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497: Lessons About Human Will and Those Who Don't Break. "Combat Leadership at Iwo".
01:26:46
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- [00:00]
Jocko Willink
This is Jocko podcast number 497 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.
- [00:06]
Echo Charles
Good evening.
- [00:08]
Jocko Willink
The battle of Iwo Jima occupies a meaningful niche in the heritage of our nation and our core. Marines of subsequent generations, accustomed to limited wars and restrictive rules of engagement, may find it hard to imagine the battle's sheer size and fury. The raw dimensions are staggering. Three Marine divisions assaulting a densely fortified island from the sea. 36 Days of Savage point blank firing that won a great victory, but cost the five amphibious corps nearly 28,000 casualties. The bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history. In the last and final analysis, it is the guy with the rifle and machine gun who wins and pays the penalty to. To preserve our liberty. My hat is off to the Marines. I think my feelings about them is best expressed by Major General Julian Smith. In a letter to his wife after Tarawa, he said, I never again can see United States Marine without experiencing a feeling of reverence. And that right there is the opening of an article that was written by Marine Corps Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, who is a company commander in Vietnam. And after he retired from the Marine Corps, he became a historian, an author, a scriptwriter, and probably his most famous book is a book called Utmost Savagery. He also wrote Sea Soldiers in the Cold War and also A Fellowship of Valor, the History of the United States Marine Corps. Very prolific guy and. But this, this short article was taken from the Marine Corps Institute or from a Marine Corps Institute document, which is called Leadership Credo. And the article itself, inside Leadership Credo, is called Combat Leadership at Iwo Jima. And I think there's some lessons in the article for all of us about will, human will, the breaking point, and people that don't break, but people that instead lead. So I'm going to get into this article. Here we go. Iwo Jima proved so costly to the Marines because the Japanese devised a disciplined defensive plan that maximized the island's formidable terrain and soft interior rock. Seizing Sulfur island would demand every bit of experience gained by American amphibious forces in the 30 months since the initial landings at Guadalcanal. While the colorful Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith is widely known for his role as the Senior Marine at EWO, the real workhorse was the commander of the 5Amphibious Corps, Major General Harry Schmidt. Schmidt had commanded that corps effectively in the seizure of Tinian the previous summer at Iwo Jima, Schmidt would have the honor of commanding the largest landing force of Marines ever committed to a single battle. Schmidt was fortunate to have three veterans of the heaviest fighting of World War I. Commanding his divisions, Major Major General Graves B. Graves B. Erskine, Commanding General, 3rd Division, Silver Star, two Purple Hearts with the six Marines Major General Clifton B. D. Cates, Commanding General, 4th Marine Division, Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, two Purple Hearts with the six marines, and Major General Keller E. Rocky, Commanding General, 5th Marine Division, Navy Cross with the fifth marines. Their collective experience would prove invaluable during the prolonged battle of attrition at Iwo Jima, which often resembled the bloodbaths of the earlier war. Iwo would see the kind of fighting characterized by one Marine officer as throwing human flesh against reinforced concrete. Yeah, so you're starting off, you're going in the combat experience, having those guys that I just rattled off as these commanders of these various units, guys that are Navy Cross and Silver Star and Purple Heart recipients from the First World War. And we've covered some First World War battles, and we've covered the war broadly on this podcast before, and it was just a whole nother level of brutality and savagery that you wouldn't imagine. Wouldn't imagine. And so these guys, having lived through that, they're mentally, somewhat, it would seem, prepared for the brutality and savagery that they're going to face at Iwo. Continuing on to the extent humanly possible, the men in the ranks of the assault divisions had the right mix of training and experience to undertake this daunting task. The third and fourth Marine Divisions were recent veterans of the Marianas campaign, in which they virtually annihilated the. The Japanese 31st Army. The newly organized 5th Marine Division would be facing combat for the first time, but a good third of its members were veterans, including many former Raiders and Paramarines. Now, this is interesting because the bringing that experience in and having that experience is so helpful, but most of the people that went into D Day on Normandy did not have combat experience. So these guys rolling in, they already know what they're getting into. They have experience. And there is like a. A huge. There's a huge gap between you've been to combat and you ain't been to combat. There's like a huge gap. And I've talked to some of my buddies, some of the missions that we did in the global War on Terror. You could pick just a random mission on a random night, going to hit a target, building, whatever. If that would have happened in the 90s when no one in a platoon, zero people in a platoon, may have had any combat experience whatsoever, we would have been so much worse, you know, and. And primarily we would have been worse just because of the mentality of getting used to it. You know, it's, it's not quite the same as jiu jitsu, because jiu jitsu, there's, it's so technical and you can, you can become so good with your techniques. But if you just take street fighting, like straight up street fighting, you know, did you know guys when you're growing up, they, they would get in one fight a week out in the bars or whatever, out in the clubs, out in the streets, that having those couple street fights under your belt makes you so much better, Right?
- [07:38]
Echo Charles
It's different.
- [07:39]
Jocko Willink
And so I feel like this is a big beneficiary to these guys because they know what they're getting into. Now I've heard people say about Normandy that they actually just wanted guys that hadn't been so that they were, didn't have. They kind of had the fantasy of battle. Like we're going to be heroic, of course. You know, we're going to charge in and it's going to be kind of glorious, right? They didn't want those guys to have the, oh, wait a second, you want us to go on this heavily defended beach with freaking bunkered in elevated machine guns? Because if you tell an experienced combat guy, hey, here's the deal, you're going to go into an open beach with bunkered in machine guns with intersecting fields of fire. This doesn't seem like a great plan. So these guys have experience, which is going to be better. It's going to be better in the long run. Absolutely. Carrying on. General Schmidt's divisions emphasized small unit action during workup trainings for Iwo Jima. A good investment in view of the localized fighting to follow. Captain Fred E. Haines, assistant operations officer for the 28th Marines, believed his regiment's pre assault training paid off in spades. Quote first we ran all 81 rifle squads through a live fire assault course twice. Then knowing we had to cut Iwo in two on D day. On the left flank, we found a volcanic terrain on Hawaii similar to Mount Suribachi and practice moving from the beach to our assigned positions. We even marked out control lines with white tennis court tape. Every man knew what to do, end quote. So he got 81 rifle squads just out there doing live fire assault courses. You got used to be a big deal back in the day for us in the SEAL teams because we did a lot of live fire. We did live fire everything. Live fire, immediate action drills out in the desert, live fire cqc, close quarters combat, going through the Houses a lot of live fire. And the pressure in live fire is obviously very high because if you make a mistake, you're going to, you can get killed or you can kill your friend. So the pressure is very high and you have to get used to it. And these guys, especially back in the day, they're just getting used to shooting and maneuvering. Cuz it is you're shooting close to your, your people and your people are shooting close to you. So it takes some getting used to and you have to understand the precision that you need to operate within. And then I would say though, as we advance, when you started getting simunition and paintball and laser, we had an advanced laser tag system that was better, but we never got rid of live fire because you have to be comfortable freaking shooting lead bullets that can kill you or your friends. You just have to get used to it.
- [10:31]
Echo Charles
What's the, what's the main, what do you call difference? Is that the. Just that psychology of it. Because the paintball or the laser tag system, for example, it still is loud, right?
- [10:43]
Jocko Willink
Or is it like it's not as loud? Okay, no, actually I take that back. They're not quite as loud, but they do have blanks. So they're. You're shooting blank. So it is loud. Okay, not quite as loud, but it's loud. The main difference is, is not about what you feel. The main difference is what the enemy, the in quotes air quotes enemy is doing. Because with live fire, the enemy is just cardboard pieces of cardboard silhouettes that are popping up. And we had little like pneumatic targets that would pop the target up and you could shoot at it. And when you hit it three times, it would go down. So you kind of knew that you were hitting it, but it wasn't maneuvering, it wasn't shooting back at you. We actually did have ones that had little, little like air cannons that would go like it would shoot at you, little flash. So you could visually get used to it, but you weren't getting shot at.
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Echo Charles
Right, that. And that's what I'm saying. So like what.
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Jocko Willink
And it wasn't maneuvering. So what are the two things that your enemy is going to do to you that you most fear?
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Echo Charles
Yeah, shoot.
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Jocko Willink
You shoot and maneuver. So the two things that a cardboard silhouette cannot do is shoot and maneuver. So you've eliminated the enemy, the quote air quotes, enemies most powerful two things, which is shooting back at you and maneuvering.
