you're like hiding and you're not going to be seen. And I remember the first time, it was actually with the 137 and we were talking about, we were going into south Central Ramadi and they're like, yeah, we're doing an armored reconnaissance. And I was kind of like, I mean I knew what, I knew what it was just by the name, but I was like that's a totally different viewpoint. Armored reconnaissance means we're going to drive tanks down there and look around and see what's going on. And it was very different from my idea.

[Dan Pinion]

Correct. And what I liked about, you know, same thing. So I was in Freeburg supporting basically 137 or tank battalions is same thing. You're light, you're on foot and you're going deep, but you're really exploring. How can I effectively help armor battalions maneuver to effectively engage the enemy? So what are their axis of attacks that I can recon for them to set them in the best position to attack the enemy and defeat the enemy. And then what information can I give them in effect? Or artillery? How can I affect the battle using artillery?

[Jocko Willink]

So, so are they training you to look for. Here's a pro. This, this kind of terrain is a problem for tanks. This is a good.

[Dan Pinion]

Absolutely.

[Jocko Willink]

This is what they're training you for.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, absolutely. So whether it's a route reconnaissance or area reconnaissance or zone reconnaissance where we're looking at 3 to 5 kilometers wide, going 10 to 15 kilometers deep as one platoon and then looking at the entire terrain of how we can maneuver the battalion or the brigade behind us to come up to the enemy.

[Jocko Willink]

And this is, I guess this is kind of after the, the Cold War. Right. So the walls down in the 90s. And so you're. But, but you guys, I'm sure still had like this vision of fighting the Russians.

[Dan Pinion]

Oh, you're absolutely fighting the Russian threat. So the. 3 by 3 by 3 and yeah, you're absolutely right on.

[Jocko Willink]

Fast forward a little bit and again, get the book. The book is, it's got so many, so many details. I'm not going to cover and read some, some High, high points of it. But the book is just, it's such a, the way you wrote it, it's like listening to somebody tell a really good long story. So get the book. Fast forward a little bit. That year was a good one and we would end it with a bang. In July, I'd married my German wife and we spent three weeks of our honeymoon traveling to see family in New Jersey and Florida. Our scout platoon was the best in Germany for the second straight year. And I had reenlisted to spend six more years in the army. With a picture of Elvis as the backdrop, as he has been. He had been stationed in Freeburg. The army gave me a wife and a rent free place to live, which is the housing area. And my leaders lived down the street. Life was good. It's like perfect, can't go wrong. Living the dream. Fast forward a little bit. On December 01, 1 December 1994, Thursday, I was officially promoted to sergeant by our battalion commander. So you're, you're making rank too? Yeah, correct, focused, working hard. Fast forward. Now we're getting in 1995 in. In fall of 1995, the former Yugoslavian country of Bosnia Herzegovina was out of control with three Bosnian groups fighting each other. The Dayton Peace Accord was drafted and implemented to stop the war and ensure peace. Our unit would be deployed with the mission to enforce the accord and allow people to put their war turn war torn country back together again. So this is like in the 90s. You're about to do something real, which is.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, this would be my first major deployment.

[Jocko Willink]

Coming up. Fast forward a little bit. We were nervous, but this was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission. The only threat discussed was thousands of mines in the country. Our maps were littered with, littered with red dots and one red dot represented between one and a thousand mines in that area. That's real.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. That's kind of widespread number there.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, we don't really appreciate that kind of. One dot, one dot, fast forward. We flew Sunday night and executing the landing was pretty cool. The air crew had us mount the vehicles so we were all in position when we landed. When we landed, the ramp lowered, the crews unleashed the tie downs and we drove off. Within a few minutes the plane was empty and turning around to take off again. That sound, you had to be pumped. How old were you at this point? 24.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, if that, if that, Yeah. I was a sergeant leading my first crew.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

Of men. Yeah. And I was going to get the mission to lead us up north to the Sava river to Secure it so everybody can come across. So.

[Jocko Willink]

You say this now. In our scalp platoon, we had 10 Humvee vehicles, typically with three soldiers per crew, but we were never manned. 100. So we had to get some soldiers from another unit to fill us out. The lead scout is the senior staff sergeant in the platoon, and he led us everywhere. This person generally has the most knowledgeable. Was generally the most knowledgeable, but not in our platoon. Staff Sergeant Heap was the most knowledgeable. And although junior rank in junior in the rank of sergeant, I, quite frankly, was better scout than the other squad leaders together. My staff sergeant and I were a dynamic duo with great soldiers underneath us. Our lead scout was smart, but quirky and absolutely could not handle stress. This was how he became known as Shaky Jake. Fast forward a little bit. We eventually completed our mission to secure the south side, found and established a base camp. Camp Colt escorted our battalion teammates down to Bosnia and helped find and mark too many minefields to be comfortable with. It was draining. No showers either. We would heat a 50 cal ammo can full of water on our potbelly stoves, clean ourselves with a washcloth. It was cold with about 2 to 3ft of snow on the ground, which made mind detecting especially fun. Basically, it sucked. The stress was building and tempers grew short. Once a battalion was established at Camp Colt, they started implementing standard procedures for maintenance. We had grown accustomed to doing our own thing for the last month and a half, but now we would need to inspect our vehicles and request them to be dispatched for missions every seven days. This is a horrible idea because we could be out on a mission for seven to ten days without warning. So it's basically, you're getting put some admin requirements on top of you guys while you're in the field.

[Dan Pinion]

And as I wrote it, I tried to write it as my mentality at that time. You know, as you look back as a leader, there's lessons learned. But I tried to write, as you know, that's me, cocky young man coming up. But yes.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, I forget who I originally learned this from, but I would say this all the time, you know, the. The next echelon above us doesn't understand anything, which is a very common attitude to have. And if you can remember that that's the common attitude is that the people above us don't understand what's happening. Then you go, oh, wait, that's actually me. That's actually my problem. I don't understand what's happening.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, correct. Correct.

[Jocko Willink]

Shaky Jake didn't like it. It frustrated the crap out of him. During one down day with no scheduled missions, we started our dispatch procedures. The vehicles and maintenance tents were located on the flight line and I just finished a mission brief for the following day and was heading to join my team. As I approached the maintenance tent, two or three soldiers jumped through the flaps. I heard screaming from inside and being the idiot that I am, ran into the tent just in time. Shaky Jake was screaming at the maintenance sergeant, a Master Sergeant E8 and someone very senior to Jake. Shaky Jake had his back turned to me. I will fucking do it. Yelled Jake. Fucking pull the pin. The maintenance sergeant yelled back. What the hell is going on? As I came around Jake, I saw him holding an M67 fragmentation grenade. One hand was cupping the grenade and spoon and a finger from his other hand was wrapped around the pull pin. The maintenance sergeant had both hands around Jake's. I did what any dumb person would do and put my hands on top of theirs. So now the grenade was covered by six hands and I yelled, everybody fucking calm down. I'd either startled them or found a commanding voice I didn't know I had. But they immediately stopped screaming and looked at me. Three of us, face to face, holding a grenade. Master sergeant, please release your hands. Staff sergeant, please let go of the pull pin gently give me the grenade and both of you step back, I ordered. They listened and I secured the grenade. As soon as I had the grenade, I left the tent yelling some nonsense instruction to the soldiers gathering to see what the commotion was. I range walked, speed walked to our platoon tents where I found the platoon sergeant and the platoon leader. Shaky Jake lost his mind and pulled a grenade on the maintenance guy. I stammered. Where's the grenade? The platoon leader demanded as he jumped up from his cot. Right here in my hand, sir. That's freaking crazy little scenario.

[Dan Pinion]

No, I mean, yeah, what do you do? And it's. I said, these are 100%. What do you do in those situations? And you come around and you see it like this. And next you know, I'm like that. And that masks aren't. Wasn't playing around. And I'm looking, I'll say, jake, I'm looking at Jake. And I didn't understand what stress this does to a person. You know, you can look back now and understand the situations we are in. You know, a few months into it, it like I said, no showers, barely any power. You know, your mind sweeping three feet of snow looking for mines and you're. We're marking the minefields. You know what it does? You don't know about finance problems, marriage problems. I don't know the minds of people at that time. And then six of us with hands on a grenade. What do you do? And I was a young sergeant E5 promotable to a staff sergeant E6 and a master E8. And I had no idea. All I said, you know, you read it, get your hands off. And then next thing I know, I had the grenade. And then I didn't even check to make sure the pins were in or the clip was on. Next thing I know, I'm taking a grenade, just holding on to the spoon, you know, so it was. It was a bad situation. But, you know, I didn't understand stress at that time, what it does to a person.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, and that's kind of the. The big lessons that you learn there because this guy, you know, he was sent to mental health for a few days, which is called behavior behavioral health now, but no investigation, no sworn statements, nothing. And a few days later, he comes back and basically everyone acts like it didn't happen. And what you say is, stress is hard, and it's essential to know your soldiers personally and professionally. We knew Jake stressed easily, but we only tried to help him after significant incident during deployment. I also learned that during deployment that when the situation became stressful, it was up to me to calm things down. I learned to call people by their first names when the hit the fan. It put them at ease and help them focus on talking to me. That's a really good point. It's a really good point. It, you know, you're used to calling someone lieutenant or sergeant or whatever the case may be, and all of a sudden you say, hey, Fred, listen to me right now. That's a. That's a really good point. You say, in later positions, I use these lessons to show my soldiers it was okay to have problems and acknowledge them. I was the first to make routine appointments with behavioral. Behavioral health. And I made sure my soldiers knew and saw and more importantly, joined me. I also ensured that we Never again did seven day dispatches in the field or on deployment. Thirty dispatches, always. So you're learning lessons. Where on September 11th, where were you?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, so I was a drill sergeant once. I was at Fort Knox. I was a drill sergeant, but I was September 11th. My wife and I were actually on vacation or on leave in Germany. We flew space A. So I was getting ready to come off the trail. So my tour was ending.

[Jocko Willink]

Your tour as a drill sergeant was.

[Dan Pinion]

Coming to an end.

[Jocko Willink]

What? What? As a drill sergeant? How'd you like being a drill sergeant?

[Dan Pinion]

I loved it.

[Jocko Willink]

And what to me it seems like you are going to get to understand human beings.

[Dan Pinion]

Absolutely.

[Jocko Willink]

At a higher level being a drill sergeant.

[Dan Pinion]

So I was fortunate to be selected for the next higher rank and drill sergeant within a two week period. So technically it was going to put me behind sort of like my platoon sergeant timeline. But I was such a better platoon sergeant preparedness wise by being a drill sergeant first and it definitely helped me later. I'm not saying I was a good platoon sergeant, you know, time will tell what people thought of me, but I was better prepared because the drill sergeant. And you are absolutely correct the way like even say, like I said, like an average life growing up, I don't know if that's true. How many people actually had two parents, a house, woods, learn to fish, hunt, like had siblings and cousins around them and had mentors. Like, I was probably way above average. And you don't see that until you see all these different cultures come together and you teach them how to be teammates. Just like when I taught ROTC and teaching college kids how to be officers. Like I, I got to see different spectrums of stuff in life, in my career. So being a drill sergeant was one of the highlights. But I was overseas when September 11th actually happened. And I started calling like, hey, do you need me to report to this base? Can I fly home? It was, it was hard times.

[Jocko Willink]

Where did you, where did you go next after September? So after drill Sergeant you're overseas, were you like on a, on like a wrapping up your tour as a drill sergeant leave type thing?

[Dan Pinion]

No. So I was. My wife, because she was German, had hiatus from her job, so she was entering her three years. So she was. We were trying to go back to Germany. So we are actually back in Germany looking for housing and I was working with Branch, trying to get assignment back to Germany. And we're visiting her parents and we're coming up. And I was, I basically told Branch, I said, I really would like to go to Germany because my wife's going back there with or without me. And that's where they're like, hey, you go to Ranger School or Pathfinder? If you go to Ranger School, I'm not sure I can get you Germany. If you go to Pathfinder, you can go to Germany. I said, well, I guess I'm going Pathfinder.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

And I went Pathfinder and got Germany.

[Jocko Willink]

When September 11th happened, you know, when I, when I saw it happening, obviously I knew there was going to be a response, but in no part of my brain did I think we were about to start 20 years of war? What were you thinking?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I honestly, yeah, I don't know if I thought 20 years either. I didn't, I didn't know who was absolutely responsible. I can't say even my focus was on that. I think my focus was making sure they're prepared for whatever was about to come. And I knew Afghanistan when we first were going into Afghanistan and then they're talking Iraq. And I was a platoon sergeant now. My sole focus was making sure our platoon was prepared for whatever we were getting, getting ready to go to whatever that. And it was just making sure we were trained. And we had a troop commander that just pushed us in training and that's what we. I just focused on that. Not length, not where, not what, just our jobs were ready for whatever we're or wherever we're going.

[Jocko Willink]

Speaking of training, I'm going to fast forward a little bit. In the book you guys are preparing to go out in the field for some training. You say it was an alert to go in the field. 100% accountability by 0400, order brief at 0500 and roll out to the field by 0800. About 15 minutes before the mission brief, I heard the first sergeant yelling for me to get to the commander's office. I thought nothing of it, maybe just wanted an update to see how fast we could move after the mission be brief. I was wrong. What do you know about such and such whorehouse? Demanded the commander. The second platoon sergeant, whom I admired deeply, was there as well. A deep rooted military family and traditions type of soldier, also extremely competent. Never heard of it, sir. I am married, I sarcastically replied. But I really had never heard of it. Well, Staff Sergeant Michaels from 2nd Platoon is apparently there and I need you two to go retrieve him, he ordered. I looked at my battle buddy and then at the first sergeant. All of us wearing shit eating grins because this might turn out to be fun. Roger that, sir. So you say you probably selected for this mission because you spoke German. You figure out where this place is and you show up at this brothel and you say we had entered another dimension. A vast living room with humongous cathedral ceilings. A beautiful staircase in the middle led to the rooms above. Couches, tables and chairs were spread throughout like it was a a spa. In the in one corner of the room was a buffet of drinks and fresh fruit for breakfast. In the other corner sat a mini weight set to work out on. And we saw an enclosed glass area with a small Pool and hot tub. This place was the ultimate man cave. Lots of TVs and music played at 0600 in the morning. To top it off, three, three or four men were lounging around wearing nothing but towels with girls sitting beside them.

[Dan Pinion]

If you've been, I'm sure people have been overseas or other places that they can relate to this. 100 maybe, maybe not.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And it's legal there. That's the thing. It's. Prostitution is legal in Germany. Correct. So.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Or at least that's what you said it wasn't.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. In that time. Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Dan Pinion]

I think it still is trying not.

[Jocko Willink]

To stare because some of the women were completely naked. We hurried up the stairs, opened the doors one by one. On the second floor, we found our guy knocked out between two beautiful Asian women who woke as we entered. Get your ass up and let's go. Stick. We're going. We're going in the field in two hours. You guys rush downstairs, he gets dressed and then. This is what I just had to read this section because of this. As we were leaving, I saw it. On the wall just before the exit was a certificate of appreciation. A certificate of appreciation is a military document printed on behalf of a command or unit and given to businesses, restaurants that support our soldiers. It is always signed by the unit's commanders and senior enlisted leader. For us, that would be our captain and first sergeant. This certificate on the wall caught my eye because it had our unit crest, which was a dead giveaway. I don't remember the exact words, but it read something like for meritorious support of our American soldiers and their needs. Your professionalism, skilled techniques and utmost most care of us helped maintain morale and well being of our soldiers, etc. Etc. This is hanging on the wall. The certificate was signed you're grateful soldier instead of our unit commander and it had the whorehouse name in bold letters in the middle. It was professional looking and surrounded by similar certificates, units, coins and patches. I'm taking this. I shouted as we matched out the door. As we marched out the door, that's it. You guys go on the mission, everything goes smooth and here's a little bit of. Here's the lesson you learned here. Before being released for the weekend, our commander and first sergeant held a meeting and the captain issued a new policy letter outlining off limits establishments. Of course, the whorehouse was at the top of the list along with many other establishments. We never had a issue with the whorehouse again. You guys had a little dining in ceremony which is like a party and you presented our commander with a certificate of appreciation that he had unknowingly provided to a whorehouse. It was great. Overall laugh. But I learned several lessons from it. First, accountability is essential. This would help me teach my leaders later, when I served as command sergeant Major. When someone fails to show up to work, we don't simply wait and assume everything is okay. We find them. That is genuine care, even if they merely overslept. We always care for our soldiers. The second lesson is about policy letters. Every stupid policy letter is written because soldiers messed up too many times. If everyone did the right thing, there would be no need to explain it in detail. From that moment forward, I scrutinize policy letters from a different perspective. What is the policy's actual purpose? How will it be enforced? Is there a systemic issue that needs to be addressed? And how will you implement it if you write it? Sometimes commanders go crazy with policy letters and use them as punishment. Lastly, do you as a leader and soldier actually read and understand the policy letters? So, yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

Well, what's funny is after this book came out, one of my buddies, you know, read it. We, we came up in our careers together and either I followed him, he followed me. He called me. He's like, bro, I'm the one who presented death certificate to the Morehouse. He's like, he's like, I gave it to him. I was like, I figured, I figured it'd be you.

[Jocko Willink]

Now again, I'm gonna fast forward here. You end up, you're on your first deployment to Iraq. You're, you're doing missions. This, this one here, I'm going to talk about. In the spring of 2003, our unit deployed to Iraq. Smack dab in the middle of Baghdad. We're doing a HVT raid on a terrorist cell. Working with the British SAS Special operation team. Didn't have enough people to conduct the raid, so we would run the raid for them, secure the prisoners and houses, and then they would come in and grab all the intelligence, etc. When you combine different organizations, you call yourself a task force. So you're, you know, they didn't have enough people. You got to hit a target.

