Jocko Podcast 148 w/ Echo Charles: "Valleys Of Death", by Bill Richardson

this is Jocko podcast number 148 with echo Charles and me Jocko willing good evening echo good evening 20 November 1950 dear mr. and mrs. Richardson I regret that I must confirm my recent telegram in which you were informed that your son Master Sergeant William J Richardson infantry has been reported missing in action in Korea since 2 November 1950 I know that added distress is caused by failure to receive any more information or details therefore I wish to assure you that at any time additional information is received it will be transmitted to you without delay the term missing in action is used only to indicate that the whereabouts or status of an individual is not immediately known it is not intended to convey the impression that the case is closed I wish to emphasize that every effort is exerted continuously to clear up the status of our personnel under battle conditions this is a difficult task as you must readily realize experience has shown that many persons reported missing in action are subsequently reported as returned to duty or being hospitalized for injuries in order to relieve financial worry on the part of the dependents of military personnel being carried in a missing in action status Congress enacted legislation legislation which continues the pay allowance and allotments of such persons until their status is definitely established permit me to extend to you my heartfelt sympathy during this period of uncertainty Sincerely Yours Edward F Witsell Major General US Army so obviously that is a letter from the government about a missing soldier this missing soldier in this case is of William Richardson and William Richardson or bill Richardson who was a part of that whole melee that unfolded in the beginning of the Korean War when the Eighth Army was caught off from the rest of coalition forces and many of those that got caught off as that retreat took place many Americans and and South Koreans as well were captured were killed or otherwise they were somehow lost or missing and this guy bill Richardson was one of those men one of those men that went missing and clearly from this letter his parents were notified about that and he wrote a book on these experiences that he went through the book is called valleys of death a memoir of the Korean War and he actually has that letter from the army to his parents inside the book which is a pretty shocking thing to see and you know these days they with with the current way they notify they send people to your house but I can't even imagine that the old days when you just get a telegram or a letter that shows up and says that your your son's been missing for three weeks or four weeks or whatever the case may be but this book I definitely there's the combat in this book is out of hand and you're gonna see that pretty quick and like every other book that we review on here obviously I can't read the whole thing but definitely this book is worth getting valleys of death a memoir of the Korean War written by Colonel William or Bill Richardson and it's a phenomenal book so with that let's dive right into it he lays out a little bit of his perspective writing the book here didn't they in the preface of the book and here we go this is not a history of the Korean War it is a down and dirty look at some of the soldiers who five years before had experienced combat in the Second World War it is the story of the men they would lead a new generation of courageous young soldiers in what would be the last true infantry war the heroes of this story are the young man of the 3rd battalion 8th Cavalry Regiment and in particular the men of the weapons platoon of L Company most of them died the story is told through my own eyes I have made a strong attempt to avoid adding to the story what others have said or what I have learned over the last 57 years but there are a few truths that are undeniable Korea was a war that neither the country nor the military was ready for and we paid a high price for a lack of readiness the disaster at Osan written about in this book was caused by a lapse of leadership from the highest echelon down to the battalion level mistakes we paid for with the blood of the most heroic men I have ever known and you know when we covered chesty puller he talked a lot about that a lot about the lack of readiness and if you remember the marine corps throwing together battalions to try and get over there and that was the whole country that was doing this and in the beginning of this book it you know he talks about he kind of introduces the characters that he was with he talks about some of the training that they had been through he was part of a squad that fired the 57 they called it which is a recoilless rifle the m18 it's a 57-millimeter recoilless rifle okay it basically looks like a bazooka kind of your traditional if you're in your mind you picture the the bazooka that's sort of what it looks like and there's a bunch of different variations of the bazooka and this is sort of one of them and in this point when we pick up the book he's kind of gone through that and they actually are now heading on Cal to California on their way to war so you know he covers the kickoff of the war and what that was like in him kind of getting back in the game and here we go they're heading to California to get on a ship to go to Korea for the war back to the book there was a gravity to it we were on the doorstep of war we all knew it and wanted to be disciplined because when the bullet started discipline could be the difference between life and death that is indeed true continuing the war in Korea had reached a crisis level American and South Korean units were fighting for their lives they'd been swept from the 38th parallel and quickly forced out of Seoul the North Korean swept south towards Pusan a port on the eastern tip of the Korean Peninsula now our troops were making their last stand along the GNAT Tong River in the West and and a line north of the tegu reaching east to the Sea of Japan and they were heading on the US troop transport ship called the Pope which had