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Echo Charles
Right. So what is the value then? You subtract those things. What's the value of live Fire. Just the psychology of it, essentially.
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Jocko Willink
Yeah, the psychology of it. And you have to get comfortable shooting close to your friends and your friends are shooting close to you, and you have to be like, hyper safe, right? Like just the hyper disciplined.
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Echo Charles
The idea of like, hey, this gun shooting next to you is a real gun, and that's a real.
- [12:20]
Jocko Willink
And if you do something stupid, right, you're going to get killed. And if you do something stupid or if you do something stupid, you're going to kill one of your friends.
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Echo Charles
So let me ask you this then, is how often, just generally speaking, like pretty often or not very often, it, you know, with the laser tag or the, the paintball, where it was obvious that that wasn't necessarily part of the things factoring in into the guy's mind. So, you know, like how. Because just like, okay, we're gonna inverse the, the, the, the comparison, we'll say, so live fire, it's like, oh, everyone's hyper vigilant on where the, you know, their muzzle is and like all this stuff. But on the other, on the flip side, when you shoot the bad guy, he's just sort of standing there, right? We'll say, so it's kind of in. But then if you have laser tag or paintball, it's inverse. So they can get the full, the full benefit of the enemy maneuvering and doing all the shooting back you. All this stuff. But on that initial side, they're not as vigilant, you would think, you know, in theory of the, you know, the mother shooting the friend. So in a situation like that, how often do they shoot their friends or, you know, how often does that show itself?
- [13:31]
Jocko Willink
So first of all, we would do live fire first, which might seem a little bit backwards because it seems like it's safer, right? Or it'd be more hazardous to do live fire first. You'd think you want to get the guys used to the maneuvering, but no, you want to do the live fire first. So their, their safety habits are just freaking instilled. They're second nature now. Listen, I'll tell you that probably once every five to seven years, someone gets shot live fire in the SEAL teams and sometimes killed. There has been people killed doing live fire training in the SEAL teams. So you have to be careful. And the other thing is, you have to, it has to be at least a little bit constrained. You see, I'm saying, like, there's risks that you cannot take as a range safety officer or as a trainer to say, oh, you know what, when you sold the target, you Know you can. If you find something to engage and it's behind the line, you can let him do it. No, no, you can't actually can't do that. Whereas in combat you might have to do something that's a little bit more. More. You might take more risk. So you got to put the constraints, There are safety constraints that you cannot let slide at all during live fire. And when you get to simunition or laser, you can start to allow them to push the envelopes. Now listen, the principles stay the same, but there are things that are more dangerous to do. Live fire.
- [15:03]
Echo Charles
Gotcha.
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Jocko Willink
That you would, that you would only want to like, maybe do in combat if you absolutely had to. And even more important, it might be something that you don't want them to do in combat, but they might do it by accident. For instance, we would set up drills where it was going to be so chaotic that a blue on blue, if they weren't paying very close attention, they would have a blue on blue. In fact, when I ran training, every task unit or troop that we put through our land warfare training, all of them had blue on blues. And that's because we ran freaking crazy scenarios. And our. It wasn't our intention that they would have a blue on blue because by the end they wouldn't have them anymore. But you know, we do a bunch of field training exercises and so they probably have one in the first two, the first two training events, the first two full mission profiles, they're about guaranteed to have a, A blue on blue.
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Echo Charles
And that was on purpose.
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Jocko Willink
It wasn't on purpose, but they hadn't learned the lessons yet.
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Echo Charles
Yeah, but what I'm saying is as the trainer, you. So like, put it this way, it.
- [16:14]
Jocko Willink
Wasn'T on purpose, but it was highly likely.
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Echo Charles
Yeah, but was that factored into your training, like intention, you know, like. Yeah, okay.
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Jocko Willink
It wasn't like I was trying to trap them with a blue on blue. You know, I wasn't like tricking them.
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Echo Charles
Part of the exercise, but part of.
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Jocko Willink
The exercise was going to be like, oh, if they're not paying super close attention, they're going to have a blue and blue likely. And like I said, there would be one or two events. So they'd go out the first night, maybe wouldn't have one to go out the second night, maybe wouldn't have one on the third night they'd have one or they'd have like one on one of those first few nights. And then by the time the fourth and fifth training events were coming along, they were super locked on. They understood the mistakes that could happen, and they would not have a blue on blue, which is what we aim for. And, you know, Jason Garner tells stories because he went through. He went through that training before he came back and started teaching. But when he. When he went through that training, he was all, like, all couldn't believe that guys were having blue on blues. And then he. Him and his troop had a blue on blue. And then when he got overseas, he tells, like, I think he's got two really solid stories of where he. He will say, if we hadn't done that training, we would have had a blue on blue. Because they weren't. They were so aware of blue on blue that, you know, didn't happen on. In the book Extreme Ownership, the first chapter is about a blue on blue that I was in that I had for real on the battlefield. And luckily or not luckily, we learned enough from that one that we never had another blue and blue. And believe me, there was a lot of blue on blues in Ramadi. Like, it was crazy. There was a lot of people running around the battlefield. It was chaos. And so there was probably one reported blue on blue a week, not necessarily that ended in a casualty, but you shot our tank, you shot our Humvee, you shot at our position. We would happen. So what I wanted to do is make sure that these guys had these. This high pressure in training. So they have a blue on blue with paintball, right? Which is beautiful. You have a blue on blue with paintball. You learn that lesson without costing a life. And that's exactly what this individual was doing here, trying to push the envelope and train as hard as they could so that they could not have these bad things happen in combat.
- [18:31]
Echo Charles
Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's some good smart training there. Because us, who are not in the military and of course don't go to combat, we don't think about that part of it. Like blue on blue. We don't think about that part of it. In fact, when you think blue and blue, you think like, I mean, all right, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense because all the video games I've ever played, you can't really do blonde blue.
- [18:54]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, a lot of them, they don't allow, like, it's not right part of the game.
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Echo Charles
The bullets just go right past or through the guy without hitting you. Can't, like. You ever play Contra? No, can't shoot the guy, but you're right behind him, shooting him through his back. He goes past him. Seems it's not part of my freaking psychology.
- [19:10]
Jocko Willink
Same thing.
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Echo Charles
But in real life it's not like that. See? So, yeah, I would have never thought, hey, you should train that dude.
- [19:17]
Jocko Willink
I was a new guy and I was in my first platoon and we were down in Florida and we had laser. The old laser gear on, but we were doing a danger crossing. So we're going across a road, and as we were crossing the road, we had contact. And as we had contact, like, I returned fire a little bit into my field of fire. But as I was shooting, like, let's say to the. To the right, there's. And I wasn't shooting across the road, but what I didn't realize is I was shooting to the right. All of a sudden I saw my point man come running back across the road. And in my mind I was like, I did not know he was there. Like, it was just one of those things where we were walking and, you know, it was in my mind I had like a mental blue on blue.
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Echo Charles
Yeah.
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Jocko Willink
You know what I mean? Because I was like, dude, you did not know that guy was there.
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Echo Charles
Yeah.
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Jocko Willink
And I realized how bad bad these things could happen.
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Echo Charles
Right.
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Jocko Willink
But luckily, you know, my field of fire is a. I was a radio man. So my field of fire was like off to the right. And so I was like looking off to the right. We started this danger crossing. And I didn't see that my point man had gone across the road. Like, you know, you're doing a little setup. You're putting the machine gunners in place. There's this stuff going on. And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, pick up, up, up. And I started shooting to my field of fire. And then a few seconds later, I see my point man running back across the road. I didn't know he was over there. I missed it, you know, and I was thinking to myself, I just had a mental blue on blue. I was hard on myself. But those things are. And you know, who's a. Stonewall Jackson went out on a recon and we got shot by his own men and he died. You know, this has been. That's the Civil War. This stuff happens.
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Echo Charles
Yeah.
