Jocko Willink (187:32)
So we launch pre dawn, and this is another thing, pre dawn operation. And. And we had done. Stoner had taken guys out with Clayburn, with Joe Claiborne like a few days earlier, and he had gotten a big gunfight. And when they came back, I was standing at the gate waiting for him. And they came back and I, you know, he's like totally impressed. And I walk with him to his battalion commander and this guy, this company commander, Joe Claiborne, who's been in Iraq for four or five months at this point, he's lost two guys. I think he's had a bunch of guys wounded. I think at that point, like 20% of his guys have been wounded or killed. And he goes to the battalion commander and he says, I want seals with me on every operation I do from here on out. From one engagement with my guys, he was impressed. And we were. I mean, I was overwhelmingly impressed with him and his guys. They were outstanding. But that's how much we hit it off with these guys. And I've told them since that that was the best compliment I've ever got. My life was when a. Was when an army company commander goes and tells his battalion commander, I want seals with us on every operation we do from here on out after just getting in a major engagement. So now you fast forward a few days and we're going on this mission. And as we're driving in, it's eerie. And what the moos would do is they would light tires on fire. And so you're rolling into town, it's black smoke everywhere, there's fires burning. Very, very eerie as we roll in. And I have already have my sniper elements head inserted at this point. And one of they were inserting on the mine clearance vehicles. So it's a pretty sneaky little operation. You know, the mine clearance vehicle goes by, it stops to clear a mine, but then some seals get out of the back and go set up an overwatch position. Very cool. So they're in position, the one by the soccer stadium is in position. The other group gets in their spot. And the building that they had selected was not the way it looked like it was going to look on paper or the way it looked on the overhead imagery. They didn't have a good view of this long axis road that was going to be utilized for the clearance, which was bad because it was going to get cleared. And then it would be hours before the op started, and now we'd have possible IEDs getting reseated. That's a problem. Didn't want that to happen, so that element decided to move. And now there's a lot of time compression. The sun's starting to come up, and we're like. As they realize the sun's coming up, they're like, oh, we don't have good visibility. The road that we need, that's our. That's. That's their commander's intent is to watch this road. They can't see the road. They decide to move. As they move, they go into a building that is just outside the limit of advance. And I'm sorry for civilians that I'm talking in military jargon, but there's a point where the clearance operation was supposed to stop. And so they're on the other side of it's a road. It's like, okay, the clearance operation, they will not go past this road. So now as things start to develop, I've got my guys, my sniper element over by the soccer stadium. They're starting to engage enemy. The SEALs that are pushing through, they're starting to income, experience resistance, and they're starting to engage with my little element starting to engage. So there's a lot of enemy fighters out there. And at some point, one of the Iraqi elements, which I don't know why they did this, or I did not know, no one knew that they were going to do this. They had decided that they were going to set their own cordon around the area that was being cleared. So by themselves, they ran from where the clearance was taking place all the way to the limit of advance road, and they went across it to enter the building and set up an overwatch position for themselves. That's where my guys were. So one of my guys. And again, there's so many little details that go into this, but we had seen, they give us intel pictures, and the intel pictures have body armor and helmets and AK47s and chocolate chip cammies that the enemy has. So we know that the enemy can be wearing body armor, chocolate chip camis, helmets, and we know they carry AK47s. So one of my guys is in that overwatch and they're looking out the bottom floor and they see a guy with an AK47. Again, it's like not quite Nod's time. It's the worst time of day, dude. And the guy sees a guy with an AK47 maneuvering through the courtyard, which they had zip Tied the courtyard shut. So this guy had actively entered the courtyard and was now maneuvering, and my guy shot him. Obviously looking back, this was one of those Iraqi soldiers that had run up there. So now him and his Iraqi soldiers and there was a small Marine element that had gone with us. An Anglico element had gone with these guys. Because the job of the Anglico is to keep track of the frontline trace of where friendly forces are. So they see these Iraqi soldiers run off and they followed them because they're freaking awesome marines and they're doing their job. So now they get up to where this, where this guy is, where this small element is, and they're like, what's going on? They're like, hey, you know, broken English, the whole nine yards. One of our guys went in that compound. He, he got shot. And so then what do they do? They all start shooting. So what we end up with now, now we're entering the blue on blue. This is a blue on blue happening. And as my guys in the overwatch position are now returning fire at the Iraqis that are dumping down rounds, trying to get their guy out of the courtyard. The Iraqis call for the qrf. So now a QRF launches to go down and it gets to that corner.50 caliber machine gun, puts it on the, on the overwatch, my overwatch position. And again, this overwatch position is Iraqi soldiers and SEALs and starts engaging with.50 cal into this overwatch position. As this is happening now, my guys call the heavy qrf, which is tanks. And as this happens, I look at the company commander, Joe Clayburn, I'm like, hey, those are my guys calling qrf. Let's go. Like, follow these tanks down there. Roger that. So we kind of break contact over here and we pull out onto that main road. Farouk Way is what it was called. And as we're driving down this road, I'm looking and I see the tank and I see red smoke, which is what we use for emergencies. And I see the tank and I'm, I, I just, as soon as I looked around, I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I knew something. My gut instinct was telling me there's something, something is wrong. So I get out of the Humvee and I'm with my sea. He's a great dude. And I, I look and I see the gunny sergeant from Anglico. And I'm like, what's happening? And