505: Lessons in Blood. General Greg Knight on Ramadi and Leadership

Summary

Jocko Podcast 505: "Lessons in Blood" – General Greg Knight on Ramadi and Leadership

Release Date: September 10, 2025
Host: Jocko Willink (A)
Co-hosts: Dave Burke (B)
Guest: Major General Greg Knight (C), Vermont National Guard

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Main Theme

This episode is a profound exploration of leadership, sacrifice, and resilience—told through the personal and battlefield experiences of Major General Greg Knight, who served as a battle captain in the 1st Battalion, 172nd Armored Regiment (attached to the fabled 228 Brigade Combat Team) during the brutal battle for Ramadi, Iraq (2005-2006). The discussion journeys from Knight’s nontraditional path into the military, through the harrowing deployment to Ramadi, and into his continued service and advocacy for veterans. The conversation is rich in leadership lessons, humility, and an unflinching look at the cost of war.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The 228 Brigade Combat Team Memorial & The Meaning of Sacrifice

• [00:08] Jocko introduces the 228 BCT Fallen Warrior Memorial, detailing its symbolism: iron (resilience), blood (sacrifice), keystone elements (reflecting the composition of the unit), and suspended dog tags representing the fallen.
• Highlights the massive casualties suffered: 500+ wounded, nearly 100 killed, and notes many did not realize 228th was primarily a National Guard unit from across the United States.

2. General Knight’s Personal Background and Path to Service

• [04:54]–[10:21] Knight recounts his upbringing as an "Army brat" in Virginia, his mother's harrowing escape from post-war Germany, and life in a tough household.
• His initial employment in a butcher shop and lack of direction after high school.
• Joins the Coast Guard on a friend's suggestion, thrives on military structure and discipline—calls it “the smartest thing I could have done.”
  • Quote: “I thrived on the order, the structure, the discipline. Didn’t have that at home.” — Knight, [09:51]
• Details six years in the Coast Guard, assignments as a yeoman and honor guard, and exposure to “a glimpse of the big picture.”

3. Transition to the National Guard and Army Leadership

• [11:26]–[18:48] After the Coast Guard, Knight enters Vermont law enforcement, joins the Air National Guard, and then, with late encouragement from Brigadier General Mike Heston, transfers to Army National Guard, fast-tracking to OCS at age 34.
  • Quote: “You’ve got to be commissioned before your thirty-fifth birthday. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get a waiver.’”—Knight, [14:11]
• Describes OCS as transformative: “Probably the most important thing I learned at NTC was how to do an air tasking order.” [29:25]

4. The National Guard Experience: Challenges, Myths, and Service

• [18:48] Breaks down the entry process, benefits, and uniqueness of the Guard:
  • Allows civilian and military careers, high retention, educational and family benefits, bonuses.
  • Dispels the myth that service in the Guard is not "real military."
  • Quote: “You can do both. Every state has different benefits. It is a time commitment …but if you don’t start with service, there’s no point.” — Knight, [19:14]
  • Highlights the best-kept secret: a person can serve in National Guard Special Forces.

5. Deploying to Ramadi: Reality and Preparation

• [24:49]–[31:38] Knight’s vivid recall of September 11, 2001 (“…we knew, the world’s gonna be different”), the call-up for war, and initial skepticism at being sent to the most kinetic environment in Iraq.
• Discusses difficult pre-deployment training, resource shortages, and the vital importance of professional relationships with higher headquarters and adjacent units.
• Memorable Detail: The advance party’s first sight in Ramadi: 16 memorial photos for the fallen.
  • “I remember walking into their talk and on the wall were 16 the photos with the American flag in case of your death. Sixteen of them.” — Knight, [31:38]

6. Battle of Ramadi: Command, Coordination, and Chaos

• [34:12]–[44:18] Knight details his role as battle captain—managing movements, tracking units, avoiding blue-on-blue incidents, and acting as the critical link between company command posts and frontline leaders.
  • Quote: “My job was to clear the air. I would usually bypass the company CP, I’d go to the platoon or company net so I could talk to the leader on the ground who’s actually in the firefight…” — Knight, [34:42]
• Complexity of Friendly Fire: Humvees and tanks shot at by fellow Americans out of confusion/stress.
• Impact of relationships with Special Forces and SEALs, notably embedding snipers (Chris Kyle mentioned).

7. Intensity and Cost of Combat

• [45:27]–[55:37] The difficulty of calling in air strikes in an urban environment.
  • Dave Burke: “The rules [for dropping bombs] had always been the rules. The ROE didn’t really change…” [45:32]
• First battalion casualty, Master Sergeant Chris Chapin, killed by sniper during constitutional referendum work.
  • Quote: “20 minutes later, he was dead, shot by a sniper … There are no words for it. And then you suppress it because you can’t freeze up…” — Knight, [46:54]
• Over 350 IEDs hit the battalion over a year. Stories of repeated near-misses, survivor’s guilt, and grim battlefield humor.
  • Quote: “They watched us for two months, got there June and July… They patterned us.” — Knight, [48:54]

8. Morale, Resilience, and the Arc of Deployment

• [51:02]–[55:11] Troops persevered despite relentless casualties, unmoved by visible reminders of danger (“vehicle graveyard”).
  • “Every day, they put on their gear and went out and did their job. No hesitation.” — Knight, [51:02]
• Mid-deployment: efficiency sets in, coping through dark humor, and the normalization of trauma.
• December 2005: Huge turnout for Iraq’s parliamentary elections, seen as the beginning of local "awakening," soon followed by devastating insurgent attacks (suicide bombing at glass factory).

9. Leadership Lessons: Turnover, Humility, and Listening

• [61:30]–[71:34] The process of handing over to incoming units—critical importance of humility and documentation; examples of tragic mistakes when warnings were ignored.
  • “One thing I never want to hear again in my life is ‘We got this.’ That’s like the most arrogant, dismissive thing.” — Knight, [62:10]
• Knight underscores the National Guard’s unique strengths (breadth of civilian skills), and Dave Burke recounts how Guard units “taught me how to fight in Ramadi”—highlighting humility, openness, and the deadly cost of arrogance.
  • Quote: “If you can tell yourself you don’t know what you’re doing and say it to another person, hey, I don’t know what I’m doing. It is such a liberating thing because then the other guy’s like, oh cool, here’s what we did.” — Dave Burke, [68:58]

10. Post-Deployment: The Long Road Home and Caring for Veterans

• [77:48]–[86:46] Coming home is “anticlimactic,” disconcerting, and isolating: “Everything was just so normal. …You folks don’t even know…” — Knight, [79:00]
• Knight commends the Vet Center and stresses the importance of seeking help for PTSD/adjustment disorder: “Nobody comes back the same … go get help, man. It’s ok to not be ok.” [79:00]
• Discusses challenges of tracking and supporting National Guard members as they return to civilian life; struggles in keeping connections and benefits for vets advocacy for legislative change (PACT Act).

11. Building an Organization: Leadership Philosophy

• [107:00] Jocko reads from Knight’s War College paper on leadership:
  • Quote: “There is a difference between effective and good leadership. One can be effective probably throughout an entire career without ever becoming a truly good leader. … Learning from their subordinates and placing the agenda of the organization above their own. This is what delineates good from effective.”
  • Mission command is about trust, innovation, listening, and assuming risk for your subordinates.
• Knight recounts the “Pope Glass” innovation—protecting turret gunners based on a specialist’s idea, and how bottom-up ingenuity can save lives across a whole theater.

12. The Modern Guard and Advocacy

• [88:49]–[94:09] As the Vermont Adjutant General, Knight faces the reality of recruiting, recounts pushback from schools and “bad advice” given to youth.
  • Quote: “…guidance counselor said, ‘you’re an idiot.’” — Knight, [91:23]
  • The Guard’s double mission: home (disaster response) and warfighting. “There’s no other organization on the planet that can do that.”

13. Senior Leadership, War College, and Accepting Responsibility

• Knight describes his reluctant rise to senior command (Adjutant General through legislative appointment), his advocacy for transparency (organizational assessment), and the challenge of fixing deep cultural issues.
• Elaborates on the tension between political and military leadership, and the necessity to be nonpartisan in service to the mission and people.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “[The Guard] is like Flex Seal, man… we’re just good for everything.” — General Knight, [93:14]
• On seeking help after combat: “Go get fixed. It’s really not that hard.” — Knight, [81:44]
• On transitioning back to civilian life: “You go from a habitual, literally combat relationship… then you get home and that ends.” — Knight, [83:16]
• Jocko, on National Guard’s hard-learned wisdom: “We really appreciated the lessons that you learned. I know the lessons were learned in blood. And you saved us blood from those lessons, and we won’t forget that.” [74:18]
• On humility: “Thank God I learned it then and not never or 10 years later.” — Dave Burke, [140:43]

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Memorable/Impactful Stories

• First Casualty — The death of Master Sergeant Chapin, and the immediate, almost mechanical suppression of emotion required to keep functioning. [46:54]
• The “Pope Glass” — A specialist’s simple but transformative innovation, becoming standard and saving countless lives. [110:02]
• Learning the Ground War — Dave Burke’s humility as a Top Gun instructor, arriving as an outsider and learning tactical survival from the Guard: “If I want to give credit to who taught me how to fight in a war, it was the guardsmen that were on the ground in Ramadi for almost a year.” [127:25]

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Timestamps of Significant Segments

• [00:08] – Description of the 228 Brigade Memorial, setting the tone for sacrifice.
• [04:54] – Gen. Knight’s early life/family background.
• [09:44] – Enlists in the Coast Guard; importance of structure and discipline.
• [14:11] – Transfers to Army National Guard, OCS at 34.
• [19:14] – Honest breakdown of National Guard benefits, challenges, and misconceptions.
• [24:49] – Knight on 9/11, beginning of post-9/11 mobilization.
• [31:38] – Arrival in Ramadi, reality of casualties, embedding with SEAL/SF teams.
• [41:44] – Jocko’s early sniper ops, effective inter-unit support.
• [44:18] – Value of sharing knowledge, “no textbook solutions” in Ramadi.
• [51:02] – Morale and resilience under constant threat.
• [55:37] – Elections and the emerging "awakening."
• [61:30] – Unit turnover, humility, and learning from predecessors.
• [77:48] – Flight home from Ramadi, challenges of coming home.
• [81:44] – Getting mental health support, importance of Vet Centers.
• [107:00] – Leadership: effective vs. good; reading from Knight’s War College paper.
• [110:02] – Origin story of the "Pope Glass."
• [123:00] – The Guard’s ongoing dual mission and outreach.

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Final Thoughts and Lessons

General Knight’s journey personifies humility, service, and the value of hard-won experience. The National Guard, often underappreciated for its heavy lifting both at home and in combat, imparts distinct lessons for leaders—chief among them: listen to subordinates, foster innovation from the bottom-up, share hard-earned wisdom, and always place the mission and people above your own ego.

“There is a difference between effective and good leadership… Cultivating the respect of subordinates through listening, asking for advice, mentoring, and keeping them informed… we may find and develop those good future leaders we are looking for.”
— General Greg Knight, [107:00]

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Where to Learn More / Stay Connected

• Vermont National Guard:
  • Instagram and Twitter/X: @VTNationalGuard
  • Facebook: Vermont National Guard
  • Web: vt.public.ng.mil
• Jocko Podcast & Network:
  • Instagram/Twitter: @jockowillink
  • jockopodcast.com

For veterans or those considering service:

“Go see a recruiter. The Guard isn't a secret anymore. If you've got the desire, come ask questions. We're transparent.” — General Knight, [123:34]

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Transcript

[A]

This is Jocko, podcast number 505 with Dave Burke and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Dave.

[B]

Good evening.

[A]

The 228 Brigade Combat Team Memorial is made of iron, symbolizing iron soldiers from the Iron Brigade. Additionally, it represents the history of Pennsylvania's iron and steel industry. Iron is also the most abundant element in blood, symbolizing the bloodshed by fallen warriors. The obelisk stands 21ft tall, echoing the 21 gun salute. The damaged steel represents the unique war the living fight, and the fallen acting like armor. Steel plates cover all four sides of the pedestal and hold the names of the fallen. Keystones made from different elements rest above the plates. One is polished steel, and when one sees their reflection, it represents the fallen warrior inside all of us. Another is ballistic glass that has been shattered to represent the conflict in which we were engaged. One is stained red wood to represent the blood we have shed. Another is marble to represent the strength and resolve and steady purpose of the 228 Brigade Combat Team. Inside the obelisk, dog tags for each fallen comrade are suspended from chains. From the base of the structure, a light shines skyward onto the tags and through the obelisk cap. The cap is made of shattered vehicle glass and acts as a window to which their souls will shine for eternity. As wind passes through the structure, the dog tags move a wind chime suspended below them, creating a subtle sound like the quiet whispers of the fallen as they continue to speak to us. Along with honoring our fallen warriors, this memorial is a reminder that our country is the beacon of liberty which shines throughout the world. And those right there are words from a plaque describing the stunning 228 Brigade Combat Team Fallen Warrior memorial statue, which is at the Pennsylvania National Guard Military Museum, located in Anvil, Pennsylvania. And the statue was originally built and erected on the ground in Ramadi, April 16, 2006, by soldiers from the unit. So it was designed by soldiers from the unit, was built from soldiers from the unit, and just a couple weeks after my task unit had arrived in Ramadi, they put this incredible memorial up, and by that time, the battle hardened units of the 228 were nearing the end of their long and arduous deployment. They had suffered significant casualties. They'd have over 500 wounded in action, almost 100 killed in action, and a lot of times people find this interesting, that the 228, who was on the ground fighting for months and months and months, was a National Guard unit made up primarily of reservist soldiers from units all around the country, including Pennsylvania, Utah, Michigan, Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina and Vermont. And I have had the honor of having the commander of that brigade, General John Gronski, on the podcast twice, episode 235 and 302. And tonight we have another member of that unit here with us. General Greg Knight served with Vermont's 1st Battalion, 172nd Armored Regiment, a National Guard unit that was attached to the 228 in Ramadi. And he had a non traditional route of ending up there. And he learned many lessons along the way and many lessons since. Obviously he did something right because he is sitting here as a general and it's an honor to have him with us to share some of those experiences and, and some lessons learned. General Knight, thanks for joining us.

[C]

Much appreciated, honored and privileged to be here.

[A]

And it's good we have Dave Burke with us as well. I know that you guys spent some time in the, in the talk in the Tactical Operations center there in Ramadi together. That's how you two know each other. And I'm sure we'll get into some of that. But let's get a little bit of your background before we get into this. Where'd you grow up? Where'd you come from?

[C]

Born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia. Army brat. My dad was a retired combat engineer. I was actually born at dewitt Army Hospital at Fort Belvoir. So pretty conventional upbringing. We never owned a home, lived in an apartment complex. So dad retired from the army and then he became the head maintenance engineer and ran the complex.

[A]

And that was down in Virginia.

[C]

In Virginia.

[A]

And what about your mom?

[C]

So mom was originally from Germany. Quick vignette about Mom. She was born and raised in Wittenberg Lutherstadt, home of Martin Luther, and at age 17 was a kindergarten teacher in Germany. Towards the end of the war, she was conscripted and placed on a flak battery, running the cameras to try to record the altitude of the bomber stream. At the end of the war, she and her girlfriend needed to get out of there because it was Russian zone. There was no Berlin Wall, but there was barbed wire and Russian sentries, conscripts probably. And she ended up packing all the earthly belongings and they went to the checkpoint. And if you got the red stamp, you went back to the East. If you got the blue stamp, you continued on into the US or British zone. So they went there and they got the red stamp. Nope. Yet back you go. Well, they're devastated. So they went back to the local village and they're in tears. And the women brought them in waited till that night, took bread dough and erased the red stamp. And then when the centuries changed shift, they went out there with schnapps and got the sentries hammered. And then mom and her girlfriend went out and got the blue stamp.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

So, I mean, the moral of the story is, you know, were it not for schnapps, I wouldn't be here. But. Yeah, but she was an amazing, amazing woman. Having lived through that hindsight, I probably should have spent more time learning about it, but as a kid, ignorant didn't pay any attention to it.

[A]

Yeah. What could your mom possibly know, right? She possibly teach you? Of course. You're 15, you know everything.

[C]

Yeah. But pretty, pretty phenomenal. But yeah, it wasn't all roses on both of them.