[Dan Pinion]

And I think this becomes common, you know, especially as, you know, if you're doing intercourt on out of cordon, the actual raid, sense of site exploration and all that, you know, ssi, all that good stuff. Sometimes you just don't have the people, especially specialized units. So you use us or some other people to help.

[Jocko Willink]

So yeah, and that next level of that for us in Ramadi was like, here we, we would get intel from somewhere and we. There'd be a target to hit in somewhere, you know, in downtown Ramadi. And we could brief, get our Iraqi troops, load up our Humvees, drive down there, drive to the, the cop, foot patrol out from the cop and all that. Took, you know, eight 12 hours to get all that done because we have to get permissions to take our Iraqi soldiers. Like, there's a bunch of stuff we. Or I could call Mike Baima and say, hey, go hit building 28 and look for this guy. And he'd be like, cool, I'll be back in 20 minutes.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, correct.

[Jocko Willink]

And it was just like, awesome. But that's, that's at another time. A little bit more in the future for this one. You guys kind of go through a planning cycle with the sas. You're gonna go out and hit this target. Fast forward a little bit. The time finally came. You guys reached the checkpoint. 0 200, the platoons reach their positions. You guys set off your explosive charges. So boom, boom. The explosions were near simultaneous and it was beautiful. Ears ringing, the assault teams moved. We had put too much explosives on the guest house door, blowing the entire thing off the frame and making it easy for our teams to enter. Within seconds, our assault team had a man, woman and child in custody and brought them around the corner to put behind the guest house. Two terrorists came out the back door, one of them with a weapon. The selector switch on my rifle went from safe to semi and I laid my sights on his forehead because there was an old car in between him and me. I should have shot differently, but I aim for his head. It would be the first, but definitely not the last time I squeezed my trigger with the intent to kill. I fired one shot and grazed the side of his head and my staff sergeant at the enemy on the left directly after we both missed. Or sorry. My staff sergeant fired at the enemy on the left directly after we both missed. But it worked out because the enemy dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Meanwhile, inside the main house, we heard room clear, Room clear. Within two minutes, they had everyone moving into the garden between the houses and then on their knees. And that's when we learned that Iraqi walls are made differently than American or European walls. You guys almost shot me, said one cult leader. The tracer round I had fired the first round to guide everyone to where I was shooting, nicked my target, traveled through two walls, and passed the other assault team. That near miss made us rethink where and how we positioned people for future raids. With the site secure and the inner cordon set. We brought in the special operations team who conducted their sensitive site exploitation. We secured nine terrorists, three 3 hvts, and a crapload of weapons to boot. It was an extremely successful mission. After returning, the special operations team by team came by and shook every one of our soldiers hands and said that was one of the best executed raids they'd seen. It would also lead to many more dangerous missions, but we had confidence and experience to execute them all. The biggest lesson I learned this time was about not missing my target when I shot. I will never forget that moment. I didn't regret trying to kill someone. I regretted missing and I made sure my soldiers and I never missed again. When you only had three to five seconds to engage an enemy when ambushed, if you missed, they ran away, but if you hit them, they had to stay and fight. And we now owned the ambush and could kill the enemy. Ask any of the soldiers I led after this mission and they will tell you. I put emphasis on, on marksmanship and shooting. We never missed again. That's the shooting part and then the understanding what your backdrop is. And if you miss, you could be hitting your own guys, which is something that a lot of times, you know, that doesn't really happen in the movies, you know, where you don't think about what your backdrops are. I think I learned this when in the, in the 90s we had one of the main kill houses that we used when I was at Seal Team 1 was made of just literally plywood. And so you had to set up your whole assault to, to not have anyone downrange because we didn't, we didn't have, we didn't have bullet traps at this time. Like we would just shoot paper targets or you know, cardboard silhouettes that are in a house. So you had to kind of figure out the geometry of the whole thing, thing to make sure that you weren't going to shoot your own guys. And that's something that you don't think about a lot.

[Dan Pinion]

I mean I put no thought of rounds going through the outer exterior of an Iraqi house until that point. Not at all. That totally changed our thought process, you know, especially as we're thinking about like inner cordon. And until they said they saw the tracer go through the extra exterior wall and two interior walls. And then like I said, I, I taking lives or pulling a trigger against an enemy. I will never regret if that's what we're asked to do. And we saw in Ramadi as we'll talk when you're getting side street ambushes or from rooftop or a window and you, you know, you only have a split second to see it react and engage before they run away or hide or circle a different direction. You only get one shot and if you miss, you're not going to get a second chance until later. But if you hit them, it's on. And I will take my chances every day when it's on. So we, we emphasize shooting non stop. I mean we zeroed on a 1 inch square at 100 meters. I mean that was our zero from that point on. And it was 5 out of 6 at 100 meters. 1 inch square, black square. And if you weren't in that, it didn't count.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, the marksmanship is a real thing. Got to be good.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Jocko Willink]

This was kind of a story here that I, it just shows you how awesome our soldiers are. You say. When our new brigade commander came in, our mission immediately changed. We would now split up assignments. One platoon would escort the brigade to meet the brigade command team around while the other conducted IED route clearance missions around headquarters. No more raids and finding bad guys. We became a taxi service and circled the headquarters looking for explosives. That's a, that's a significant mission change.

[Dan Pinion]

It is. And say so you're talking 2003. You're right behind the main push. I mean they're going from dropping grenades and taking Baghdad International Airport 3rd ID and we're right behind them. And our mission was find bad guys. And like you were talking about earlier, you know, we basically had the whole brigade footprint and we could go to all the battalions and, and say, hey, we want to operate in your sector for a week. What would you like us to do for you? Or how can we help you? So we knew the entire east Baghdad footprint and could help all the battalions and like, hey, we would love you to do this. And that's what we did. We found bad guys and it was awesome.

[Jocko Willink]

What months was this?

[Dan Pinion]

This would be, was this May 03 to basically probably. Yeah. October oh three when it first started or that time period.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So this is like wild west activities.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, correct. And again, the enemy isn't really, they're learning IEDs at that time. So they're dropping grenades. Yeah, they're learning. And then they lifted stop loss and commander started switching out. And then we went to, hey, route clearance. But I mean we didn't even have doors on Humvees and we had no up armor. I mean we had the Vietnam flak jackets on floorboards with sandbags and again, I'm 6 3, and my knees are in my chest from the sandbags and flak jackets trying to protect us. And they're like, hey, go find IDs. And this is Baghdad with the wires and everywhere. It's command detonated and wires at best. I mean, it's just trash. And you didn't have the vehicles. And we're driving around in circles.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, we had. We had the same thing. Unarmored Humvees. We had the can, like, literal, actual canvas doors, you know, like. And so we. What we did was we popped those doors off completely and we turned our seats so that they faced outboard. And so then. So then at least we'd be presenting the plate of our body armor. And it was also. It felt better because now you're just looking. You're looking out. Instead of having to look over your shoulder, you're looking out and scanning for targets, which felt a lot better than sitting there trying to look over your shoulder with your weapon kind of canted. So that's what you guys end up doing. You're getting replacement soldiers, too, or new soldiers. One of those soldiers was Private David Cantor from California. And so you're out on a clearance mission. This guy's a new guy. And you come up against a suspected ied and you call eod. EOD shows up. And when EOD shows up, they're like, okay, cool. Yep. We think it's an id. So they're going to send their robot down. So they got a robot, and they're going to put a water charge on it and blast that thing in place, which is a great thing to do, not put any lives at risk. So you say this as the robot backed away. So that's what they do. The EOD shows up, they send the robot down. And then you say this as the robot backed away to turn around, either it got stuck or the transmitter stopped working. We watched and waited and finally got impatient. And I asked the EOD leader what was the matter. The robot is stuck. We need to go down there and get it. Crap, here we go, I thought. I turned and saw the other EOD soldier putting on his bomb suit. I started calculating whether we needed to expand our perimeter to look for bad guys in case this was a command detonated or someone was waiting for the EOD SOL soldiers to get close enough. I called the leaders over, and we mapped out two areas we would push to ensure no one was watching or waiting for us. I spotted. I spotted. Private Candor edged edge, Cantor edging closer to us as we talked and decided to with him in combat in a stressful situation. Welcome to the army, Caner. Come here, Private. We need help. The robot is stuck, and we need you to go get it. I ordered. Cantor went ghost white, which was the reaction I expected for someone with Colombian blood. He looked positively Caucasian at that moment. Cantor hadn't seen the soldier in the bomb suit yet. He looked at the robot, then at me, and very nervously said, roger that, Sergeant, and turned toward the robot. I was utterly amazed. He didn't really know us yet or trust us, and this was his first experience with an explosive device, yet he thought it was his duty to go down there, and that's what he planned to do. We immediately stopped him, of course, and laughed our asses off. You could see the blood rush back to Cantor's body after a massive look of relief came over his face. It was a golden moment. That's, to me, just an epic story, like, you got a guy. Hey, we need to go and just risk your life to go grab this robot. And he's like, yep, Roger that.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. I mean, yeah. One SO one I'm gonna meet Cantor tonight after this. It's amazing. And then Cantor becomes a sniper and does amazing stuff for us and Ramani again. He worked with Chris Krat, Kyle and stuff. I mean, Cantor saved lives when we talk Dietrich here, but new private replacement grows up. His brother's in a gang from the streets here in California and serves his country, and we ask him to do something, and he. He's like, roger that. Scared. And he does it. And that's just one of many of a few soldiers. Yeah, he's absolutely amazing. And we messing with a kid in combat, and then. But that's, you know, that's. I bet you all military is like that. Yeah, I. I'm sure somebody's like, oh, that's horrendous. That's the military.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it's. It's horrendous. It's horrendous and really funny.

[Dan Pinion]

And it's true. Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

And there's another cool story you write about Cantor in here. He ends up getting in trouble at some point and, like, going AWOL for a little bit. And you call him up, you talk to him, and when you, you know, you, hey, look, you got to come back. Get back here. And when he gets back, you, you, you, you punish him. You know, you say we rip off his rank and. And demote him to private, but if you check his official paperwork, there won't be anything. Anything. Because as far as anyone's new. So you did a little paperwork shuffle, like.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I mean, there is no paperwork.

[Jocko Willink]

Exactly.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. Rank came off his chest and rank went back on his chest. He. He graduated sniper school. There was a situation back with his family back here in California, and he went back to take care of it instead of coming right back to Germany to our final train up to come back to Iraq. He was scared. He didn't know what to do because his other buddy who graduated sniper school came right back to Germany. And I was like, hey, where's Cantor? And then he got scared. And then when I got a hold of him on the phone, I was. First name David. I need you to come home. Everything will be all right. I need you get your ass back here. We'll take care of it. And there had to be punishment, but it was visual. I knew what he was doing, and I knew the reasons he was doing it. Sometimes you get. And I wouldn't be where I was if leaders hadn't done stuff for me.

[Jocko Willink]

You. You end up. You get hurt, you get blown up. Right. On that deployment, their first one. Yeah. What happened there?

[Dan Pinion]

So. And thankfully, again, thankfully, it's 2003 and. And not later, as we were talking about. They were learning different stuff. So we were escorting the brigade command sergeant major, wonderful man who later died Christmas Eve. And we were just coming down route Pluto on the east side by Soverler City, and IED exploded. But it was more of a grape charge, you know, where they're packing all the charges, like shaped charge, as you know. And it hit us. Demolish the vehicle. And I think there might be pictures if not, I have them. Thankfully we were okay. Later found out I was not okay when they. I. We responded. But again, we're talking about, like calm under fire. And I called the reports on the one good radio. The other radio was shot to hell. The whole left side was peppered, all the tires were flat. Antennas were gone. And we responded. I remember I had the ops sergeant major behind me, E9. And he was like, what do I do? And we started. We actually opened the doors, got out and started to pull cover while the other vehicle was coming around to search. And he wouldn't get out of the vehicle. I was like, get out. Pull cover. And I called the report and I was like, three wias. And I sent. And they're like, who? And I was like, red for Delta, Red 4, Golf, Red 4. And they're like, that's you? I'm like, yes. And then they're treating us. And then they responded and I was telling her earlier, I always used to call my wife on a sat phone like every two weeks on a Sunday. This happened on a Thursday, I believe. And we get treated, and we're basically all rtd. They banished us up. Oh, we went out the mission the next day. The brigade sergeant major, he came and grabbed me. He's like, hey, opinion. I need you to get a vehicle. It'd be nice if you get your vehicle fixed. I mean, they had to replace all the tires, all the combo, everything. We had holes, holes all through the vehicle. Vehicle. And they're like, hey, I want to take your vehicle to division headquarters so you can see what we went through. I'm like, we. I was like, all right. So our major and I remember Lugo, my driver was just like this, you know, but they say you fall down, you get back on the bike. But he was like this, driving to division headquarters the next day. But anyway, you know, they do, like, casual reports or whatever. Somehow I got back to the rear, and they left a voice message to my wife, and it was, have you heard about your husband? If not, call me. That was our casualty notification. Well, I didn't call my wife, and I called her on Sunday. As soon as she heard my voice, she is freaking out. And I'm like, baby, you can hear me, right? You hear me, right? You hear me? Yes, it was bad. Thankfully, I was okay. We later found out out that I had tore an ACL in my knee, which required surgery. As soon as I got back, they did the mri. Okay, you, like, you have no ACL anymore. When I had gone into the radio mount and tore Whatever. So I had a surgery right after. And then they found out I had bleeding on the back of the brain from the tbi. But, yeah, that was. That was the IED from the. That id.

[Jocko Willink]

How long was this first appointment we got extended?

[Dan Pinion]

Sometimes I misspeak. I think that one was 17 months. Was it 12? 15. 15. 15 months, yeah, because we got extended right as we. I mean, we were shooting basic load, and they're like, hey, you're going to Kuwait in two days. And they're like, nope, stop. Extend it. Go to Cardigan off in Karbala and stopped uprising. And we got extended three months. Yeah, 15 months.

[Jocko Willink]

How was it coming home after that deployment?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, it was good. It was hard. You know, it's hard. Any deployments? Coming home is hard. But I think mine was hard because I. I talk about getting fired sometimes, and I had a really rough relation. Relationship with my third commander, and it was My fault. You know, you have to own. I was pushing the wrong way as a leader, and I put my platoon leader in a rough spot because I thought I knew all the answers, and I knew what I was doing as a platoon sergeant, which I did. And I knew how to keep my men alive, but I was pushing my commander wrong, and I thought my commander was a coward under fire. Different story. And three weeks before the deployment, he removed me after an incident, and my brigade sergeant major saved me from a court martial. And so I was removed, and they put me in brigade staff. And as we got back, that's when they found out my ACL was gone. And. And they found the brain bleed or spotting, and they did this ACL surgery, and it was the brigade sergeant major who called me and was like, hey, congratulations, you also made E8. You know, good job, buddy. And, oh, by the way, we're already being told we're going back to Iraq. We're not even home 30 days. And they're like, hey, you're going back to Iraq. I mean, we just did 15 months, but that was the time. 2003. 2000. For, like. I mean, I met people who went with us to Iraq. Stop loss, lifted they PCs, and we saw them coming back north as we were going south to go home. And 30 days after we get home, they're like, hey, we're going back to Iraq. And within a year. And he's like, Congratulations, you made E8. When can you walk? I was like, hey, they said, I'll be running in nine. That's not what I effing said. When can you walk? I'm like, 30 days. He's like, good, I'm making you the first sergeant. You're going back to the BRT. Get ready, because we. You're gonna have a special mission.

[Jocko Willink]

So when you left in October, in October 2003, did when you went home, because. So I got to Iraq in, like, September, October 2003.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, we left, like, July of 04 or something like that. Oh, it was just. Our mission changed in 03. We started doing. We started doing circle. I got. I got blown up in 03, but we did circle.

[Jocko Willink]

So when you. So you. So you didn't leave until July of 04?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I think around that time. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So you had started to see. Because I was going to say there was a time period, like, maybe around December 2003 into early 2004. Even in the spring, it seemed like things seemed to be going in a decent direction.

[Dan Pinion]

Correct.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, oh, you know, like. Because I Left in the spring, and it's probably around April of 2004. And it seemed like there was a little. There was a spike in some. Some enemy activity because the, The. The Shia were starting to rise up and that was starting to cause problems. But prior to April, so what would that be? March, February and March. It was like, oh, we're gonna. This, this. We're not gonna be here for that much longer. That's how I felt. Did you kind of get that feeling too?

[Dan Pinion]

We. We're pulling tanks out of. I was escorting tanks to Kuwait. They're like, yeah, we're good. We're gonna be pulling cops, shutting down bases and cops and everything else. Right? We're good, man. We're out of here. Yeah, we're out.

[Jocko Willink]

So you get back, you're immediately. You let your leg heal up, and now you're right back into training for your next deployment. And what's your job now? What's your position?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, so I was in brigade staff for a couple months, getting better. And then we here, we're going back. So I think it was April 2005 is when they laterally appointed me to 1st Sergeant E8 and put me officially back into Brigade Reconnaissance Troop to get ready to go back to Iraq. Yeah. April 05. Then when was Colonel McFarlane officially the Brigade commander? I think so. And they're like, hey, we got a special mission for you. And again, the Brigade Reconnaissance Troop is a special unit to begin with. And I'm not trying to sound cocky or anything, but it's a Brigade Reconnaissance Unit.

[Jocko Willink]

How many guys are in the. In the brigade recombinant?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, on paper, It's. It's like 57, 54. With attachments, we can go up all the way up to 100 depending on what missions we're doing. But on paper, it's like 54.