he goes, there's Moose in that building right there. He goes, he's like, we're Going to call for fire. Like, we got to take him out. I'm like, okay, stand by. Because I didn't feel comfortable and looked at my, like, sea game, like, the head nod. And he, like, got on my. Gave me the squeeze, and I started walking up. And as I'm walking up to this compound, I see a white on the ground and on the door, I see a white zip tie. And I'm like, my guys are in here. And I kick the door open. And when I kick the door open, I saw tune Chief Tony Friday standing there, and he's, like, stoked to see me because they called the qrf. He's thinking, I'm the qrf. And I go, what happened? And he said, hey, guy was coming. Guy was coming through the courtyard. We engaged him. And then they brought it. And I looked at him, I said, it was a blue on blue. And he looked at me like, totally confused. And he said, can we get the guys out of here? I said, yeah. And we had a 113, was down there as a Kazavak already, so got the SEALs and the Iraqi soldiers that were in there, put them in the 113 to get him out of there. And Tony stayed with me because Tony's like, there's a reason why. I said, Tony's like, top of the list. Because Tony just got 150 rounds shot at him through a 50 cal. By the way, one of my other guys, Matt Hasby, he got fragged in the face. I. I don't. He was so. Had so accepted his death. It was wild. But Tony through all that was just like, hey, I'm staying with you, boss. I'm like, check. No factor. Those guys go back. And I went up then to the company commander and same thing. I looked at him, I said, hey, that was blue on blue. And his same. Same look. Like, what? And I said, it was a blue on blue. Then he radioed it in. So. And by. As soon as I saw that white zip tie, I. I figured out what had happened. You know, I like, oh. And I saw the building from the map where my guys were supposed to be, where they were to supposed originally planning to be. I knew that I was at the limited advance. Like, I knew what had happened. And in talking to that Anglico guy was like, yeah, the. The Iraqis pushed down here. And I was like, oh. So we finished the clearance, you know, because that's what you do. Like, there's still a mission going on. We finish the clearance. And as we finish the clearance, we. Then we're we're now, like, some elements stay out there, but the bulk of the clearance force is now going back to base. I go back to base, and myself and the company commander go to the same battalion commander that he had just told. He wanted seals with us on all of his operations. And this battalion commander is one of the best guys, But seriously, one of the best leaders I've ever met. And he looked at me and he looked at Joe, and he's like, what happened out there? And there was a giant battle map. Like, literally wallpaper. And I just walked through it with him. I was like, hey, sir. I had an element here. Had an element here. My element moved to here. This Iraqi element pushed down. He goes. They went past a limited advance. My guys didn't know who they were. Engaged him. They called the qrf. My guys got engaged by the qrf. My guys called the heavy qrf. I came down and made the connection, and he was like. And this guy was. You know, he'd been in Ramadi for six months as a battalion commander or five months or whatever it was at that time. I guess they got there in December. Yes, it'd been like four or five months. He was just awesome. And he was like, okay. He's like, we learned from that. Don't let it happen again. We got another mission to do. And I was like, roger that, sir. And so we went rejocked, went out again, did a whole nother operation, got done with that clearance sector, and again, now everything's. You know, we didn't have any more of these things happen. And then we came back, did it again, Boom, rolled out. So we end up doing clearances the whole day, engaging all kinds of enemy fighters, the whole nine yards. And then I get back once the last mission is done, because these were daytime operations, you know, other than us inserting at night. Once the sun was setting, the Iraqi soldiers can't clear it at night, so it's a daytime operation. That's why. Then I get back, and I open up my field computer, and needless to say, I had some emails and some. Some texts, you know, the Webby texts to explain that, hey, stand down. Investigation is commencing as to what happened. I'm like, yeah, roger that. So we consolidate, and we go back over to Western Ramadi Camp. Ramadi Camp Mark. What? We end up calling Camp Mark Lee. And now I'm getting ready to debrief, and my. My skipper sends me an email like. Like, hey, we'll be out there tomorrow. Be ready to debrief. And now I'm trying. So now one Iraqi soldier's dead, multiple Iraqi soldiers wounded, and one of my guys wounded. Blue on blue, dude. It's a freaking nightmare. So it's a nightmare. So I spend the next however many hours trying to figure out who is to blame for this. I'm. My assumption is someone's getting fired, right? Because you can't have a blue on blue and no one gets fired. My assumption is someone's getting fired. So that's kind of the question is who's getting fired? So I go down the list of, like, the element leader that was in charge of the Iraqi soldiers. Guess what he didn't do? He didn't keep control of those soldiers and let them go down and leave the limit of advance. The radio man that was in charge of that element that moved positions didn't tell me or anyone else where he's going. He just did it. Shooter shot a guy without doing a good pid. Like, I went down the list and was figuring out who was to blame. And there was something in my gut that felt so disgusted by my thoughts, and it. I was probably, you know, a half an hour away from when the CO arrived. And I couldn't figure out why I felt so disgusted in this debrief. And it occurred to me, like a giant slap upside my head, that the reason I felt disgusted is because I was trying to blame people for things that were my fault. Because this operation, like every operation, when you are the senior leader on the battlefield, you're in charge of everything. And every one of those mistakes that happened are because of me. They're because of me. Because I failed as a leader to convey how important it was to pass your location. I failed to convey, as a leader how important the limit of advance was. I failed to convey how important it was to keep control of those Iraqi soldiers. Those. Those things are my fault that that's happened. Not any one of those guys. And so when the commanding officer showed up and the command master chief and the investigating officer, and they're sitting there in the room with my wounded guy who's got his head bandaged up. It's Matt Hasbro. You know Matt, right?