[A]

And then what about your dad? What was your dad's job in the Army?

[C]

Combat engineer.

[A]

And then was he in World War II?

[C]

Nope, nope, he was. In fact it was during latter part, well, beginning of Vietnam. And it was actually again fortuitous. He had gotten transferred, I think to Fort Belvoir and his unit was then mobilized and sent to Vietnam. And they had a horrific casualty rate. But again, just pure luck that he ended up getting assigned to be, I think an instructor at the NCO academy as opposed to going to Vietnam or he went to light ship in Panama, something like that.

[A]

But yeah, and so then you're growing up, you're living in a. We live in the apartment complex with the, with your, that your dad was the maintenance officer of.

[C]

Yep, yep, we lived there. It was a great place to live. I had lots of friends. I was never a big fan of school. Like many of us, it was tough. My folks, they were alcoholic and we had domestic abuse and verbal abuse. All the things being a product of the 70s. Nobody took it as serious as we do now. So my brother and I came out of it mostly normal. So I look back at that and just like you learn, just like being in leadership, you learn. I'm not going to be like that.

[A]

So as you're going through high school, what are you, are you playing sports? What are you interested in partying?

[C]

I didn't, I did intramural sports. I didn't do any, any JV or varsity sports. And I was talking to somebody about this the other day. I didn't really fit. I was just some scrawny, long haired kid. I wasn't a freak. I didn't smoke a lot of weed. I wasn't a jock, I wasn't a geek. I would, I didn't, wasn't A preppy that was a big time. That. Then it was all, you know, khakis and Izod shirts, and everybody listened to little feet. But I look back, I didn't really fit anywhere. I got a job at. I think I was age 16, and I worked at what was then the Beacon Butcher. So I worked at a butcher shop, breaking down hanging beef, hindquarters, sides, pork sides, all that stuff, you know, great trade to go into, but I had no plan.

[A]

I was about to ask you what your plan was. You just answered my question.

[C]

There was no plan.

[A]

What about the military? Your dad was in the army. Were you not, you know, thinking, at least I could go do that?

[C]

Well, it was interesting. I had looked at it, and my dad said, hell, no. You're not joining any army that I was a part of, because it's not the army that I was a part of. It had changed. It was post Vietnam. It was tough. My neighbor Alex Worden was in the Coast Guard right next to our apartment. And I wasn't going anywhere. I had my 67 mercury. I was the only guy with a license, only guy with a job. All my high school friends were hanging out, drinking beer, and he got me one day. He said, why don't you just join the Coast Guard? And I did. And that was the beginning of where we are now. Just being in the military was the smartest thing I could have done. I would tell anybody. I mean, it's. I just. I don't know.

[A]

What'd he tell you about the Coast Guard?

[C]

You know, I don't know. It was. It was just three hots and a cop.

[A]

You're like, sounds good to me.

[C]

Yeah, I'm good. Get me out of here. You know? But I remember going to basic training at Cape May, New Jersey, and I thrived on it. I thrived on the order, the structure, the discipline. Didn't have that at home. It was just different. It was like putting on that pair of running shoes that you should have bought years ago. It's like, oh, my God, this is awesome. It wasn't hard. Do what you're told. There's instructions for everything. It's the military. So that was the beginning of, to me, just an incredible opportunity.

[A]

And what was your job in the Coast Guard?

[C]

So I was a yeoman, a personnelist. I did that. I was in the Coast Guard Honor Guard, first date myself. Like, it was Reagan's second inauguration.

[A]

Dang. Okay.

[C]

Yeah. On the drill team, the silent drill team. It was. It was a blast. Running around the military district of Washington, you know, doing drill team performances in Bristol, Rhode Island, Newport, Grand Haven, Michigan. It was just a great time to be young, dumb kid, you know, spinning a 1903 Springfield with a bayonet could possibly go wrong. And then I went down to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and I struck. I don't know if the Navy has you strike for a rating. You don't have to do it. Yeah, you can do that in the Navy. So you get ogt, you take the service wide exam. Mayor, congratulations, you're a third class petty officer. When I got out as a yeoman second class, my last job in the Coast Guard, my last year was driving for the commandant. Went back up to D.C. which was fascinating. I got kind of a glimpse of the big picture. But here I am in E5, you know, what do I know about national level politics there? For the Exxon Valdez oil spill, I had to go to Alaska with the commandant. But I just, I love being in the Coast Guard.

[A]

So what made you decide to get out? So how many years did you do? Six.

[C]

Six.

[A]

Six years.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Because that's a pretty good chunk of time, you know, you're kind of like moving through your career a little bit.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Hindsight being what it is, I'd have been retired 25 years ago if I'd have stayed in the Coast Guard, been a retired master chief someplace, you know, master chief yeoman, drinking coffee at the Chiefs Club. But that didn't happen. So my ex wife and I came up to Vermont. I got a job as a Burlington police officer, went into Vermont law enforcement. I stayed in the Guard, which was I had enough common sense to keep my foot in the door. So I was in the Air Guard for seven years as a security forces defender. I was a Burlington cop for four years. And then I went over to the department of Liquor Control to be a liquor investigator. So real popular with the college kids.

[A]

What are you doing as a liquor investigator?

[C]

A lot of it's compliance, licensing. You're basically doing background checks on corporations. You're doing the licensing program. Because in Vermont we're a control state. You have to have a liquor license in order to do business, Whether you're doing it as a restaurant or what we used to call a cabaret or as a store convenience store. My job was to license them. And then you're checking for compliance over service, underage drinking. And there's all kinds of.

[A]

What years is.

[C]

This would have been 89 to so 93.

[A]

Oh, so this was 2000. This wasn't the drunk driving you know, when people were starting to really push against drunk driving.

[C]

Yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't all the thing it is now.

[A]

Yeah. Like, I think I know guys that got pulled over for drunk driving in like the 50s and 60s. And it was like, you know, hey, be careful the rest of the drive home. You know, that's what the cops would tell them. Like, you're looking a little drunk. Yeah, sorry. Well, be careful on your drive home, you know, so.

[C]

And there was some catalysts for that changing. And it was, I thought it happened in Vermont, but it was one of those kids were underage partying and they were driving and the, the law enforcement officer didn't do the right thing, which was detain the kids, call the parents, at least let them go. And then they were killed later. Rollover crash. And then of course, you do the math. It's like, wait a minute, you had hands on these kids and let them go. So that kind of changed the dynamic.

[A]

And you were in the Air National Guard this whole time. So tell me a little bit about the Air National Guard. Is it the same thing as the National Guard, but it's like Air Force instead of Army?

[C]

Correct. Yep. So the National Guard is both Air Guard and Army Guard. All of us have different missions. We're fortunate. We flew the F16 for 33 years. I was security forces defender. So you're out there on the flight line, you're doing the law enforcement activity on the base. Base security, ground based air defense is what we used to call it. So I did that for seven years. It's a small state. I was still an E5. And you're waiting for somebody to die or retire. Because when people retention is great in the Guard and folks would stay for a very long time and our ear Guard is. They're fantastic. Love working with the folks that I work with there. But I knew that I had aspirations at one point to go to officer candidate school. I had just enough college. I didn't have a degree yet. And it was the late Brigadier General Mike Heston. He died of pancreatic cancer after three tours in Afghanistan. He was a state trooper. I knew him from law enforcement. He was also the OCS company commander for the Army Guard. So we're having coffee after shift one night and he says, hey man, why don't you go. He's from Rhode Island, Nida, why don't you go to OCS? I'm like, Mike, I'm 34 years old, man, I'm like a late bloomer here. You got to be commissioned before your 35th birthday. And he said, don't worry about it, I'll get a waiver. And he did. So I went over from the Air Guard to the Army Guard. So that would have been in February, March, April, May, June. So four months later, I'm standing tall at Fort Carson, Colorado with what we call fast track accelerated OCS run by the guard.

[A]

And you're 34 years old. When you go to be 34 years old, second lieutenant.

[C]

And there was, I get off the bus with all the other candidates and there was some terrain feature of a captain. I mean, look at the back of this guy's neck. Look like a pack of hot dogs. He was giant. Former nco, had been to war. I think he was actually in Lebanon for some of that, some of the horrific actions. But Mr. Talk about somebody being up your backside with a flashlight. That was an eye opener. They don't do that in the air guards. Like, why are you yelling at me? But it was, I've been to a lot of different schools, we all have. But it was probably, I would consider it a capstone experience in my career. That was really the truly the opening of the door of opportunity. And it was because of Heston. And I cursed him for nine weeks because it was, it wasn't buds, don't get me wrong. Yeah, but it was hard. It was hard enough.

[A]

Yeah. And plus, you know, I went through buds when I was 18. And when you're 18, I mean, look, you're, you don't really care about anything, you know, but As a grown 35 year old man, you know, with somebody yelling and screaming at you, I'm sure that was a little bit tougher to deal with.

[C]

Yeah, it was a smoke session. It was. You double timed everywhere. And in the end, when I flew home, we did seven weeks at Fort Carson for phase one and two, which was condensed, and then phase three was at Fort Lewis, Washington. @ the time I had to go to the exchange to buy clothes to fly home because I lost £22. You got your three squares. That's it. It's calories in, calories out. And there are way more calories out because I mean, you get smoked to the point of failure. I mean, we'd screw up the PT formation and then Captain Shuto, who's one of our attack officers would come out and guys like a triathlete, you know, 2% body fat. Hey, we're going to do the side straddle hop. We're like, Yay, four count exercise. Right? We're doing 100. So Jocko, you're a fit man. Have you ever jumped up and down 400 fricking times and then go for a five mile run?

[A]

Yes, unfortunately I have.

[C]

Yeah, of course, yeah. But my God. So yeah, no secret. Yeah, I probably should go back but Yeah, I lost 22 pounds. But that was really, it was very well done.

[A]

And are you starting to think, you know, what are you thinking about your job, your future as an army officer? Are you starting to think maybe that's something you want to lean more into?

[C]

Well, I will tell you this. So I liked being a cop. I always loved the idea of being a cop, but it was never quite what I thought it was going to be. Whether in uniform or working as a liquor investigator. It was a great job. Don't get me wrong. I mean made my own hours. You're working every Thursday, Friday, Saturday night to do bar checks and things like that. But it's never like it's on TV, you ain't solving anything in 20 minutes. Right. It's just, it's compliance and it would look, it's a great job. But man, I love going to drill weekends. I became an armor officer. I went to the armor officer basic course for 17 weeks at Fort Knox. I love being on tanks, man, I just. Most fun, you can have your clothes on. You guys talked about it in the books. You know you're calling in main gun Mike to do your work.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[C]

Help you guys out. Yeah. So to me, I don't know, I just loved being. I love going to drill weekend. And then I had the opportunity in June of 2000, interviewed for a support platoon leader job. I knew jack about logistics, but that's a job. It's agr. I could be, I could be in the Guard full time. So I applied and just incredibly fortunate to get picked up to be active guard and reserve.

[A]

So if someone's listening right now and they, you know, I get a lot of questions like this. I get a lot of guys that are 28 years old, they got a kid on the way, they're married, they got a good job and they, but they never served and they feel bad about it. They want to, they want to scratch that itch for lack of a better way of saying it. And I always tell them, you know, go in the reserve, go in the National Guard. When someone's that guy right now, 28 year old guy, what does that, what does that look like for him?

[C]

When someone joins join the Guard is not hard. Truth in lending. Right. So we've all heard the added, well, one week in a month, two weeks a year. Okay, well, that's kind of true. You got to get your training out of the way first so you can do 10 weeks of basic training and then your advanced individual training is however long it is intel. You want to be an intel specialist could be up to a year, 10 months, something like that. Air Guard, very technical career fields there. They're Air Force specialty codes. Some schools are longer than others, but you can do both. Every state has different benefits. It is a time commitment. I'm not going to tell anybody. It's not, it's not convenient. It does add some stress to your family because you're not going to be home some of the times. We do get deployed, obviously all part of the job. So for me, there's plenty of incentives, there's plenty of reasons, plenty of benefits. But if you don't start with service, then there's no point in joining because it's going to take time. It's going to be a commitment on your part. To me, the payoff is at the end worked out for me. But I know a number of folks that started part time and have a similar experience to me and they love the Guard. We've got great retention rates. But when you look at the educational benefits, the Tricare, the dental, life insurance, all of those things, if you're, you're going into a critical specialty. My granddaughter, who I swore in just a couple months ago, passes the ASVAB and goes into weapons with the 158th Fighter Wing, my air guard. And she got a $50,000 bonus.

[A]

Damn.

[C]

And my wife was like, what are we doing wrong here? I mean, there were no bonuses when I joined, but that's out there. But you're going to earn it. I mean, we're not just giving that stuff away. So that's why we haven't talked to anybody come see us. That's probably the most important thing. I think we need to do a better job as a Guard telling our story because there's a story out there that's simply not being told or not being heard, one or the other. And that's why I think it's important. And thank you again for having me here. I think there's a story to be told.

[A]

Yeah. One of the best kept secrets, I was saying this before we hit record, is that you can be a National Guard Special Forces soldier so you can go to all the training to be a Green Beret and be in the National Guard. So you can, you know, Carry on with your normal career if you have one. Or you can, you know, whatever you want to do on the, on the civilian side. And you can be an actual Green Brave. The SEAL teams doesn't have anything like that. You can't. You have to be active duty in the SEAL teams and you're probably going to spend, you know, eight years before there is a Reserve. There are reserve SEAL teams, but you have to be in the Navy active duty for a bunch of years prior to that. So the fact that you can just be a National Guard Green Beret is outstanding. Is very cool.

[C]

Well, and that's the other part of this jocko, the other element of the best kept secret. You know, I talk to a lot of young folks. I mean I'll sell deer to a farmer. But hey man, let's talk about the Guard. You know, what are you doing working at coffee shop or whatever. And I will always ask the question. And you're not tied to a given state. If you join the Guard, let's say your career takes you to California and you're in the Vermont Guard. Well, that's a simple paperwork drill recruiters handle. It's called interstate transfer.

[A]

Nice.

[C]

And then you go to. And similarly we can do a reserve component transfer. Let's say you, you pick up, you, you go to Q course, you become 18 series. You love it so much you want to go active duty. Okay, then go active duty. I think the only thing you owe the Guard I think, I think is still true is a year post training. You owe us a year after that you can go active duty if you want paperwork drill. We don't, I don't get in the way of that. That's opportunity for, for young folks.

[A]

Yeah. Awesome, awesome stuff. So you end up getting selected for active Guard reserve. And so when you're active Guard reserve that means you're full time. You don't have a civilian job anymore. This is what you're doing.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

And you did that what in the supply department.

[C]

So I was an armor officer and we will go into branch immaterial position. So I was support platoon leader as a lieutenant and then I became an armor. Armor company commander. That's your part time job. So my unit was in Enosburg, Vermont and northwestern Vermont. But full time I was had become I think the Assistant S3 Assistant Operations Officer.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And then you know, you kind of progress and it's, it's like any other military organization. You're going to do a little bit of personnel as you're going to do logistician work. You'll pick up your key developmental assignments, your company commands, your battalion admin officer work, things like that, that are kind of the things that you need to hit to move to the next level. And you can continue, by the way, and mention that time commitment, your professional military education doesn't stop. You got to do your captain's career course, you got to do your intermediate level education, you got to do the advanced operations course. And then you want, if you want, you'd be competitive for, for senior service college.

[A]

Check. Dave, what about Air National Guard pilots? Is that a thing? Absolutely. Thing. And what's the deal with that?

[B]

I'd say the description that you had and their version of that is almost the same. You've got guys that are AGR's, full time reservists, you got guys that are part time, that are full time airline pilots, full time, other professions. But the version of what you just described, my experience, the Air National Guard is, I don't know if identical is the right word, but very, very similar. I'm sure there are some other commitments on, you know, being current and things like that if you're an actual pilot. But the Air Guard integrates with the active duty units that I was a part of and they're all part of the same team. It's pretty awesome.

[C]

Yeah, pretty seamless.

[A]

So we mentioned that when you're part of the National Guard, you may deploy. Where are you and what's happening on September 11th?