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Jocko Willink
So definitely need to train hard. And that's what these guys were doing. Let's get back to it. Captain Thomas M. Fields, Commanding Company D, 2nd Battalion, 26 Marines, D226 formed and equipped a 15 man assault squad of three teams. Quote, the basic assault team had flamethrowers, bazookas and satchel charges, said Fields. Each man was a rifleman with advanced Specialty training. Most other marines in the company knew the basics of these weapons. This practice was widespread and represented a significant change from the Taraw assault where a handful of combat engineers had to provide all flamethrower and demo support and the infantry had no rocket launchers available. So they learned lessons, right? You can't just have one guy then that knows how to operate the flamethrower or one guy that knows how to set up the, the satchel charge to blow up a bunker or something. You got to get everyone learning all the jobs. Captain David E. Severance, commanding company E228, took pains to provide tank infantry orientation for his men. He commented, quote, they not only learned how to talk over the bustle phone on the rear of the tank, they also took turns riding in the bow machine gunner seat using that weapon to mark targets for the main gun. Severance had his men dig foxhole. The foxholes then tested their nerve and validated their digging skills by driving tanks over occupied holes. The marines also learned how to retrieve casualties in the hot zone by straddling a wounded man with a Sherman tank, pulling him into the tank through the bottom escape hatch. Lt. Col. Robert E. Cushman Jr. Commanding two nine also practiced this technique, then used it successfully on Iwo Jima to rescue one of his wounded company commanders. So being familiar with your various things that you're gonna be on the battlefield and you know what's crazy? When we first started working with tanks over, well, we first started working with them in training and we'd go out to Fort Knox and we, we, luckily the army would, would come out and drive tanks around for us. Dude, like you, you know how the pedestrians have the right of way?
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Echo Charles
Yeah.
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Jocko Willink
In like on the streets.
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Echo Charles
Sure, yeah. Hell yeah.
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Jocko Willink
The pedestrian does not have the right of way with a tank at all. In a tank. Cannot see you, will not feel you, cannot hear you yell. It is 100 the responsibility of the human, the soldier, the Marine to get the hell out of the way of that tank. That thing will just run you over. And you're, you, you kind of have a little bit of an instinct, just a little bit of an instinct that a vehicle moving towards you will slow down. You just haven't, dude. And the reason I know that is I'd see like new guys. They would start walking as if this tank gave a, as if the tank could see him, you know, and we'd brief the hell out of them like, hey, this thing will absolutely run you over. You will die. This tank does not see you can't hear you. It doesn't matter what you're doing, it's going to run you over. And that was good because when we got to Ramani, not only did you have American tanks, we had Iraqi tanks too. So the Iraqis, I mean they definitely are, aren't as skilled.
- [24:31]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
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Jocko Willink
So it could get really chaotic. You got to get the hell away from those things, man. It's, it's crazy too. If you know where they're going, then you can use them for cover. Right, right. But if they're going to start turning, get the hell out of the way. So that's so smart for this guy to like get familiar with the tanks. And the other thing that's good about it is, well we, we drove Humvees and you know, my guys were like a freaking NASCAR pit crew on the Humvees. Flat tire, freaking had the little like impact wrenches. Guys pulling out this one zip tie that, you know, like everyone's good to go and we could rig for tow in 30 seconds, 20 seconds. We had everything staged and ready and you know, it was all like zip tied in loosely. So it just break apart you. Yeah, but that's how you got to be, got to be ready for that. Continuing. Many of the company Commanders in the 5th Marine Division were former Raiders or paramarines with combat experience in the Solomons and Bougainville. Fields and Severance were in this category. So is Captain Frank C. Caldwell Commanding Company F226. All three applied their former paramarine experiences to small unit training. Our goal was for each Marine to be familiar with every type of weapon the company would use in combat, said Caldwell. Added Severance, we wanted every man to be ready to assume a higher level of responsibility. Our PFCs were taught how to act as squad leaders. The veterans also taught basic battlefield survival skills to newcomer newcomers. Years later, some of Captain Field's surviving non commissioned officers paid him a tribute, saying, you taught us everything we needed to know about hunting and killing, killing Japanese. So that idea of making everybody really flexible, this is something that they picked up because they knew that they were going to lose people. Like you are going to lose people, you're going to lose people that have expertise with certain weapon systems and you're going to lose leaders. So everyone has to know how to operate all these weapon systems and they have to be able to step up into the senior, more senior leadership position. And believe me, we did that all the time in trade at we were killing dudes all the time. Kill that breacher, kill that Corpsman, Kill that chief. Kill that platoon commander. In fact, the better they were doing. They were getting killed.
- [26:57]
Echo Charles
Yeah. And when you say killed, you mean, like, you can't you for the scenario you like your breach dead?
- [27:02]
Jocko Willink
Yep, the breacher's dead. The assault force leader is dead. The assault chief is dead.
- [27:06]
Echo Charles
Right.
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Jocko Willink
Like, once that guy. Once you saw that the assault chief was good to go, you're like, yeah, Like, I would just, like, come walking towards them. They would have the look on their face like. No, it's like the. The Brad pit movie where he's death. You know what I'm talking about?
- [27:23]
Echo Charles
Yeah, yeah.
- [27:24]
Jocko Willink
He plays the death.
- [27:25]
Echo Charles
Meet Joe Black.
- [27:25]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, meet Joe Black. I was like, joe Black. Like, I'd be. I'd be looking at, like a. A platoon chief just walking over, and you see the look on his face like, don't take me now. I'm not ready to go. He'd be like, hey, bro, it's not about that.
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Echo Charles
So it's kind of ecological training, essentially.
- [27:42]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, there's some ecological activities going on. The other funny thing is we would have, like, we would make sometimes the trade at guys would make little, like, shields with a piece of plastic or a piece of cardboard, or you just cover up your face and your nuts. Right.
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Echo Charles
Oh, so you don't. When you get hit.
- [28:02]
Jocko Willink
So when. So when the paintball's about to start flying, you'd see, like, trade at guys would, like, cover their nuts or get behind one of these shields. And so of course, what that made us all do is we would. Because you're land grading, like, simultaneously. So I'd like walk up to a hallway, and then I just, like, cover up like the shooting is about to start. You see all the guys get all tense, but nothing was gonna happen. So eventually they got no indication of what was really gonna happen, which was the goal. Continuing on, our commanders were new to war or. Sorry, other commanders were new to war. Captain William T. Ketchum Jr. Took command of Company 1324 in late 1944 after serving as an instructor at the reserve officers course in Quantico. The 4th Marine Division by that time had connect. Had commenced amphibious training in the waters off of Maui. Ketchum was impressed with the expeditionary troops commander. The legendary Howland Mad Smith spent so much time observing these procedures at the lowest levels. He would come upon you and tell you if you screwed up or didn't know what you were doing. And yell at you. Sorry. And yell at you if you screwed up or didn't know what you were doing. And you know, this is important because the leaders, the individual leaders are responsible for training the people. And there's no time when you're in charge of a team where you can say, well, headquarters didn't train us right, or battalion didn't train us right, or brigade didn't train us right, or corporate didn't train us right. You gotta, if you're in a leadership position, you gotta make sure things are getting trained properly. It's a solemn duty of leaders. Iwo Jima would also be Lt. Col. Don J. Robertson's first fight. He had spent much of the war serving much of the war serving with a defense battalion in Samoa. Two weeks before embarking for Iwo, he took command of three two seven. Robertson immediately scheduled a four day field firing exercise. His men executed their landing plan, crossing an imaginary line of departure in a silence. Nine boat teams while artillery fired overhead and close support aircraft made nearby strafing runs. Robertson came away impressed with his unit's combat readiness. Most commanders believe they were ready for Iwo Jima. We were well trained, well equipped, motivated outfit, said Capt. Caldwell of his Company F, said Col. Robert E. Hagaboom, chief of staff of the 3rd Marine Division. We