[Jocko Willink]

So your workup for that. Any major lessons learned from your. As you're preparing to go on this deployment?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I think the biggest lessons were the mission change. Because they're like, hey, we want you to do small kill teams, ambush missions. So we are going to embed asymmetric warfare Group. We want you to learn from oda, we want you to learn from seals. Like, here's all the unconventional teams we want you to learn from. We're going to send this amount of people, sniper school, this amount of people to tracking school like we went. We are sending people schools and doing all the field training, so there's no downtime. So you had one year back, but that one year Back was training for stuff not out of our realm, but it was new lessons learned. So I think it was getting ready for that type of missions. And then right before we deployed, they're like, oh, change of mission. We're going to put you under 137 and put you up north as a landowner. Which is, okay, not typically our mission, but that's what our training was focused on. Small kill team mission operations. So that.

[Jocko Willink]

And was that. Was that McFarland driving that?

[Dan Pinion]

Correct.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, I don't know, some insight, doesn't he?

[Dan Pinion]

Correct. Correct. And he pulled myself and Captain by him in the office and said, this is where I need you to go with your unit. And that's what we did.

[Jocko Willink]

What was your first impression of McFarland again?

[Dan Pinion]

You get this tall, almost. I'm not gonna say nerdy, but sort of nerdy, dry sense of humor. Like, I couldn't read them at all at first. And, you know, some guys are funny. Some guys just look like hunter killer, sort of go, like, scary. I didn't have any of that with them. I. I really had no opinion at first. And, you know, I can say stuff about Colonel Tedesco and some of the other battalion commanders, you know, like Captain Byma, you just get this arrogance right away. Yeah, that guy, he's like, all right, I got you. I can read you like a book easy. Your book has pictures and colors. But I. I mean, yeah, Colonel McFarlane is just skinny, tall. You can tell he's smart right away. But he gave us a mission. He was straightforward in it, too. And we had a good S3, and then they just told us what you want and. Right. Execute. But he gave us the authority and the lenience to run it how we felt.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. He's a true believer in decentralized command, that's for sure. So when you go on deployment. So your first thing. When you go on deployment, it's now, what, early 2006, and you guys go straight to Talent far.

[Dan Pinion]

Correct. And we're west of Telfar and Sinjar. Sinjar Mountains. Just south of Sinjar Mountains in biage. In fact, that's where you. That's. So this tells you about main gun Buy him up. His first op order was welcome back biage. Like, that was his first op order for us to go back to Iraq.

[Jocko Willink]

And what. When you're up in Telfar. So what are you guys doing up there? What's your job? What's your mission?

[Dan Pinion]

So we were landowners of a small town, so.

[Jocko Willink]

So your troop actually had like.

[Dan Pinion]

We own land okay. And we had Iraqi army.

[Jocko Willink]

And this is when Baimo is still in charge of your troop.

[Dan Pinion]

Correct.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Dan Pinion]

And we own the town and the land south of it. And we called it like the terrorist training camp. Like they were bad, the terrorists, and they were blowing themselves up. We would get some mortar attacks and we do some counter mortar miss missions. But our job was really to try and work with the Iraqi army there and have them turn over, take over that area. So we were partnering with them a lot to do a lot of the missions. And then really south of that area. And then sometimes we go out to Syria, the border out there, and try and stop the smuggling that was going out there on the border.

[Jocko Willink]

When did you start hearing rumors about Ramadi?

[Dan Pinion]

It came fast. That changed a mission for us. I think we're like the redhead stepchild. We're just out there doing our thing and all of a sudden they're like, hey, we're going to close this base here in Bias and you're going to go to Tal Afar. And by the way, we got AWG coming in again. They're going to embed with you for 30 days and we need your snipers to get ready. And we're going somewhere west of Fallujah. And I had operated west of Fallujah in my first. When we did the Fallujah Mission in Oh3, we started looking at mats and they started talking Ramadi, probably, we didn't hear about until probably early May or late April.

[Jocko Willink]

Dang.

[Dan Pinion]

So it was late. And I think they were still trying to decide who's going where between battalions and stuff. Yeah. So I don't. Yeah, it was quick for us.

[Jocko Willink]

And then what. How did you guys get down there? Just. Just drive.

[Dan Pinion]

Drive. Yeah, we drove. So that was. So we closed up, went to Tal Afar, got our marching orders. And that's why I talked like the transition for us was huge. And then we drove our entire troop through. And I mean, you're talking multiple sectors, Apaches overhead, you're switching crypto through the zones with multiple commands like it through the night. And then I think that was our first transition that the game is on. And we're talking like Doc Black and stuff. That was here earlier for the new soldiers. We just came from training camp that people blowing themselves up. We are now hitting convoys and multiple IEDs along the route from Baghdad to Fallujah to Ramadi. And we're getting stopped with multiple convoys in the middle of the night. And IEDs are just going off along the route. And that's a Main route. And I remember our supply sergeant is an LMTV with a whip antenna, man pack radio. And I'm tracking the convoy on the Blue Force tracker and we're doing a count and I don't see the LMTV because he doesn't have a Blue Force tracker. But I'm doing a count of the convoy and he says he's moving, but our convoy is not moving. He had jumped into the other. Some other convoy. So now I'm chasing our supply sergeant along a route and I track him down and I get him pulled over, I'm like, bro, you're in the wrong convoy. He's like, what? I'm like, you are leading us to Rati right now. You're the lead man. Tip of the spear. But it was like it was a wakeup call for some. Like, we are not north. We are not in the north anymore. Like, we are moving. The game is changing. It just the movement, the radi was fun.

[Jocko Willink]

And. And then when you guys, when you guys got down there, did you guys immediately get chopped to the 137?

[Dan Pinion]

No. So we left 137 when we got to Talafar.

[Jocko Willink]

Got it.

[Dan Pinion]

And then we didn't. I don't think we had clear attachment orders yet. So when we got to Camp Ramadi, we were back under brigade control initially. And I think, yeah, we were told we're going to start doing small kill team missions. And that's when we initially told we were going to start working with the SEAL teams. In fact, I think our first few missions were with Seal Team 3. And yeah, our first three missions were with Seal Team 3.

[Jocko Willink]

What was your impression of meeting. Meeting my guys?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, it was no interesting. In a good way. So we had worked with the ODA team up north and we did not have the greatest impression because they were very standoffish. And my first deployment, we had very good interactions with unconventional forces in general. No matter who they were, what task force they were, whatever they said they were, we had very good interactions. But up north, we had a very standoffish interaction. They had their own compound within our compound and would not talk to us and would not share what missions they were doing, would only tell us when it was over. And that's a very tough atmosphere to deal with when you're trying to share intel or how can you help each other. So it is very different when you get invited to Shark Base to come into your talk and you're like, hey, brother, my name is Jocko. For some reason I thought it was Rhino or something like that.

[Jocko Willink]

At first, Rhino was actually the task you to commander after me was.

[Dan Pinion]

His nickname was Rhino.

[Jocko Willink]

So you went from Jocko to Rhino.

[Dan Pinion]

Maybe that's why I stuck. Yeah. But either way, I was like, man, what a badass. But I remember I was like, man, badass. And I think I was our first impressions, like, man, how welcoming of a difference it is to say, hey, how can we help? I think that's one of your first sayings, like, this is what we do. How can we help each other? And then this is the area of we know right now. And I think you had an intel person give us a layout of what you knew. And because we were starting to build our map and we had pull all the intel from point deployments before, and we had our XO John Vilcenor, and a staff sergeant Damon Walker, who was in our headquarters. They started building the intel of all of Radi and we had all the building numbers, and we started pinwheeling all the attacks by house, by hour, by day of the week, by month to try and find patterns. And we're. We had no intel experience, and they're like, hey, we're gonna pinwheel this thing. So initially, and then my guys had this sort of this coolness because they had done small kill team. This is a background they've been training for. For almost a year to get ready. And they're like, hey, we're ready for missions. So I think within the first two. Two weeks after transfer authority, we're already on missions with you guys, and they're coming back like, this is what we train for. So they were hyped, and we had success in emissions. I mean, Jesse Gonzalez came back. I. I'll never forget. He came back and he's like, first arm shot a203 right now. We didn't have the. The cars or whatever. We had the 203s under that rifle. He's like shot 203 round he. Through the window. First try, they high fived me, and I was like, hey, great job, Jesse. Gonzo. We call them Gonzo.

[Jocko Willink]

The. The. We dumped a lot of 203 rounds. A lot of. A lot of those 40 mic microns. Yeah, you're right. We didn't have a lot of 203s. We used the M79.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, the M79.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Old school, that thumper. But, yeah, it was. It was great. You know, the. The attitude in Ramadi was like, hey, we need. Everyone needs all the help we can get, and we're all one big team here. So you guys, like, for us, it was like, oh, you guys want to come out and set up overwatch positions near us? Awesome. Like, let's go.

[Dan Pinion]

And I think that's the point. We had similar capabilities that we could support each other. Maybe not levels of training or equipment wise, but we had the capabilities to help each other, and we had the soldier with discipline to go out there and do it. So having snipers with snipers and machine guns with machine guns and the specialized team to do small kill team operations and size capacity, it just worked out perfect.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

So when we did joint missions, it was amazing.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. I remember one time we got a visit from, like, one of my senior leaders in the SEAL teams, and they're like, you know, hey, Jocko, do you need anything? And I was like, yeah, we need another task unit. Like, can you send me another. Just Send me another 40 seals out here. And like, we got. We. I got more work than we could ever hope for. That's not happening. And so it was like, okay, cool. So you guys show up. It's like, bro, you guys want to get in on this action? Let's go.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, it was a tar. I remember one mission I walked on with. I think it was a life we were walking. It was nighttime, and just the green lasers or, you know, and they're just everywhere. And I just remember being. It's like a light show at night, and we're just. And you're like, this is awesome.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

Like, it feels good.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yeah. So echo, Charles. When you're patrolling, you have night vision on, and so the enemy can't see it, but you can see. You can basically, you can tell where everyone's looking because you can see where they're. What they're lazing. And so you feel like, as. It's pretty awesome. It's like an awesome feeling of knowing that you can see how much people are paying attention to scanning windows, scanning doors, scanning rooftops. You can see all these laser. Looks like a porcupine of lasers going down the street. And it's a very good feeling. Yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

I mean, you see. Yeah, it.

[Jocko Willink]

You.

[Dan Pinion]

You definitely feel more confidence. Without a doubt, it feels good.

[Jocko Willink]

What kind of TTPS surprised you?

[Dan Pinion]

I will tell you honestly, I feel. Felt really confident coming back on those missions of how closely we operated. Now there are stuff like if you're talking peeling, but if you're talking cover and move, either with team or individual, we were very closely. You know, you guys might say stuff different, but we operated in general movement. The silence. But Cover and move was all the same. I think the only true difference we had is of how we established within houses the ttps or barricaded or set up positions within there. But if we set our vest nest to the machine gun. So it doesn't matter who was on the machine gun, they had the ammo and everything else and we had the vest here. But we, we learned from you of how to cover our dead spaces better or what we're looking at from talking to your team. So we learned knowledge of how to look at danger areas better. But when actually came to the patrolling and the maneuvering, I think we were very close. But you, like I say, Chris, Kyle, shooting with our snipers on the range and having that fun competition in smack talking that's cross really helped and gave our guys confidence to realize, hey, our guys can shoot. And it's fun to compare notes and techniques and how we set up our blind spots and why we sit back off a window like this and to learn how they shoot and when you're making the holes in the wall, why you make it like this. It was really fun to compare stuff like that. And then I think our guys learned about decision making. And that's what I always preached. I never, I always say like I should have a teacher said like, okay is leader, but I was always preaching, okay, yeah, okay, but I always, I always preach make a decision. The people who don't make decisions have issues or leads to problems. You have to evaluate and you have to make a decision. Your decision is not going to be right, but it's going to be worse if you don't make a decision. And I think they learned from your team how quick people can evaluate situations, prioritize and then make a decision, execute. And that would generally lead to better outcomes than overthinking or not making decisions.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, the, the exchange of information that everybody had was, was pretty awesome. I know we did a bunch of overwatches right in the beginning with 38 and 38 scout snipers and stuff. And they shared all kinds of good information with us and you know, helped us with RTTPs. And then the, the decision making and stuff is like, we get a lot of really good training and one thing that, that we do pretty good is make really small decisions fast. So it's like, hey, I don't necessarily need to make a huge decision right now, but I can make a little one. You know, for instance, oh, our overwatch position is getting attacked. I don't have to say, oh, we're going to leave Now, But I could say, all right, well, let's put eyes on this part of the road so we can see what the exit is going to look like. So you can make a decision very quickly that then is going to indicate to you if you want to make another small decision in that direction. You can make it or you can say, oh, we. Oh, we're not taking fire anymore. It seems like we're going to be okay. Or, oh, we're taking more fire. Luckily, we already have eyes on our exit. We can move down that road. So making these little decisions very quickly is what I think our team got good at. And again, for us, it was just like having more people, especially like you guys, that were focused on the same thing that we're focused on. Being able to set up mutually supporting overwatch positions was just, like, very helpful and very awesome.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. And I think that's one of the things we'll learn later is we were smaller than the Marines, the way they took houses. So where they would put 40 in a house, we're putting 12. So we had to rely on mutually supporting houses and overwatch positions. So anytime we could team up with you was a. We're like, absolutely. There's no way we're. We're saying no to that.

[Jocko Willink]

What was your OP tempo like?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, we're gone every. Every day.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

I mean, you know, General or Colonel McFarland at the time, he wanted major operations every two to three days. And then so as a BRT, so we went from 137, we get to Ramadi. We started off doing missions with you, and then they put us under Colonel Dean as a landowner again, and because they took forces from his battalion to give the 137 for the main push. So we supported his battalion and we had some land that we owned again and route Gremlins. And then we got pulled off of that to do missions again. And then Colonel McFarlane Marlin and be like, hey, I'm going to keep putting you at the point of friction.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

Wherever I need special stuff, I'm going to keep putting the brt. So we are always in some good spots.

[Jocko Willink]

And also it's. It's also you mentioned in the book, but McFarland grabbed Mike Baima and took him from you and put him back in charge of. Of a tank company.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. What a great decision. Again, you don't understand how. What his mindset was. But for Ramadi, I mean, you worked with Mike all the time and then later. But I don't understand why decisions are made. I. I try and learn that. Like, I'm more interested in books that say how decisions came out, like, why. But boy, he nailed that one. Putting Baima in a tank. Yeah, that dude's Rommel.

[Jocko Willink]

You don't. You don't get the nickname Main Gun for nothing. So we talked about stress, you know, with your deployment to Bosnia. How was your troops handling the stress in Ramadi? I know that one of the things that always struck me as a very unfortunate situation was the fact that that vehicle graveyard was on the right hand side as you drove out the front gate. And there's 75 or 100 vehicles. They're all twisted and. And burned up. And knowing that each one of those vehicles represents one or two or three Americans wounded or killed, and just the knowing every time you go out in the city, there's that chance. How was your. How was your guys holding up?

[Dan Pinion]

So I will tell you, you know, the transition when we got there early June, and we realized this is not the north anymore, and you had the daily attacks, mortar attacks, and we're like, oh, this is not Kansas anymore, Dorothy. It was a wake, a serious wake up call. And then we started with the early missions, and we had immediate success, so everybody was on a high. And then we attacked Ramadi, and again, we had early success. But around the end of July, going into August is when it really started to hit us because we started to take casualties and losses. We were fortunate where we never really used the front gate, we used the back gate because that was our area. So. But we became keenly aware of the graveyard because we started putting vehicles in it. And because we were small, any casualty to us became well known. So as soon as we started taking casualties, such a small unit, just like a team, it really starts to hit you. And I started to see it wear on our soldiers quicker and heavier.

[Jocko Willink]

I know for. For us, you know, August 2nd is when Mark Lee was killed and. And Ryan was. Ryan. Joe was so badly wounded. And we had been working with you guys at that point a lot. Do you. What do you remember about. What do you remember about how that impacted your guys? I know that. I know that army guys that I knew, they were very, you know, it seemed like we had a little bit of. Of invincibility, you know, like, hey, we're. We're out there tasking a bruiser. We're going down. We're killing bad guys every day, like. And, you know, being that everyone knows what's happening, everyone's reading the ars, everyone's hearing on the Radios, you know, you're hearing the reports on the radios and so I know that, I mean, for us it was definitely, you know, an end of our invincibility. What did you do you remember that impact for you guys?