[C]

So I was standing on the front slope of an M1 Abrams outside my armory at a recruiting event for the local high school. And then my readiness NCO came out. Sergeant Wayne Pudva, he came out and he said, hey, a plane just flew into the World Trade Center. And I'm thinking, well, you're talking like a Cessna. What do you mean? He goes, no, no, like an airliner. And everybody in that armory knew, we knew, the world's gonna be different after that. It had changed forever.

[A]

And how long did it take? So now you're watching the wars, what does it look like as you guys are getting spun up to be activated?

[C]

Yeah, there are lots of fits and starts. A lot. Rumor, innuendo. You know, you probably experienced the same thing on the teams. It's like, hey, we're going here. I know you're not. Well, we're go here. No, no, we're not. It was. We're going to backfill the 11th ACR at Fort Irwin. No, we're not. We're going to go to the border of Syria. No, that didn't happen. You're going to go to Ramadi and you get a warning order about a year out. Then you get your notification of sourcing, meaning they turn on the money for, for your training and equipment and it becomes really real. And I remember when they said you're going to go to Ramadi with 2nd Brigade, 28th Division and Shame on me. I probably sold a short. I'm like, they're not going to. That's like the most kinetic environment on the planet right now. They're not going to send. No way. That's bullshit. They're not sending us there. Oh no, they did. And I do. If I had a regret, I think that probably a guard is. And we do sell ourselves short sometimes. We were, we were good. Our folks were just phenomenal.

[A]

What was the training like? Getting ready to go over there. So you guys, they spin you guys up. Everyone goes on active duty. How, how far prior to deployment were you all now like, hey, we're. This is where our job is every day.

[C]

So it was January of 05. We went to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. We were an 18 month mobilization with a year deployment, 5 months at Camp Shelby. Hindsight, it wasn't. They weren't ready. I don't think they had 44 ranges. 11 of them were actually running one crew serve range. And we're trying to push a brigade through. So the knife fight, trying to get trigger time for your gun crews was horrific. NTC was hard. It was validating. I was there. I always go in the advance. I gotta know. So I'm the assistant S3. So I would go in the advance and you're in the logistics support area, drawing vehicles, getting things set up, two weeks in the box, which mostly sucked.

[A]

Do you guys bring your own vehicles and stuff out there for that?

[C]

I'm trying to. Some of the stuff, I think we would draw from there, their material, their mates. Because you're signing for stuff. Because a lot of our stuff was probably already on the boat heading to Kuwait, heading to Camp Buering. What I'll tell you about my perspective at ntc again, we're learning how to run a talk. And there's no handbook on how to run a talk. Every unit does it differently. But what I would tell you about Camp Shelby could have been better. What it did is it helped us build relationships with our higher headquarters, with my colleagues at the brigade. And it was really important because that really smoothed things out. When we got to Ramadi, we did a war fighter exercise. You know, we got the OCS there, we were all validated. Went to NTC1. To me, a shortcoming of NTC there was. And again, my perspective at the time, it was a gotcha game. So I'm in the talk. I'm the battlefield manager, right on the S3 air. I, I didn't know how to do an air tasking order. And my oc, my OCT is sitting there taking notes and talking into the collar mic. So I'd go over and hey man, how am I doing? You know anything? Any pointers? No, you're good? Well, no, it wasn't good, but there was no, no give and take. There was no mentoring, right? That was just a construct at the time. And it was actually, I don't remember her name, but she was a Kiowa pilot and she came in and sat me down. She goes, hey man, do you know how to do an air tasking order? Because you got scouts out and I want to help you. And I'm like, nope. Probably the most important thing I learned at NTC was how to do an air tasking order. She was great. And I just learned so much from that 10 minute conversation. Then she took the time to come in and say, man, let me help sort you out here. That was huge. But then overseas we went, how did.

[A]

You guys, like, what was the morale of the troops? You guys know you're going in Ramadi. You know how bad Ramadi is. What's in the minds of the troops as you're heading out there?

[C]

I think there was some trepidation that's inherent with anything of that. It's the first time we'd ever been. You don't know what you're going into. Probably a little overwhelming that this was actually going to happen. I remember going to Camp Buering, which is. I'm pretty convinced that if you look at the solar system, it's the sun, Kuwait and then Earth. It's a wretched place. But I'll never forget my experience getting on that CH46. We had to C130 from Kuwait to Takatim Air Base. Corkscrewed into the middle of the night, get off the plane. Plane never turns off and they're out of there. And then a few nights later, you're on the CH46 again. Middle of the night, I'm watching the crew chief and there was like seven on one side. I don't know these people, different units, they were just getting on the plane. You got, you're going to Ramadi. So we're facing each other and I'm Watching the crew chief in that, in that semi darkness, and he looks at the pile of duffel bags, kicks two of them off, puts up the ramp, says, let's go. That's how you gauge weight, I guess. But that was sent. And I'll tell you, Jocko, there's things like, for any of us, the things that stand out in your mind. I remember him, I can see the glow on his face from the NVGs. And he sat down and he charged the 50. I'm like, this is real. And then when we landed in the pitch black at Ramadi and there was some sergeant first class there with a flatbed waiting for us, helicopter takes off. He says, welcome to Ramadi. If we get incoming, don't worry about it. It's usually pretty inaccurate, I don't think usually. Thanks.

[A]

Right, and you guys get there in June, June of 2005. Is that when you're showing up? And this is right around the same time when, you know, AMZ was declaring that Ramadi was going to be the, you know, the, the capital of the Caliphate and whatnot. So it's, it's on, it's game on.

[C]

Yeah, they laid low. I got there early. I went on the advance two weeks early to, to facilitate the rip toll with, with the outgoing unit. So I went into their talk and it was me and Doc Stevens was our pa. And we walked in and they had in their foyer, it was an old field artillery or old air defense base. So it's all concrete structures, you know, 22 inch thick walls. I remember walking into their talk and on the wall were 16 the photos with the American flag in case of your death. Sixteen of them. And I remember saying to Doc Stevens, I'm like, Holy shit, 16. That's a tough tour. And he was so matter of fact, he said, oh, we'll lose 16. I'm like, how do you figure? How do you know? He goes, I just think we'll lose 16. How he knew that, I don't know. But that was, was the end result. We lost 16.

[A]

So what was your, what was your job? You explained, explain to a normal person or a civilian what your job is over there.

[C]

So I was a battle captain, so you're a liaison, probably most importantly with adjacent units with higher headquarters. You're a battlefield manager. You're making sure that you and your NCOs, your RTOs are tracking the battle, you're tracking it digitally, you're tracking it on a map because you have to have visibility in where units are all the Time. Because if you're going to call in air, if you're going to call in indirect fire, you got to know where your folks are. But it was down to you do a trip ticket. It was battle roster number, blood type, weapons, nomenclature. You'd have their concept of operations, their con op, so you knew where they were going, when they were going to come back. Normally you communicate through the CP, their company command post, which was usually an E4, E5 on the radio. And if you had troops in contact, my job was to clear the air. I would usually bypass the company cp. I'd go to the platoon or company net so I could talk to the leader on the ground who's actually in the firefight, whoever got hit by an ied, whatever it is. And then the adjacent unit coordination thing. In particular, higher headquarters is pretty critical because they could give you things a phone call away, like Chip would do. He was always a phone call away. For us Field Artillery, mortars, qrf with the Marines, I think they had labs at Blue diamond, but that was pretty important. Building relationships, I think was critical for us. Even with 269 armor to the east.

[A]

Yeah, the, the amount of coordination that it took to. When you. When you take a step back and look at the battle map of Ramadi and you know, all these different adjacent units everywhere, and, you know, the enemy knows where those seams are. They try and operate within those seams. They do their best to, you know, cause confusion and chaos out there. But yeah, it was. It's like the ultimate leadership and management, you know, like actual management of all these different people out there and getting them to not kill each other, you know, and, you know, I know we were talking about the book Extreme Ownership in the opening chapter. I'm talking about the blue on blue that, that we had and just how, you know, that was. I always tell people there was like a blue on blue a week that got reported. Not necessarily a casualty, but someone would say, oh, yeah, we were over here and we were getting shot at. We were in this building, we were getting shot at. It ended up being this unit or. Yeah, hey, hey, did you guys have over there? Yeah, we had guys over there. Yeah, that was us.

[C]

That.

[A]

That happened like once a week that it got reported, how often it didn't get reported where it's just like, you know, some platoon sergeant was talking to another platoon sergeant, said, hey, stop shooting over here. That's us. And that bill, that. That was probably almost every day.

[C]

Yep, we had that in our area of operations. So we Had Jazeera just north of the Euphrates, Zangora to the west and Tamim. All very different, urban to rural. You were there, you've seen it. But we also own the msr. We had our eight ops out there. We had tanks or Bradleys on the overpasses and then we had roving patrols and then we had other ops that were off the shoulder of the road. And it was not infrequently and I don't recall a single time where a Marine Corps or Army unit convoy that would run at night and they would never. We had billboards, this is Sabre country. Go to this push and talk to us and let us know you're here. And I'm seeing. Okay, I'm looking at the blue force tracker. Who the hell's. Who's this? And why are they driving westbound in the eastbound lane? Right. They're gonna outsmart the bad guy. Well, IED is everywhere, pal. You can try. We had a couple of very close God a near miss collisions because our guys are out there roving. Or you had a patrol out and here comes this convoy bombing through with some second lieutenant in charge, didn't tell anybody. That's bad.

[A]

Oh, that's really bad.

[C]

And then they shot at our Humvees. I got pictures somewhere, you know, 7.62 rounds embedded in a ballistic windshield.

[A]

That's another way that I explain to people how, how hard it is. So if you're an American soldier and you shoot at a Humvee like there is no more distinct vehicle pattern, you know, the recognition of a Humvee, that is a very obvious looking field. But Humvees would get shot by Americans.

[C]

Tanks. Yeah, same.

[A]

Yeah, tanks as well.

[C]

Yeah. I didn't realize the insurgents had M1, but thanks for that. Yeah.

[A]

So that, you know, when you're an 18 year old kid and you're, you know, you're out on patrol or you're in a, in a static position and you're scared and vehicle rolls up like you don't have time to think or you don't take the time to think or you weren't told someone's gonna be there, or no one gives you a heads up like they pull the trigger. So it is very, very difficult job that you had sitting there trying to coordinate all this stuff.

[C]

It was complex. I look back at it, I mean, you didn't kind of me and we had only two of us at the beginning for the first six months of you doing 12 hour shifts, which is. That's a long time to be switched on. I'm not telling you anything, but that's just tough mentally. And then we had a third battle captain that got added the last half of the deployment, which was immensely helpful. But then you're still doing a longer shift because I'm going to work with the plans guy. You know, we're planning operations, battalion level ops. At times I think one of the most important things is actually I met. I don't know who it was. A SEAL lieutenant came in. This was the latter half. I'm not sure when you guys got there. Probably that spring.

[A]

We got there in April. Yeah, it was like just before you guys went home.

[C]

So a SEAL lieutenant comes in with two petty officers first class. And I was floored because having been there for that long and nobody ever came in and said, hey, how can we help you? It was usually, hey, can you get us this? Hey, we need a ride, we need your brads. We need. You know, that was the army SF guys. I'll tell you about that one later. But I was like, gentlemen, how can I help you? And lieutenant said, well, actually, how can we help you? And I'm pretty sure it was Chris Kyle that said, we want to in bed with your snipers, so. And I kind of validated that. I didn't put two and two together. I don't know seals. I don't know how you guys were operating. I'm just an army guy doing my thing, finding out after the fact. We were certainly fortunate to have you there because of the work you were doing. But I sent Sergeant Carroll out. You mentioned Kentucky Delta Company first, the 149th Infantry. Probably the most professional infantry company and command team that I'd ever had the privilege of working with was Captain Cole at the time. I remember his first name. He later died of leukemia, was a major. But he sent Sergeant Carroll over and I sent Sergeant Carroll out with your snipers. And I don't see him for three days. And he comes back in. This was out of Mike Charlie 1. And he said, you know, he comes in, he's dirty, he's got three days growth of beard. I'm like, sergeant Carroll, how'd it go? He says, sir, I can't carry that man's water. What are you talking about? He said, I'd never seen nothing like it. So I watched him in an abandoned tire warehouse standing on a stack of tires, shooting through a loophole with a.300 win mag, clipping dudes at a thousand meters. I'm like, wow, that's. Wow, that's Impressive. It wasn't until I got home and there was a documentary on Chris Kyle. And I was sitting on the couch next to my wife, and I'm like, honey, I think that's that guy. And she's like, what are you talking about? I said, that's. That's him. I met him. And that when I came. What does she know? But I gave her the whole story. But just having you guys, I will tell you this, by far, the most professional special operations unit I ever had the privilege of working with. I can't say that for all of them.

[A]

I certainly appreciate that. It was an honor to be able to be there and help you guys out. I remember, you know, one of the. I think one of the best moments in my career actually, was we had put the. The.38 had suffered a massive IED up in firecracker. And they had told us about it, and we said, well, we'll put snipers up there. And that was one of the earliest sniper operations we did. We put guys out up there right around Firecracker. And the first time I met General Gronsky, as I'm walking into the talk, they're reporting that the seals up by Firecracker just shot a couple guys that were in placing an id. And he looked at me, he said, are those your guys? And I said, yes, sir, they are. And he said, have a seat. And we, you know. And I said, what. You know, what can we do to help you out? We're here. And he, you know, then he immediately went, hey, we need guys out in the lab district. And. But it was just a great way to, you know, I didn't lead with my mouth.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I led with the actions of my guys that were out there making it happen. So that was very helpful for building that relationship out of the gate.

[C]

Yeah, it was just tremendous. And like I said, I'm not throwing stones at anybody. We were big on sharing information, right? And if I'm on the intel feed, because we had a very small S2 shop, so I would be on the intel feed and you're developing things. I would see things as a battle captain. I could apply some perspective, some dimension to, hey, this is what I think. And some of it was pretty cheesy. It's like the watermelon is planted. Gee, what could that be? But as an example, one instance, it was. I got the intel feed that the martyrs are prepared for the assault. And I was able to figure out that, holy shit, they're going to attack Blue Diamond. And there's only One way to get to Blue diamond, and that's from the east. So I got a hold of Chris Wilson was the first to 109th platoon leader. One of the platoon leaders, Bravo company for Swano 9th. And he took his Bradley platoon and he stayed off route Duster. So he went cross country, and his driver stops and they're scanning, and the gunner punches him in the leg and says, hey, sir, get on the sight extension. There's some guy over here, he's all hodged up, and he's carrying an ak. So he gets on, he's okay, well, clearly that's a bad guy. I'm paraphrasing. Light him up. Which is not a textbook gun fire command, by the way. So that was like kicking a hornet's nest. And normally you see an intel for, you know, 200 brothers are preparing to the assault, and you're doing Iraqi mask. That's like 12 guys. You know, there was a lot of them. And it was one of those moments where luck actually has. Has a role to play here. I called Pat Moore, my colleague at Brigade. I'm like, hey, man, what do you got in the air? And they had a Super Cobra and a Huey gunship. And I. It was. And there are no textbooks, no textbook solutions in Ramadi because if something didn't work, you had to figure it out. So Chris could not talk with. With the Apache pilot or the Super Cobra pilot, but I could just. Weird. So I talked to the guys. Where are you guys? Hey. North of duster by 500 meters, east of Blue diamond by a click. Whatever it was, got it out. And, yeah, it was a good day. Chris came in afterwards. You know, his eyes were like saucers. Like, I've never seen anything like that. I'm like, well, good on you. Thanks for doing it. But again, it's about relationships. Being able to call somebody and knowing immediately that you've got something that can help me. It's fantastic.

[A]

Yeah. And like you said, you got to figure out how to make stuff work. You know, we went on. We learned so much from you guys. And I know you. You know, we were, again, talking about extreme ownership, but just the, you know, Leif going out on patrol with the Marines, completely overloaded. You know, he had a ton of grenades, just too heavy, you know, and. And he's like, you know, well, like the Marines, the three, eight guys were like, hey, this is. This is what you need to do. Hey, here's how they gave us so much information, and even, you know, with what routes were good, you know, Working with you guys that have been there for what, 12 months at that point, or 11 months, the amount of information and, and knowledge that you shared with us to make sure that we understood what was happening was just a total team effort. And yeah, if you don't do that, I can't even fathom what it looks like. I can't even imagine the kind of friction that you could, if you, if you add additional friction onto that battlefield, it's just going to be a nightmare. What were the talk a little bit about when you're calling, Aaron? Because it was pretty hard. It was pretty hard to drop bombs.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

In Ramadi. What'd it take to drop a bond, Dave?