were in good shape, well trained and thoroughly supported. Our training was very realistic, said Col. Robert H. Williams, executive officer of the 28th Marines. And I think the entire 5th Marine Division was as ready as any division could possibly be. Major Frederick J. Karch, operations officer of the 14th Marines, believed that the 4th Marine Division had a continuity of veterans that was just unbeatable. Again, that's the idea that bringing people that had experience is the best way to go, which I agree with. Again, D day had less of that. But having those guys with experience, especially when now they're back in Maui and they're training people, getting them ready and telling them what it's really like. You need that. The troops would find their hard training quickly validated at Iwo Jima. Three things happened on D Day to knock us all plans awry. First, the beach proved treacherous. Treacherous. The combination of high surf, steep slope and poor traffic ability in the volcanic sand created a bottleneck of stalled vehicles and smashed boats along the high water mark. So bro, you know the deal like the waves can cause issue, period, end of story. Now you're bringing in through big waves, steep beach, which means shore pound. And now you're bringing in vehicles, you're bringing in guys that might not be the best swimmers that, but even if they are good swimmers, they're laid down with a bunch of Gear, that's just part one. Just nature, just the ocean already took its toll. Second, and despite these conditions, General Schmidt continued to land his reserves and artillery units, seeking to build full combat power ashore before the anticipated night counterattack. This created incredible congestion along the beaches and lower terraces. So even those guys were getting hung up and slow. General Schmidt was just like, keep landing, keep landing. So now you got crowd. Now you got people bunched up, huddled up. Vehicles huddled up. That's a problem. Third, Japanese gunners opened a devastating fire throughout the crowded lowlands, enjoying open targets and fire superiority that they would never again experience in battle. So confused were conditions by late afternoon on d day that 128 reported 600 missing in action. Nearly all would resurface within the next 24 hours here. But imagine you're sending up like you're in charge of a battalion and you miss, you're missing 600 dudes. Like, even if they're all gonna turn up somewhere right now, for the next two hours, three hours, four hours, you don't even know where they are. That's how freaking chaotic was that. You lost 600 people here. The small unit training paid valuable dividends, obviously, because even though if you don't know where your people are, how are you commanding them? No, you got to actually have decentralized command. We're gonna make things happen on their own. When Company B128 lost five of its officers, the staff NCOs and and NCOs stepped up and kept their company moving. The 28th Marines cut the island in two in 90 minutes. With such initiative on the right flank, three two five lost 22 officers and 500 men in the first day. Junior officers and NCOs maintained the frontal assault against the face of the rock quarry and prevailed. Imagine that. You lose 22 officers, you lose 500 men. But the junior officers and the junior NCOs step up and they keep pushing. Undeniab, that's Marine Corps activity right there. Among the ranks of the landing force on D Day were two Medal of Honor Marines from Guadalcanal who had voluntarily returned to combat. One died on the beachhead, the legendary Gunnery Sergeant Manila John Bazilone. The other survived. Lt. Col. Robert E. Gaylor, one of the first Marine fighter aces in the war. As hectic as that first night ashore on Ewa was for Gaylor, he could readily see this, the progress since the Guadalcanal years. Then it was, can we hold now? It's how long before we're done here? So they had a Little better attitude heading in. And we all know the the legend of Manila. John Basilo Mbazzi didn't want to be back here in the states going to Hollywood parties and living the good life. He wanted to be back with his boys overseas. And there he was, going into Iwo. As the battle swung north into the teeth of the Japanese defenses, the marines on the ground were accompanied by an unprecedented wealth of fire support. Core artillery, two battalions of 155 millimeter howitzers of fledging fire support coordination center division artillery, 4.5 inch rockets, rocket trucks, close air support, including a few napalm bombs and some of the best post landing naval gunfire support of the war. But the Japanese garrison somehow endured. Hunkered down well prepared bunkers and tunnels waiting for the guns to lift and the attack to begin. Then it would be the turn of the Japanese gunners to take their cult toll. Said Lt. Col. William W. Buchanan, assistant operations officer of the 4th Division. We still didn't have an effective way of either destroying or neutralizing the defenders in a very restrictive area. So it fell to the thin green line to get in there and dig them out in hand to hand combat. There must be a better way. And this is a, a very hard thing for people to understand is you watch like a position get bombed for days and yet at the end of those days of the most intense bombing you can imagine, out comes an enemy with a machine gun and starts shooting at you again. This is, you know, Matt Hasby. When Matt has been speaking of blue on blue, when Matt Hasby was the victim of a blue on blue and American forces shot probably 150 rounds of 50 caliber machine gun into his position, which was also BTF. Tony was there like they got, they got hammered by U. S forces, grenades, 40 millimeter grenades. And despite all that, despite the only person that got wounded was Matt. And it was, we got like a, a relatively minor wound, could have been worse, but he got a relatively minor wound. He basically caught some frag in the face. But when we would now you fast forward to trade at and some turret gunner in a, in a Humvee with a 50 cal would shoot you know, 30 rounds of blanks at a building. And, and then they'd start getting shot at again by the trade at guys. They'd be called, this is bullshit. No, no, no dude. None of your rounds even penetrated. None of your rounds even got in there. And look, these are structures in Iraq that are, they build with concrete, you know, concrete and sand, right? They're concrete block. So they are more durable than, let's say, an American structure, which is made of freaking plywood and drywall. But these Japanese are in legit actual bunkers. So you know what has to happen? The Marines have to go in there and freaking clear them. That's what happens. General Holland Smith, in his Task Force 56 action report best summarized. Fighting on Iwo, there was little possibility for tactical initiative. It was an operation of one phase and one tactic from time. From the time the engagement was joined until the mission was completed, it was a matter of frontal assault maintained with relentless pressure. So he, you know, what is he saying? He's saying, like, you got all your tricks. You want to flank people. You want to flank them and spank them. All these things that you want to do. Guess what? You just have to do a frontal assault. That's. That's, that's what your choice is. Captain Bill Ketchum found that all the school solutions from Quantico's rolling hills were inappropriate. Here was more important to tie in the flanks, hug your supporting fires, and keep grinding ahead. As Lt. Col. Cushman recalled the fighting, it was discouraging. After every one of our terrific artillery barrages, you'd hear the damned enemy open up their machine guns. It was just painful slugging with tanks and high explosives and flame, and then the infantry with their flamethrowers and grenades and pole charges digging them out. Casualties were terrific. You got to just have an even, even. He's saying the flame. Like they had tanks that shot fire, right? But even, that's not good enough. You need a dude. Cushman also characterized the conflict as a battalion commander's battle. The fighting indeed took toll at the that echelon and below. 12 infantry battalion commanders were wounded, five were killed and three were relieved. Think about those numbers. 12 infantry battalions were wounded, five were killed, and three were relieved. And by the way, imagine you're in the midst of an assault in the Pacific campaign and you're got a situ. I got a bad thing happening. You. You still have to fire this leader right now. One of the few to emerged unscathed was Lt. Col. Don Robertson of 327. All three of his company commanders died in action, two killed by the same shell. Kushman's 29 paid a stiff price quote. By the time I was over, I had gone through two complete sets of platoon commanders, lieutenants. We had such. We had such things as an artillery forward observer commanding a company and sergeants commanding the platoons down to half strength or less. It's A bloodbath going through two complete sets of platoon commanders. Colonel Hagaboom released his staff secretary to take over a leaderless rifle company. Lt. Col. Lowell E. English commanded 221 until the 12th day when a Japanese machine gunner blast let a blast go and I got one through the knee. His battalion suffered critical losses. I lost every company commander. I think I had one executive officer left. It was pretty goddamn rough. Company B128 went through nine company commanders in the battle. The billet of Platoon Commander, 2nd Platoon, Company B changed hands a dozen times. Lieutenant Michael E. Kelleher, U.S. navy Assistant Regimental Surgeon in the 25th Marines, became 325 surgeon when their doctor was killed on D Day. The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Justice M. Jump and Joe Chambers, had already qualified for the Medal of honor by D plus 3 for leading the survivors of 325 over the rock quarry. Then a Japanese Nambu gunner put a