just been taken out of mothballs if you don't know this they take old old ships when they're not needed they put them up well they put them in a couple places around the country but they put them up and they called it mothballs and then they just believed these big old ships sitting there if they if they ever are needed again they can pull them out and kind of get them up to speed so that's what the Pope was it was a vessel that was pulled out of mothballs and now it was getting ready to sail overseas and these guys get on and the head overseas and then back to the book after eight days Ambar on board the ship word spread that we were getting close to Japan we do another month of training before landing in Korea we crowded along the rail looking at the shore lights in the distance the water made the lights from the city look like stars its Yokohama and were headed right for it I heard a soldier say suddenly the ship started slowly turning to the starboard and running south parallel to the shore I didn't think much of it but the next morning we were informed that we were going straight to Korea there you go that's the way the military works sometimes you think you're gonna go train for an extra month and you have a little bit more time to prepare for combat and all of a sudden that time is gone and you're going straight in straight into the combat scenario so that's why everyone out there in the military don't wait till tomorrow to train it's not gonna come or it may not come so they pull into this port in Pusan back the book the smell was unbearable the water around the dock dock at Pusan was black and slick with oil and sewage two docks up from where we were was a cattle holding area with and when they cleaned the Pens they just hosed everything into the water the pungent odor hit us as we approached the pier most of the guys stayed below out of the smell but I stayed on the deck mesmerised by the port the Eighth Army had established a perimeter to hold off the Koreans people the Korean People's Army until enough troops could arrive and organize a counter-offensive set up in August the perimeters western boundary was formed mostly by the knocked on River the North Koreans crossed the NAT Tong River and then he says I know one thing if you're defending a river and the enemy is on your side you're in trouble that evening after another dinner of sea rations I got the section together this is his his little section of troops that he's running he's in charge of I won't and here's what he tells him I want everyone to check his gear one more time we're mu moving to an assembly area north of the tegu first thing in the morning and take a moment to write home you never know when you'll get another chance and that's one of those things that that can be pronounced a pretty heavy statement when he's saying that and I'll tell you when you're in that situation if she's especially if you're young at least in my situation if someone would have told me that when I was 19 years old I would have been fired up and that's just the way it is yeah I guess I'm some people think it's crazy to think that way but I'm telling you there's a whole group of human beings in the world that they have a little genetic makeup that makes them want to go to war and so when you get told hey you know write you write your last letter home you're actually pretty fired up about it again I know that sounds completely crazy and even thing is he was a little bit older so I think for him he had had more gravity for him than it did for his boys the other thing is I think it's hard for them to have recognized even though they read in the news like how bad it was and we've heard this from other people too we've heard this from other people like you always think it's not gonna be you right yeah it's not gonna be me that gets that gets killed it's not gonna mean that's not gonna happen to me so you have that little thing in your brain to where you just think it won't happen to you so you aren't that concerned about it and the other thing is like you're you know you just got done what we just got done with World War 2 where all this heavy combat and guess what we were back to back World War champions right America was back to back World War champion so how are we gonna get into a worse situation on this little random little Asian country a little Peninsula like this won't be a factor so you had to have that in your head a little bit you had to I don't think they recognized how serious the situation was even though they were saying it my point is that even though you're getting told hey this is a dire situation and we're holding up a perimeter to try and wait for more troops to arrive so we can actually do a counter-offensive even though you hear that you're like alright that's no big deal we'll handle it in my mind again I'm trying I'm trying to transpose a nineteen year old brain on this situation yeah all right going back to the book the trains to tag you left just after noon I heard a few cheers as the train picked up momentum so there you go I'm right right the train is heading to combat and what are the boys doing they're cheering the train lumbering down the track for a while and then stopped at a siding word came back that we were near the assembly area but had to make way for a hospital train head itself the train carrying the wounded stopped for a few moments and we could see the soldiers inside IV bags hung next to litters men with bandaged arms legs and heads lined the cars the few walking wounded stared out the windows the wounded Americans had dark depressing eyes and a vacant stare a few of our guys tried to pass them cigarettes and candy from the window but they didn't react they just stared into space so there's your reality check that's what we're heading for and that's a little wake-up call I doubt that the there was cheers when the plane when the train rolled north again and they go from trains eventually they get off trains and next up is that getting into some troop transport trucks and here we go back to the book as the trucks rumbled forward we could see American troops moving south down the road they