[B]

Well, it's an interesting question because, you know, on paper it just required the roe but as everybody here knows, and I'm sure most people at the time knew, like there was a lot of resistance to using bombs, especially in the city, for the fear of the collateral damage that was somewhat unspoken and unwritten. And what we had to do was prove that we could mitigate the risk to civilians. And really the Marine battalion before us that was up north before 3.8 was 3 7, had had worked really hard to try to convince that we could do it with low collateral damage. And once we proved that your, your team was the first team that really let us do that in earnest and that kind of opened the gates was, hey, we could things like hellfires, really cool weapon off a rotary wing, very precise, hits a window in a building and really doesn't do much more damage. You know, the people across the street are pretty safe, relatively. So once we figured out how to do that, you know, the ROE is never different. It was just demonstrating that we could follow the ROE and not have the second and third order effects that were unintended. Once they got the confidence that we were able to do more. But on paper, the rules had always been the rules. The ROE didn't really change.

[A]

You know, you mentioned those 16 pictures that you saw hanging on the wall when you showed up. How long was it before you guys, your battalion, took its first casualty? What do you remember about that?

[C]

August 23rd, I was on shift. Mass Sergeant Chris Chapin was one of our embedded trainers. So we had him. I don't remember who was 317 or 117, but he had come in, given us the conop for the day. He was out there working with the Iraqi units and he was in Tamim. And this was before the constitutional referendum. And Mass sergeant Chapin was happy in his work, good soldier he came in and talked to me about it. He told me he was happy. He felt like he was making a difference. And their mission that day was to go out and do some patrolling, but to hang posters encouraging Iraqis to vote in their own constitutional referendum. And 20 minutes later, he was dead, shot by a sniper. And, you know, I just. I was talking to somebody else in Vermont. I'm doing some series on the radio there, because 20 years later, nobody's telling this. This story. How do you. You've lost guys. I mean, there are no words for it. And then you suppress it because you can't freeze up. You've got to be that calm voice in the radio. And I think you referred to it in one of your books. You can't be emotional. Push the resource when you can. And I think we all had a naive hope that, hey, let's get him to the aid station and the docs can save him. And it wasn't going to happen. And then it's just like a punch in the gut. But they watched us. The bad. The insurgents, they watched us. They patterned us. They. They took their time. They got nothing else to do. They watched us for two months, got there June and July.

[A]

Five. So this is a couple months after. After you arrived. And meanwhile, you. You must have had. I know I had this feeling which was, guys are getting wounded or killed every day, you know.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And so when you're for. For my SEAL task unit, it's like every. I don't know how, like we had guys, there would be some element of seals in the field very often, you know, very, very. Because we had. When we first got there, we had five different elements. We were broken up. So, you know, this. This five guys would be going out, these six guys were going out, these four guys, we. Going out there was almost. I wouldn't say almost always, but there was. Oftentimes there was someone in the field. So the feeling that, you know, you. You keep playing the game and eventually your number's going to come up. And so for you, as a battle captain, you're tracking not just your battalion, but you're tracking an entire brigade worth of people. You're seeing these casualties happen. And for me, I felt like at some point the numbers are going to come up.

[C]

You know it's coming, and that's kind of. That there's always a stress there. You're hoping for the best. You hope it doesn't happen, but you know it's coming. You can feel the tension building. And there were, you know, if I look at, and I'm not sure that folks who. If you look back at Ramadi, if you look at the scale of the stuff we're talking about here, in the course of that year, our battalion was hit by over 350 IEDs. Scott Mathewson, now Lieutenant Colonel, was Staff Sergeant Mathewson at the time. Infantry soldier, really good at his job. He and his crew were hit by 20 IEDs. He's the only guy I've ever seen direct commission infantry because he was phenomenal. The insurgents hated him. Oh, they hated him. They called him the. He's a big. He's a big guy. And they called him the fat man. And he'd go around and he'd pick up Gray list and Black List guys. Very clever. And, boy, they didn't like him. And they issued a. He came into the talk one day after a debrief, and he's like, captain Knight. They issued a bout. They put a bounty on me. It's like 20,000 dinar. I'm like, Scotty, it's like 12 bucks, man. What are you worried about? You're gonna be fine. But. Yeah, but it was. It was ugly. September was worse. September was bad. Yep.

[A]

What was the morale like for the troops?

[C]

I think for the most part, guys just. They buckled down, did their job. It was hard. And, you know, I think what probably humbles me the most is knowing what's out there and knowing that, look, I got it good, man. I'm in a hard structure. I'm on the radio living through your actions. I pushed the resources when I could. I'm tracking the battle, I get you the help. But every day that. Every day, they put on their gear and they went out and they did their job. No hesitation. Not that they would display. Those are just phenomenal people. Where do we find people like that? That, to me, is probably the most humbling aspect of this, is even having losses, knowing the IED threats there and how clever. I mean, the pressure plate IEDs, they're building them into curbs, they're putting them on donkeys, they're putting them in vehicles. They're everywhere. And knowing that guys still going out and doing the job there's just phenomenal people.

[A]

Yeah. I always complain about the fact that that vehicle graveyard with, I don't know, 75 or 100 freaking wrecked Humvees and tanks and Brads and mine, allegedly Mine Resistant vehicles. That vehicle graveyard was on the right hand side as you rolled out of base. Very stark reminder of what you were getting into.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

What was the as the, like, the arc of the deployment did you get into, you know, in the middle deployment, where you're kind of in a. In a. In a pattern, mentally, where it's just like you're going through every day, just making it happen.

[C]

Yeah. So there came. And it was almost disconcerting. It became so efficient. I guess, in fact, it was our Scouts. It was Jim Armstrong at the time, and Max Rooney was his platoon sergeant. They were on Route Jones heading south, the westernmost route north, south route in Tamim, and they were southbound in the northbound lane. And a Caprice came out, a vbied. T boned the Humvee, detonated. There's gore sprayed everywhere. Dude's eyeball was in the grill. The insurgent's heart hit the gun shield and was laying on the roof. And I get the call. Yeah, I just got hit. Hey, Save Rucktray just got hit by a vbied. Yep. Roger that. Any Wiaka? Negative. We're gonna rtb, swap out vehicles. Roger that. That's about the extent of the conversation. They come back, they go in through Trooper Gate or Ogden Gate, and here, these young kids, the triple deuce, you know, find young kids from. From Utah, and they stop. Of course, he's covered with Gore and the guy's heart. And Rooney. Rooney gets out and starts interrogating the heart. This is. I mean, but you got. It's dark humor.

[A]

Humor, yeah.

[C]

His heart was in it, so it's awful. But. And they swap vehicles, and back to work they went. And so it was actually Bunky Moore called me from Brigitte. He goes, are you kidding me right now? He said, 45 minutes from start to finish, you guys had a VBID and that's it. And I said, that's it. That's part of the battle rhythm. And you just. When. When you had your. When you got your battle drills down. My job was simply to facilitate the information. But our guys were good, man. They were. They were good at what they did.

[A]

What did the. The elections took place in, like, December of 05. What, strategically, what did that look like to you?

[C]

So, again, a humbling experience to see the sheer volume of people that voted. I wish we had that in America. I don't. I mean, they were lined up down the msr. Our job was we provided security for the polling places. Didn't have that big a turnout for the constitutional referendum, but for the actual election, my recollection was that there was a tremendous turnout.

[A]

Yeah. And it seemed like there was kind of a positive groundswell. You know, you see all these people with the ink on their fingers and all that stuff, it seemed like progress was being made. Yep, it certainly seemed that way.

[C]

Yep. And that, to me, again, just my perspective, that was kind of the beginning of the Ramadi awakening. That was when we started doing, like, police recruiting at the glass factory, which one of them ended horribly, tragically with a suicide bomber. But you could see it turning and then it was outside looking in.

[A]

Yeah, and that's actually a good point. You know, I'm sure the enemy saw it turning as well. And that's why you end up with a big attack like that at the glass factory. January 5th. That was 2000, 2006, January 5th. A massive attack. Because they see what's happening, they see progress being made and. And they do this devastating attack. There's like 20 plus Iraqis killed, of course, lost. Colonel McLaughlin, McLaughlin, who's. What they call him the shake of shakes. And everybody loved that guy. Marine Corps Sergeant Adam can was killed. And then my buddy Braxton McCoy got wounded.

[B]

Bad.

[A]

But again, one of those things where you're taking two steps forward and there's a step back, maybe two steps, maybe even three steps back. Yep, on that one.

[C]

So I was listening to dichotomy of leadership, and Leif brought up that very thing at OP293 on Route Michigan. We had set up that checkpoint, and I was in the talk, and it was one. It's. It's an incredibly helpless feeling. I know what's happening. I know what's going on. We've seen it before. It was a complex attack. It was a small arms fire. And then it was multiple mortar rounds to suppress everybody inside that compound. And then they rammed the dump truck full of explosives. Ammonium nitrate, fuel oil, artillery rounds. I think they'd armored the cab.

[A]

Yeah, they usually did.

[C]

But it was Joe Proctor from Indiana, stood his ground. And Brian Latandre, Marine Corps, I think he'd been in. He might have been in Ramadi 72 hours and engaged that vehicle because it was penetrating into the compound. And the Iraqi soldiers, brave soldiers, pulled that Humvee up, armored Humvee, and tried to stop it from coming in, but just the mass of the vehicle.

[A]

Yeah. And again, it's like the enemy's watching because that was a. I think there was the military transition team, the oncoming guy and the offgoing guy.

[C]

Correct.

[A]

So they're, you know, they're getting ready to help the Iraqis take control and help them step up. And the enemy did not like that. And hit with those massive, massive Complex attacks which were not rare in Vermont. It wasn't rare. It was like this only happened occasionally. And in fact, later on they were doing those complex attacks, but they do four or five of them throughout the city all at once.

[C]

Which they were coordinated.

[A]

Devastating.

[C]

Yeah, coordinated via cell phone. I mean, and it was again, I never sold those. I never sold the insurgent short. They were tactically and technically proficient. They were well armed. We had one. And it was the stupidest place I look, hindsight being what it is. We had that OP3 was on the MSR and then down below that on the old bridge, low water bridge was rop. There's no worse place to put. It's indefensible. And I don't know why looking back should have thought, move it, you don't need it. It's a redundant route. But we left it there. And there was a complex attack on that one. We had a number of guys wounded. Part of that was made more complex by some complacency. But don't pay attention for a few minutes. Watch what happens. Yep.

[A]

And then as. As the deployments, like, you're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for deployment. What did that feel like? Did. Did you start to get more paranoid? I know one thing I did on two deploy, I only did two deployments to Iraq. But I never told my guys, like, hey, this is the last mission tonight. I wouldn't tell them that. I would just be like, keep working, keep working, keep working. And then one day I'd say, remember last night? Yeah, that was the last one. Like, we're, that's it, we're done. Because I always felt like Jinx, you know, superstitious. You know, you send the guy out on the last op and you, you know, everyone's got that in their head. I didn't want them thinking that way. What did it feel like for you as you were going through the deployment?

[C]

I think you're. Personally, I think the level of paranoia would go up a little bit because nobody wants to be the last person killed. Nobody wants to be that close to the end of getting the hell out of the place, but you know it's coming because you're doing award ceremonies and you're taking care of our soldiers and making sure that all the evaluations that you're closing out stuff, and then you've got the incoming units. And this was again, I probably mentioned it up front. We were pre surge, so we had started. We did it in Jazira with what we called op forsaken kind of the seize hold clear rebuild that you talk about. We didn't have the personnel or resources to do it large scale. So first God bless first A.D. they came in and did the right thing. I mean that was the only way to do it. There was no way we were going to as a brigade or as a battalion go into Southern Ramadi. No way. We, we made one run at that. It might have been with 3 8. They didn't get very far. I think they'd hit double digit IEDs before they'd gone a couple of kilometers.

[A]

That was one of the main briefing points that I got when I showed up. I think it was somebody from Three Eight was like, yeah, we went down route. It was Route sunset. We hit 13 IDs and 500 meters. It's like, okay, so, yeah, so yeah.

[C]

And so there was some discussion towards the end of our tour. It's like, hey, we're to make a push into Springfield, Southern Modi Railroad station, whatever. Yeah, no, we're not. That, that doesn't end well. We don't have the resources or personnel to do it. And to what end? Right? You're not going to hold it. You're not going to build up, you know, a cop Falcon or anything. You're not going to do that. You know what's, you know what's coming.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. What you guys just strategically, what we saw was you had gotten control of the outskirts of the city. You know, the MSR is going in and out, set up good checkpoints along the way, mitigated as much, you know, traffic going in and out of the city. That's sort of like what I felt was, was happening when we showed up there and paid an extreme price to make that stuff happen. So. But as you're, as you're starting to think about going home now, it's like, okay, here's what we're going to turn over. How was the turnover?

[C]

So Leif talked about it in dichotomy of leadership. And he was talking specifically, specifically about some of the, I'd call it arrogance, probably kind of a dismissive. Oh, those guard guys. So the bandits, that was not the case because they I think had come from Tallil. And I remember one of them was Sergeant First Class Thompson. I don't remember the other one's name, but they sat down on either side of me and said, okay, man, give all of it. How do you do business? How do you run your battle drills? How do you track your IEDs? How do you run your trip? I mean this is. It was just sharing best practices. Here's what we found worked. I went around to two other units because I was kind of doing the round robin towards the end there. One was a blue diamond. The other one had taken our AO with three battalions and divvied it up. And I just, I'll never forget it. I went and I told him, listen, man, if you're on an op and you haven't seen the dirt, don't drive on it, don't ever go. Don't go east of route Jones after dark, whatever you do. Right, and whatever. A few other pointers. And I remember going back in the next morning and asking this young captain how to go. He goes, well, we lost this lieutenant last night. And his gunner hit a pressure plate, flipped the Humvee, pinned the gunner. Scott Mathewson actually stripped off his body armor, crawled into that Humvee to try to get the gun gunner out. Unsuccessfully. Lieutenant was simply gone. It went off under him. And where were they? Oh, we were by the marketplace. And Tamim, what even say to that? I told you so? Well, that seems wrong. Damn, dude. What else happened last night? Oh, we came off of OP4 and you know, tank hit an IED. What were you doing coming off the OP? Well, they just came off and did a combat turn, you know, to check the surrounding area. Well, it was ammonium nitrate fuel on a Freon, can crack the hull. Probably blew out the final drive. I don't know. One thing I never want to hear again in my life is we got this. That's like the most arrogant, dismissive thing. Yeah, we got this. You don't have anything. I've been here for a year. I know a little bit about Ramadi. At this juncture, when you're doing the rip with my units, you might want to pay attention, man. But yeah, that whole, I don't know, I saw a couple of examples of that and was kind of disheartening. That's why I brought it up. I'm not going to throw stones. You all did amazing work. Our army SF did fantastic things. It's just flow of communication between your team and us was vastly different than it was from our army colleagues. I'd get a call on the dnvt, the digital non secure voice telephone, and he was like, hey, man, it's Steve. Hey, what's up, Steve? Yeah, we're gonna go up route Fiat, we're gonna grab a guy. I'm like, I wouldn't do that. What do you mean? Well, Steve, it's a Raised Canal Road. They will blow you up. There's one way in and one way out. No, no, we're good. We got Bradley's. Oh, we got. We got strikers. Yeah. Okay, so I called then Lieutenant Beams, my QRF guy said, get the 88 ready. Get two tanks ready. And they went up route Fiat. I watched them on the Blue Force Tracker. I didn't hear anything for half an hour. And then I get a phone call. Hey, Steve. Yeah, listen, we're mired pretty good up there. So now I'm going to jeopardize my folks and put them at risk to come get you out because you know better than I did. Yeah, that stings a little bit. If you just listen, we could have helped you, man. We could have worked out, I don't know, an air assault. Yeah, if the, if the guy's that bad, go get him, but don't drive there.

[A]

Yeah, it's terrible. It's got to put your ego in check, man. You really do. Like when you. We roll up and to a new ao, and man, you guys been there for a year. It's like, I'll tell you what I'll do is I'll get out my notebook and take notes on what you're going to tell me. That seems to be the, the best possible course of action.