bullet through his chest. Kelleher got on him quickly, but the wound was critical, the position terribly exposed. Somehow they snaked Chambers out of the beaten zone down to the beach, back aboard the ship, back aboard a ship saving his life. I shall always remember. I shall always wonder why I'm alive, kelleher wrote his wife from the battlefield. Fighting conditions on Ewa were gruesome. The Marines had never faced a leaf such a lethal combination of mines, heavy artillery, rocket guns and enormous spigot mortars. The landscape was surreal, almost lunar. The Japanese garrison fought with uncommon discipline, for the most part eschewing their sacrificial bonsai attacks, maintaining excellent camouflage and stoic patience. Most Marines rarely saw a live Japanese. I saw maybe 20, said Captain Caldwell. And most of those were at the bitter end of the fighting. Exhaustion prevailed. We learned to sleep fitfully and sort short snatches, said Captain Ketchum. But I had to constantly yell at my men to stay alert, not to make careless mistakes. Because of their fatigue and with every man, fear was a constant factor. As Lt. Col. Cushman admitted, I always had fear. I hated high explosives. Its effects are so terrible. Iwo veteran T. Grady Gallant later wrote of his squad mates, they no longer expected to survive. Fear was not of death, but of mutilation. And there were no end to the mutilating wounds. Others simply expected the worst. I had no illusions, recalled Lt. Col. Chambers after reviewing the Japanese defenses along the rock quarry in his assigned sector. To be honest, I liquidated myself and my outfit in advance. So you're looking at what you're about to go up against and you just say, yep, we ain't gonna make it. We're gonna do our best, we're gonna make progress, move the ball down the field, but we ain't coming out of this. Sometimes dealing with fear was a factor of one's preoccupation with responsibility. Much of the time I was simply too busy to think about being afraid, said Captain Ketchum. The action for us was pretty much non stop. Lt. Col. James P. Berkeley, executive officer of the 27th Marines, shared that view. When you're responsible for something, you don't have time to be scared, he said. Berkeley had been an observer and at the Allied landings in Solerno in 1943. I was scared to death at Solerno with those damned 88s going around my head. But at EO, I was concerned with maintaining good communications. Dude, it's good to be busy. It's not good to sit around and freaking think about what can possibly happen. Combat losses among the landing force grew steadily. As early as 23rd February, which is D4, the day of the Suribachi flag raisings, the 5Amphibious Corps had already lost 6,251 men. By 3rd March, the date the first crippled B29 landed on Iwo's airstrip, the count had reached 13,665. And by March 16th, when General Holland Smith dedicated the cemeteries, declared the campaign a success and departed the objective area, the casualties toll stood at 19,928. Ten more days of savage fighting in the north would further spike the count. Each division landed with a sizable replacement, with sizable replacement drafts in tow. In view of the stiff casualty losses, it is doubtful if the battle could not, could have been won without these replacements. But no one seemed too happy with the plan. And this is one of those things where they know they've actually got a plan for replacements. And this is something in the seals, we just didn't, we didn't even think about that stuff, you know, that's how naive we were. You know, when we were overseas in tasking a bruiser, we didn't have replacements. We didn't, we didn't think about that. And again, that's just how naive we were and how, you know, indestructible we were in our own minds. And it was weird when I came home and I would talk not at the, not at the, like platoon or troop level, but at the team level and at the group level of saying, hey, when, when guys go on deployment, you need extra people. And even again, these are a lot of these commanders at that time, they didn't have combat experience. And so for young freaking jocko to be sitting there saying, like, hey, you need extra guys? What do you mean, we need extra guys? You need to plus up the platoons. Well, why? Because when you lose a guy, you need freaking guys.
- [47:59]
Echo Charles
Yeah. Yeah, that is great. Like, what. I mean, did you guys not think about. Or did they not think about it? Or was it like.
- [48:08]
Jocko Willink
It just wasn't a thing. And. And we had, like, we had. We had, like, a immediate action drill for what to do if a guy gets wounded or killed. Hey, you need to shut down the radios. You need to initiate the protocol for contacting the family. You need to get their personal items, you know, secured. Like, there's a bunch of things that we knew we had to do.
- [48:30]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [48:31]
Jocko Willink
But what we didn't think about was like, oh, yeah, we got to go back on missions again in two days, three days, tomorrow. And we just. SEALs had not taken care. I mean, Mark was the first SEAL killed, you know, in Iraq.
- [48:46]
Echo Charles
And then. Then what'd you do? Do you fly, like, someone else in, or did you just go with one man?
- [48:51]
Jocko Willink
No, Well, a little bit of both. We had had new guys show up, which was kind of a new thing where they would just send. Once a guy graduated from SQT and he got assigned to a team, if the team was on deployment, they started just sending new guys over on deployment. But it was really sketchy to. To try and say, like, look at a new guy. Yeah, and say, yeah, just go ahead and pick up this mark 48 and stand by to get some. Though that wasn't happening. We. We slowly got some of those guys in the field a little bit. But a lot of times what they did was they kind of picked up the slack in camp, you know, and picked up some of the more easier jobs in camp, or maybe they were going to be a turret gunner in a vehicle or something like that. But it was. We. And we also. We. We had some guys from. From another team show up. One of the east coast teams, they had sent to, like, a squad of guys. So that was cool. So we'd kind of gotten plussed up there, and they were great dudes, so, you know, we were. We had them as well. So we kind of got plussed up, but it wasn't, like, part of the plan. It was sort of a little bit more luck.
- [49:55]
Echo Charles
Yeah, it feels like, because, yeah, obviously I play sports growing up, you know, and you got your alternates and, you know, even, like, on a freaking Track team or it's like an individual sport. There's an alternate, like if that guy can't run, he's injured, he can't go for whatever reason or whatever. It's like there's an alternate or there's this, you know, in teams there's the second string guy and third string guy. It almost is kind of like, hey, shouldn't it kind of be like that?
- [50:20]
Jocko Willink
It should be. It should be. Yeah. And it's just one of those things. We hadn't been at war for so long.
- [50:27]
Echo Charles
Yeah, that's the case.
- [50:29]
Jocko Willink
We kind of just, we kind of just didn't, didn't think about it. And you know, the army, you, you heard me say this before. Like the army in the Marine Corps, they have doctrine. They have like written doctrine that says when you do this kind of mission, when you do a massive or airborne drop, you're going to take 6% CAS. I think it's actually 10%. 10% people are going to get hurt on a big airborne drop. So you got to plus up your people 10%. Like they've got all their figures and it's all doctrinalized. We didn't have any freaking doctrine. The SEAL team, it does now, but we didn't have any doctrine. You couldn't just refer back to like, hey, think better think about this. And we had also gotten very into the, in the 90s, we were very into the idea of the big mish. Right. Which is we're just going to do one mission and whatever happens on that mission, the mission's now over and we'll start training again, trains up some other people.
- [51:19]
Echo Charles
Was.
- [51:20]
Jocko Willink
It ain't like that in an actual war.
- [51:22]
Echo Charles
That's crazy.
- [51:23]
Jocko Willink
So those were some hard lessons learned.
- [51:26]
Echo Charles
Yeah, there's got to be a bunch of like stuff like that that you can't really. It's not very obvious.
- [51:32]
Jocko Willink
Actually.
- [51:33]
Echo Charles
It's not obvious at all until you go through it a few times.
- [51:35]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [51:36]
Echo Charles
And then these little things emerge like, oh, wait, stuff you, you'd never think about.
- [51:40]
Jocko Willink
And the army and the Marine Corps had the, have the size and the mass to do that. But dude, the SEAL teams after Vietnam, there's only two SEALs team, SEAL teams. You know, there was just seal team one until team two. They had like 100 guys each. And those guys got out, moved on and they didn't, they didn't have the, didn't have the systems in place to capture lessons learned and pass them on. We have all that stuff now.
- [52:04]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [52:05]
Jocko Willink
So things have changed. But that was Definitely a growing phase for us. You know, we were like a startup. You know what I'm saying? And it's actually more like the. The Vietnam seals were. Were. Obviously, they were the ones that started it, but they didn't. After the Vietnam War was over, everything downsized, you know, and then you had to go another, you know, almost 30 or 30 years. 30 years. So there's a few, like, contractors or civilians working that were Vietnam's Vietnam legit seals, but a lot of those guys were fully retired, like, not even around the community anymore. So, man, we had some lessons to learn, and then we, you know, and we started documenting those lessons and. And capturing them. But it's also. It's not the thing that anybody wants to think about. You know what I mean?