looked like ghosts frail with torn and dirty uniforms their black eyes didn't even register as we passed they had the infantryman's thousand-yard stare they were lost gone we were operating under Lieutenant General Walton H Walker's standing order to stand or die Walker the Eighth Army commander had issued the order in July before we'd arrived and here's here's the quote from from general Walker we are fighting a battle against time there will be no more retreating withdrawal or readjustment of the lines or any other term you choose there is no line behind us to which we can retreat there will be no Dunkirk there will be no Bataan a retreat to Pusan would be one of the greatest butcheries in history we must fight until the end we will fight as a team if some of us must die we will die fighting together I want everybody to understand we are going to hold this line we are going to win now that's it that's a heavy statement and if you know a little bit of the background about this Walker general Walker was in World War one and World War two and now he's in Korea and you had MacArthur at the time who was in Japan who was basically saying hey look I don't care you're gonna hold one you're gonna hold one even though Walker was thinking hey I need you know massive support I don't know if we can pull this off and the order came and he was like okay and you know I I mean I talked about this if you're getting that command you know you can't come down and say well MacArthur is telling us that we got it but I don't think we can do it no he's like ok that's what we're gonna do our best to do now as you actually study what unfolded eventually he held it as long as he could and then he started to tactically retreat to the best of his ability and so he sort of compromised he didn't just state it didn't stand against Lauder so he eventually made a more organ the best organized retreat that he could but still the the 8th army was on the run if you remember this time this is when the Marines were trying to hold the line as well so it was a very hard situation going back to the book thick black smoke rose in a steady stream on the other side of the horizon I could see only a few of the squat huts but the valley and ridges had thick scraggly bushes which made it very difficult to see any movement suddenly artillery shell and mortar rounds crashed down around us we dive into ditches that line the road and waited for the barrage to end I waved to my section and got them together before we moved out toward the outskirts of the village a smoky haze with a pungent smell of gunpowder hung over us as we started moving forward I could feel my heart beating and my breaths came quickly almost like I was running but it wasn't nerves it was adrenaline my body was on fire popping with energy back on the road a North Korean machine-gun to our right opened fire I could see tracer rounds in almost slow-motion dashing into the line of men ahead of me the soldiers ducked and dove out of the way as the rounds bit into the dirt around them time is a strange thing in combat sometimes it moves so fast that you cannot believe it and other times it is moving so slowly that you could scream we drove into the dirt and pressed ourselves flat against the ground Maccabi and Maccabee at this time as the company commander started moving the other platoons toward the guns while my section part of the weapons platoon provided supporting fire so there you go they set up a little cover move this was real combat all of my fears seemed so far away now I didn't have time to worry about how I'd react I just had to act turning back towards Walsh's gun I yelled for him to get in position and start firing at the machine guns Walsh nodded and started calling to his men like veterans they ignored the machine-gun fire and got the gun up and got ready put some fire on that hill I shouted pointing toward the North Korean Gunners with my hand Walsh pointed out the machine gun position and Gomez the assistant gunner loaded around and halt sighted in the gun and fired my section fired its first shot of the war so a couple key things that I liked about this paragraph of the you know he talks about time and the weird things that time do does during combat and that happens during any really stressful situation where you become a hyper sensitive to what's happening and in with the way it appears the way it feels is that time is actually slowing down I think the first time that I ever experienced that was in a our crash not a bad car crash but I was in a car crash and it seemed like things were moving in slow motion and I wasn't driving I was just a passenger but I was that's the first time I ever felt it and then the other thing I'd say you can you can be expecting that be expecting if you're going into combat that you might have that slow motion and it's actually a awesome thing because you can feel like you can I don't know to me it didn't feel like I was moving slow it always felt like things were moving slow and I could still it gave me more time to react it's like if you're doing jujitsu and your opponent was moving in slow motion but even though you weren't even though you couldn't move faster than them you could see it and react to it properly mm-hmm does that make sense yeah and then the other thing is if you notice the fear he's saying that he did have time to be afraid which is definitely something I felt where like once rounds are being shot you're not thinking oh I'm gonna get shot you're thinking okay we need to we need to get online we need appeal right we need to we need to make a call as opposed to and what is that that's based on in my opinion is training and if you train properly then you just react that just that's just what happens and this is why and you heard me say this at the at the muster was talking about like from a self defense perspective it's for females that are doing jujitsu for the first time I'm like hey if you've never done jujitsu before you're about to see that this is about as intimate as a sport or or this about as intimate as an activity you can possibly engage in without actually taking it to the next all