[Dan Pinion]

No, it absolutely was the exact same. So we know that day very well and the mission. And like I said, every time we went out with you, there was a, there was more level of confidence of what we had. We had more firepower, we had more professionals. I mean, we had the best of the best going out with us or supporting us or us supporting you. However you want to look at it, we were just better than the enemy and we knew it. And we put a hurting on the enemy. There's no other way to say it. And when you hear that Mark Lee was killed and you hear it's a seal, it doesn't matter the name at first. You just hear that SEAL was killed. I can't even imagine what your team's going through. And then you hear about the evacuation and you hear what's going on and you're still fighting door to door to door and you're still so important. It really, for me internally, like, oh my gosh, you're, you're not Superman anymore. And that's what I remember from the previous deployment. Like, hey, like I'm, I'm not invincible. I just remember that feeling for me personally. And then when you have it happen to a team, a SEAL team, you're like, oh, this is real. And then like I said when we went to the memorial service and to hear you speak and one people don't realize that like that tent is huge and it was filled. I mean it's absolutely filled, standing room only to honor Mark and then to hear you speak and the strength it takes to speak. And then like I said in the army we would have people speak and then you do the roll call where you say the name and then you do taps and the salute and it gets you gut wrenching. But like I said, I felt everything leave my body when somebody just screamed Mark's name. I mean, it was earth shattering scream calling Mark's name. And the reality set in for me personally that everything was about to change for us. And I can't remember the date of the memorial service, but it coincided with exactly when we started taking losses that first week of August. We started taking some serious losses and casualties and everything changed from the brt. So I know exactly where we are in Ramadi.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, so that was, you know, Mark was killed on August 2nd and I forget what day the memorial service was, but, you know, it was. It was not long after. I mean, they were happening all the time. It wasn't like you postponed it. It was, it was happening in. And I know that. I mean, it's just everyone has to get their gear back on and go back out in the field. That's what's going to happen. The enemy's going to keep coming, the missions are going to keep going. We need to keep pressing. We need to keep pressure on the enemy. And so we get our gear back on, we go back in the field. And that's exactly what you guys did. That's what everybody did. Picking up in the book here, on August 4, 2006, 2nd Platoon was scheduled to go on Route Gremlin. Again. The request, they requested a route clearance team and it was denied. I was scheduled to go on their mission, but the night before, I was told to be in a meeting with the Brigade Command Sergeant Major. 2nd Platoon conducted the early morning inspections and headed out for their missions. 1st Platoon would replace 2nd Platoon in sector around 0800. In the middle of the meeting, Sergeant Jared Rogers, our communication sergeant and the executive office officer and the executive officer's gunner, practically knocked the door down to get to me. His eyes and expression said everything. Something terrible had happened and I was needed. We stormed out of the HQ, jumped in the XO's vehicle and returned to our troops troop HQ. My crew had my vehicle ready and our new medic was prepping everything in the back seat. Sergeant Rogers couldn't tell me what was going on as it was hard for him to talk and drive with his emotions going crazy. But once I got to our HQ, I heard that 2nd Platoon had hit an IED and it was not good. We jumped in our Humvees and the commander and I took off. The point of contact was only five minutes away and I saw the smoke billowing in the air. That's a weird. It's a weird thing. It was a weird thing about the battle of Radi is you could. You could see smoke, you know, from base. I know you know my building. We could go. We could look out the window of my building. They were sandbagged. But if you went outside on like these, had these little patios, you go up on the rooftop. You could just sit there and watch. You could see what's happening. You'd hear a report. Like sometimes I'd hear something happening and go up to look and see what I could see. And so here you are. You're actually still on base, relatively safe, and yet you can see smoke and you know exactly what it is. 1st Platoon, who is already in sector but further out, turned around and headed to the point of contact as well. Second Platoon had wrapped up their early morning reconnaissance and snap checkpoint missions and were heading back to base with Sergeant Story and his crew as the rear vehicle in the convoy. His crew that day was Sergeant Bradley Best as the driver, Specialist Michael Hayes as the gunner, himself as the vehicle commander, and they had an Iraqi translator sitting behind Story. Usually the platoon sergeant would be in the rear vehicle and the platoon leader would be in the middle. However, the platoon leader was on leave, so Sergeant First Class Mike Olenek. Am I saying that right? Olynek served as platoon leader and moved to the middle. Sergeant Story's crew had just passed the Ramada University walls and were starting down an S shaped curve embankment when the IED went off underneath them. It was command wired, set off by an enemy watching from a nearby factory. It had been placed in the perfect choke point on the only path down the embankment. You couldn't drive fast there and if you were not careful, vehicles would bunch up. The ground was not freshly turned, so the IED had been in place for a while. The commander and I made it there quickly with our two crews trying to figure out what was happening in the chaos was hard. As we approached the burning vehicle, I thought I was looking at the gunner's hatch. However, as the smoke cleared a little, I saw tires spinning. I was looking at the bottom of the Humvee where the IED had blasted through the undercarriage. Staff Sergeant Story, Sergeant Best, and the interpreter were killed instantly. There was absolutely no doubt in our minds they did not suffer, but we could not get to them. With the ammunition cooking off inside the Humvee engulfed in flames, Captain Enslin ordered 1st Platoon to head toward base and grab the base camp fire truck and force them out the gate to help us. This was a colossal no, no. They were civilians and their mission was to serve the camp, not outside the wire. But those brave civilians defied orders and followed first Platoon out the gate to us. Specialist Michael Hayes was alive but hurt very bad. His leg was in shambles and on fire. He had to escape from the Humvee. Trying to move, he realized his leg was cut in half and reached down amid the flames to grab the bottom portion of his left leg. Then on his back, Mike crawled away from the heat. He made it approximately 20ft before the first soldier reached him. Specialist Chris Buckley and Sergeant Reagan Barr had been in the vehicle in front of white twos and immediately stopped when they heard the explosion. Jumping out and racing toward the vehicles. Chris heard Mike calling for help and went to him while Reagan attempted to, to get the others out. So you see that Humvee and you actually think you're, you're looking at it right side up, but it's flipped upside down.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, it's horrific. I mean, absolutely horrific when you see the smoke sort of clearing and you see what you're actually looking at. I mean, one, it's important to understand that, that you know, this enemy is sophisticated and they're changing tactics. I mean, as we're adjusting, they're adjusting. I don't think people understand that sometimes as we're trying to talk about Rati is a key hotbed for a reason. Like they're good, they're. This wasn't just a pushover enemy. They're changing as we're changing and tactics and as we were beating them in this Ralph Gremlins area, they're adjusting tactics. And we shut down their smuggling in their weapons. And as on that day, they adjusted and, and got us. And it was horrific. Ied, it's one of the worst ones that I saw.

[Jocko Willink]

Going back to the book. By the time we got closer, they had Mike loaded into Sergeant First Class only. Next vehicle and they raced toward my truck. We had practiced. We had practiced casualty evacuation and exchange several times. Typically, we'd cross load the casualty from one vehicle to mine. I would continue treatment and get them to safety while the platoon returned to the fight. But our standard operating procedure was about to change. As we pulled up to door to door, I saw the anguished look on Sergeant First Class Olynek's face. He was a strong soldier with outstanding leadership skills. We had been drill sergeants together in years past, and he was perfect role model for his soldiers. Easygoing, funny, and great to get along with today. I saw the horror of war in his eyes as we were about to exchange Specialist Hayes from one vehicle to the next. Doc Herrod, am I saying that right?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Doc Herrod screamed, fuck no. Don't move him. Doc was precisely correct. Mike was stabilized already and there was no need to risk further injury. We adapted on the spot. I jumped out and then into Sergeant First Class O's vehicle and he jumped in mine. Off we both went. This was possible because our vehicle load plans, communication setup and crews were interchangeable. This would become our future SOPs on casualty evacuation. As my new crew started back, I turned and inspected Specialist Hayes. I held his hand and told him it would be okay. Since we were so close to Base and 1st Platoon was on their way, I accepted the risk and we traveled alone. I had to tell the driver, Specialist Ruiz to slow down a few times because we were bouncing around so much and I didn't want to hurt Mike anymore. Mike was in not in good shape as Doc tried to keep his lower leg attached. We made it to the gate in no time. I had alerted the field aid station and we were on route and what expected and what to be expected. So the medics and doctors were waiting for us at the aid station. I followed them in. The doctor told me to stay out but he quickly learned that wasn't happening. I gave them all his information. Blood type injuries. Meanwhile the vehicle crew started cleaning blood from the vehicle and getting it ready to return. Save him was my order to the doctor. I will, but I can't save the leg. I understood. Meanwhile the fire department extinguished the Humvee and assisted with the recovering of the dead heroes. I stayed at the aid station and waited for the arrival of the body so I could go through the process of paperwork and identifying them. I'm forever grateful to Captain Dan Enslin and sergeant first class Mike Olenek for keeping everyone back and helping the firefighters recover our soldiers. And I am so sorry for the horrors forever etched into those brave responders brains. When the bodies returned, the morgue did their underappreciated job of prepping them for their final flights home. I signed all the paperwork and made one order very clear. Everything goes back to America. I was not leaving a single piece piece of American soldier in this country. Specialist Michael Hayes was air transported to safety and back to America for treatment. That night we conducted our first angel ceremony for our fallen.

[Dan Pinion]

So for us that was our first hard reality. We had had IEDs before that and people had walked away. We had casualties. We had somebody end up losing a hand and blind in his eye. But they walked away and talked. That was our first loss and hit home. And you talked about like earlier about like Cantor saying roger that, I'm going to go check that IED. And now you have Buckley, a 19 year old kid shielding his body from explosives going off in the vehicle as rounds are cooking off and grenades are cooking off so they can work specialist Hayes to try and stabilize him. I mean just 19 year old kid just like hey, I got this. You have Regan Barr trying to get to the vehicle on fire and burning his hands trying to open the doors as rounds are cooking off and it's so hot trying to get to him. And then you have a medic, like, don't you move him? Basically making the right call and changing our evacuation process and adjusting our. The ways we do stuff. But that was our first lesson. I mean, reality slapped us in the face. And it afterwards. I don't know if I mentioned or not, but Buckley told me afterwards that he went back to his tent and he was the only one left in his tent. Yeah. So this is probably three weeks of hard fighting when we took over and he went back to us and we had about 10 people in our tent at a time. Anyway, back to the 10. He was the only one left in his tent. And staff Serrant Bear came into the tent and said, grab your. And moved all his stuff into another tent. We lost an entire tent within three weeks from casualties and wounds, wounded. And that was our first loss. So it hits you like, it's like we're in a fight and it's not going to get better. Like it's gonna get worse and we have to continue to push. And that was the day when it really hit us.

[Jocko Willink]

How long was it before you guys were back in the field?

[Dan Pinion]

Oh, yeah, yeah, Hours. Yeah, yeah, hours. I mean, 1st Platoon was on mission as soon as we finished clearing that area. 2nd Platoon, who lost as soon as we ended up inventory and everything, they're back on mission the next day. But this was my first leadership challenge. So this is where I got stuff right and wrong. I started compartmental analyzing myself and putting stuff back. I became cold. I don't say in a negative way. I just didn't show emotion where my commander did in a positive way. But I became very mission focused. Like, let's go. And I became anal and making sure. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's do this. Let's do this. Not micromanaging. I was just very mission focused because I didn't want to see any more. And I didn't take care of myself emotionally. I didn't grieve. I didn't. I focus on what's next. And I had a platoon who was scared. Fear. And I was scared, and it was fear. And I had leaders who were ready to give up leadership positions. And I was like, fuck, no. I needed them to lead and they were the best people to lead. And I couldn't switch them out even though they were asking me to switch. If I had switched, switched them out, what would that have done to the other. The soldiers under them? I couldn't. There was no better option. So it was me going on mission with them more. That was my decision. Like first sergeant shouldn't be kicking indoors or being the first vehicle in the combo convoy. But there I was going to Baghdad with him in a convoy or wherever we were going. But I couldn't. So I had a. Leadership dilemmas or. And there's stuff about me, I became cold and some I got right and some I didn't. And it hurt me later emotionally because I grieved later all at once later on the deployment and I had a soldier, Shea, his first time. I saw battle fatigue. I mean I heard about it in World War II. I didn't even know what the it was. You know you heard about was it where the general slapping. I watched this soldier. Blank stare, couldn't blink, no emotion, couldn't sleep. Lock board, sleeping on a. Or laying on a cot. Couldn't move from losing his best friend on that day. And that we had to evac to the rear for PTSD or battle fatigue.

[Jocko Willink]

And you didn't. You. Your initial assessment was like what the hell is going on here?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. And it was one of the toughest young kids I ever saw. A young non commissioned officer and could not function physically, emotionally or mentally at the time. I could not process or understand it. In about three months I understand. Understood them 100. So I, that was reality hit our troop, fear struck our troop and I started to learn I was changing inside as a leader.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I think some of that's just survival mechanism too.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, correct.

[Jocko Willink]

Because. And I know I felt like I cannot be, you know, breaking down because same thing like if I'm breaking down over here, what's going to happen with everybody else? So you, you, you know, survival mechanism is like, okay, what do I need to focus on? And I literally told my guys, I said hey, I don't know what to do except for one thing, work. And we're gonna go back to work because I didn't know there was no. I never had a class in it. I never had a senior leader pull me aside and say hey, if you lose someone in combat. Because it was the 90s, we didn't have guys that lost people in combat. It just didn't exist. So I wasn't. There was no instruction. There's no manual on it. Oh, there's a manual on the casualty assistant, whatever, casualty care officer. There's a manual on that. There's all these protocols you follow. Make sure you do this with the, with the gear. Make sure you do this with the serial numbers. Make sure there's all that stuff. That's a checklist. But not one thing on that checklist. Addresses. What do you tell that guy's best friend when he's got to go back on a mission in two nights? There's no, there's no, there's nothing like that. And so part of the survival mechanism is like, I don't really know 100% what to do there. One thing I do know is I know how to be a frogman. And what we do is we go and we go do operations, we do our mission. That's what we do. And that's, that's what I focused on. And, and you know, again, whether that's the right thing to do or wrong thing to do, I don't know 100%. I know that at the time, it was the only thing I could do. The only thing I could do was, all right, we need to get back to work. And that's what we did. And that's what you guys did too. And by the way, it's not like, you know the enemy's going to keep coming. The odds. It's like when you flip a coin. You know, you flip a coin 10 times and it lands on tails every time. And now you think, well, it's, it's bound to land on heads this time. Nope, this doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You, you lost a guy, you lost two guys, you lost three guys. The risk is still the same. It's the same time every time you go out. Fast forward a few a couple weeks. On the day of the mission, 19 August, 2nd platoon drove to one of the outposts. Cop Grant parked their vehicles and waited for dark to insert into the sector known as second Officers District again. So it's so interesting, like, how much your operations, you know, were the same as what my guys were doing, which is like, yep, go to a cop, park the vehicles, wait till it gets dark, head out on foot patrol to find a house. Same thing here. At approximately 0240, they found a house, entered it, secured the family in a downstairs bedroom, which was tactically the safest room in the house. Next, they went to the roof and began the painstaking procedure of drilling through the roof walls. With chisels and hand drills, 2nd Platoon identified two houses to support themselves and the tank battalion. We generally planned to be soft compromised within 12 hours, which meant people knocking on doors and looking for the family inside, and hard compromise within 24 hours, which meant an attack was imminent. So what that means is you go into the neighborhood. And you take, you go into a building and you, and you take the family and you say, all right, family, you're going to go sit in this room for a while. Here's some food. Here's some MRI, MREs, here's some chem lights for the kids to play with and the family sitting in there. Well, in the morning time when the neighbor goes, oh, where's, where's Ahmed? You know, he's normally get out in the morning checking his garden. He's not out. Oh, where's, where's the wife? She's not out. Where are the kids? They're not out. Oh, what's going. Oh, there's, there's Americans in there. So that's soft compromise. You're calling it 12 hours here. I usually figured it was like within the first four or five hours, my guys are going to be telling me up, hey, we're starting to take fire, we're starting to get hit. Um, so, yeah, and then the hard compromise, 24 hours again. They usually figured out where we were quicker.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. Our goal was if we can make it to the next night.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

Where we could X fill out. It was a. It was a good mission.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. Sometimes our best strategy was to take a house, design great defense plans, wait to get attacked and simply kill the enemy. During this mission, the platoon had a soft compromise. Around the late morning, after 10 to 12 hours on site, Sergeants Quick Bar Wall and Rodriguez De Jesus were on the roof, while Sergeant First Class only Nick, Doc Herrod and Specialist Ruiz and the interpreter were with the family downstairs. The platoon leader in the supporting house and Sergeant First Class Olynick began developing an extraction plan. The streets became eerily quiet, a telltale sign of bad stuff about to happen. Sergeant First Class only Nick had just radioed the plan to extract when four hand grenades came flying over the roof. Frag. Frag. Cover. Shouted Sergeant Barr as he dove for cover. I've been involved in or near several grenade attacks, and you will never forget the sound a grenade makes as it hits the floor and explodes. Tank, tank, tank. Boom. Sergeant Rodriguez was off gun and asleep when the commands were shouted, but he quickly woke and curled up into a ball as did Sergeant Wall. However, despite being closest to the stairs and the closest to safety, Sergeant Marquis quick moved toward the grenades. Sergeant Barr screamed. No. Explosions rang out as the grenades detonated. Smoke and debris was everywhere as the soldiers called out in pain. Sergeant Rodriguez was wounded in his lower back and shouting he could not feel his legs. Sergeant Wall, wounded in his leg, had already applied A tourniquet and began preparing for another attack. Sergeant Barr had been blown backward during the blast and took shrapnel to his foot and buttocks. Sergeant Barr assumed the machine gun position and swept the roof for enemy or fall on attacks. As Sergeant Ball and Wall bar and Wall secured the roof, they saw Sergeant Quick unresponsive near the stairs. He had taken the brunt of the grenade explosions. Instead of jumping down the stairs to safety, Sergeant Quick had jumped toward the grenades to protect his soldiers. On 19 August 2006, Sergeant Mares Quick selflessly sacrificed himself to save the lives of his brothers in arms. There was absolutely no doubt in our minds he was a true hero. You guys, you say? We sprang into action for the team's evacuation and the tank company vehicles, assisted by infantry fighting vehicles, moved toward the house. It took a while to link the vehicles and our team up due to some navigation issues, but they made it to each other. They were evacuate, evacuated back to COP Grant, where they mounted their vehicles to get back to Camp Radi. In the hospital, I was already at the field station, field aid station waiting on them. The Bradley vehicle with Sergeant Quick in it continued directly back to Camp Ratty, where I carefully helped unload Mares and he was pronounced dead. The military doctor who pronounced the time of death was astonished to see the injuries. When I told him it was a complex grenade attack, he asked why Quick's injuries were on the front of the stomach area and not on the back where someone would turn to protect themselves. The injuries were on the front because Sergeant Marquis Quick, when faced with danger, chose to protect his soldiers and men above himself.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. So several points. One, Quick was my driver earlier, and I had moved them out of the driver position to go lead soldiers.