- [52:56]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [52:57]
Jocko Willink
So, I mean, you. You remember when I had, you know, Elliot and Joe on, and my briefing to them was like, you guys will take casualties. And even with that, it's like nobody. Nobody thinks about it, wants to think about it. It's freaking horrible, and these guys are taking massive casualties. Going back to this document, each division landed with us with sizable replacement drafts in tow. In view of the stiff casualty losses, it is doubtful if the battle could have been won without these replacements. But no one seemed happy with the plan. Okay, now back to it. Too often the replacements were fed into the frontline units as groups of individuals rather than, say, trained squads. The new men were strangers to each other and their new outfits. Disoriented and apprehensive, General Erskine complained that the replacements joining his third Marine Division were poorly trained. His personnel officer commented that they get killed the day they go into battle. Lt. Cushman berated the inexperience of his replacements during the final days of the fighting, reporting that almost all of the infantry were replacements. They lacked entirely the will to close with the enemy. Few other field commanders shared Kushman's harsh assessment. Most found no lack of fighting spirit among the replacements. The troop leaders were much more concerned that the combination of inexperience and disorientation made the replacements such initial liabilities. And again, it's interesting that, you know, they mentioned that they would come in as an individual instead of as a squad, and so no one really knows them. And I can see advantages and disadvantages of that, because if you have, you know, a squad of 10 guys or whatever, and you lose a guy and you get a new guy, well, at least the squad is 9, 10, experienced and used to working with each other. And as opposed to a brand new squad of 10 guys, and you throw them into the mix. Well, they haven't been in combat. They haven't worked. They haven't seen it yet. And so they might be a little bit incohesive. Yeah, they might not be very cohesive. And also, just, like, one individual is not cohesive with that squad yet. The squad is now not very cohesive with the platoon or the company yet. So I don't know which one of those would be worse. I tend to think, actually, that it'd be better to take, like, a. I'd rather take one new guy and put him in rather than take a whole squad of new guys. And this is essentially. Actually, this is essentially the debate, somewhat of a debate, that I had with Seth and Leif where we had some additional personnel when we were going through urban warfare training. And these Additional personnel were SEALs, but they were from another unit, and some of them weren't seals. Some of them were other types of technicians. They're going through our training with us. And each platoon was responsible for, like, I don't know, like, six or seven of these guys. And I told the. I told Leif and Seth, and I was like, hey, take these seven or eight guys and just divide them up between your fire teams, and it'll be a little bit bigger than a fire team. Like, but actually, I use the term that the. The Polish Grom used, which was sections. So they called their fire team sections, and they had, like, six guys. So I said, just break it into sections and distribute these guys with your guys. So they have. They're instantly being mentored, and not even just mentored, but, like, directed by someone that knows what's going on. And Seth was like, roger that. But I told. And Tony and Leif and Tony were like, now we're gonna keep platoon integrity, and we'll just put that. That will be like a separate squad. So we'll have three squads. And Seth's guys, like, incorporated the. The new guys and were able to maneuver very quickly. And lace. Leif had basically a squad that was not functioning properly because they didn't know what they were doing as a whole, and it was problematic. So Leif came back. He's like, tell me about this section thing. I was like, yeah, cool. Here's what you do. So I. Yeah, I kind of prefer the idea of spreading them out, but I wasn't there. Back to the document. The 5th Marine Division reported a casualty rate of 55% of its replacements. Captain Caldwell ordered each member of Company F, veteran or replacement, to fasten black tape around the base of their helmet. That way they at least knew who the hell was in their own company. With the 4th Marine Division, Captain Ketchum tried to orient and integrate company. F company eyes newcomers. But often we didn't have the time. Sometimes we could barely write down their names before the fight was on. Better hope those freaking guys got some good training. That's how confusing it is that you put freaking black tape around your helmet so you can tell who's who. Most commanders who survived the battle condemn Holland Smith for stubbornly refusing to Harry Schmidt's repeated request to release third Marines from expeditionary troop reserves. All three of the divisions would have welcomed reinforcements by one of the full strength battalions of this veteran regimental combat team. Smith refused, possibly from perspective of his other hat, Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force Pacific, knowing how critically he would need at least one experienced intact regiment of upon which to rebuild his shattered forces for the forthcoming invasion of Kyushu. So again, there you have a little bit of a disconnect. Like a strategic disconnect, right? Because who is it? General Smith. General Smith is looking at the bigger picture saying, if I use up all these regiments right now, we got work to do and if I have one regiment that's good to go, I can at least backfill it with fresh people and we'd be ready for the next operation. But if I decimate all these regiments, I might be in a worse spot. So he's trying to play that strategic game now. Of course you could say, well, it's better to get him in there, get, get more experience. There's, there's a way to argue it, but I'm sure the. I'm sure Harry Schmidt's requests would have been at least nice to acknowledge why we're doing this, right, Instead of just going, no, you can't have them. And I don't know if that's what happened, but I figured if Harry Schmidt gets told, hey, I need to keep these other guys prepared for this next invasion, which is going down directly. Lacking this perspective, the commanders on EWO could only curse Smith when the ship's bearing. The 3rd Marines departed for Guam on 5 March. By that time, each commander had to deal with filling leadership billets with his few surviving veterans. In most cases, combat savvy took precedence over normal rank or lineal list standings. This is awesome. This means, like, if you were freaking good to go in combat, we were going to get you promoted. And we didn't give a shit about this guy over here who's inexperienced or lame in the 25th Marines Staff Sergeant Alfred I. Thomas took command of the half track platoon when his lieutenant fell wounded on D day and stayed in command throughout the campaign, earning a Silver Star and a battlefield commission in the process. Hell, yeah. In 325, Captain James G. Headley, the senior company commander and A veteran of three previous assault landings, two took over the battalion when Lt. Col. Chambers went down and retained command for the remaining three weeks of combat. The only captain to command a infantry battalion in the battle, Headley earned the Navy Cross and battlefield promotion a major, which unfortunately did not stick. Already half deaf before Iwo Jima, Hadley lost almost all of his hearing in combat. Fatigue and illness took their tolls among higher echelon commanders. Within the 3rd Marine Division, General Erskine developed pneumonia but refused to be evacuated. His chief of staff, the competent Colonel Hagebone, quietly ran the show for several days until Erskine could recover his strength. Similarly, Colonel Williams unobtrusively called the shots for the 28th Marines during the period when Lieutenant Colonel or sorry, when Colonel Harry the Horse Liver's edge became too sick to function. The temporary illness of Erskine and liver Sedge were far different than the totally debilitating effects of combat fatigue, which caused the evacuation of 2,648 Marines during the battle. This was still a relatively new phenomenon for the Marine Corps, which categorized these cases as sick and therefore not on, not, did not list them on, as battle casualties. Yet they were very much casualties of protracted fighting. Few, if any, ever recovered in the rear field hospitals in sufficient condition to return to the front line. So this is where you get the real. The real battle fatigue, right? 2,648 marines that are. They can't. They get evacuated and they can't come back. Dr. Kelleher, 325's surgeon during the initial phase of fighting, recalled that battle fatigue occurred in two different categories. The first was more akin to shell shock. Noting that the landing force sustained 99 cases of battle fatigue on D day alone, Kelleher said this was attributable to. To the shelling we took on the beaches, the noise, shock, blast and sense of helplessness. So that's the first one. The first one is just like acute. You're getting. You're just getting traumatically blown up, explosions going off and complete fear, complete helplessness. And first day, they get 99 cases, first day. The second form occurred as the battle progressed and seemed more a function of sleep deprivation and bone weariness. Weariness. Kelleher continued. We all had battle fatigue to a degree. We were numb Fatalistic, exhausted. But some men simply crossed the line, could no longer function in a combat zone. Some would even hallucinate at night, open fire on image on imaginary enemy troops. Exposing our lines and endangering, endangering our own men. We had to get them out of there. Yeah, this is something that's portrayed in the Pacific, you know, guys freaking out in the middle of the night, they're having bad dreams. Captain Fred Hayes recalled examples of both kinds of battle fatigue. One staff officer became so terrorized by the Japanese artillery artillery barrage on the beach on D day that he would not leave the ship shelter of the first shell crater he found even hours after the barrage stopped. We had to evacuate him. Much later in the campaign, the 28th Marines had to relieve a highly competent battalion commander engaged in the thick of fighting. He had lost all capacity to lead. He was slumped over and crying. Haynes said Liver's Edge quietly replaced the stricken officer with, with his executive officer. So you have like a guy that's fully competent, fully capable, and he just breaks. And this is something Hackworth talking about in about face, like, fill up that water. That water starts to overflow. Everyone's got a different size glass. And when it happens, it's almost also, I think, very important. And you can see that they, they've got it here. And they, they do it in a band of brothers as well. One of the guys gets combat fatigue and they just like, it's okay. Hey, we just gotta go get him off the front line. It's almost, you know, like you can't be mad at a guy for getting wounded or whatever. Yeah, they're not, they're not like calling him a coward. Like, you know, you get the famous patent thing where he slaps the guy around or a couple guys around that were in the back for, or in the rear in the hospital for combat fatigue. But in, in that, they kind of go, okay, it's okay, dude, like get you to the rear.