[C]

But you know, it's a guardism, right. Because what folks in the garden reserve, both. We bring things to the fight that active duty doesn't. If I look at all the folks that we brought in, master carpenters, master electricians, law enforcement officers, school teachers, attorneys, cops, generator mechanics. Jocko. I think we had Sergeant Lavallee, the only qualified generator mechanic. So you can wait for a couple weeks to get KBR to come in or you guys. In the valley, the seals called me and said, hey man, we got a platoon coming in. Can we borrow Sergeant Lavallee? Absolutely. He went over, he got the generator fixed. That's a guard thing. Yeah, we don't wait, man. We get things done.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

These are tough stories to listen to right now because I am there either next to you, next to your guys, or in the talk at those at or on site for every one of those stories. Like literally every one of those stories. I can tell you the name of that lieutenant. I probably won't just on this podcast, but I know his name, I know his wife's name because I looked at the STLI paperwork the next day with that battalion commander. Those are tough, tough days. It just. I'm thinking about Jocko seals a little bit because I probably had six weeks on you guys. I'm late February, you're early to mid April, something like that. So not a ton of time. A little bit of time, but not a ton. But I showed up and you guys had been there, I mean a long time. And as a Marine, I'm really attached to the army as Anglica. That's my job is to be an army liaison for the Marine Corps. So I wasn't really close to the Marine Corps on the north side, which was 37 and then 338 as close to you guys. And your, your guardsman taught me how to fight. In Ramadi. I showed up to relieve an Anglica unit and I spent maybe we might have had a 36 hour turnover. We just did not have a long rip. They were leaving and so I probably got a day and a half of the angle go rip in place with them. So I didn't, not no criticism of them, but I just didn't have much time to learn from them. I did maybe one mission, left seat, right seat with a, with the Anglico feck I was replacing, I got with you guys and right away all your frontline leaders, your platoon commanders, your, your in place leaders, I mean they taught me how to fight in Ramadi. I didn't know what I was doing. The only advantage I probably had when it comes to like arrogance and complacency is I had none of that because I was completely paranoid about being there as a fighter pilot on the ground. So I did not roll in with anything. Like the phrase we got. This never came out of my mouth. Not, not because I was like enlightened. I was literally just, I don't know what I'm doing. And if you can accept, if you can tell yourself you don't know what you're doing and say it to another person, hey, I don't know what I'm doing. If you, it is such a liberating thing because then the other guy's like, oh cool, here's what we, here's what we did. And so I had this, this memory of getting there and this vision of I'm going to sit in the, in the COC as the salt lead, I got 13 guys, I'll send a couple out on patrols. And when I realized the platoons that were doing the operations, you didn't have enough help from the airplanes. And to me that was just mind blowing because I had Hornets and Harriers and Cobras and Hueys and I had full influence and control over them. I understood an ato, because I was a fighter pilot. And I realized very quickly we could have used 10 Anglico teams, like, easily put them to work. 10 Anglico teams. And I learned all these things from you guys. And when the SEAL showed up, to be totally honest with you, like, in my mind, I had never. I had never interacted with a seal. So everything I thought that I knew about SEALS was like either from a movie or from a secondhand story, or that these are big, tough guys that were probably pretty complacent. And so when the SEAL team showed up, I didn't know who they were. They want to do a mission with your guys and me. And I'm like, we'll see about that. I'm going to roll into the SEAL platoon or the SEAL Task Unit space, and I'm going to watch them brief because I'm pretty sure they're going to roll in with the attitude if we got it. So I took myself and put myself in the very first mission with Task Unit Bruiser, not knowing what to expect, but pretty sure that they were going to be like that. And you had said it, they're the most professional seals you'd ever seen or Special Operators you'd ever seen. I walked into that brief. I'm at the Top Gun standard. I know exactly how brief should be. I've been in Ramadi for not quite two months, but enough time to see what's going on. And Jocko seals were. It was the most professional, articulate, cogent, well coordinated brief I had ever seen from a ground unit period. It was remarkable. And very quickly, my thoughts of what they were like was completely evaporated, which. These are just. These are professionals that just want to take their capability, which none of us had, and contribute. And I have this really cool spot where I was the linchpin between your aging out at your year. We had a little bit of. We had some two months together, and I got to take a lot of what I learned from you and help with Leif's platoon of, hey, this is how I did it with these guys. And there's this little link between my Anglico team and all the guardsmen that are there, the 5,000 guardsmen, and then the one 180 that came, and I sat right in the middle of that.

[C]

And.

[B]

And for me, it is such a huge honor to be so closely connected to all the things you did and sacrificed and learned. I was really the vehicle to help pass some of that on to Jocko's team, who got there, really, as you guys were leaving and then you made a comment about 137the bandits, and you described them extremely well. Just unbelievable. And Colonel Tedesco, just that whole crew, Two Gun Tedesco. I was just so, so lucky to be in the middle of that. And to hear the stories of the contrast between the professionalism of Jocko. Seals rolling in with a ton of capability and a ton of ability with all sorts of humility. No arrogance, no presumption. And then you told some of those stories, and I watched those as well, and those are heartbreaking stories. Being in the talk with some of those and being on site for some of those. So anyway, just my little narrative of getting set between your guys and your guys and what that experience like for me was, was unreal.

[A]

No, we definitely took advantage of that. I mean, it was real obvious that you had, in those two months, learned a lot, and we were definitely all on board for that. And. And you know, I was kind of saying this before, before we hit record, but I wrote the forward to Dave's new book. Dave's got a book coming out. And one of the things is, you know, I met this Marine. He was, you know, how can we support you? And we said, how can we support you? So it was like, great out of the gate, like, no drama whatsoever. No friction of any kind. And at that time, you know, I thought. I didn't even know what kind of pilot he was. I might have. I might have asked you, I don't know. But I didn't really. Quite frankly, I didn't really care, but I didn't really, you know, I wasn't concerned about it. You know, he's like, oh, I can help you with your, with your air to ground. And I said, well, cool. If you can do that, then I can take my SEAL jtax and they can just do what a SEAL is supposed to do and not have to worry about air to ground, which you're probably better at anyways. And then later I found out that, you know, he's a, you know, Top Gun, Top Gun instructor, Top Gun senior instructor, you know, the whole nine yards. But at the time, I didn't really know that. Here's the other funny thing. And I didn't find this out until later. I was like, probably six months ago, I said, dave, when you got to Ramadi, like when you got put in your anglico unit, how. When was the last time you had shot an M4? You know, because he'd been in a F18 for freaking 10 years. And, and so now he's over here. He hadn't shot an M4. Like, what was the deal?

[B]

12 years.

[A]

He hadn't shot an M4 in 12 years.

[B]

Is an M16. A2 at the basics.

[A]

Yeah. So when he says he was not thinking, he knew, you know, he. He had, you know, an open mind to learn from the boys on the ground. Yeah, that'll. That'll clue you in when you're like, wait a second. Charging handle. Wait, you know, what's the. What's the immediate action? Draw on this weapon right here. So that was pretty. Pretty awesome. Relationships.

[C]

Great.

[A]

Are across the board. And that was really critical. We try to milk as much as we could out of you, out of your guys on the ground. Of, like, just gathering intel, telling us what. Down to what gear, what routes, how to. How to run the roads, like, everything. We just wanted to absorb what you guys had learned. And, you know, you get you. Without question. The turnover we got from you guys and guys from 38. There's no doubt we. We saved our lives. Literally, no doubt about it. There was roads that we were going to go on missions on where your guys were like, hey, do not go down that road. We're like, hey, roger that. Not like, well, maybe, or, well, what if. No, it was like your guys say, do not go down that road. We're like, got it. We will not go down that road. And we watched other people go down those roads and get. Get blown up, take casualties. So we really appreciated what. The lessons that you learned. I know the lessons were learned, you know, in blood. And you saved us blood from those lessons, and we won't forget that.

[C]

Glad to be a part of it. I just wish, looking back, that I. I didn't know what to ask for. I don't know if any of us would. Here, do what you got. I had no idea I knew what an Anglica was. I didn't know we could have one. Didn't know we had options that were Riverine units, Navy or. And again, you know, sometimes it's just luck if you go back to American Sniper. The search of the white apartments. So mostly accurate depiction. I actually planned that operation old school. I planned that on my bunk after I got off shift. It was us first of 1 10th, first of 125th, our Iraqi units. We probably dragged in a couple of marine units, our ETTs. But the catalyst, a part of it was I'm walking through the chow hall in Ramadi and I see a guy in a Navy flight suit, and I'm like, what's the Navy doing here? What are you flying? It was the. It was the Prowler EA6B. And I'm like, really? Mind if I sit down? So he was the. Is it the Electronic Warfare officer? There might be another term for it.

[B]

That's it.

[C]

But, yeah, he was an iwo. And I said, okay, so tell me about this. This aircraft and what does it do? And he goes, well, if you want us, we'll come work for you. And you let. Let me know what you want. We'll figure it out. We'll put on the right pods. And was preceding that battalion level, battalion plus level operation. I want to jam cell phones.

[A]

Pressing id.

[C]

I want to jam sat phones. And they. They flew over that mission for the duration of whatever it was, five or six hours it took to search those apartments. It was just having the curiosity to sit down and ask the guy, what are you doing here? Navy, you know? But little chance meetings like that. I had a. I had a. Somebody called me on the dmv, he's a master sergeant, Air Force master sergeant. He goes, hey, Captain Knight, you guys want to use J Stars? I'm like, what? I said, you're. You're a theater asset. And he goes, yeah, well, nobody's using us. And you guys are probably the busiest battalion in the ao. How can we help you, man? And this became the catalyst for what we did in Mike Charlie 1. I said, well, I know 269 armor is getting messed with because they're bringing ordinance across from that dip in the Euphrates. So he said, tell me what you want. And they flew it that night. And by my shift start that next morning, I had everything they had recorded. And it showed boat traffic, as I thought, you know, a dozen different things coming across, bringing ordinance over to North Central Ramadi. I'm like, really? And then we sent the scouts out with Gunny Burkhart and his EOD team. Mass Sergeant Takis was there or not, but I think it was the second largest cache site that anybody found in theater. I mean, it was. It took him a week to excavate it. And that was all because one curious master sergeant called me and said, hey, man, can we help again? Come back to your point. Can we help? How do we help you? I didn't even know I had. I'm a battalion. Why would I use J Stars? But just a lesson learned, man. Know what you got out there and reach out and ask the question. Because if you don't ask the question, the answer is always going to be no.

[A]

As you're. So now you're getting the turnover. What was your last day like there? I mean what was it like the final getting on the bird to fly home?

[C]

We, I, I think all of us were just happy to get out of there and there, there are, we've all been on lots of helicopters, been on lots of aircraft. That was a flight I will never forget. Middle of the night, getting in a Chinook and we took off. We flew right down the Euphrates and the pilot drops the ramp and I could see the full moon shining off the windscreen of the Chinook behind us and it was, you know, just flipped off Ramadi and said see ya. Yeah, it was, that was memorable. But I remember all of us were sitting there all keyed up. It's like me just get the birds here, let's go. Because you're, you're sitting at the, at the, at the lz, you're waiting, you're just big fat mortar target because we got mortar and rocketed over 260 times in a year that was acquired by the radar. You know the small caliber stuff that came in under the radar fan, you don't know. Yeah, that was a memorable evening. Yep.

[A]

And then how was it getting home?

[C]

Kind of anticlimactic. It was disconcerting at some level because it's Vermont and I think I remember getting home and everything was just so normal. And so I go, hey Greg, welcome back. How was it? You think I went to the frickin beach? What do you mean how was it? I was pretty high strung. Nothing, I didn't do anything like you, I wasn't kinetic. But when you're living it vicariously on the radio, to me that brings its own level of stress, right? You have to eat it. You can't get excited, you, you have to, you know, do the call for fire. You've got to be the calming voice, send out the qrf, send out the medevac, whatever you're gonna do. But I got home and I remember thinking, this is just wrong, man. You folks don't even know, you're still going to Walmart. You're doing your Costco thing and everything's just so normal. It's not. And I would tell anybody this, Jocko, nobody comes back the same. And we, I personally have made it a point in particular in my role. Now go get help, man. It's okay to not be okay, right? Not to sound cliched, but I wasn't. I was. And I'll give him credit, Doc, Colonel Coffin at The time he was our, the guard state psychiatrist and he came down to Camp Shelby and we were there. And you know, we're actually in. You, man, literally, you're blowing your nose, a week later, it's brown. You're wiping your skin, it's brown. You know, you're hacking up all kinds of crap. And Colonel Coffin, he brought us in and he did a. He loves soldiers, man. He did kind of a group, several group debriefs. Nobody's saying anything, man. We're not talking because I'm not going to spill my guts in front of my RTOs. They were there with me. That's what it was. He told all he said. Look, man, keep track of yourselves five or six months. If it's going to manifest, it'll be in five or six months. And here are the things that you can want to look for. And man, I was textbook. I was angry, short tempered. I didn't have tolerance for bullshit. What I thought was stupid because you go from kinetic environment until you're back to Garrison, back to the usual, you know, hey, your cyclic inventory is late. Okay. You know, oh God, no, not that. But my kids saw it, my wife saw it, colleagues saw it. And I went to the vet center, I got my head checked. I just don't think there's any shame in it. Why? Go get fixed. It's really not that hard.

[A]

What'd they tell you when you went to the center? When? The vet center, like what are they.

[C]

Talking to you about so people understand. I think everybody's got vet centers in their different states. It's run by the va, but it is, it's not anonymous, it is confidential. And I don't think it goes into the VA system unless they prescribe you on meds. But the vet center to me was my counselor for the first two years of going there was a two tour, 25th ID, Vietnam vet. So I'm like, okay, well I'm pretty humbled now because I can only imagine what you saw and here you are taking care of guys like me. But it was interesting because I would see some of my folks would be there and I'm sitting in the waiting room and they're like, oh, hey sir, what are you doing here? Same thing you're doing, man. No secret, not right that I'm going to get right. I wasn't what I was. I want to get back some semblance of that, but I've messaged that to anybody who will listen to me. Just go get it done, man. And so oh, well, you know, it's gonna. It'll ruin your career. Really? Is that right?

[A]

Apparently not. And that has to be, you know, very difficult. You guys come back and you have soldiers that are gonna go back to their civilian job.

[C]

Correct.

[A]

Like, how do you keep them on track? Like, I mean, I had active duty freaking seals that literally worked for me that I had a hard time keeping out of trouble. I can't imagine what it was like, you know, you got some guy that goes back to work at his, you know, job as a plumber or teacher, whatever. How does that work?

[C]

So that's the tough thing, Jocko the Guard is, is there's some continuity there. Because you see, folks, oftentimes we've got guys have been in the same unit for decades working with each other. The challenge is you're only seeing them one week in a month, two weeks a year, normally outside of deployment. So you go from having a habitual, literally combat relationship with them, and then you get home and that ends. So now you're trying to help somebody when you really only see them about 7% of their life. And what's more concerning for me, and again, I message this unless, you know, unless somebody is following us on social media, unless somebody is paying attention. If you're a veteran and you get out, we don't track you. We lose track of you. Unless you're using the like in our case, Vermont Veterans Affairs. Most states have a Veterans affairs within their military department. They will track how many veterans there are in the state. I don't know if they're enrolled in the VA health care system. I don't know their specific experience. I can't make them go do anything, but I can at least get the word out. But the problem is I can't reach out direct to them. So I've really, in my role in this job, I've really leveraged the media, public affairs, social media. But I talk about it. I don't make it any secret. You know, it's. If we're serious about doing something with ptsd, adjustment disorder and certainly suicide, well, somebody needs to help me share this story. We work with our congressional delegation, Senator Welch in particular, on getting the PACT act passed into law. And they actually accelerated it.

[A]

And what did that do?