[Jocko Willink]

And wasn't that partially because he was a bad driver?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, yeah. No, he.

[Jocko Willink]

There's a lot of details in the book I'm skipping over. Read, get the book, read the book, Hear these stories.

[Dan Pinion]

But that is a fact. Yeah, bad driver and the biggest head I've ever seen and one of the smartest brains, but. And then two, just about Hector Rodriguez de Jesus. We were taking casualties and we already talked about the tent, where the tent was empty. Colonel McFarland asked what he can do when we're getting ready for that angel flight earlier. And I said, need soldiers. They had started sending us soldiers now. We had heard, like, old stories of like World War II and replacement soldiers. I perceived replacement soldiers in the truest sense, that I got soldiers from other battalions, that we had no idea who they were. Sergeant Hector Rodriguez de Jesus. I had only known for a couple days. He came from another battalion, came into our platoon for just a couple days. And I barely knew his name. And I'm not trying to sound cold, mean or what. I barely got to know him at a previous deployment under his belt. Put him in second platoon because he had experience. And that's where I thought I didn't need the leadership. And got wounded on one. After a week of missions when he was evac back the old battalion he came from, which I believe is 137, the rear detachment said, please let us take care of him because we have known him for two months. I was like, thank you. Because we didn't know that's replacements. Like we were getting replacements that we didn't even know. That's how we were taking losses. And then you look at Marquis Quick. I mean, you have a medal of Honor winner. And we're going to talk. I'm going to talk about rectifying some of this stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

This definitely needs to get rectified.

[Dan Pinion]

This man is near the stairs and safety going down and goes towards grenades to save his brothers and saved them. They are alive because of Marquis Quick. Their lives are altered. Some of them like Hector. But he sacrificed his life for his brothers on that rooftop. No doubt in any of their minds. And I have everything ready to go. It took. It took years. Once we started this project, it's all ready. So I have the procedures and I'll talk about the end on the way forward. There's no doubt he's going to get recognized as we go, but another example of heroism, of people stepping up and doing it. And Maris Quick is a hero and he saved his brother's lives.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I was. You know you say in the book, you know you say Sergeant Quick is a hero and I failed him. I failed to push to have him recognized. We should have. He should have received the medal of Honor. I believe that in my heart and soul. We tried to resubmit the paperwork later requesting to upgrade on his metal. Unfortunately, they required sworn eyewitness testimony that Mares had jumped on the grenade. The soldiers could not confirm because they were diving for cover. Alicia. Is that her name?

[Dan Pinion]

Alicia.

[Jocko Willink]

Alicia. Your husband is a true hero and he worshiped you. You two are perfect. And I'm so sorry I couldn't protect him. Nevertheless, he saved lives that day. And although we failed to recognize him with the award he deserves, we know and we'll never forget.

[Dan Pinion]

So I think two points and I know you're probably gonna say something. But one, I think we've corrected it and I have the original sworn statements. Sergeant O found his hard drive with the original sworn statements. So we have it and we pieced together the entire conop for it. And then I worked with General Van Wagon and who is the old S3 for 137 or XO from 137. And obviously I've worked with Colonel or General McFarlane. So that's why I have the package together. And I have to go back through 1st Armored Division to submit it. So we have everything ready on that front so he will get recognized, hopefully with the outcome that we believe in our hearts. And two, there's absolutely failure because I think when you're in the fight and you're in for survival, you don't recognize what people are doing because you're trying to survive and you're fighting. It's only later when you look back or see other stuff going around you when you really recognize, like, oh my gosh, look what he did, look what she did, look what they did. That I truly appreciated, or maybe back even at my career of how much I truly appreciated how great the people I served with were. And it was when I was talking with the first Armored Division commander, Sergeant Major, about this award and he was with us in Ramadi and he was a battle Sergeant in 137, James Light. He was like, Dan, we had so many heroes that we just didn't fully appreciate at the time because we were in it and I would. And even Colonel McFarlane says we should have taken better care of the BRT and the heroes of what you guys did. And it's true. I wish we recognized them better.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I think one thing that was just timing wise for like, Mikey, that was at the end of our deployment. So all of a sudden, you know, Mikey dies in September 29th. Like, we're literally, you know, starting to package up stuff to go home. And so I think that little. Just the time I could be like, oh, okay. And. And plus the guys were immediately like. They were just immediately like, hey, he. He saved us. You know, I talked to the guys that got Casa back to Germany. They're like, he saved us, he saved us, he saved us. And it was, it was. And. And because those guys got medevac and then I followed them home. It was like the timing of it allowed more focus than you had when you still had five or six months worth of deployment. You were going to go out, you know, you weren't sitting There thinking about awards when you're going out that afternoon on another mission. Well, I look forward to. I look forward to seeing that happen. And I. There's no more clear case. I mean, this is. This is a clear. As it comes. You say this while holding an angel ceremony for quick. Our brigade commander, Colonel Sean McFarland, asked me how he could help. I need soldiers, sir, was all I could muster. He saw the pain in my voice and my eyes. I was barely holding on without breaking down. This conversation led me to meet and serve alongside one of the best human beings I would ever meet, Private David E. Dietrich. Is that how you say it? Dietrich. Dietrich from Marysville, Pennsylvania. The night Dietrich arrived, the radio operator woke me up and told me there was a new soldier there. My first impression of Dietrich was solid. He looked like a running back with his strong short stature and broad shoulders. He was obviously wide eyed, confused and I'm sure scared like the rest of us were when we first arrived in combat. I felt good about David until I asked him a question. It could be because Captain Wagner had put a bug in my ear and maybe I had formulated an opinion already, but I immediately sensed something different while we were talking. It was as if I could see his mind trying to comprehend what I was saying. First, his eyes would look a little blank. Then there would be an awkward silence. Then he would answer slowly. Was it nerves? I've been told that I can have an intimidating stare and demeanor. And again, I was withdrawing emotionally at this time. Plus, I was the senior enlisted person in our unit. Whatever the reason was for his behavior, I didn't have a good feeling about it. I assigned him to 1st Platoon.

[Dan Pinion]

And.

[Jocko Willink]

They were the meanest, hairiest, and most complex. Or to go out on some of the meanest, hairiest, most complex missions. They would get Private Dietrich ready. Dietrich would stay back from missions while 1st platoon was gone and remain with the HQ section or me when I was knocking on mission. When 1st Platoon returned, Dietrich went back with the platoon to learn more. So you got focused. Like you met this kid and you're like, are we going to get this kid trained up? You didn't send him in the field immediately because you could see he had, he needed some time. You actually ended up sending him to Behavioral Health to see what his deal with was. And they run a bunch of tests on him and they to ensure he was mentally fit and his cognitive skills were up to par. This took time. In the meantime, Dietrich became everyone's little brother and my personal helper.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, my battle buddy.

[Jocko Willink]

They come back. Behavioral Health came back and stated that David was fit for the military and did not see any obstacles to serving. They noted that he'd had assessments done in basic training, and those conclusions were the same as theirs. They did caution that he was a slow learner, but the method we used to teach him was appropriate. They also mentioned that he'd explained how much this unit already meant to him and that he respected and loved me. That caught me off guard, but I understood why it was said David was constantly complaining about staying back from missions to train, but he vowed to Behavioral Health that he would show us he was ready. This was around October or November. So you're working with him. You get the feedback. Look, he's a little bit of a slow learner, but he's got the cognitive capacity to get the job done.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, they say he's good to go. Everybody learns differently. He needed hands on. And, you know, we were trying to do our due diligence. And again, whether it was the rear D. Tell me something was off the initial conversation. And we had a policy, just making sure. When the platoon said they're ready to go out, they went out. And this was same steps with Dietrich. We were just making sure. And we took the extra step with Behavioral Health, and it took a little longer and took a little bit more hands on. And he became my battle buddy when 1st platoon was on mission.

[Jocko Willink]

And the thing is, it's not like you're. I mean, you got to be able to count on your soldiers. And if you got a guy you can't count on, you're not just putting him at risk. You're putting everybody.

[Dan Pinion]

Absolutely.

[Jocko Willink]

So you don't go, oh, well, I'll just go ahead and roll the dice on this one. Like, it's not the. That's not the move you're gonna make. He became known as Heisman because of his love for football. David could talk about football for days if you let him. And he pulled the Heisman pose all the time.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, absolutely. He had to shut him up. He had to shut him up.

[Jocko Willink]

And you guys are doing, like, battle drills with him with what? Different weapon systems? Just Humvees. Learning how to do everything and testing him out over and over again.

[Dan Pinion]

Correct. I put them on every weapon system, every communication equipment. We. We had everything. Maps. Yeah. Glass house drills. You know, clearing houses, entering a house. Everything that I could think of or 1st Platoon could think of. We put him through every drill he would need to do in combat, and he got him. I would say, technically and tactically skill wise, he is one of the best ones out there. At the end of those two to three months.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, you say David passed the test with flying colors and was ready for missions. I'll never regret that decision no matter how much it hurts. Mission comes down the mission from Colonel McFarland required us to go into an area and figure out where a famous enemy sniper was. The sniper was would most likely target and kill US soldiers as they established new combat outposts. Unfortunately, the Marine unit sectioned off this part of town with barriers and there was no way in or out for vehicles. We were about to build another copy on this area's edge. The last hurdle of enemy territory before taking back control of the entire city.

[Dan Pinion]

This was it.

[Jocko Willink]

Was this up by firecracker or something?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, this was it.

[Jocko Willink]

Cop Firecracker. It had taken almost six months of constant fighting to reach this point. We are nearly done. 28 December 2006 First Platoon finished their checks and prepared to depart for their mission. They would infiltrate between 2300 and 03300 and established their sniper team and overwatch positions. I was the last man standing there. On their way to leaving the compound, they filed by and either a nod, smart ass comment or handshake greeted each soldier as they passed. Dietrich was near the end of the line and his eye protection was all messed up crooked on his head. A ach straps twisted. I stopped them and told them, fix your shit, Dietrich. He adjusted his eye pro and gave me the biggest smile I'd ever seen from him. He was excited and he was proud. He was a soldier. I reached out to slap him on the back as he passed, but he threw a curveball and turned and hugged me. A big strong bear hug. Ask any soldier when the last when they last hugged their first sergeant like that. Most likely the answer is never. I'm proud of you Dietrich. Listen to your NCOs and keep your eyes open. This is the happiest day of my life were the last words David E. Dietrich would ever say to me. And I still believe those words. Once out on patrol, 1st Platoon established two small kill team positions over watching where they thought the sniper would appear again. We got everything right about the mission planning, the houses we picked, the counter positions we found, etc. Everything was perfect. Until it wasn't. On the morning of 29 December 2006, Private First Class David E. Dietrich had started his observation shift with his NCO and soon noticed something strange happening in one of the houses we'd identified. Dietrich alerted his Team that someone was setting up a potato sack or mattress a few feet away from a window in one of the houses. We thought the sniper would use this is the exact technique used to mask the sound or sight of fire. Dietrich saw it and reported it. Unfortunately, the sniper saw him move and when Dietrich repositioned himself to get a better look, he was shot. Back at the Marine base, I jumped up and put on my boots as I gathered information. We slept in our clothes and on mission went on mission like this. So it was only seconds before we were ready. I did not know who was hit or how bad it was. All I knew is the EXO pointing at the map and telling me to get there. I would get the rest. As I was moved to the Humvee, my driver, Specialist Matthew Clayton had the truck ready. Communications and GPS tracking systems were booted up. Meanwhile, the teams saw the enemy preparing for an attack on one of the houses Cabin O'Hare and Sergeant First Class Marco decided to pull both teams since they were under heavy fire now and had no way to protect the dismounted. Evacuation movement to the CCP from Marine Base Camp to the CCP was about 2 1/2 kilometers from the CCP to 1st Platoon. Point of injury in the overwatch house was about 750m. The teams evacuated David under fire and with complete kid on for almost 800m. This was no easy task. And it was daytime. 1st Platoon made the right decision to pull the other team to help clear the path. Guys are going to work.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah and yeah one, you know, @ daytime under fire, you know, cover and move situation with, you know, dead casual, you know, dead soldier, 200 plus pounds with full kit on down streets that you can't get vehicles through at that time is not a good situation. And then you know, you have to trust your, your subordinate leaders to make those calls to pull the other team. Especially if they're you know, supporting fires and they can't cover the entire move. So they made the right call to pull the team, you know, so it's, you know, for that aspect of it is exactly right, you know, with Dietrich, he was ready for the mission. I said I will have personal feelings about should I, you know, told them to send him to Iraq. You know, the rear detachment commander had doubts. I made a decision as an enlisted person to tell an officer, send him, I'll make the call. I will live with that for the rest of my life. I had no regrets about him going on the mission. I, I stand by it, but I'll live with the decision. And bring him to Iraq. Because the rear detachment commander had no problems with me say, send the one eyed guy to Iraq. But I had a problem with saying.

[Jocko Willink]

Say teacher, explain that. The one eyed guy. You had a blind guy. Blind, Literally blinding one.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, we had a guy show up to the unit blind in one eye, and he had to tilt his eye to read papers. And the army's like, yeah, he's good to go. And I'm like, this guy, this guy can't be combat arms. And then the army's like, hey, what's, what's med boredom and change MOS's. And then they tried to make a truck driver. And I'm like, this guy can't even drive. He can't scan his side of the truck. He can only be a vehicle commander, so at least he can scan that side of the truck. And then he got kicked out of truck driving school on day one and sent him back to us. So we put him in the supply and I told him, I said, send that guy out to Iraq. We'll put him in supply. And then we'll use them on missions if we have to, which we had to. So there's, there's stuff I'll, I'll live with going on there. But Dietrich was ready for the mission and found the sniper. We, we had everything right. The sniper was better. And he said, there's stuff that you live with and the enemy gets a vote. And they voted. And then Dietrich, you know how many people come up and hug you? Jocko, you know, we're not talking a bro hug, you know, like, hey, bro, like this guy, bear hug, I love you hug. And I believe this was the happiest day of his life. Now, obviously, hours later, not. But he became a soldier and he did exactly what he wanted to achieve in life of serving his country. And he served it with honor. And he achieved his goal. Something. He fought hard growing up as a young man with all the obstacles he had. And I'm proud to say I served next to him. And when I went back to his hometown to tell his story, his town did not understand the family he came to know in us. And we. I did not know the community that honored him after his death. So it was a closure on two sides. But Dietrich was a soldier and I'm proud to have served next to him. But that, that evacuation, that's, That's a tough evacuation. Tells you the toughness and it talks about what you, what you do under fire. It's tough.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. The. I mean, you write about it here in the, in the book. This, this evacuation is chaotic and you, you're like you said, your daytime, you're under attack. And by the way, the enemy knows when they've got a little bit of an upper hand and they know when they wound a guy, they know and they're going to bring it. Like when they, when they hit a vehicle, vehicle is down, they're going to come hard because they know they've, they've got you on your heels. Same thing here. Like, oh, we, we got, they see that wounded guy, they know that you're on your heels, they know that there's going to be vehicles trying to get in there. Like they are going to bring it. And, and that's what happens here.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, you got a polis litter. So you got one dead soldier, a polis litter carried by four more soldiers that can't shoot back trying to carry them. And now you, so you've already taken five people out of the fight and out of 10 to 12 coming down and they have all their guns on you, you and they're trying to run up the street with at least five alleys that they're trying to shoot at you. And we can't get vehicles down. As I'm trying to get a tank to move a barrier out of the way.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, they just don't, don't hear you. Classic World War II scenario. Like you're like, hey, banging on the tank. Like, hey, help us. They don't hear you. Going to the book here. I saw the teams about 500 meters from me. I foolishly left my Humvee by itself next to a tank that never answered and began running toward my soldiers. I reached the first intersection and the teams were only a block away. So I popped a red smoke grenade and kept an eye west down the side alley for enemy. The teams were taking fire as they crossed their last intersection. Sergeant Gonzalez. Staff Sergeant Gonzalez, one of the best combat proven leaders I'd ever seen, was the lead element in front of the evacuation team. They're shooting at you. I screamed as he ran with four soldiers carrying Dietrich on the litter behind him. First Sergeant, you're getting shot at. He screamed back. As I realized rounds were hitting all around me, I had messed up again. Focused on my soldiers running toward me, I stopped paying attention to my sector. I began returning fire. Upon realizing my stupidity, the teams cleared their intersection and only had my intersection to go. Just then, out of nowhere, a Humvee pulled up to my corner and began unlocking, loading their machine gun into enemy positions. It was a fantastic sight. And to this day, we have no idea how they got to us. Do you ever figure out who that is?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. So it was the 16th engineers. So the easiest way to say it, the cop is off to my left. It would have been my east, but the left and on that part of the alley, they had somehow maneuvered around the cop as they were building the barriers and come up with the.50 cal in the Humvee. And they just come from. From my left to the right as they're running from you to me and come right in between us. And they just unloaded. I mean, there's times where, you know, you've seen it in TV shows or movies or whatever, you're just like, ah. And that, that was the moment, like, he unloaded and you're like, oh, my gosh.

[Jocko Willink]

That 50 cal is a little bit of a game changer in the street.

[Dan Pinion]

I don't think he left let up on the butterfly by either. Like, it was one burst of 100 rounds. And the guys crossed behind him. And it was beautiful.