right without actually having will yes without being married to the other person right so and and that's the thing if you get used to that you get used to somebody grinding on you get used to someone grabbing you and you once you get used to it then you don't have to deal with that in the moment because you are to not to deal with it you can just react so it's the same thing here these guys have trained really hard and so now once this situation is unfolding what they're doing is just reacting to it as they should they're not sitting there panicking and getting getting care not that everyone's gonna be like that because you will have some people that will immediately get that that fight-or-flight and they might roll into the flight scenario of getting down and hiding and so you might have to deal with out a little bit but be ready for any of those reactions so now the first once they get through this first big kind of firefight going on now we're going back to the book the guys were digging in I told them to set up the guns but we'd be covering our section with rifles that night we were all wired after our first firefight and it was good that we had something to do I was happy to see that everyone knew everybody was digging in with a sense of urgency I was worried about our open flank to the right I ordered the section to dig in some positions facing to the right in case we had to occupy them when we were done I told my guys to eat and rest while they got with Walsh and grey word is the North Koreans were attacking that night so the most of the you'll see throughout this book that the North Koreans and then eventually the Chinese they do their attacks during the night that's what they do that's how they roll they're there if you remember even T Fred Harvey was talking about when he was doing the island happy hopping campaign they was Americans moving in the day and then at night the Japanese would attack so a similar situation here now it's actually the opposite against the enemy because we have you know we have night vision capability so we have a huge advantage at night so that's when we normally work in and and and in the SEAL Teams that's the way that's the way we always worked we always worked at night now when we got to Ramadi and it was a lot of daytime fighting we had to fight in the day but the preferred thing is to fight at night and that's goes back to the seals in Vietnam and if you remember Roger Hayden I think it was Roger Hayden was saying when they were going out at night no one else was going out at night it was just like seals would go out at night but other than that it was only the Vietcong that were going out at night and the NVA whose but friendly forces just just seals and I know there's others there's other ones but he was saying early on it was them so now the attack comes here we go back to the book the attack started with a guttural scream the North Koreans came out of the brush in waves we could see them moving toward us like shadows muzzle flashes exploded out of the darkness there was very little aimed fire instead we were firing straight ahead and into their assigned to zones soon screams came from our wounded joined the chorus of battle cries orders and machine guns illuminating rounds from our mortar section soon lit up the area like a ballpark making the North Korean soldiers look like silhouettes on a firing range we dropped several before the flare burned out since the rounds were in short supply the mortars waited several minutes between rounds during a lull I could hear one of the engineers to our left screaming in pain and calling for his mother his sobs and screams for help landed harder than the North Korean artillery shells finally private Jones one of my young smart asses had heard enough he started to yell and scream I covered Walsh as he scrambled out to Jones he was on the bottom of halls hole crying Wallace tried to get him up but he wouldn't move I climbed out and helped Walsh dragged Jones's ass out of the foxhole you stay with hall I told Walsh snatching Jones by his shirt-collar I stumbled with him back to my foxhole he crawled in and huddled against the wall sobbing he couldn't talk even when I asked him a simple question his body heaved with every sob the engineer had finally stopped screaming and now in an ever desperate voice pleaded for someone to come get him stay in your holes I barked I was sure the North Koreans were lying in wait hoping someone would try and get him god I wished he would just die that thought sent a jolt through me Jesus Christ I didn't really mean that that poor son of a bitch my only thought now was please God bring the daylight soon when the sun's rays finally peeked over the horizon we started getting the wounded off the hill so there you go like I said there's some people that are not gonna react well and you got this kid Jones that can't handle this situation and he's done he's done what is this night - he's done and I mean obviously it doesn't help when you kind of one of your wounded guys out just ahead of you and he's screaming for help then crying for help and you can't do anything and the order from Richardson which is you know stay in your halls and again this is the same exact thing that T Fred Harvey talked about when they captured one of his guys and they the Japanese sat and tortured him it sounded like 3040 meters away they tortured this guy the whole night and the whole night T Fred Harvey's you know leaders were saying stay in your home stay in your holes were staying what if what a what a nightmare that is back to the book Walsh grabbed me and here's what Walsh says Sarge black lost it he's crying he's hugging a tree and will not respond to me black I didn't know him very well he was one of the company's problem children he'd gotten drunk after a unit picnic at Fort Devens and the military police had locked him up for being drunk and disorderly this incident confirmed that what I fought already black was going to be a constant problem I put him in Walsh's squad and we both kept on his ass making sure he was doing the right thing when I got to black he was wrapped around a tree