[C]

So it provides more resources sooner to veterans, and it's incorporated, kind of spins off of the exposure to the burn pits, open air hazards. But they can enroll and register. And I just don't know if we can reach veterans because think about it, somebody separates from the Service and in 10 years they end up with some aberrant form of cancer. Are they putting two and two together? I could give you a dozen names off the top of my head. It was pancreatic cancer here and in Verona and Pennsylvania. Pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, metastasized colon cancer, metastasized prostate cancer, 2 instances of glioblastoma. Way before anything like that should be happening to anybody. But I don't know, are they in the VA healthcare system? So I tell anybody who's listening, if you're a veteran, whatever your issues are, validate it, man, because we didn't break you. The army did or the service, right? And our VA were fortunate in Vermont. Our VA is great. Probably not true in every state, but man, you've got to take care of yourself. And what happens if folks aren't leveraging the va, if they're not getting a service connected disability because they were exposed to burn pits or what other types of. I mean, how much stuff did we eat or drink in Ramadi, right? You go to the palate and I'm sure that's all PVA free water bottles out there in a palate in the sun. Oh, sure, and that talcum powder, fine dust, you know, I mean, but man, go get yourself taken care of. Because if you don't, you're. You're leaving benefits on the table, right? You're leaving benefits potentially for your family, Tricare for life, for instance. Talked to somebody the other day about this. If you are a temporarily 100% disabled vet, your dependents can't access the VA's Dependent Education Benefit. If you're 100% permanently disabled, you have access and your kids will get, I forget what, the amount of 12 or $1,500 a month to go to college. Well, how many folks linger in a permanent or a temporary status get no benefits? And I've seen it happen twice. Two good friends of mine, Mike Heston was being one of them and his wife June is, she's pretty sharp. She figured it out and worked with Senator Leahy to get his status permanent. He was dying of pancreatic cancer, so now his kids at least had access to that program. But how long do these folks, if you've got a terminal condition that's quote unquote stabilized. I'm not quoting chapter and verse here. Until it's permanent, you get no benefits for your kids. Well, who's in a hurry to help you get to permanent? There's a huge backlog, but again, you go to these places and you're exposed to pretty horrible things. I think it's okay for them to give those benefits to your kids, especially if you have a terminal condition like pancreatic, Pancreatic cancer, brain cancer. Both of these gentlemen, they fought it for two years. Could have been two years of their kids getting benefits. So that's the kind of stuff you do at the, in this job at the national level, you're advocating for change.

[A]

Before you got there to this job that you're currently in. So you get home, what's, what's the next, what's the next job for you?

[C]

So I went, got home, I was six months at my old unit and then went down to the southern part of the state to become a battalion AO admin officer. And then in 2008, they moved me to the recruiting battalion command, which was a great job.

[A]

Where were you doing that?

[C]

Right at Camp Johnson. Right at the head state headquarters.

[A]

And then when you're in charge of recruiting, because I, I see recruiters at wrestling tournaments I go to. A lot of My kids all wrestled, so I would see a lot of recruiters at the wrestling tournaments. Where do you go to recruit kids?

[C]

So we have a challenge getting into schools. I don't know if that's a Vermont specific thing. It might be. I think we're getting better. There's some reluctance to get, get my recruiters in the school.

[A]

That's weird because I will say a lot of people that I've had on the podcast, when you ask, when I ask them like, oh, how'd you end up in the military? They will literally say, yeah, some guy was in the chow hall, or what do they call a chow hall cafeteria. And he was handing out pamphlets for the Marine Corps, for the Army. And I said, oh, it looks cool. It's better than what I'm doing right now.

[C]

Yep. So it's not universal. In all fairness. I think there are some schools, like the tech centers are great. They know that a lot of the work, the hands on work you do in the Guard crosswalks into civilian sector. Diesel mechanic, hydraulics, avionics technician, airframe power plant, all of that stuff. We train you and then you can get a job in the civilian sector. Great stuff. Let me tell you the narrative. I think we're working to change it. I talk to a lot of kids about joining the Guard. I go to Norwich University, our senior military college. They have a future leader camp that they do every summer. They did three of them this year. Probably the largest one they've ever done. But these are groups between 75 and 100 kids. These are all rising seniors with aspirations to go to Norwich University. So this is their experience. I talked to my recruit sustainment program soldiers. They are either just back from basic training in AIT or getting ready to go, so. But I asked the question. So, hey, did you talk to your school counselor before you decided to join the Guard or have aspirations to go in the military? And a number of them did, and the theme hasn't changed much. So what did they tell you? Oh, you can do better. It's dangerous. That's a really bad idea. My favorite one was, why would you throw your life away?

[A]

Good Lord.

[C]

So I about came off the. Yeah, come off the ledge on that one. But I was like, okay. And the other one, just a few weeks ago, I went down and I. Because I speak to these kids about the Guard, and here's my experience, and here's what happens when you join the Guard or the military. I joined as an E1 with no college and fast forward, and here I am with no college debt. I'm not the sharpest tack in the box, but I can figure that out. And one of these young ladies who wants to be a future leader, who wants to go to Norwich University guidance counsel said, you're an idiot.

[A]

Damn.

[C]

So I don't say it's universal. I'm not pointing the finger at all educators, but I'll tell you, you need to get yourself educated to understand the opportunities that come with service to the military.

[A]

Yeah, no doubt about. That's the worst advice I've heard in a long time.

[C]

Yep. I would agree.

[A]

That's another very common theme. In fact, I'd go so far as if it's like 90% of the common theme of people that come on this podcast and talk to me. The military is what, you know, squared their entire life away. You know, they were knuckleheads and they joined the military. Okay. Take the knucklehead energy and put it into something positive. Next thing you know, they're doing great things. So for a counselor to sit there and tell that to a young man or young woman, that's ridiculous.

[C]

Totally ridiculous. If you back out a little bit and open the aperture, if somebody ever put it in perspective.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And I. I do this at different times. Go to the National Guard association meeting or whatever, and we'll do a. An evening event sponsored by the New England states. And that's if you've ever been to National Guard Association. It's. It's a party. But I do. It's Just a hollerback, right? They make a mistake and they give me the microphone, one or two things is going to happen, right? I'm going to do the hollerback. I'm going to sing Friends in Low Places because you can't screw it up. It's the bar anthem. But I asked the question. It's a rhetorical question. Hey, listen, man. When you have a pandemic, who do you call? National Guard? When you have wildfires, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, who do you call National Guard. You have an insurrection at the nation's capital, who do you call? We move 25,000 National Guard members in about a week to the nation's capital after January 6th. There's no other organization on the planet that can do that. None of. We did it. So it's. It's. Who do you call? It's the Guard. So it's like, we're like, flex seal, man. We're just good for everything.

[A]

So slap some National Guard on that thing.

[C]

That's right. So I think the nation's capital right now, that's a whole other conversation, but that's what folks need to understand about the Guard. We have a dual mission. We have our domestic response mission. You know, we did flooding in Vermont two years consecutive. I had soldiers with their LMTVs that saved 19 Vermonters and their pets. And they were working with Swift Water. Swift Water rescue teams and facilitated the rescue of a hundred, I don't know, a couple hundred more. That's your Guard. And to your point. And then we get that done. Hey, good work. And we go back to work or school and. Yep, they're your neighbors, man. And then sometimes we go to war. Sometimes we do. Okay.

[A]

What was it war college you went to after that recruiting tour? How'd you end up going to war? And you went to the Naval War College. Yeah. Was that your choice? Was that the one you wanted to go to?

[C]

Not really.

[A]

How'd you end up there?

[C]

So I. I had made 05 lieutenant colonel, and I was like, I never thought that was going to happen. No, wait, I'm good, man. So I kind of saw the writing on the wall, and I. I started my master's of education at. At Post University. And it was probably two weeks after that, it was the late Brigadier General Mike Heston called me. My Rhode island colleague, Nider, you're going to apply for war college. He was a Deputy Adjutant General at the time. And I'm like, hey, sir, I just started a master's. You're not hearing me. You're Going to apply for war college. You're going to put Naval War College on your 4187 resident as your first choice. Roger that, sir. So I did just completely. Again, Lucky got selected. One of my colleagues, he couldn't do the resident course. He would have been first in the queue for resident. He had just gotten back from deployment. I can't leave my work again for another year. So I backed into it. Probably one of the most phenomenal, probably the most phenomenal education experience I've ever had.

[A]

Some high praise. Would you like.

[C]

I'm telling you, I just. Well, it was a really great setup. Grand trimester. It was joint military operations, national strategic decision making and then policy. What was it? Policy, Strategy and policy. S and P. The professors were phenomenal. But what was truly humbling for me is to be around that talent, that brain power. All services, every letter agency was represented. We had international students. It validated to me, America. It was, it validated what it was to be a part of something like that. It really kind of reset things. It was hard.

[A]

What year was this?

[C]

15, 15 to 16. It was hard. I got a B, which was, you know, pretty good.

[A]

We'll take it.

[C]

I'll take absolutely. And actually I got dinged on an exam and I was mad because, you know when you do good work and you knew you do good enough. Well, I knew I crushed this. This is a 24 hour exam, right? You get it 8 in the morning and you will turn it in by 8 the next morning. So I mean I crushed this thing and it was something, it was like on, on the Iran nuclear deal or something like that. Something fairly complex. I thought I got this, I got the placemat, I got the rubric, I'm going to crush this thing. And I thought I did. And I got an 82. I'm like, what? I was mad. So I called the professor and he goes like, well, you can appeal it, I can't change your grade. He says, you're probably right, but you have to go to the dean. I knew that was good, so I did. So I went to the dean. I think I got an 84. So I called Heston, who was a Naval War College graduate. I'm like, hey, sir, this is B.S. this is, this is. I was mad goodnighter. Listen to me, I graduated second from the bottom. He said, don't worry about it. Your job is to just get the diploma, don't worry about it, get the degree, don't worry about it. He was right.

[A]

Did they have any rationale behind you getting an 82 or then an 84?

[C]

It was a matter of. Everything you wrote was third person, except for this paper. And this paper was first person. This is what your opinion. And you had to support your opinion. Here's what I'm going to tell you. I tell you. Here's what I told you. Very basic, right? But this is why I thought my. I thought my argument was, sound like I nailed this, man. I went by the rubric, this ain't hard. Yeah. Somebody had a different opinion, but, yeah.

[A]

What came after that?

[C]

So went back to work, became the deputy chief of staff for personnel, which was a great job because you're helping soldiers and retirees. You're doing a lot of, you know, in the weeds, policy work, but you're taking care of soldiers and veterans and retirees, helping them get their pay sorted out, help them get their medical stuff sorted out, all the personal issues, personnel issues that you're going to be dealing with. That was very comfortable for me. I really love that job. And then again, Heston calls me downstairs. He says, hey, call me down the hall. Gonna move you to hro. I didn't want to be the hro. You're not hearing me. You're gonna be the hro. I didn't want to be the hr. That's a shitty job. I didn't want to. It's awful. Nothing good happens with HRO because it's technicians, it's AGRs, it's managed level of resources, it's budget, it's bonuses, it's incentives. And he told me, he said, and again, he. We've all had this person. You've been this person for somebody. As have you, Chip. He had a vision for me that I didn't have for myself. He said, you need. This is a joint billet. You need to learn the blue side. Like, fine. Roger that, sir. Still, I didn't have any idea with what he wanted to do. So you have somebody like that pushing you into the job that you don't want, somebody pushing you into a job that's probably going to make you struggle a little bit, but you learn. So. And he did, and it was because of him. And then I had some other senior leaders that were mentors pushing me to do more because they always saw something in me that I probably didn't see in myself. Sell yourself short. But it was Heston. Heston's the reason I'm in this job.

[A]

And then how did that come about?

[C]

So I was the hro and he called me down and I thought I'D screwed something up, right. I was waiting for the ass chewing and I came in and he closed the door. And at this point, he was ailing pretty badly from pancreatic cancer. He had lost a lot of weight. He was probably my size, and he'd lost 70 pounds. And in Vermont, if you're going to become the adjutant general, it is done by legislative election. It's the only state that does that. Everybody else is appointed by the governor, which is unique.

[A]

So this job means you're the senior guy, the senior military guy for National Guard, Air National Guard and National Guard.

[C]

Army Guard and Vermont both.

[A]

And so this is very strange. So you're going to this position which the entire military, you get promoted through the ranks. Every. The entire military. The entire US Military, you get promoted through the ranks. But this one job for the Vermont National Guard, to be in charge of all that, you get elected.

[C]

Okay, I am now a politician. It's awful. That being said, there's some uniqueness about it.

[A]

I think it's kind of good because, let's face it, climbing those ranks through the military channel, you have to do certain things that may or may not be honorable to move up the chain of command. And so for you to kind of. It's like an opportunity to take an outsider or someone that didn't maybe isn't the perfect candidate from the military side that's got some other aspects to them that'd be beneficial.

[C]

Yep, it's, it's, it's very Vermont. It's kind of a colloquialism. At the time, I didn't appreciate the process because, I mean, I lost £14. I wanted to vomit every day because it's stressful, man. I was active Guard and Reserve, so I had to get a. An exception to policy from then Secretary Esper. And the response from their attorneys was, yep. Well, Colonel Knight may be a candidate, but he may not campaign. Violation of the Hatch Act. Right. Okay, so we have to send them. My JAG sent a note back saying, hey, this is how Vermont does this. He has to be able to engage with legislatures. What they settled on was, okay, he may speak with legislators, but only him. No lobbying, no campaign committees, no social media, just Colonel Knight speaking with legislators. So I took a day of leave every time I had coffee with the legislator. Anytime I met with a committee, anytime I met with a caucus. What's interesting about the way we do things is. And what I like about it now, hindsight being what it is, our soldiers and airmen have a voice in this. So if Somebody's running. You all have senators and representatives, and you can email, you can call and say, listen, this is who I want to be, the next senior leader of our guard. I've worked with this person. Whether me, whoever it is that's running for office, I don't think it had. Mine wasn't contentious. I got along great with the other candidates. There were three other folks running, which was fine. That was collegial. Some of the sniping from the sidelines was not. Night's gonna ruin the Air Guard. Do I even know you? I haven't even met you. How do you know me? Pretty horrific. But it was all Heston's fault. You know, he called me down to his office and he was ailing, and he said, yeah, obviously I was gonna run. Just a wonderful man, most loyal friend you could ask for. I knew him for 30 years. And he said, obviously, I can't. I need you to run. And I about fell out of the chair. I'm like, oh, hey, sir. What? That's not on my to do list, man. That is not even a thing. I'm good. I'm getting my high three. I never thought I'd get here. And he said, understand, you'll be fine. And that's. He would always say that you'll be fine. Where there was pushing me to go to OCS, whether it's making me whatever job, G1, War College. You'll be fine. Don't worry about it. So love the guy, God rest his soul, because he's one of those folks and.

[A]

And he's having the last laugh right now, watching.

[C]

Yes, he is. Yes, he is. And there's still more good days than bad. I mean, it's. It's when you really grasp the scope and scale of the job and the things you can impact. Helping veterans, getting legislation passed that helps veterans, that's kind of a big deal because it's a unique thing for all adjutants, General. In most cases. We all kind of straddle that civ mill relationship because we work with our governors, we work with our legislatures, but we also work with the congressional delegation. So at this juncture, even as an elected official. And we've all heard this, you certainly heard it. Well, you know, the military is apolitical. No, you're not. Not even close, man. You're a nonpartisan. Because I go to the state House a lot, and I will testify to committees. I will talk. I don't care what your political stripes are. If you can help my guard, if you can help my soldiers, and airmen. Oh, man, we're gonna get along great. And that's always been my pitch. So that's a uniqueness. It's a unique thing about. And I have to be close to them because they elected the adjutant general. How could you not? Smartest thing I could have done was six years ago. If you look back at the. We were not in a good spot. We had some challenges. It was ugly. When I got the job. I mean, you talk about, you'll pardon the expression, being handed a bag of shit. It wasn't the fault of the previous adjutant general. There were some things behind the scenes that had not been addressed because he simply didn't know. And they all percolated up. And I'm like, oh, boy, this is not good. So you start rebuilding. First thing I did 2019, I asked for an organizational assessment. So it was Office of Complex Investigations. And the JAG team came up from National Guard Bureau. And that I know of. I was the only adjutant General to ask. They had done several in the past, but it was a governor asking. And if the governor's asking, you ain't got a job.

[A]

That's gonna be a problem.

[C]

You just got shit canned. Probably the smartest thing I could have done. So I talked to Brigadier General Chris Rafrana, who was Guard Bureau's jag, and I called him. I said, how do I get one of these things? And he said, well, you sure you want to do this? As you know, it's releasable to the public. I'm like, that's the problem.