[Jocko Willink]

With the machine gun raining fire down, the evacuation teams could cross behind them. And to me, we tackled the last 50, set 50 to 75 meters to my vehicle and loaded Dietrich into the back seats, which were laid flat. What do you want me to do? I asked Clayton. Do you know the way? I asked, still trying to catch my breath. Yes. Then go. And off we went by ourselves through the streets of ramadi with about 3 km to the main camp and to our medical teams. Specialist Clayton got us back to the to the back gate of Camp Ramadi. I had warned the base camp security we were coming through with casualties, so the gate was open. We flew past them to Charlie Med. Charlie Med is the medical unit which provides higher level of care and has surgeons to treat casualties. We pulled up and the medical teams took over getting David into the field hospital. I passed all the information along to the medics and doctors and got on the radio to update our XO and to find out what was happening with the rest of the troop. The platoons returned safely to the Marine base camp without further injury or firefight. I went back to the field aid station just as the doctor declared David dead. I dealt with plenty of death and gruesome injuries, and the doctors and medics knew me well. But this hit hard. Hard. The morgue is positioned beside Charlie Met for obvious reasons, and they transported David there. The morgue personnel would clean David up and prepare him for movement out of the country. Then I would be called to Identify the body and sign some paperwork. My crew had already alerted the troop headquarters, so they began collecting David's belongings for inventory and shipment home while his brother, brothers and arms were still out. I'm not sure if this was the optimal procedure, but we'd learned previously it was the best way for our troop to deal with loss. I had identified fallen soldiers before, but when the person came to get me, I physically couldn't raise myself off the bench outside the Morgue. Right then, Colonel McFarland, simply the best senior leader I have ever served under, approached and sat next to me. First Sergeant, take your time, but when ready, I need you to identify the body. The morgue assistant repeated, I can't. Please don't make me do this. I can't. I began to cry. Where do I sign? Said Col. McFarland. I will never be able to repay him for his leadership. He did what I could no longer do.

[Dan Pinion]

It's tough. There's. So I briefly talked about earlier, you know, about my corporal who. I saw battle fatigue and I didn't understand it. I understood it right there. 29 December. Inside, I broke. I mean, I physically could not stand up. I mean, I tried everything, just hit. I, I can't, to this day I can't explain why or how or what. I could not stand up. And all I did, I just, I was crying. All the medics were crying. They knew me. I mean, I, I, to this day I can't explain how the, all the medics, what, everything they saw and that Charlie Med and how they dealt with all that day in, day out. And I don't know if Colonel McFarlane will ever remember stuff like this, but, you know, we do or I do. And at one moment, just saying, I'll sign. I don't think he'll ever know Dietrich, but what he did for me, I will never forget. Even in me as a leader, couldn't stand up that day. I, I know what he did, but I, I couldn't. I mean, I was with him when he died. I took him back, but I, I couldn't go into the morgue and inside I broke that day, even though within minutes I had to go back and lead 50 other soldiers to get. As they were coming back, they saw none of it. The only people who saw that was me, Colonel McFarland, the morgue, the medics and my driver and gunner. No one else saw. Five minutes later it was over and I, I had to go lead the troop again. But I physically broke inside, like that was the moment.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, and then you had to put it back on. You had to put it back together.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. You know, you had to survive.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, much of this book, you are explaining the heroes you got to work with, and you. You definitely lay some. Some of that out here, especially as Matthew Clayton. You were amazing. I'm so proud of you. You gave. I gave you the entire deployment and constantly pushed you, but you were a true hero that day. You should have been recognized with an award for valor and your combat action badge. And I failed you, my friend. No one could have done what you did. You were brave and I love you. Doc Rob Black. There was nothing you could have done to save David, and yet you did everything humanly possible to train, change that outcome. You kept David alive until we made it to hospital. So many people need to learn how hard it is to learn how hard the Combat Medical Badge is to earn. It's the only combat badge that requires you to perform duties under fire, and you did that. You would distinguish yourself that day and many more during our tour. And I love you. First Platoon, you followed your extraordinary leaders, Captain O'Hare and Sergeant First Class Marco. And you fought bravely that day. You cleared the streets of the enemy as they were forming an attack on you, and you evacuated your men under fire with precision and courage. Engineer Hum V crew, you saved us from further injury and stopped a possible ambush as we evacuated. You did your unit proud. Thank you, Marines, we love serving with you and I proudly display my 1 and 2 meth patches when the army pisses me off. We both made mistakes that day, but we would fight with you again. As you've seen through these stories. I made many mistakes in my career, but I am proud of the soldier David became. I should have thought done some things differently, but in hindsight, that doesn't save him. I will see you in Valhalla, my friend, and drink with you in Fiddler's Green soon enough.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. So you know one Clayton. You're great. He was my driver. He had my rule. I. I hate leaning. I'm afraid of tipping over. And he learned I do not like to lean. And he got that down. And I did. I wrote him hard. He was a combo guy. I wrote him hard three times in two and a half years. Three years of combat. I found myself alone from stupid decisions twice in Ramadi. And that last time, Clayton was a driver and got us back. That's a long distance on Route Michigan, as you know, in enemy territory. I don't know if I could have navigated to get us Back under that condition while trying to help Dietrich and Clayton did. And I will forever be grateful for that. He was perfected getting us back with me saying nothing. It was absolutely amazing. And then you met Rob Black. Yeah, earlier. And I can't wait till he comes on.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, we're gonna have a little chat.

[Dan Pinion]

That's a fun. That's a fun. A funny guy, man. You gotta be careful. That's a funny guy. But the stuff he did and saw.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, and he was like a 20, 21, 22 year old kid back then. That was his first deployment, correct.

[Dan Pinion]

I mean, the stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

Welcome to the jungle.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, the stuff. And just the aging of them, young boys to men. It's just amazing. So I am forever grateful of what I witnessed and saw and who I was thankful to serve with, what we asked them to do, or even as leaders sometimes again, I don't pat myself on the back, probably as much. And I'm not trying to be egotistic because I don't give myself credit. I give myself more guilt than I do credit. But I was learning to be a first sergeant the second deployment. I learned from watching the first arm before. I was learning to be a platoon sergeant the first deployment. I never had second chances at any position I was ever in. Every NCO rank I was in, except for command Sergeant Major, I was always deployed in some theater or deployment of some sort. I never had second chances at those positions. So you're always learning how to lead, so you're not going to get it right. So I was always amazed at how well people performed around us and. And I had to. I should have said thank you more. So I'm glad I'm able to try and get it right now.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, again, the book's got all kinds of so many details in it. I want to close out the book and we'll talk about some of the stuff that's in the book. But I do want to close out the book with this section. It's fast forwarding quite a bit, but for my retirement ceremony, my battle buddy, Brigadier General Sean Burnaby Bernabe, great man, Asked for pictures of me to show as a slideshow. Instead, we only showed pics of my family and my soldiers. And it still brings happiness to my heart when I see those pictures or think of them. I have told only a few people about this, but my life is in extra innings now. I'm not meant to be alive, but here I am, still kicking. Somehow, when I was leaving R R and heading back to Iraq in 2006, so this is you're talking. Yeah. So you're in Ramadi and a lot of people don't know this, but especially the army, when you're on a one year or 14 or 15 month deployment, you get a break, a two week leave break to go home, which I don't know how you guys do it, but you go home, you spend two weeks at home, and then you go right back into the fire. And that's what you're talking about here. When I was leaving R and R. When did you take R and R? What. What month was it?

[Dan Pinion]

It was August. It was. It was right at the end because I went during my R R. I did Quick's memorial service in Germany. So it was at the end of August.

[Jocko Willink]

So you had lost three soldiers prior to going home in R and R, and now you're going back and you say. When I was leaving R and R and heading back to Ramadi in 2006, I wrote letters to my wife, Solvig, my two boys, Damien and Tristan. I was saying goodbye because I believed I would never see them again. In the letters, I told Solvig to move on and find someone who would love the boys as much as me and asked her not to marry another soldier so they would have a dad that was around. I told Damien and Tristan how sorry I was that I couldn't be there to raise them. On the way to the base, I told Damien, who was only 7, that he was the man of the house and to be brave and strong, to take care of Tristan, who was only one year old, and watch over their mama. I told him not to cry when I left because it was going to be okay. When I got out of the car, I hugged my wife, who was sobbing, kissed Tristan, and knelt down to kiss and hug Damien, the man of the house. Now, Damien stayed brave and strong. As his eyes watered, his lip quivered. I knew selfishly that if he cried, I might not get on the plane that day. I stood and turned as tears flowed from my eyes and I walked away, never looking back for fear I would stop in my tracks. I just said goodbye to the three most precious people in my life. In that moment, I gave myself totally and fully to the army and my men, knowing I was going to die in Iraq for whatever reason. I didn't die. And in some ways, I regret it. Not because I'm not thankful for what I have, but because the guilt of not bringing them all home alive while I got a second chance in life. This book is my final salute to those I serve with, and I hope I made them proud and told their stories with accuracy and honesty. I love everyone with whom I served, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to serve my country. I hope someone shares stories, more stories of our unit in Ramadi, Iraq, because there are many more details, and these soldiers deserve to have their stories told or shown on the screen. If you want more funny stories, I have plenty. These were just the tip of the iceberg. Take care of your soldiers and loved ones, and they will take care of you. Everything else will take care of itself. Until then, roll up your sleeves and chop that up.

[Dan Pinion]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. The. The idea of accepting death. I think when people ask me about Ramadi, I was like, yeah, we'll pretty much accept you're gonna die. I know. I was like, yeah, this is. This is what I signed up for. This is what we're doing. And I. And I think that is the. I think that. I think that's the best attitude to have. I really. I mean, I think if you're scared, if you're afraid of it, it's going to be. I don't. I. I don't know how you serve. I don't know how you do that mentally. I mean, I guess you can't. But coming home after losing three soldiers, doing memorial service, I bet your wife must have been horrified.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, there. I mean, there's a lot of stuff I don't share with my wife. I mean, I don't think I. She's tried to read the book. I'm like, I don't read it. And after they say get wounded, or the first phone call, like, have you heard about your wife recording? A lot of people don't know is she had a severe panic attack, my first appointment, and had to get rushed to the emergency room. And my son Damien was put in the back of an ambulance. And thankfully, we had our parents nearby to help take care while I was still deployed. So I was always very careful what I shared and what I did. But you're exactly correct. And accepting death is the word I have come up with now because my mom's like, oh, you can't say that. And I'm like, mom, it's true. Like, and if the ones who have been there understand what you're talking about. And I've tried to. Soldiers come back from rr. I've tried to tell them, like, you have to focus on the mission. You can't be thinking about that. R And R. If you're thinking about what you just left, you're not going to make it home. And it's horrible to say, but it's true. And I'm like, you have to let the FRG take care of your family. You have to let family members take care of your family. You, this is your family. This is your fight. Nothing else can matter right now if you have any chance of going home. We have to fight the enemy. And I believed I was not going to go home. And I accepted it. I absolutely accepted it. And I'm thankful I'm here. And there's guilt in it as a leader that soldiers didn't. You regret decisions. You look at everything like, oh, this and that. And I have been in counseling for 15 plus years going through everything just to accept where I am at and beat depression and beat suicidal ideations and look at everything and to enjoy life and in and what I have around me to get to that point. But I accepted death. There is no doubt. And I am on. I'm in extra innings and I'm thankful for that. And I'm trying to make a difference. And that was some of the purpose of the book. The book is therapy, and the book is making sure that they are remembered and to honor them correctly and award them the stuff that we missed and got wrong. And that was the purpose behind that. And that was I. I know we haven't mentioned yet, but one of the things I wanted to do with the book was I had three rules in the book. One was in no way did I want to dishonor their story. So did tell by telling funny stories would I dishonor them. And then in no way did I I want to dishonor the army in any way, shape or form. And then I didn't want to dishonor the NCO corps that I love so much. So I gave to many mentors and like, this is the three criteria. If any of them is a yes, then it's not getting published or written. And they came back like, no, Dan, I think you, you're okay and we love it and please publish it. So I was like, all right, let's continue to move forward and I want to make sure that they're recognized.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So it's, it's awesome and you do a great job. I mean, you've got a whole section for each one of soldiers that you lost. You, you either got input from their families or you went and researched to give a description of who they are. You know, I always tell people, these aren't a soldier is not not just a soldier. They're a person. They have loved ones, they have families, they have dreams, they have hopes. And they sacrificed all that. And, and you do a beautiful memorial to each one of those soldiers. The book is just, it's just fantastic. And another huge part of the book that I think is going to be really helpful is. And it seemed like it was your quest and during your time in was once you realized that, oh, I got some issues, you got your issue, you got help with your issues. And you wanted to make sure that every, that other people could get that help as well. And you kind of describe what happened. You came home from that deployment. Of course it changed a lot. You know, I came home from that deployment like you just came. Got on a freaking metal tube in ramadi and then 20 hours later I'm back here in San Diego walking down Ocean Beach, Newport Avenue, going to get a hamburger and there's people walking around and like I'm looking at little pieces of trash on the ground and like it's, it's a, it's, it's a significant change of environment. So you come back, you end up, up and again this stuff is in the book. But you end up in an ROTC unit. You end up going out and, and you're doing some training in Fort Lewis, Washington. Some guy gets mouthy with you with one of your buddies.

[Dan Pinion]

One of your buddies, a ranger bat guy.

[Jocko Willink]

You freaking, you, you, you have to rough this dude up. And I think you said, you said you believed your past the statues of limitations now where yeah, you can no longer just put.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I put my hands around his neck. We'll just put it like that.

[Jocko Willink]

You end up going to see you go into the, to the whatever.

[Dan Pinion]

The behavioral health.

[Jocko Willink]

The behavioral health. They hand you a bunch of drugs. They, you fill out a questionnaire for an hour with 200 questions by reading a questionnaire, they hand you a bunch of drugs.

[Dan Pinion]

Now most, here's your bag.

[Jocko Willink]

Most people say, okay, cool. They take the drugs, they numb their brain. They're not making any progress. You said, wait, how are you giving me these drugs? And they say, cuz we, we read your questionnaire. You're like, what are you talking about? And so you went a little bit Richter and said I better see a doctor right now. And luckily this, this woman doctor sat you down. She talked to you for 15 minutes and she canceled all canceled our appointment.

[Dan Pinion]

I loved it.

[Jocko Willink]

She said she got, she, she had her work cut out with you. She said she canceled the rest of them. So you what, what do you, what happens? Because I know you talk to her for like, 12 hours a day? For two or three days.

[Dan Pinion]

Two days, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

What is she talking to you about? Is it basically the first time that you got to decompress and let some of this emotion, which you as a leader had kept bottled up? Is that. Is that what happens now?

[Dan Pinion]

That was exactly it. We went from everything from talk like David Dietrich is in front of you right now, to how do you feel about yourself right now, to just talking about life to talking about your kids. I mean, we went. We explored everything. Marriage, kids, career, life, combat.

[Jocko Willink]

How did you suddenly feel like it was okay to talk about this? Did you know that you needed to. Did she just have a good approach?

[Dan Pinion]

I think it's because she was a stranger, and I was in a state facility across the country of somebody who I'd probably never see again. And I felt. And she was easy to talk to, and I trusted her immediately, and it was almost like confession. And I felt I was going to walk out and I was going to be healed, but I trusted her.

[Jocko Willink]

Now, is she giving you. Is she giving you any guidance, or are you just pretty much sorting stuff out as you're saying it? If she's saying, like, well, it's okay to feel like that, or here's another perspective, like, what. What is she actually saying to you?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I can't remember who the. The famous prophet singer is, but she basically said it's okay not to be okay. That's basically what she was saying. And. Yeah. And then we started exploring plans, and then she's like, I think you need in treatment or. Yeah, in treatment facility. I was like, all right, let's keep negotiating here. I was like, look, Doc, I. I'm trusting you by pouring my heart out, so you're gonna trust me, and I don't need any treatment.

[Jocko Willink]

You feel. Did you feel better after the first day?

[Dan Pinion]

Absolutely. I felt a weight come off of me immediately. It all came out, and I felt relieved. It was like weight off my shoulders that I wasn't healed. But I felt a weight come off, and I knew what it is. I recognize I needed help. That's the end result is I need help. I am not okay, but I need help. And I didn't care about my career at that time. Nothing mattered except that I needed help. And I needed it for me, and I needed it for my family. And if my career continued after that, that's a bonus. But it was for me, and it's for my family.

[Jocko Willink]

One of the things that I've talked about over the years is for me, for whatever reason, when people died, I've given a lot of eulogies. Right. So you saw me give one for Mark. And that. That was. I guess it might have been the second one. Identity. I have a friend get killed years ago, another SEAL buddy of mine, Grizz. But you know, when you sit down to write a eulogy, you know, you're expressing and going through all the emotions and, you know, trying to keep your freaking keyboard from short circuiting because you're crying as you write the thing. And I feel like that was very helpful for me. I didn't know at the time, but just looking back, you know, sitting there and writing down what. What's going through my head, how much I cared about this individual, what they meant to me, how awesome they were, what I'm going to miss, like just processing all that and writing it down. It seems to me to be a very helpful thing. And it seems like that for me was very similar to what. What you eventually did here.

[Dan Pinion]

Absolutely.

[Jocko Willink]

To sit down and tell this woman how you felt, what you were feeling, going through those things.