- [65:35]
Echo Charles
Kind of like a nascar, right? You got a pit. Pit stop.
- [65:38]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I need a pit stop. Although these guys sound like they're dead, they're like out of the game. This is a pit stop. They need to get them out earlier. And there's an actual example that right here. The company commanders had little experience dealing with combat fatigue. There was a natural tendency at first to suspect malingering. Captain Ketchum resorted to slapping one of his officers to break him out of his sudden stupor. It didn't work. Captain Caldwell was able to save one man at the breaking point. By reassigning him 20 yards to the rear with the 60 millimeter mortar cruise. Just getting him off the front line seemed to help. And he didn't snap. So that's something that you've heard me say many times, right? Just get him out of there, get him out of that stress environment. Don't blow the engine. And it's funny, 20 yards to the rear, bro.
- [66:29]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [66:30]
Jocko Willink
And by the way, 60 millimeter mortar, that was Sledge. That was Sledge's job, you know what I mean? It's not like these guys weren't freaking totally stressed out, but you're 20 yards back, that was enough.
- [66:41]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [66:42]
Jocko Willink
Captain Severance recalled having two brothers in his company. One died of wounds early on. The other lasted about two weeks, then got the classic symptoms. The wide eyed stare, the shakes, uncontrolled, crying, he had to go. Unlike wounded in action cases, the company commanders rarely saw their battle fatigue cases again, rarely learned whether they ever recovered. Yeah, some of that's got to be a little bit of the, like the wounded guy, maybe they're, hey, is he okay? But the guy that was battle fatigue, they figure he's like, whatever, he's, he'll be okay eventually. The impact of the Marine casualties at Iwo Jima is perhaps the measured best measured in the ranks of the rifle companies. One more time. The impact of the Marine casualties at Iwo Jima is perhaps best measured in the ranks of the rifle company. So let's just look at the rifle companies. What do we got? Captain Fields commanded Company D226 for the first eight days, then served as battalion executive officer. The final news from Company D broke his heart. Every officer and platoon sergeant went down. So did the first sergeant at one point. Sergeant Hubert J. Fulton, a former Raider, commanded the company for six days. And in the end, only 17 Marines who landed with Captain Fields on D day remained. Captain Severance of Company E228 lost, 71 killed, 167 wounded, 21 sick and evacuated. He lost all five platoon commanders. A replacement lieutenant lasted 15 minutes. Quote, in the end, I had my first sergeant and my company gunnery sergeant. My three platoons had been consolidated into two. One led by a corporal, the other by a PFC. End quote. Of the six men from Company E who raised the flag on Suribachi on D plus four, three died and one was wounded. In subsequent fighting in the north, Captain Bill Ketchum, his company I324 landed on D day with 133 marines in its three rifle platoons. Only nine of these men were still standing when the 4th Division back loaded their ships 26 days later. Captain Frank Caldwell's company F226 lost all its platoon commanders and two hundred and twenty one men. Caldwell's worst day came on three march. We had seized Hill 362B and we're holding on for dear life. I lost 20 and 25 wounded and two cases of combat fatigue. I lost my platoon commander and my first sergeant killed while standing in his foxhole taking casualty reports. Seizing Iwo Jima enhanced the strategic bombing campaign against Japan and saved thousands of lives among B29 crews struggling back from their raids over Honshu. Was it worth the cost of so many marines in corpsman, so many proud infantry battalions? Military military historian and Marine officer Ronald H. Specter analyzed the casualties of Iwo Jima from a different perspective. Had the war gone as expected with the invasion of Japan necessary in early 1946, he wrote in Eagle against the Sin, Eagle against the sun, the wholesale sacrifice of three well trained and expert assault divisions simply to secure emergency landing fields might have loomed as a gross strategic error. So as this dude's looking at it, hindsight's 20 20. Look, you got an emergency landing field for the B29s, but what did it cost us to get those things? But then there's another side to that, going back to the article from Joseph Alexander. Colonel Joseph Alexander. Yet the psychological factor of the American victory at Iima cannot be ignored. After I both sides could clearly see the inevitable outcome of the final battles to come. The Americans had demonstrated a mastery of forcible assault from the sea, the concentration of overwhelming combat power, the abilities to sustain offense, offensive momentum and the will to see it through. The years of issuing doubt were gone forever. So that psychological victory over the Japanese that they knew that no matter what they did, they could not, they could not stop the United States Marine Corps and the United States army and our will for victory. And this document closes out with the statement. Captain Ketchum recalled that his survivors felt heartsick at their appalling losses but upbeat about their victory. Morale was surprisingly good. We had destroyed a very good enemy force defending a real fortress. We had the sense of that nothing could stop us. So there you go. This is the heroics of the United States Marine Corps and their docs. Navy corpsman. Don't forget about those docs. The Marine Corps love their docs. And important first of all, fourth of July coming up, important to remember incredible sacrifices that have been made for our freedom. And I, I will Never go through material like this and not be reminded of the will and the strength of human beings that are determined to do something did get up day after day after day. I mean, can you imagine if you're. If you're. If there's only nine guys left out of 250, that means you've watched hundreds, hundreds of your friends and comrades get wounded and killed, and you are still fighting. Not to mention the heat, not to mention the bugs, not to mention the dehydration, not to mention every other thing that would make this totally miserable. Totally miserable. And on top of all that, the fear, the anxiety, the sadness, the horror. And you know what? If these guys can get up and do that and make that happen, I think we can get up in the morning and work out. Right? You know what I'm saying? I think we can face our fears, we can face our challenges, we can do our duties, and no matter what, carry on. That's what we got. Speaking of carrying on, we need that mental strength. You know, we're training. Look, the Marines were training, sure. Hell, yeah, they were training. We got to train, too. We want that mental strength. We want that physical strength. We're working out, lifting, training. We need fuel. We recommend Jocko fuel. Check out jockofuel.com. that's where you can get the real goods. That's where you can get all the goods. We can get good deals. We. We. We send out little special deals at. @jockofuel.com so check that out. Free shipping. If it's. If you spend over 99 bucks, which is for me, I do that.
- [75:17]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [75:17]
Jocko Willink
Because, you know, just the various supplements that I take from Jocko fuel, it's over 99 bucks. But if it's free shipping, then we got loyalty products. I actually just had someone hit me up like, the loyalty things that you're getting are cool. Like you're gonna get some good stuff. So there's all that. Also, you can text Jockey Fuel 24 6. Text Jockofuel 224-672. You get the text messages, you get the voicemail. From Jocko.
- [75:41]
Echo Charles
Sure. Yeah.
- [75:42]
Jocko Willink
From me.
- [75:43]
Echo Charles
Got mixed emotions about that idea.
- [75:44]
Jocko Willink
What's. What's your deal? You don't like it? No. You don't want it. You hear enough of me. You don't want me in your head.
- [75:50]
Echo Charles
Exactly.
- [75:50]
Jocko Willink
So that's what we got going on. And, you know, we got. We got protein, we got hydrate, we got greens. Joint warfare. You need more joint warfare right now, don't you?
- [75:59]
Echo Charles
Yeah, I think so.
- [76:00]
Jocko Willink
Got the. Your Shoulders a little jammed up.
- [76:03]
Echo Charles
I think it's like a muscle tear, to be honest with you.
- [76:05]
Jocko Willink
A muscle tear? Muscle tear or. Or a like tendon.
- [76:10]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [76:10]
Jocko Willink
Which one do you think? 10 cuz I think muscle would be better.
- [76:14]
Echo Charles
Yeah. To the back of my shoulder. Microscience way deep in there. I don't. Hey, look. Yeah, it's full speculation at this point, but I. I don't know. I am taking joint warfare though. Totally. And you know, super curl, super krill all day.