[A]

Exactly.

[C]

I got it. We need to do this. So we did it. And it was painful. Hard to read. 113 pages of that was painful. I didn't get quite what I wanted. I would have liked to have specifics, but I got enough themes out of what we had put in there. Here's what I'm looking for. Hazing, bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault, maltreatment of others. All of the things that we can't abide. I got enough themes to start putting some things in place. So when I got the report, sent it to the governor, sent it to my folks, the Guard sent it to the legislature, and then I released it to the public. And then it was, yeah, sky is falling. Catastrophizing, good old boy network. We were getting raked over the coals, but I had to do it.

[A]

Yeah, well, that's how you get things fixed, right? You gotta say, here's our problems.

[C]

And it was actually Dave Baldwin. He's former Adjutant General here in California. He actually Texted me, goes, because I sent it to every other tag, every other adjutant general. Hey, man, this ain't just Vermont. You. You all got similar problems. And I was getting responses like, well, yeah, we got some problems, but not like that. And I'm like, sure about that? Really? Yeah, you're getting. You're getting insulated here. But Dave, good friend of mine, he's since retired, but he called, he sent me a text. He goes, probably the bravest thing I've ever seen. Could you just put it out there, man? Can't get any worse.

[A]

Well, that's. One of you wrote a paper about leadership when you're at the war college. The paper was called Good or Effective Leadership. Is there a difference? And here's a quote from that that I really liked when I read that paper. It says, quote, there is a difference between effective and good leadership. One can be effective probably throughout an entire career without ever becoming a truly good leader. Alternatively, I find it difficult to characterize someone as a good leader who isn't effective in the military. Assigning personnel to leadership positions presumes ability and results in rank commensurate with the position. Those who best exemplify the traits of a good leader do not necessarily receive these assignments. Fitness reports may capture their being effective, but are they good leaders? There is a time for directive or transactional leadership where the nature of the mission or situation does not allow for inclusiveness and decision making. I believe those times are limited. The period interceding is where leaders should strive to not only be effective leaders, but good ones. Learning from their subordinates and placing the agenda of the organization above their own. This is what delineates good from effective, good from effective organizational leadership by good leaders. Cultivating the respective subordinates through listening, asking for advice, mentoring, and keeping them informed when making decisions, we may find and develop those good future leaders we are looking for. I was speaking with a company the other day, and you know that idea that you have in there? Like the idea that occasionally you got to say, hey, this. This is what we're doing. Hey everyone, this is what we're doing. A lot of leaders think that that should be the majority of the time. You know, they think it should be 99% of the time. You know this when you say times are limited. For me, it's like there's such a small number of times where I actually have to say, hey, everyone, lock it up. I'm making the call. This is what we're doing. The amount of times that you should have to do that as a Leader should be so. So few. It's ridiculous. But in a lot of people's heads, that should be the norm. The norm is everyone shut up, listen to me. And that should not be the norm. And as a matter of fact, if that's what the norm is, you're making all kinds of mistakes as a leader. Because if my team isn't making things happen without me telling them what to do, I'm doing all kinds of things.

[C]

Wrong. Fact. So there's been this recent resurgence of mission command, and I hear senior leaders throwing it around, and I'm like, okay, do you actually know what it means? Because you're saying it. And I don't recall them off the top of my head. But there are seven tenets of mission command. But first and foremost for me, Knight's version is its trust. And I expressed this to my subordinate commanders, to my assistant adjutants. General, it's simply assume risk on their behalf if it's prudent, but trust them. Give them the guidance. I mean, Patton said it right. Don't tell your soldiers how to do things. Tell them what to do, and let them surprise you with their ingenuity. Go back to Specialist Bennett in Ramadi, coming up with the Pope glass.

[A]

Yeah, that's a. Brief us on that one real quick.

[C]

So the insurgents, because I don't know.

[A]

How many people were alive today because of him.

[C]

Yep. So we get hit by a lot of IEDs, and at the time it was a line of sight. They would use the. The base station with the long range cordless telephone. And then they get up and run. And while you cannot run the 50. So our gunners are clipping these guys, which was upsetting to the insurgents. So they started. And of course, as you noted, I think in one, in one of your books, the. The old style turret, the gunner's head's exposed, so you're protected on three sides unless your head's up. And the gunner's head has to be up because you're checking shot holes for IEDs, you're looking for threats. And they started packing those IEDs with ball bearings and screws and nails, anything they can get their hands on. And I've got pictures I know of, at least on my shift, I know of five instances where I've got photos where the bedd. Our specialist had welded the spare ballistic windshield to three sides of the turret, and he put angle irons on the corner so snipers couldn't shoot through the gap. But I've got pictures of those, you know, shrapnel Nail screws embedded where the gunner's head would have been. That would have been a nightmare to have a Humvee disabled and their crew captured, and the next thing you know, they're getting their heads, you know, cut off on Al Jazeera, whatever. But that soldier, what he did translated to not just our battalion. It went to the brigade, it went to the meff, it went to your team. And I tell my basic leader Corps students, this man, don't let your rank dictate your contribution to the organization. That guy's a specialist, an E4, part of that specialist mafia. And he had an idea and he implemented.

[A]

And the idea was just to catch everyone up, like, was to take these. These extra pieces of bulletproof glass and formulate. We ended up Pope glass because you look like you're in the Pope mobile, which was after the assassination attempt on the Pope. They surrounded him with bulletproof glass. And so the turret gunner, instead of being totally exposed, it was like, okay, now we got some protection for this guy. And like you said, it spread throughout the whole ao.

[C]

Yep. And your point is valid. How many lives did this? The actions of this one. E4. He just had an idea, didn't ask for permission, and he just did it. And now, I mean, I can tell you how many lives he saved in our battalion that I know of, but how many across the theater. Hard to say all that from a good idea that nobody told him to do. As an E4, that's just phenomenal to me. Yeah.

[A]

And that's what you're looking for. You know, now that you're. Now that you're in charge, this is what you're trying to implement. This is what you're trying to inspire throughout your organization. How do you do that?

[C]

Well, yeah, exemplify it. Seek innovation. Give them, if they have the idea, man, run with it. I think as an army, certainly as a guard, and this is a. I call it the GWAT hangover. We kind of spoon fed training. You will do X. And you took away the latitude of the command teams. They don't have any creativity. You know, how you train is how you train. Are you meeting the standard? And go forth and meet the standard. But it became very, very cookie cutter. And we had a team that would actually go around and then make sure of that. But we saw that at Camp Shelby. But let people lead, man. Get out of their way. It's really not that hard. Have some trust that they're going to do the right thing. And if it's time for a tune up, okay. Then you do a tune up and you think I haven't been scuffed up? You think I haven't? You got my ass handed to me on a number of occasions, you know, by one of those senior leaders, like, you know, hey, come here, Jack. Ash, like, great. You take the ash trunk like a champ and learn from it and drive on. But, yeah, I mean, all the stuff that you've identified in extreme ownership, it's valid, man. I mean, I'm not telling you anything, but it's. I learned that probably in Ramadi, I was again, being the voice on the radio. I would go out enough to maintain situational awareness, but very dynamic of fluid. I mean, come on, man. It was such a dynamic environment. If a patrol leader is telling me I ain't going there, I'm not making them go there. That's. That's your call. You're the guy on the ground. If somebody gets in a firefight, and this is early on, and Chip, you'd mentioned roe, I think we were timid for the first couple of months to pull the trigger because it was just like this. This is odd. I'm about to take somebody's life very simply. If you articulate hostile intent, then you're justified in your action. But I'd get a phone call, a request, permission to engage. I'm like, dude, I ain't there, man. Don't ask me. You're gonna come in and give me the debrief and I'll write it up for you. But you're the one making that decision, not me.

[A]

Yeah. And by the time they get that call back. Yeah. You're approval, that person's gone, you know.

[C]

No, the only time. This was actually the first time. 1st Battalion, 172nd Armor, fired a main gun round in anger. It was actually Op. Jones was getting mortared right at the confluence or the intersection of Route Jones and Michigan. Mortar rounds are impacting and they're jockeying the tank around so it doesn't get hit. And they're scanning and they see probably, I don't know, a click down the road up on the roof, three insurgents, one with binos, one on the cell phone. The other guy's doing whatever he's doing. Oh, yeah, and, you know, I got the call. It was actually Tom Combs, who's now retired, first sergeant, works out at the range for us. He said he may request mission to engage. I'm like, weapons free, man. I. You see what I said? You see, I don't. You can articulate it. And the Next thing I heard, because it's just outside of Camp Ramadi was the, you know, that crack. And then. Then I called a bunch of bda and he goes, yeah, they're gone. But that's the closest I ever came to pulling a trigger. Like, hey, weapons free, man. I don't know what to tell you. You just got to have faith that your folks are going to do the right thing. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And that's, you know, that's why you train them. That's why you got to make sure they understand why they're doing what they're doing. What the strategic goal is, you know, was a huge thing with me, was, you know, you know, we had the. I don't know what it was nine slide ROE brief. And I would tell my guys, you, you. You have to make sure that the person you're going to kill is bad. Like, if we go out, you go out in Ramada, you killing a mom or you kill a teacher or, you know, whatever. It's like, it's going to be a nightmare. It's going to be. First of all, it's going to be terrible for all of us. They're going to be at the gate tomorrow morning protesting. It's going to be a huge strategic downturn for US Impact. So we have to make sure the people we're killing are bad. And how do you do that? Well, guess what? It fits right in with the rules of engagement. I'm reasonably assured that this person is about to commit a hostile act towards us. Yes, that's a bad guy. So you have to entrust them because, you know, what's the sniper see a guy for half a second, four seconds, three seconds? You know, it's like they have to be able to make that call.

[C]

Correct. And who am I to second guess that? You don't have time, you know, the luxury of time. You see it, you know it. What. You know it for what it is. Do what you have to do, man. You come tell me about it later.

[A]

Yeah. You know, that's the thing with leadership, is just allowing the guys on the front lines to make things happen. And they'll make things happen.

[C]

You know, that's exactly right. And I think, Jocko, there are so many vignettes in this conversation, and in listening to your books, it brings back things. And some of them are, at some level, tragic, but in a dark humor kind of way. They're. They make me laugh because they're so odd. Inappropriate, perhaps, but odd. And we had sent our snipers out, and I got another Story about our section leader. But one of our soldiers was up in a hide, third floor of an apartment building and overlooking a shot hole. And that was, you know, the technique. You'd drive by and you'd, you know, drop it out of a car. Either cut the bottom out of the trunk and drop it, or in this case, blue opal pulls up and the insurgent gets out of the back of the opal with two what turned out to be 130 millimeter rounds. And he drops and goes to drop it in the shot hole, and our sniper takes the shot. So the guy staggers and he falls back into the opal and they take off. And half an hour later was a Marine Corps ecp, which was just in our. Just into Rao on the bridge across the dam before you went into. Into Ramadi from Tamim. And some lance corporal called, called the Talk.

[A]

Oh, they rolled the guy out.

[C]

So, hey, sir, did your sniper shoot a guy? I'm like, yeah, about a half hour ago. And this young Lance Corporate, he's like, yeah, they shot his junk off. My God. Excuse me. Well, yes, sir, you know, like. Like his package. I'm like, are you shitting me? And so I sent our sniper and his guys went out and they, you know, positively id'd the guy. And it was my RTO specialist in North Carolina. He's like, damn, sir, that's like controlling tomorrow's insurgents today. So, yeah, stuff like that. But there's an element here. And again, it's a. It's a guardism. I talked about it a little before. Of what? Both the guard and Reserve, you've got folks that have jobs outside the military. And I would tell my basic leader course students, I had the good fortune to be able to talk to our entry level NCO course that we run one of them in Vermont. And we're talking to these young soldiers, E4s and E5s, and you know, there's so much experience in the room, even at a relatively young age. And you mentioned earlier, you mentioned some. I think folks are actually joining a little bit later in life, mid-20s. So they've got some life experience. And I talk to these kids and they've got. I mean, I've had young soldiers, thoracic surgeon's assistant nurses. I've got in my air guard, I have a doctor who works building bombs for the F35 because that's what he wants to do. So we're in Ramadi and our sniper section leader comes in, one of our staff sergeants. And he was From West Virginia. And he talked like he is. And I'm thinking, okay, you're a mid grade NCO sniper from West Virginia. And my presumption, you got to be working, you got to be a tradesman or something, right? A farmer, you got to work in the trades. Masonry, electrician, what, whatever. And he'd come in for the debrief and I'd always ask him, I called him Huckleberry because he's from West Virginia. Huckleberry, how'd it go? And he'd say, you know, sir, there weren't no killing, but it weren't for lack of trying. And now sometimes they were successful. They got one of the more prolific bomb makers one night putting in, he was in, placing a pressure plate, ied. But we're there about six months and he came in for a debrief. Huckleberry, what do you do in West Virginia? He says, oh, I'm a financial manager for GE Capital Management. I got a staff of 45 in Charlestown, West Virginia. And I'm thinking, God, who's a Huckleberry now, right? This guy, probably making mid six figures. He wanted to be a sniper. That's the Guard, man. We've got that. And that opportunity is out there for anybody who wants to pursue it. You got to show up.

[A]

What was the deal with the strike we just did on Iran?

[C]

So little known, secret. It is one Air Force, it is one army, right? Folks don't understand. The National Guard is the primary combat reserve of the army and the Air Force. The army is 40% army, National Guard is 40% of the army and I think the Air Force. We are probably 50 or more percent of Air Mobility Command capability. The gray tails, the C17, C5, C3, C130, those are guard. We are about, I think, 30% of the fighter fleet, something like that. But that raid on Iran, midnight hammer. Yeah, 50% guard.

[A]

Damn.

[C]

Pilots in command, 50% guard. The guys loading the bombs on those aircraft, guard. And they went back to work. I mean, these folks, and they're like you said, Chip, they're probably flying commercial airliners. Take a few days off and go put the hammer to Iran and then go back to work. Hey, what'd you do this weekend? You know, not much.

[A]

Yeah, 36 hours, right? 36 hour evolution.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

That's epic. Epic. Does that get us up to speed?

[C]

I think so. I would tell you, there's so much opportunity out there in the military, folks will just give it a chance. The Guard in particular. You can, you made the point earlier you can do both. You can have a dual career track, you can be in the military, do all the things you want to do through the guard, through the reserves, and have a civilian career.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And derive benefit from both.

[A]

And the best way to go about it is just going down to the.

[C]

Recruiter, come see us. We're not a secret anymore, Jocko. I mean, I think we've been a best kept secret for just two, way too long. If you got the desire, come ask questions. Man, we're transparent. We're not going to stick in the neck with a tranquilizer dart and take you to enlistments. I mean, it's come see us, man. It's really, it's your guard, it's your neighbor, it's somebody that you know who's probably in the guard.

[A]

Yeah. And it's so it's like a, it's just a lower level of commitment for a young guy. When I do, when I, when I enlisted in the Navy to get the program that I wanted, which would give me the opportunity to go to Buds, it was a six year commitment. I was 17. Six years is a long time.

[C]

Yes, it is.

[A]

So, but this is like, oh, you'll be back, you know, at the end of the summer or you'll be back, you know, like it's much lower level commitment and you still get a taste of it. And if you like the taste of it, there's all kinds of opportunities. If you don't cool, you carry on and you can get out in four years or six years or whatever. But you're, you know, you haven't been in gone the entire time. So I think it's a great iterative step on how to figure out what you want to do with your life. And you know, I mentioned that some people come ask me questions when they're 28, 29, but if you're 17 years old, 18 years old, why not make some money, why not get some benefits, why not get some money for school, why go into debt, you know, trying to pay for college? Why not learn a trade that you can put to work out there immediately? Like there's so many benefits and you get to do the military thing, you get to know what it's like because you know, you know, when people ask me, well, I want to go to college, I want to join the military, I want to do this, I want to go in the military, all the other things in life are going to be there, the military, like you're, you're, you're a rare breed to get, get it done. Get OCS done at 35. You know, get it done while you're young. Get it done. Because it does disappear, and there is an age limit, and you will get to a point where there'll be too many other things in your life, whether it's family, whether it's work commitments, whatever. Get it done while you're young. Go in there, get the experience. You will have a mutual respect with everybody that you meet that served. And what a noble thing there's. You know, everybody in America goes, oh, you're in the military. Thank you. Like, that's what you're gonna get, and that's what you deserve. So if you got the opportunity, go down, see a recruiter, and I'm gonna tell you, like. Like you and me, best thing I ever did was sign that piece of paper and. And get my. Get on track. Get told, hey, this is what you got to do to be successful. The civilian world doesn't have that. Hey, you know what you need to do to be successful in the civilian world? There's a bunch of different paths you can take. There's confusing. It's. It's chaos. There's you. You win some, you lose something. No. In the military, you do this thing, you're gonna get your paycheck, you're gonna get promoted, you're gonna. You're gonna be on track, you're gonna have a good life. So go down there and check it out.