[Dan Pinion]

And I made a mental note that what I felt coming out of there, I would make sure every soldier I came in contact knew it was okay to get help. And I would never be ashamed to say I was getting helped. Like I knew it. Like I knew what I. When I went in was different than the way I came out. And I would make sure every soldier I came in contact would know that. And I was amazed at how many leaders discouraged me from. From saying that. And I refused to back down. And I'm telling you, I saw changes in soldiers lives as a command sergeant major by actively showing them I was going to behavioral health. And then watching our numbers get better when it came to domestic violence and suicide ideations and overall depression by them going to seek help. And they're like, oh, your numbers are going up to seek help. I'm like, you damn right they are. But look what numbers are going down. I'm like, I'd rather. Yeah, those are going up, but those are going down. I'll take that all day long. It means it's working.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Did you ever. So did they ever put you on the. On like this, the meds? Did you ever take them or did. Was the counseling good enough?

[Dan Pinion]

I did. And it. There was one time I was on 17 medications as we tried to work through this stuff. And then I'm like, this is crazy. My head's a fog. I'm not feeling right and then we just started working them off and I said, you got to find. And my therapy has always been I want to do everything I can not to take medication. So let's work that first. And then last resort would be a medication. So you show me every technique that requires no medication before we go to medication. Medication will not be the first answer. And that's how I do everything now. And now I'm on no medication.

[Jocko Willink]

But some people need it.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, some people, yeah, that's just me. That's just me. But when it comes to like ptsd, depression, etc, and I'm generally on no medication, there's other techniques I'm using.

[Jocko Willink]

And, and is this the other. Like, what are the other techniques?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, to this day, I, I am a counseling every two weeks. I just switch from every week to every two weeks. And then you have the mindfulness, the other stuff that we go through.

[Jocko Willink]

What does mindfulness look like?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, you know, the breathing techniques or whether you, you know, you're going through the thought therapy or the sensory therapies, thinking, you know, with your breathing and, you know, your, your thinking that calm yourself down. I had a problem with anxiety the last, last summer. So I was working through that anxiety stuff, work related, professional related that we worked through that required medication, but then we worked how to get that down that requirement required it had physical symptoms related to it. So we work through that stuff. So again, you know, it's still a roller coaster, but right now, you know, we're working. But I have a counselor every two weeks, every Friday, every two weeks.

[Jocko Willink]

And do you find yourself talking about, still talking about combat or do you, do you feel like you've. You're talking about other things now?

[Dan Pinion]

What I try and talk about now is like I said, I've had two soldiers commit suicide from this unit, Ramadi. I've had four soldiers commit suicide, not directly under me while I served, but since that have served with me. So suicide is continuing to always be an issue. So I continue to talk depression and seeking treatment or help or reaching out.

[Jocko Willink]

I.

[Dan Pinion]

My phone number is in the book. Whether you want to spam me, text me, I don't care, call me, whoever. I mean, I've had two soldiers who do not know me call me just to talk. I'm like, I will always answer the phone if you need help. Suicide's not the answer. And let's figure out what we can do.

[Jocko Willink]

So, yeah, you mentioned the.

[Dan Pinion]

I talk about that more now.

[Jocko Willink]

Jose Diaz and Jared Rogers, these are two of your soldiers that, that, that killed themselves 2018 in October and 2021. How did you hear about them? Like, what does the messaging look like? How did you find out that this had happened?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, so a lot of it's social media, whether it's group group pages or you know, unit pages that we have on social media or staying in contact as we go down through, you know, like Jared Rogers was our commo sergeant Clayton, my driver worked for Rogers as a supervisor. But Jared Rogers was Clinton. Stories like best friend, you know, in the during headquarters section together and they always quoting Joe Dirt. And I would always get pissed. I'm like, stop quoting it. And they're always having fun. And you know, we asked a commo support soldier to man a 50 cal gun and get in the middle of a fight. And fight he did. Like we asked him to do stuff that, you know, our combat soldiers are doing and then they're like, everybody's a soldier. Yeah, I got it. Got it. But we asked him to do stuff that were tough and he saw stuff that some soldiers just don't see and he battled stuff. And I can't tell you all the circumstances why he took his life, but he took his life. And Jose Diaz was a young soldier. Same same again. You know, circumstances at a young age, ended up up taking his life. And you know, through social media we heard about sad and Jared Rogers ex wife. In fact, I said the proceeds of the book, none of the proceeds of the book go to me. All the proceeds I make or we make no money on this book. The proceeds all go to scholarships or award awards in the name of the fallen soldiers or from the families awarded to others. So like Jared Rogers has a memorial award that we're going to award on the anniversary of his death this coming fall. His son will choose who gets the award in his name to honor his father. So through his ex wife who's battling cancer right now, his son will choose who gets an award named after Jared. So that's the purpose of the book now is the name and stuff. Or Chris Strickland who lost a hand and blind in one eye. His son is named after. After Bradley Best who lost his life. His son has a race car or drives a race car. Coming up, an amateur circuit and the race car number is 84. August 4th. And his son is named Brad after Bradley Best. So stuff like that, we have an award named after that that will award. So it's stuff like that. So you know, that's how we keep. And we heard about the death. So yeah, but just keep them Remembered.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. You know, you mentioned these guys, these kids being young and, and, you know, there's like, there's dark. If you're a human being, there's going to be. There's going to be bad things. It's going to be darkness. There's going to be. You're going to see evil things. But to get this level of concentration of fear and horror and death and, and terrible wounds, to see that over and over again and then go into that fire over and over and over and over and over and over again over time, like, eventually that darkness can start to be a pretty. A lot bigger than it should be in your world. And it just seems like if, if you're not careful, it can take over. You know, that's another part that you mentioned in the book. And again, this is just hitting some, some other sections that you talk about is, you know, you, you had some physical issues as well. So you're, you're dealing with your, like, your, your mental health type stuff. You ended up having some physical issues too. That, that sort of came out. Obviously had some injuries, but you also ended up. The situation where you're talking about, you're, you're like, you would gain £30 in a month, then you'd lose £30 the next month. You're. You, you were all over the place. And you end up getting, I guess, would you call it fired when you, when they pulled you off the list there. So you're about to be a command sergeant major and they pull you off the list and eventually you figure eventually get a medical review and they figure out you got some medical issues.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, correct. You know, so again, if you, if you grow up in the. Like I said, I started my career in the early 90s. You didn't go to sickle. You know, I have a broken toe and a broken finger that never got treated because you didn't go. He's just like, yeah, I got a bent finger that. They're like, it is what it is. I, I watched an NCO get fired because he went to sick call. They're like, you work at the gym now, brother. And I'm like, all right, I'm not even going to sit. Call. And that was the lesson in the early 90s. So you never went. And then, you know, as you're coming up, you know, you just never got seen. So like I said, even after coming back to Iraq the first time, all of a sudden they start doing tests on you. Like, you know, you know, this is what's wrong with you. And you're like, what? And, oh, by the way, we're gonna do this. And now we gotta start scanning your brain every six months to check the spotting in the back of your brain. And you have some pretty serious bruising. And then, you know, you come back the second time. Next thing you know, you got. Oh, by the way, you put your hands around somebody and you got severe ptsd, and this is your anger issues. And now you need counseling and this and that. Oh, by the way, you know, now we're running tests and you're going up and down in weight, and you got some guy saying, hey, I'm pulling you from the command sergeant major. And eventually, you know, at first you're like, oh, I blame everybody else. And I blame everybody else. And you don't accept responsibility for yourself, you know, and then you have to accept responsibility like, hey, I have to own this also. You know, there's laziness in there, too. But there is. There are the army. Didn't you know, this guy did mess up, too. And then all of a sudden, the doctor is like, no, man, there is something wrong with you. And you're like, oh, there is a reprieve. It's not just all me. And they figure it out, and you get some bad bedside, man. Or Dr. Just like, bam, shot in the ass. You come back in two weeks, and two weeks later, bam, shot in the ass. And all of a sudden you're like, whoa, whoa. And you feel great. And next thing I know, man, I was a beast. I mean, I. I was looking good, feeling good, running marathons. And they figured it out. It was good, good times. Then they had to put me back on the list.

[Jocko Willink]

And. And is that how you finished out your career?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, sorta. So after that, I was selected for nominative list, so general officer level. And I ended up going to Europe, serve as general officer level.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, nice.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, it was. It was a good. Good finishing. And they. I was actually selected higher, but I chose retirement, drop retirement. And they're like, I'm like, no, I'm retiring.

[Jocko Willink]

What year did you retire?

[Dan Pinion]

January 31, 2019. So six years ago when.

[Jocko Willink]

What was like that? Was there a. Like a final straw that broke the camel's back in terms of deciding to write this book? Because writing a book is a big undertaking. What was the thing that made you finally decide? All right, give me out my computer and start. Right. Yeah.

[Dan Pinion]

It's kind of funny because actually, no. Yeah. So I used to. So I worked for the army as a civilian after, and I'd run major conferences, and I'd always heard the cattle, the cats, and the conferences. And I always tell a story to start a conference, and I'd be telling some of these funny stories, or sometimes I'd tell some of the sad stories, and I have people crying or laughing, and everybody would push me, like, dude, you got to write this. And earlier, when I was going through the medical stuff, I was up at Fort Benning with another sergeant major. And again, me, you, and Echo could sit around tonight drinking beers down at Coronado island, whatever, watching the surf, and we would just tell funny stories of our services, and we would just be laughing, and each one of us would try and up each other with. And that's me. And the sergeant major would tell stories like that. And all of a sudden, people would come in every morning and start listening. But that's how the military is. We would just. All of us have a story. And I remember us, me and Greg looking at each other, I was like, man, we could. If 20 of us just put a story together, we'd each. We'd have a book. So the idea was always there. And then my buddies in Germany, like, dan, you gotta write this. One weekend. I wrote it one weekend.

[Jocko Willink]

Dang.

[Dan Pinion]

I wrote the entire thing. And I sent it away, and I sent it. I did some Google research, and I sent it to 10 publishing companies. You know, the excerpt or whatever, like, here's 250 words or one chapter within five days, seven of them wrote back, said, we want you.

[Jocko Willink]

What chapter did you send? What excerpt? What story? Do you remember?

[Dan Pinion]

Was it chop this up? It probably chopped that up. Good one. Yeah, it's probably the one. Lead it off. And then by the end of the week, all 10. And then you go through the traditional hybrid. You know, I'm not gonna get all those details, But I had 10 out of 10 say, we want you.

[Jocko Willink]

Nice.

[Dan Pinion]

And then the idea was never to write a memoir, but they said, you got to put a chronological. Makes sense because of the way. And I really felt it kind of worked out because you can see me go from naive, stupid, funny story to combat to broken, finishing up. So you can see a transition that was unspoken when I first wrote it. But as they start talking about it or writing it, it sort of. It just comes out that way.

[Jocko Willink]

We were talking before we hit record about a movie that's coming out. It's called Warfare. And it's my. My buddy Ray Mendoza, who was SEAL Team 5. And when we left in October of 2006, Raymondoza and their troop Came in and took our place and they had a, they suffered significant casualties, including a guy named Elliot Miller on. It was November 19th.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So. And Elliot, you know, he, he got severely wounded. Survived, thank God. But I know you, you were talking about that the, There's a trailer out for it right now and you know, I, I watched it and it's, it is, it is very powerful trailer, but just the realism of it is pretty awesome. I know you said the first time you saw the trailer you like shut it down.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I stood up, walked my family, I put it on and I was like, hey, I think this is Ramadi. And I stood up and walked out halfway. It's. It's real. You know, I'll, I'll watch it. There's not. I can sit through almost everything that's related back. You know, there's thoughts and feelings and smells that will come. You know, there's stuff that reminds you of stuff. And I just talking to you, I can picture Ramadi to this day. Or in your book you show map of Ramana. I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah. Like I, I know it. Or talk about Mike Bahaima and stuff. It takes you right back to the stuff. But that trailer, I can tell it's accurate, the scenes and it's there.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it looks like they did and, and Ray's done a bunch of like movie type stuff and Rey is, is just a freaking awesome guy. Like just. He's just an awesome guy. He's. He's like quiet. He's. He's really good reputation as in the SEAL teams obviously. And yeah, it's. From what I've seen of it so far, it looks like it's going to be really, really powerful and will give people the sense, some of the sense of what it was like, you know, as close as you can get without having things blow up right next to you.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure he got it right and I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[Jocko Willink]

So what's next for you?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, so like I said, so the way ahead right now, if I can talk about it real quick is like I said, right now we're trying to do scholarships and awards for people, but I want to get stuff right. I want to recognize people. So like I have. We have one soldier from our previous deployment, 2003, was wounded. In fact we took him to the Green Zone, to the cache there I took him, I could see his skull. He refused to be evac back to the States, stayed with us. Redeploy and then self medicated at Fort Lewis and ended up getting. They court martialed him for self medicating. That unit did whatever they thought was right and court martial and got a bad conduct discharge. So I'm working with him to get it overturned and get him a good conduct or honorable discharge so he can get VA care. He can't get VA care right now. Now this is guys who serve their country. So we last July tried to do that. We have another soldier from Ramadi who I didn't realize didn't get his Purple Heart because when he was getting seen at the cache, Joseph Rodriguez didn't want the female medicine examine him, cutting off his clothes and walked out. And I didn't realize it. So I have to fix that. So we're getting. He just admitted his Purple Heart and then obviously Marquis quick. So there's stuff like that I want to fix. So I've sort of made it. My goal is to rectify some of this stuff and then continue to give the awards. Like Regan Barr, I think he knows it, but I just wrote his uncle who was a Nebraska National Guard general. His, his uncle actually came out to Iraq when we're up north and pinned corporal on him. How cool is that? Have your uncle come out, pin Corporal E4 on him. I just wrote his uncle a few days ago. I was like, hey, I'd like to name an award. So my goal is to continue to name awards and scholarships after these heroes so they're never forgotten. I currently live in Virginia. I just resigned from federal government a few months ago to look at different avenues my personal professional life. But I still continue to help the joint staff of the military as a contractor, which I love and looking at stuff serving our country and then hopefully we go to this reunion.

[Jocko Willink]

I was about to say, and what?

[Dan Pinion]

Let's do this.

[Jocko Willink]

We got this. We got this. Ready? First 2006 reunion, it's happening. It's the 20 year anniversary. It's January of 2026. The planning is already underway. If you were there, you're invited. Gold star families are invited and that would be awesome to see the Gold Star families there. You know, General McFarland's on the case, you know, leading from the front as usual. But we've, we've already had a bunch of meetings. So anyone from any of those, from any branch, you know, whether you're Marine, Army, Navy, Air Force, every service was represented there. I don't know if the Coast Guard was represented there. They might have been, I forget. But if you were there, you're invited. Gold Star family is invited. So that's the next big thing for the ready first Brigade Combat Team from Iraq at that time. So January of 26, Martin Luther King.

[Dan Pinion]

Weekend, I believe that weekend.

[Jocko Willink]

And it's going to be. It's going to be a couple, like maybe it's Friday, Saturday, and then I think it's those. The two big days. It's going to be great to see everybody again.

[Dan Pinion]

Even.

[Jocko Willink]

It's been, it's been awesome. We've been jumping on these zoom calls and it's, you know, it's like the battalion commanders are on there, some of the senior NCOs are on there. And it's, it's just, it's just awesome to see everybody again and, and be talking, you know, to be talking about something that we can go and have a celebration as opposed to the old meetings that we used to have, which were a little bit more serious, a little bit more heavy content.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, correct. And again, honor what we did. I mean, remember they ran a 5k race just a few months from the sacrifices we did.

[Jocko Willink]

They did indeed.

[Dan Pinion]

How crazy.

[Jocko Willink]

Right down route Michigan.

[Dan Pinion]

Michigan 5k race.

[Jocko Willink]

Unbelievable. It was so unbelievable. So is that get us up to speed? Is that where we're at?

[Dan Pinion]

Yes. But I, I do have one thing. Yeah, A little bit of surprise. So cavalry has a tradition where we wear cavalry spurs and Stetsons because we're pretty. We're pretty sexy. So when we're, when we're back in training, we go to a competition called Spur Ride. And if you complete it, you get silver spurs. When you're in combat against the enemy in a cavalry unit, you get gold spurs. So I reached across and talked to our commander and some other people, and I brought with me a pair of Combat Spurs, Gold spurs for Lieutenant commander at the time Jocko Willnick, to present to you today with a promise that if you give me the names of all your SEAL team at the reunion, I will bring every certificate in Combat spurs for all the members of Seal Team 3 Task Force Bruiser to officially award all of them as a member of our team, the Combat spurs with you. So I have them. I have brought them, my friend. They look a little used because they are mine. That's awesome. But I couldn't think any better. So these are official gold combat spurs for what we, we did together, my friend.

[Jocko Willink]

Outstanding, man. Outstanding. That's what an honor that is. And it was just so awesome to serve alongside you guys and, and just be out there and. Oh, man, there's an honor.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. And Then with that, I'll tell you how to wear them at the Spur dinner, so you look sexy, too. And then with that, I got our official coin. I don't think we ever awarded it, brother. So thanks, man. Yeah. Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

Phantom Troop.

[Dan Pinion]

That's with an F. Y.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn.

[Dan Pinion]

We never learned how to spell. But.

[Jocko Willink]

That'S an honor, and I'll definitely get you that. That. That. That list. And everyone will be. They'll. They'll. They'll wear those with pride.

[Dan Pinion]

Hey, just a side note, Baima made his Bulldog coin just a hair bigger than that coin just because he designed that coin with us. And then when he left to go to Bulldog, he intentionally made his bulldog just a hair bigger just to rub it in.

[Jocko Willink]

That's by my dude. That's the way he rolls. Where can people. Where can people find you right now? So you got D Pinion dot com.