- [76:27]
Jocko Willink
Okay. I definitely strongly recommend those things. Cold war time. War, Lots of war going on in our product. There's a lot of battles because there's battles being fought. So check it out. Go to jockerfield.com hook it up. Also you can go to Walmart, Wawa vitamin shop, GNC's military commissaries. We're on base. We got you covered. AES, Hannaford-stores, Wake Fern, Shoprite, HEB down in Teos, Meer out in the Midwest, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Publix. We're in high V. I know that because I just got a little text message from. From out there at Hy Vee, Big Brack. So we got got it going on Publix down in Florida and the southeast. Lifetime fitness shields, small gyms everywhere. Crossfit gyms, Jiu jitsu gyms, powerlifting gyms. We got you covered. Go to JF salescofuel.com if you want this stuff in one of those facilities. But just get yourself some good fuel. The best fuel, Jocko fuel. Also Origin usa. Look, we fought wars to maintain freedom and then we sold it overseas. And now we got slaves in other countries making crappy products for us and we're sending them our money. Don't do that. Instead, go to OriginUSA.com and get yourself some goods. Jeans, boots, rash guards, geese, T shirts, hoodies. Whatever you need, we got you covered. Go to OriginUSA.com, get your workout gear, get your hunt gear, and you know what you'll get. Communist free gear. There's 100 guarantee for no communism in our gear. You don't like communism? I don't like communism. You don't like tyrannical leaders. I don't like tyrannical leaders. There is 100 tyrannical leadership. Free clothing. Communist free clothing. Go get some originusa.com it's true.
- [78:30]
Echo Charles
Also, speaking of gear, got more gear? Discipline equals freedom. Gear. It's on Jocastore.com also, you know, we all are familiar with the idea of good. You know, every day is not going to be perfect even in everyday life. So I'm just saying you got to take the good with the bad. So. Yes. Anyway, if you're familiar with that, you can represent with shirts. You've got hats on there, got hoodies on there, got socks on there. Big hit, by the way.
- [78:57]
Jocko Willink
Check. I wouldn't know.
- [78:58]
Echo Charles
We got. Sorry about that. We got some new stuff coming, by the way. What?
- [79:04]
Jocko Willink
What?
- [79:05]
Echo Charles
Oh, you want some socks.
- [79:06]
Jocko Willink
I've been asking you for socks for months.
- [79:07]
Echo Charles
You know, hey, look, you know how you said earlier it's good to be busy, you know, then you don't.
- [79:12]
Jocko Willink
Oh, you so busy, huh?
- [79:14]
Echo Charles
The busiest section ever. Nonetheless, they're on the. How about this? I'll. I'll look into.
- [79:20]
Jocko Willink
Do it. I'll say freaking even. Like here being recorded. You're non committal cuz you know that your word means nothing.
- [79:29]
Echo Charles
Well, let's say look into it. Not nothing, but you know, nonetheless. You know, there's a very reliable place to get socks if in the event of you wanting socks. It's called chocolate store dot com. We got some new stuff coming, by the way.
- [79:45]
Jocko Willink
What do we got?
- [79:46]
Echo Charles
You know what I realized? How long we've been in this outfit? 10 years. Yeah. 10 years, right. Discipline equals freedom. There's the original shirt. This is the second shirt, the one you designed, by the way. Good job. Congratulations. Discipline equals freedom. Standard issue. That's the third one. And then there's discipline equals freedom. 004. There's 4. Discipline equals freedom. So it takes two years to come up with a new Discipline equals freedom. See, I'm saying. So I kind of started to feel that heat a little bit. But new ones, there's a new one on the way. It'll be good. And then hopefully I'll get more. Every 12 months or so we'll have a better.
- [80:24]
Jocko Willink
Where's my Viking skull shirt?
- [80:26]
Echo Charles
Oh, they didn't come in. I sent you four of them.
- [80:28]
Jocko Willink
Oh, you did?
- [80:28]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [80:29]
Jocko Willink
When did you send them?
- [80:30]
Echo Charles
Like a month ago? No, like three weeks ago.
- [80:33]
Jocko Willink
Would you do me a huge favor and look into that double check? Because I did not receive these things and I need them like for right now.
- [80:43]
Echo Charles
I got you. Okay, I'll look into that as well. I pro. I'm being serious, actually. But yes, what you're talking about. The Viking skull shirt is part of the shirt locker. That was the June. June. No, not June. Sorry. Right before June. April.
- [80:59]
Jocko Willink
I wouldn't know.
- [81:00]
Echo Charles
May. It was the May shirt for the shirt locker, which is, if you don't know, it's A subscription scenario. New shirt design every. Every month. A little bit outside the box, but still representative of this path. Discipline and freedom. See what I'm saying? Anyway, Jocko particularly liked. Or Jocko liked that particular one.
- [81:18]
Jocko Willink
Yes, I did.
- [81:19]
Echo Charles
And hey, man, I'm in agreement with you. It came out good. Check nonetheless. But yes. So new discipline equals freedom shirt. Aside from the shirt locker. Shirt locker is good, of course. New discipline equals freedom shirt. New new good shirt. Actually, no, that's going to be part of the shirt locker. Anyway, go to Jocastore.com if you want to get updated on, like, new stuff or whatever. Bro, I don't spam nobody ever under any circumstances. But you can sign up for the email thing on there and get notified, you know?
- [81:45]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, maybe. Maybe you could spam me with a new shirt. Also check out primalbeef.com and colorado craft beef.com. you need good steak. You need it. You need beef tallow, perhaps.
- [81:59]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [82:00]
Jocko Willink
Some people be rubbing this on their face. I don't know anything about that, but I do know this. When you cook with it, it's hella good. Yes, you get that from coloradocraft beef.com and then just awesome steaks. Primal beef. Also making a jerky right now, which is tasty. I got some in my bag. That's my lunch today. So let's go.
- [82:17]
Echo Charles
Who you've been hanging out with that you're saying hella good?
- [82:22]
Jocko Willink
I said that one time. Yeah, but I'm a kid from the 80s, bro.
- [82:26]
Echo Charles
Yeah, but isn't that in Northern California? Oh, I know. Because Hannah, she went up to.
- [82:30]
Jocko Willink
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [82:32]
Echo Charles
No, she went slow. Right. Okay, who did. Who went to Cal, who went to Berkeley?
- [82:37]
Jocko Willink
Frey.
- [82:38]
Echo Charles
Yeah. You've been hanging out with Freya or Hannah.
- [82:41]
Jocko Willink
I don't think Freya has ever said hella good.
- [82:43]
Echo Charles
That's where I think.
- [82:44]
Jocko Willink
I think I brought it directly from the 80s.
- [82:47]
Echo Charles
All right, well, it is hella good, so.
- [82:49]
Jocko Willink
It is hella good. So check out colorocracraftbeef.com primalbeef.com also subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to Jocko Underground, check out our YouTube channels. And then of course, got a bunch of books need to lead by Dave Burke. Get that pre order. Get that first edition, first a dish. I've written a bunch of books too, including a bunch of kids books. So check those out if you got kids. And then we have Echelon Front leadership Consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. We take the lessons that we learned on the battlefield and let you apply them to your business, to your Life. So if you want to come to our events, you go to ashlomfront.com we got the. We just finished the council up in the mountains of Washington state, the middle of nowhere. What an incredible event. It's like 20 to 25 people there and two days of just total disconnect from two days, three nights, I think something like that. But it's, it's awesome. So come and check that out. Also, Muster December, Orlando, Florida Women's Assembly FTX we call, all kinds of stuff. Or we can actually be hired as a consultancy to go to your business, get embedded in your business, figure out what your problems are and solve those problems through leadership. That's what we do there. And if you need training for your company, you can do online training. Go to extremeownership.com we can train your company. Or if you're just an individual human, you have a job or you have a family or you have friends and you interact with other humans, then guess what? You need to know how to lead. Go to extremeownership.com to learn how to lead. And also if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org also we got heroes and horses.org and then finally Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org all those rely on donations to function. So that's what we got going on. Also, if you want to connect with us, you can check out jocko.com and on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. Echo is at Echo. Charles, just be careful because people want your brain. They want to possess it like possessed. They want to own it. Don't let them own it. Don't, don't. Don't let the algorithm own your brain. It'll get you. Also thanks to our uniformed personnel around the world with a solemn semper fi to the United States Marine Corps, specifically the old breed, thank you for your sacrifice and your example. We will never forget. 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 sacrifice here at home to keep us safe and for everyone else out there. There's a quote, it's an unattributed quote from a Marine that fought on IO Jima and he said we were all afraid, but we had a job to do and we did it. That is a simple but powerful way to think. We know what we have to do. You know what you have to do at home, at work, for your team, for yourself. You know what you have to do. You know what your mission is. You know that you have a job. So do your job. And that's all I've got for tonight and until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.