[C]

Come see us. I'm telling you, we're doing this coming week, September 7th, Metro weekend, and on Sunday, we're going to do an open house. Both air and Army F35s are kind of sexy. So we're doing it over at the Air Guard. So last time we did this was I think three years ago, and we had like 6,000 people go to our base and we ran out of parking. It was. Yeah, we could have done better. We did. We figured out the parking this time, we think. But what that shows me that there's at least a curiosity about who we are. And that's. That's what I would tell anybody, you know, come see us, learn about the Guard and what comes with it. Not convenient. I ain't gonna lie to anybody, but, man, the opportunities are there if you want to take them.

[A]

Yep, yep. People can find the Guard. Instagram and Twitter. X. VT National Guard. So that's Vermont National Guard. VT National Guard, Facebook, Vermont National Guard. And the Internet is VT Public NG mil.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

So that's where we can find you guys. Dave, any. Any other questions? Comments from you.

[B]

As soon as I got to Ramadi, the first thing I did was sign over custody of all the Anglico gear. I was the senior Anglico guy. I signed over all the gear, you know, the radios, the weapons, everything. They lay everything out on this big, huge thing in the ground, and we just signed for it. Turnover, custody. And part of that custody was three humvees. I had three humvees for the three teams. And I'm there, I don't know, 72 hours. I sign over custody, these Humvees, and I don't know who or where. I have no idea. But somebody's like, hey, if you drive these Humvees down to this, there's, like, a warehouse a couple of streets up on Camp Ramadi. They'll put bullet flute, bulletproof glass for your turret gunner. And I kind of look over at, like, Corporal Speller, one of the drivers, and he's like, okay. And I'm like, go. I didn't, like, just go. Try to find this thing. It was like a. Kind of like a word of mouth. And he goes. And he comes back, like, a couple hours later, and he's like, all right, the first truck's done. We'll get the other two done. I'm like, oh, roger that. No idea what it is. And that saved my truck gunner's life. And that's a function of my experience, is if I want to give credit to who taught me how to fight in a war, it was the guardsmen that were on the ground in Ramadi for almost a year when I got there that had all that loss, all those casualties, but all those lessons learned, and they just freely handed them over to me, and I thank God it listened. But that is my connection to you and to your guardsman was everything you had endured, you gave to me. And I maybe helped a little bit with. With Jago's guys and also try to pass it on. But that's my recollection of. Of your men and. And the people involved in that was trying to help me out, and they did. And I. I didn't piece it all together now until you're telling that story about the Pope glass. But that was what you guys were doing, and it was awesome, and I was the beneficiary of that, so I'm happy to be here, and I wanted to say thanks.

[C]

Well, we appreciate having you. And again, I wish I'd have learned about you six months prior. We could have done some good work together.

[A]

Indeed. General Eddie. Sir. Any. Any final thoughts?

[C]

Well, yeah. Actually, I've been thinking about this and I found some things and. And since we were there at the same time and for both of you. And I've got one, got one for Leif as well. Leif was talking in dichotomy of Leadership about the BBI ad at op 293 where Brian Letendran and Joe Proctor were killed. They got that bad guy, they went and they found him. And I remember listening to cars and he was describing the incident. I'm like, I'll be damn. So I've got something for him if you see him or if you can mail it to him. But I found some. If any of you have one, if you don't, that's just wrong. These are Task Force saber coins. Very few left. They are vintage. So operation Iraqi Feeder MO 507, 1st Battalion, 172nd Armor. But it has all of our units represented on the back. Mississippi, California, Kuwait, Iraq. That's where we were. Why don't we give you that one?

[A]

Outstanding.

[C]

And then Chip, obviously we've got one for Leaf as well, sir. But also to give you my coin, which is a small thing, token of appreciation. 1. Thanks for having me on. There's a story to tell and I just appreciate the opportunity, being able to tell it. Appreciate your service and what you continue to do for us, for veterans, for both of you, you're just phenomenal. But on the front of the coin is a symbol of office for the Adjutant General. In the back of the coin it has our 06 commands represented and it's presented for excellence. But at the top of the coin is the first part of the order issued by General John Sedgwick, who was a commander of the 6th US Corps leading up to the battle of Gettysburg. The corps was in Marshfield, Maryland, 37 miles away from the Gettysburg battlefield. And the Scouts came in and told General Sedgwick, there's a big one coming. You got to move the corps. Which meant a 37 mile forced march. And it was then that General Sedgwick, knowing Vermont's reputation for hard marching and never running from a fight, issued the order, put the Vermonters ahead and keep the column well closed. So thank you both for being a part of it. It matters part of the story. Keep telling it, man. Sincerely appreciate it.

[A]

Outstanding. Yeah, thanks, sir. Yeah, outstanding stuff. General Knight, sir, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for sharing your stories. You know, these lessons learned. Most important, thanks for your service. You know, not only the Coast Guard, which. Thanks for your service in the Coast Guard, but the service of you and your guys, the 1172 and Ramadi, that you guys set conditions for us, you guys taught us how to fight and you made incredible, incredible sacrifices to achieve victory in that city and will never forget you guys, what your battalion and what the brigade did. Thank you.

[C]

Much appreciated, Jocko. God bless.

[A]

Yes, sir. And with that, General Greg Knight has left. The building echoes back joining us. Dave was in the, in the seat for that one. Pretty awesome to link up with him again, huh? Yeah, that was awesome, man. It's. You think about, you know, we, we spent another probably hour on either side of the podcast just reminiscing and stuff. And you know, you think about all the, the service and sacrifice from those guys. It's just heroic, heroic group of people. So pretty awesome to have General Knight on here to talk through some of that and just bring back a lot of memories. So definitely appreciate General Light showing up here. Yeah. And if you want to support what we're doing here and you want to support yourself too, at the same time, check out Jocko Fuel. We. What's, what's up with the creatine right now? Dave Burke.

[B]

I have, I have, I've learned the, the cognitive benefits of creatine, which I did not fully understand.

[A]

But what, how did you recognize them or what made you recognize it?

[B]

I didn't know that it was contributing to that.

[A]

I was always under the impression like, we're getting smarter.

[B]

No, what I was saying was I always thought creatine was really just like a recovery for, for lifting and all the physical benefits of it. But as I've gotten more education on that, the point behind is my wife is a full time creatine user now, so we have both converted to the daily Jocko creatine. But it's more than just like, hey, you know, we're working out, we're recovering faster. There's a cognitive benefit to it that's undeniable and kind of in her world of, you know, health and wellness and things like that, like, were total users of that.

[A]

How many grams a day are you doing?

[B]

I am varying between five and ten.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

She's five. Straight up. I'm like seven and a half. Trending towards ten.

[A]

Echo, Charles. Ten. Where you at? Full ten. Ten. Morning. Night. No, two in the morning.

[D]

Creatine, hydrate, water. Morning.

[A]

That's, that's the system you got going on. Well, whatever you need for that stuff, check out Dracof and you get that stuff. Good for you. Really good for you. Also, it's available now at Hy Vee, which is awesome. And a bunch of other places around the country. So. Jockeyfield.com get your protein, get your energy drinks. I'm on my second energy drink of the day and I'm feeling very good about that one.

[C]

I agree.

[A]

Also OriginUSA.com is where you can get American made products. We're just up at Camp Jiu Jitsu Camp.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And it was cool because they have a store there and you just walk in and you're surrounded by freedom. Hell, surrounded by freedom. Everything made in America. Jeans, boots, geese. Just everything. And what's. It's when you get to hold stuff. This is. This is a hard thing for an online clothing store. Online clothing company, which we are, is you. You don't get to hold it. Right. You look at a picture, you look at a bunch of different pictures. 360 Spin view different models. You like all this stuff but you're still like, well, how would it actually fit me? You know what I mean? But when you go into the store, you're like, all this stuff is awesome. It's just awesome stuff. Originusa.com and we got like, if you do buy something you need to return, it's no factor. It's really easy. Print out the shipping label. It's like we got that stuff down to a sign hands too. And it's all made 100 in America. So check out originusa.com as they say.

[C]

It's true.

[D]

Also jocastore.com we're representing Dave Burke.

[C]

Good deal, Dave.

[D]

Representing the Independence. That was a hot commodity when it came out.

[B]

I got both.

[D]

I'm very happy to see that you have that.

[A]

You got the version. Version five.

[D]

The discipline equals freedom. Yep. 005. I learned that from you.

[C]

You.

[A]

By the way, the three digits in anticipation of hundreds of versions over the coming decades.

[D]

Yeah, you know, you never know. But yes.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Those are five. Five colors or four colors, by the way, or what they call colorways.

[A]

Oh, come on.

[D]

Come on. The colorway, bro.

[C]

Colorway.

[D]

I just learned that too. But the two that are. What do you call. They're like not as obvious, but really good when you put it on.

[A]

What is it?

[D]

The white and white and the black on black called blacked out and in the clear.

[A]

I learned that from you. Yeah. By the way, bro, in the clear is a great expression. It's a great expression. That was one of my, my platoon chief when I was at 7. He would just be like, oh, he said that in the clear. You know, classic stuff.

[C]

Oh yeah.

[D]

But yeah, those are good also. Shirt locker, subscription scenario. New design every month. Yeah, yeah, there's some good ones coming up. I got a Halloween one coming. I gotta put it this way, if you like metal.

[A]

As in the music.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You know.

[D]

You know what have you maybe keep. Yeah, yeah. You know, keep your eye. But Anyway, yeah, go jockostore.com if you want to click on the shirt locker, you can kind of check it out, see what it's all about. But it's on there. And then. Yeah, a lot of discipline equals freedom.

[C]

Good.

[D]

Oh, there's a new good shirt coming out too, by the way.

[A]

Really?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Interesting version 3.0. So there you go. Tacostore.com books Dave Burke sitting here.

[C]

Good deal.

[A]

I'm sitting here looking at your. This is the galley copy of your book. The galley meaning it's like a pre advanced reader's edition. Goes on sale October 21st. You ready for it to come out?

[B]

I'm ready.

[A]

You ready for it to rock? I wrote the forward to it. It's probably the best part of the book. It's my forward. Somebody pointed out that on the COVID you've got what, two F18s, an F22 and an F35 and an F16.

[B]

Gotta get them all.

[A]

Damn, dude. How long did it take you to write it?

[B]

It took a long time to write it.

[A]

Is it? Do you count the iterations that you sent me in the beginning where I was like, bro, what even is this? Yes.

[B]

Without those iterations, this book doesn't get written.

[A]

So. It's so cool. I like. You know, one thing that's cool about computers? We have the very first attempted chapter of Extreme Ownership. The first version of Extreme Ownership. So bad. It's so bad. When you read it, you're just like, you know, not, not the concepts obviously are good, but the, the writing, you're just terrible. So it was, it's. It was awesome to watch you go through iterative, iterative, iteratives, just getting better, better, better. And now you're pretty stoked the Ford.

[B]

Is good enough to buy the whole book.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But I am stoked that it's done and I'm excited for it to get out there.

[A]

No, what's cool about it for me is like, you know, you and I spend a lot of time obviously talking about our shared experience on the battlefield, but not as much time talking about everything else you did in your career. You were only with me for six months, so you have what, a 24 year career? And then obviously everything we do at Ashtown front. I'm kind of abreast of. But, yeah, hearing some of your lessons learned from the rest of your career is pretty awesome. Especially what was the chapter where they're just like, hey, Dave Burke, you know, you're. You're. You could be the greatest lieutenant.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

What's the.

[B]

The line is Lt. Burke would be one of the best lieutenants in the platoon if he didn't already think that he was. Which was my platoon commander. My very first. First six months of being an officer in the Marine Corps is the basic school. You get something called peer evaluations. It's what your. What your peers think of you. And I went into that, like, ranked 8 out of 250 in my company, and I'm like, I'm one of the best in the company.

[A]

So you went in ranked 8th in terms of performance. Military inspections, tactical stuff. They grade you on number eight out of 250.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

They grade you on physical fitness, leadership, and military skills. I was ranked number eight.

[A]

How the peer review go?

[B]

The peer review did not go that well. It was. That's the line is like, hey, this is what they think of you. They think you'd be one of the best lieutenants if you didn't already think that you was. That was. That was the chapter on humility. And thank God I learned it then and not never or 10 years later.

[A]

So what's scary is how. Well, I'm guessing and according to the book, how completely unaware you were of that.

[B]

I was 100% sure I was going to be showered with praise because I was top of my class.

[A]

Why wouldn't I? Yeah.

[B]

And I was very confident that the people that. That didn't think I was awesome, they were the problem.

[A]

Yeah. They were just turds, of course. Yeah. That's one of the scariest things about. But the. One of the scariest things about being a human being is that things can be happening around you that you're not aware of and you don't recognize that it's happening. And that is just absolutely terrible because let's face it, if somebody slaps you in the head and says, hey, dude, your. Your ego's too big, you can go, oh, damn, I didn't know that. But when you're just going through life just thinking everything is great, and you don't even realize what people think of you, the lack of awareness is terrible. So it was one of the many lessons in that book. The other thing that's cool, I mean, for me is the how you're relating some of the, some of the flying stuff to leadership and decision making is just, it's just an awesome book. So the need to lead October 21st just order right now. Get a first a dish. Let's face it, you don't want a second dish. We, you know. Are you going to sign second editions?

[B]

Only if required. Only that first edition.

[A]

Yeah, you have to. You have to. If you bring a second edition to me, you got to apologize. Hey, I'm sorry it's a second edition. But actually the funny thing is they only made, I think they made like 10 or 12,000 copies, true first editions of extreme Ownership. So you don't have to apologize. I'll sign your book, but because we should have made more. So there you go. Check out the book need to Lead. I've written a bunch of books too about leadership and some kids books as well as Front speaking of leadership, we have a leadership consulting company called Echelon Front. Go to ashlonfront.com whatever you need inside your organization to help you get squared away, we will help you. And we also have an online training academy. Check out extreme ownership.com for that information. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. She's got an incredible organization. She helps out so many of our veterans. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org also check out heroesandhorses.org and finally, Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org and listen, some of you might have been thinking today I might want to go in the National Guard. I think that's a good call. If I look back at my life, going in the National Guard would have been awesome. So you a lot, like I said, a lot of people hit me up with the hey, I really never served, but I want to serve. Go serve. Go be in the National Guard. For the Vermont National Guard, you can check out Twitter and Instagram VT National Guard at VT National Guard Facebook, VT National Guard, Internet VT public NG mil. And then for us, I'm at Jocko Willink Echoes at Echo Charles, Dave's at David R. Burke on the various social activities. And also you can check out Jocko.com once again, thanks to General Greg Knight for joining us. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned. Most important, thank you for your service in Ramadi and for your continued service today in the Vermont National Guard. And thanks to all our service members in every branch with a specific salute to our National Guard soldiers. And to be even more specific, those soldiers of the 1172 and the entire 228 Brigade Combat Team, thank you all for your incredible service and sacrifice in Ramadi, Iraq, 2005 2006. We'll never forget what you guys did and we thank you for your service and your sacrifice. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret service, as well as all of the first responders. Thank you for your service, keeping us safe on the home front and everyone else out there. Let's remember some powerful advice from General Knight.

[C]

Quote.

[A]

There is a difference between effective and good leadership. Leadership strive to not only be effective leaders, but good ones. Learning from subordinates. Learning from subordinates. Imagine that. And placing the agenda of the organization above their own by good leaders. Cultivating the respect of subordinates through listening and asking for advice, mentoring and keeping them informed when making decisions, we may find and develop those good future leaders we are looking for. End quote. So there you go. Listen to your people. And that's all we've got for tonight. Till next time. This is Dave and Echo and Jocko out.