[Dan Pinion]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

Got your own website, which is awesome. You're on Instagram @DanielPinion. You're on Twitter X at Daniel L. Pinion. And then, of course, you're on Facebook and LinkedIn. Daniel Pinion. And. And that's where people want to reach out to you. By the way, you said you have the phone number in the back of the book.

[Dan Pinion]

They got to read the book.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Got to read the book. So if you want. If you want the phone number, read the book. Hopefully you don't have to set up an answering service on that time in the future if it gets overwhelming. But, you know, it just shows where your heart's at. You know, you're here to help people, which is. Which is unbelievable and. And awesome and exactly the what. What we would expect from a. From a leader like you. Echo. Charles, you got any questions?

[Echo Charles]

Oh, yeah, real quick. Your boys are grown up now.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. How.

[Echo Charles]

How much were they in the know about, like, kind of the things that went on and stuff like that?

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, I don't think at all. Like I said, my youngest or oldest, Damien, was seven. And during Ramadi, and I really didn't talk about. So one thing I'll tell you. So when I did go to ROTC and I was pulled out right after Ramadi, if it wasn't for the counselor at Fort Lewis sitting me with 48 hours. And I. I say this honestly, and I had everybody in Connecticut crying when the little League kids and family, the parents of Mansfield really pulled me out of depression and saved my life. I started teaching little League and that taking me. Me away and giving me another purpose. Those. Those kids and families, but my kids. So My oldest is 26 now, and he's about to join the Cincinnati Police Department.

[Jocko Willink]

Outstanding.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah. And my youngest is about to transfer to University of Cincinnati. I think we're waiting for the letter to come in and continue his college career. But they didn't. They didn't really know, so even until they read the book.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, okay.

[Dan Pinion]

Okay. Yeah. My old. My oldest read the book.

[Echo Charles]

Okay. And what. What was his take? Was he, like, kind of blown away, or was he, like, okay, this makes.

[Dan Pinion]

Sense now, you know, I think so, because there was times where they saw the anger and stuff, and you try not to take it out in your family or, why is he cold? Or. It's tough, man. It's tough balancing act. But I think he understand. We have a lot more conversations. Conversations now. There's a lot more maturity now on my side, too, of how I interact with my children. It's a real strong relationship. And I think he. He understands. He understands what I did for my soldiers. But when it comes to combat, I don't know if they'll truly understand what we saw and did. There was a. It was a shitty movie, I'm not gonna lie. But at the end, it was some SEAL movie, but I'm not saying, don't. Don't take me to the mat after this, but it was a pretty shitty movie. But at the end of it, they had mentioned Mark Lee's name as a scroll, and I lost it at the end. Like, I just came out of the movie theater, had to be like, 2010, and my kids, like, it wasn't my dad. And I. I explained to him what was going on. I'm like, hey, I know that guy. And my kid was like, well, that was a crappy movie. I'm like, yeah, the movie did suck, but I know that guy that they honored at the end, so I don't think they'll ever understand combat. And I hope they never have to see it. I hope the sacrifices we make, they never have to see.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. When you. When you were talking about your wife and. And I know with me, like, I have, like, my wife, she wouldn't know what we were doing. I actually have. I've gone back and looked at emails that I was sending home from Ramadi, and they're like, hey, how's it going? Hope the kids are good. You know, food here is not great, but, you know, oh, well. And. And actually, I. I have, like. I looked at the email I sent to my wife on August 2nd and August 3rd, and they're just, like, the most. Hey, babe. You know, hope everything is okay with the kids. Just no. No indication of what was going on. But then at the same time, my wife was back here. She was going to the hospital, visit my guys that are wounded. She was going to, you know, she went to Mark's funeral. She went to Mike's funeral, like, so as much as I tried to keep her detached from it all, like, and I imagined your wife had to be the same way.

[Dan Pinion]

You know who I was thankful for? Linda McFarland. Because I sort of shielded my wife from the army. But Linda McFarland put her arms around people like my, you know, my wife Solvig, and, you know, brought. Guided her and otherwise. And, you know, Linda McFarland's an angel.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, she is indeed. Right on. Echo. Any other questions?

[Echo Charles]

No. Good to meet you, sir.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, no, you do, Echo.

[Jocko Willink]

Right on. Dan, any. Any closing thoughts?

[Dan Pinion]

No. I. I mean, one, it was awesome serving next to you guys. And, you know, as much as horrible as Ramadi was, I cherish our time together. And this platform is amazing. So thank you for allowing me on. And if you get Rob Black on there.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, he's evil.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, that's a done deal one. That's a dangerous thing to get him on there, but I look forward to watching that episode. Just be careful what you ask. I appreciate you guys.

[Jocko Willink]

It's awesome, man. I want to close out with some words speaking of McFarland's and the McFarland's in general McFarland close out with some words that he wrote in the forward of the book. He said some may read this book as a collection of war stories, but it's really a love story. Command Sergeant Major Pinion's love for his soldiers is unmistakable as he fights the enemy, the elements, and the army's infamous red tape on their behalf. In this series of vignettes, it's clear his love for his soldiers grew until it was put to the ultimate test in Ramadi, where he was forced to sacrifice the soldiers he loved for the sake of our brigade's mission. I know the pain of those terrible days haunts him still. His moving story about a life dedicated to his soldiers in peace and war is full of hard truths we can all learn from. And no matter what he says or thinks, I can say with some authority. CSM retired, Dan Pinion is a hero. Scouts out. Ready first iron soldiers. Lieutenant General Sean McFarland, US army, retired. And Dan, it was an honor to serve with you and your men on the battlefield. And I agree with the general 100% and I know your response to that, the response we all give, and that's that the real heroes didn't come home.

[Dan Pinion]

Oh, well said.

[Jocko Willink]

But thanks for remembering them. Thanks for your service and sacrifice. Thanks for sharing the lessons and the stories of your valiant men, especially Staff Sergeant Clint Story, Sergeant Bradley Best Sergeant Marquis Quick, and PFC David Dietrich. We will never forget them.

[Dan Pinion]

Absolutely, brother.

[Jocko Willink]

Thank you.

[Dan Pinion]

Oh, thanks.

[Jocko Willink]

And with that, Dan Pinion has left the building. Just an honor to talk to him. Honored to be able to share these stories and thanks to everyone for listening to it. Much appreciated. Get. Get the book. You're not going to find a better name for a book, right?

[Echo Charles]

I don't think so.

[Jocko Willink]

Top. Top name for a book, man. Chop that up. And you know, someone was like, well, you know, we're not sure if that's really a title that will, you know, you don't want to use. No. And he was like, no, no, that's the name of the book.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, perfect, actually.

[Jocko Willink]

Don't even, don't even deny it. And as I mentioned, like, I went through some of the stories in the book, but I left out so much detail. Even the stories that I told, there's so much detail in there. So get the book and you can hear from what Dan said. What is he doing with money from the book? He's forming these scholarships and. And whatnot to. To memorialize the names of these heroes. So it's just a great book. Check it out. Get the book. You'll. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and everything in between. So thanks, Dan. Thanks for coming out. Awesome. Also, if you want to support the podcast so we can do stuff like this, and you also want to support yourself at the same time, you can do two things at once. We call that double leg takedown.

[Echo Charles]

Thought you're going to bring back the double gravitational scenario.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Wait, what's the double gravitational scenario?

[Echo Charles]

Like when you get pulled in the same direction by two things?

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, okay. Nice.

[Echo Charles]

Double gravitation.

[Jocko Willink]

Is that something from. We're bringing that back.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, we were talking.

[Jocko Willink]

Was that one of our things back in the day?

[Echo Charles]

This is maybe like five years ago, but hey, we back.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, so we're gonna do double gravitational pole.

[Dan Pinion]

Sure.

[Jocko Willink]

You're gonna support yourself and you're gonna support the podcast. Here's what you do. Go to jockofuel.com and get yourself some protein, get yourself some energy drinks, get yourself some pre workout, which you occasionally might need. Look, do I take a pre workout every day? No, I don't. But Occasionally. Do you need to get a little bit of, let's say some, some external help with your, with your motivational levels?

[Echo Charles]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

Do you need that? Sometimes. Sometimes you do. Last night I got all held up on the, on the aircraft, couldn't land in San Diego, blah, blah, blah, so. And I had an early call this morning. So when I get that workout today, what's gonna be in the afternoon, which I already don't like doing.

[Echo Charles]

Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Probably gonna hit that later.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So. Jockofuel.com get protein, get the, get the good stuff, get the clean stuff. Get immunity, get, get it all hydrate. Hydration is good. By the way, greens. Greens say you don't. Greens don't need to taste like dirt. FYI, you can get greens that taste good and have the nutrients you need in them. Jockofuel.com you can also get this stuff at Walmart, Wawa Vitamin Shop, GNC Military Commissaries, AES, Hanford- Stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, ShopRight. Heb down in Texas, Meer in the Midwest, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, shoprite. There you go, Publix. We're down in Publix now. Pub's a big, big chain, so check that out. Lifetime Fitness shields. Small gyms everywhere, including your Jiu Jitsu gym. If your gym doesn't have Jocko fuel and they're making you weak or poisoning you with some other product, it's okay. Have an email jf sales jockey, fuel.com and we got you covered. Also, you probably need Jiu Jitsu clothing. And I recommend you get American made jiu jitsu clothing. Ghee rash guard shorts. Go to originusa.com and get stuff that is made in America. And then when you go out to the grocery store afterwards, when you go to Wegmans or you go to HEB afterwards, you need clothing where you can't wear your gi there. You could technically, but you don't want to. You need a pair of jeans, you need a hoodie, you need a T shirt, you need a pair of boots. Go to OriginUSA.com and get American made goods. Get American. Look, there's been a lot of sacrifice in this country, a lot of sacrifice in this country for freedom. Support freedom. Support America. Support our workers. Go to originusa.com and get some.

[Echo Charles]

I will say this too, because you mentioned the hoodies. You may not even care about this. I don't know. Maybe do, maybe don't. But there's no reason for me to think that. Nonetheless, Pete and everyone who designed the hoodies and other stuff at origin. They care about the fit. Like when you put on the fit. Like when you put it on, it like, fits in a way not like your regular boxy junk hoodies. Like, it looks good too. The aesthetic value is very high at origin, not to mention the made in the usa. But when you put them together, you get something very unique, I'll tell you that.

[Jocko Willink]

I'm glad you're over there concerned with the aesthetics. Yeah, somebody's got to be.

[Echo Charles]

Well, bro, I think we kind of.

[Jocko Willink]

Want stuff to work.

[Echo Charles]

I think we all are, except you. That's what I think, actually. And you know what? You know what I think, though? You know what I believe? Whether or not you're going to admit this or not, I think aesthetics are part of your list, your priorities.

[Jocko Willink]

That's just junk. Correct?

[Echo Charles]

Correct. Exactly.

[Jocko Willink]

Right. So we don't look like an idiot.

[Echo Charles]

At the very least, you, we, you, we prefer it to be squared away at the very least. About that.

[Jocko Willink]

Hey, cool all day. This is something you said. Maybe I don't want to admit it.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I will admit that I want something to appear to be squared away.

[Echo Charles]

Aesthetically.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes. Squ away is an okay. There you go.

[Echo Charles]

Hey, hey. There you go. You heard it here, folks.

[Jocko Willink]

Hey, go to origin USA.com and get some aesthetically squared away product.

[Echo Charles]

Yep. 100%.

[Jocko Willink]

100%. 100% made in America.

[Echo Charles]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

All right.

[Echo Charles]

That too.

[Jocko Willink]

Let's go.

[Echo Charles]

Also, Ja Ja Store called Jocko Store. Jaco Store.com. discipline equals freedom. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom shirts and hats and ha. Hoodies, some shorts on there. Basically apparel in, in every scenario. Situation. Discipline, freedom. Good. You know, these things you want to represent as far as, like, being on the path. Being on the path. You see what I'm saying?

[Jocko Willink]

I like how you can't remember what you say every time or you're maybe you're just pretending you don't remember it. Maybe you're searching for a new way of saying something.

[Echo Charles]

Maybe a little bit. But I think I'm just trying to keep it authentic. You know, I, I, I revisit the Jocko store thing in my mind every time we do it.

[Jocko Willink]

Cool.

[Echo Charles]

So it's really.

[Jocko Willink]

Do you have any kind of a subscription thing there?

[Echo Charles]

I'm glad you asked. Jocko. So we do have subscription scenario called the Shirt locker.

[Jocko Willink]

It's a subscription scenario.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, big time.

[Dan Pinion]

Big time.

[Echo Charles]

Yes, yes. You get a new design every month. Designs a little bit outside the box, we'll call them. People seem to like them Though, And I, you know, they're all different, you know, in these different ways. So some. Some hit land. How should I say? They are a hit to certain types of people. And sometimes when those designs hit hard to people that I'm personally in. No, I'll get the wave of text. Yeah, this is the one I like. Oh, yeah. The last one was one of those ones. Nonetheless.

[Dan Pinion]

Yes.

[Echo Charles]

It's all on Jocko store.

[Dan Pinion]

So go.

[Echo Charles]

If you check some. Check that stuff out.

[Dan Pinion]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

If you like something, get something right on.

[Jocko Willink]

Speaking of stuff that you might like and should like, check out coloradocraft beef.com and primal beef.com because we got steaks that you will like, bro.

[Echo Charles]

So. Okay, so Colorado craft beef Beef sticks, Snickers bars.

[Jocko Willink]

They're Snickers bars. Yeah, they're like a snack, like a Snickers bar. But they're awesome for you.

[Echo Charles]

Way better. Yeah, way better. So this specifically, you know, my son, he's like, whatever. He'll just eat whatever, you know, like, not eat whatever, but, like, he doesn't make a big deal out of, like, food. And, like, he'll just.

[Jocko Willink]

He's not a foodie.

[Echo Charles]

No, not really. He doesn't relish all the stuff, but he runs down. Right. Because I guess we got some. Some free ones at the Mustard. The beef stick. We've been out for a while.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

So he found one. And he runs up to me. He's like this, like, points it in my face.

[Dan Pinion]

This.

[Echo Charles]

This is my favorite one right here. And I looked at it. He's like, it's the. My favorite. And Then runs upstairs, 100 Colorado craft beef Beef stick.

[Jocko Willink]

Check out those beef sticks. Snickers bar Steak. Snickers bars. Basically, good to go. And then primalbeef.com just awesome steaks. Awesome food from awesome people at awesome companies. Primalbeef.com ColoradoCraft beef.com Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Don't forget to check out Jocko underground.com, the YouTube channels. Psychological warfare books. We got some books. Obviously, the book you need to get is Chop that Up by Dan Pinion. It's just a freaking great book. And then I've written a bunch of books, too, that you can check out, including a bunch of kids books. If you've got kids or, you know, kids, or there's a kid that lives across the street, maybe you can see. You ever look at a kid, you go, oh, I'm worried about this kid. Like, he's got that little, like, yeah, some. Maybe a little bit of an attitude where you go, this kid might go down the wrong path. Let's get him on the right path. Or maybe he's a kid that's on a good path. Maybe he's gonna be a little bit. Maybe he's gonna be a little bit soft, like, oh, he's not, not doing enough hard things. We got you covered. Warrior kids, check them out. Warrior kid books. There's a warrior kid movie coming. It's gonna be awesome. So check all that stuff out. And then I've run, written a bunch of books about leadership. So we're here for you. Also, we have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for some details on that. And by the way, we have events. We have live events. The next big live event that we have is San Antonio, Texas. This is April 29th through May 1st. It's gonna sell out. It's in San Antonio, the muster. Come and check that out. We also have another battlefield coming up out at Gettysburg. So if you're interested in history or you are interested in leadership, or if you're interested in both, this is a place for you to go. The Gettysburg Battlefield Review is epic. So check that out as well. Go to ashlandfront.com for details on any of that. We also have a consultancy. We'll come into your business and help you. So we got you covered there. And then we also have an online training academy, extremeownership.com where we can get you trained up in the skills of leadership. Look, the lessons that we learned on the battlefield, that we learned in business, that we learned with our families, that we can take and teach them to you and they will make every aspect of your life better. Go to extreme ownership.com and also if you want to help service members, active and retire, active and retired. You want to help their families, you want to help gold star families? Check out Mark Lee's mom. You heard about Mark Lee today. What an incredible human being. Made an incredible sacrifice and his mom took that and turned it into something unbelievably awesome. It's America's Mighty warriors dot org. They do so much to help our, our veterans. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to that website, America's mighty warriors.org and see how you can help out. Also, don't forget about heroes and horses.org and finally, Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org once again. If you want to connect with us for Dan Pinion, check out. He's got his own website it's dpinyon.com you can check that out. And he's also on Instagram at danielpinion and Twitter x daniellpinion and then he's on Facebook and LinkedIn as well. And for us, you can check out jocko.com on also on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink and Echoes at Echo. Charles, Just don't waste a bunch of time there because time fleeting and you're gonna run out of it. And don't spend that precious time looking at a 3 inch computer screen that you carry around in your pocket. It's a waste. Don't let it happen. Thanks once again to Dan Pinion for joining us. And thanks to the rest of Phantom Troop was an honor to serve alongside you guys in the Battle of Ramadi. We will not ever forget your service and sacrifice. And thanks to all our military personnel out there. There's so much sacrifice that happens to protect our freedom and we are grateful for it. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret service and all other first responders. Thank you for your service and sacrifice here on the home front and everyone else out there. You can probably guess what I'm gonna say right now. I think it's pretty obvious. They're gonna be obstacles in life. There's gonna be big obstacles. Big obstacles. And it's gonna be hard to make them go away. But now, thanks to Command Sergeant Major Dan Pinion, you know what to do. Roll up your sleeves and chop that shit up. That's all we've got for tonight and until next time, Zeko and Jocko out.