like a vine every time a shell landed nearby he began shaking and crying no talking was going to help I just wanted to get him away from the rest of the men the section had fought well but after listening to the engineer all night they had their own nerves to contend contend with that made two men within 24 hours if this continued I would lose the whole section to fear instead of the enemy yeah so two guys gone two guys can't any and he ends up sending him to the rear cuz he just can't you can't do anything with this guy and that's a tough call to make hey if I send this guy to the rear how's that gonna affect everyone else on the team have an all-time team is gonna be thinking you know oh all I need to do is cry and scream and I'll get I'll save my ass hmm so you know in my opinion there's just if you're in these situations I think if you're scared to die it's gonna be a problem if you're scared to die it's gonna be a problem if you basically accept the fact that you you could die and and you're okay with that that's how you that's to me that's the difference between these two guys and everyone else everyone else was like okay do they want to die no I'm not saying they want to die but they recognize they can die and they're okay with it you know maybe okay was a strong word they accept it I should say they accept it whereas these two guys are scared and if you're scared to die then I think this is this is the kind of thing that happens because obviously if you're if you're like okay you know what there's a chance I could die and that's the way it is and I'm willing to take that chance so I'm gonna do my best like that's one attitude the other attitude is I don't want to die and Here I am in a situation where death is everywhere around me and that just closes in on your brain right that just closes in on your brain I can't like I can't imagine I can't imagine how that would how that would affect you psychologically if you are scared of the scared of dying and again I don't want to I'm not trying to sound like hey I want to die or troops on the front line are like yeah we don't care if we die no I'm not talking about that but to be able to psychologically say hey look I could die that's one of the possible outcomes here and okay I get it and I'm okay with that that's different than being I don't want to die out if you don't if you're if your main goal is to not die and you're in a combat situation especially a really really violent hardcore combat situation like this this isn't gonna work out good you at all yeah because you it's like when I you know when I used to work with MMA fighters if they were scared of getting knocked out yeah if that's what they were scared of it's really hard to not be to go into that cage with any level of confidence because you're scared of that one thing that might happen it's the same thing here if you're so scared of that one thing happening that's gonna possess your brain yeah and even you yeah mmm eh even if like you're I don't know if you're new to boxing or something you know and you it's like you haven't accepted the fact that you're gonna get hit yeah so every time like someone even flip you know if they throw a feint you're reacting to everything right so if you're constantly under the kind of stress yeah the stress of like bullets and all this does it's like you're what didn't we call your self preservation yeah mechanism in your brain is just firing firing firing and then after a while the thing is just like gone haywire already yeah it's gone into overdrive that's what's happening to these guys man it's horrible it's horrible to see all right back to the book the smoke and dust still hung in the air when they attacked again the first waves came with rifles behind them more soldiers followed and picked up the weapons left by the dead so that's a that's a common battle plan where we're gonna hear is then we've heard it before in in other books about the Korean War hey we're gonna send the first wave they're gonna have rifles and magazines the next wave is just gonna come and pick up the dead guys gear and use that so part of the plan is the guys dying or the planning part of them is absolutely part of the plan and not a small amount either because you know when you when when the military when the US military when you plan a big operation you plan for casualties and I can't say this about the SEAL Teams the SEAL Teams isn't like okay like we're gonna take this amount of casualties the SEAL Teams doesn't do that we're not planning to take any cows days but like you go with a big a big division going in for an airborne drop in world war two they were like okay 10% of these folks are gonna be injured on the drop that's it so yeah and these guys are just saying hey we got whatever 300 guys attacking we need about 70 guns or whatever that number is back to the book on almost every attack the North Koreans tried to slip behind our lines and cut off our avenue of retreat once they did they would pound our flanks this time the North Korean soldiers charged uphill right into the teeth of our machine guns after the third attempt they quit and we settled in for a tense night we waited all night but they didn't attack again North Koreans instead went around us and caught off the road back to Tabu dong as the fingers of the pink light shot up over the horizon we were ordered to withdraw through the Korean line this was not going to be easy so going back so they're getting called back hey there's a Korean line and they're getting told to fall back pass that line they got it they basically they're kind of surrounded even at this point and here we go he kind of expands on what it was like from his perspective and he talks a little bit about this just general Walton Walker's mobile defense which was hey basically use a thin line of people to sort of sort of hold up the enemy and then as like a screen and then the bulk of the force would be ready for a counter-attack and it was it was kind of considered a theory at this time but this is what they were trying to do and then he says for us ground troops it was confusing this game of chess had become maddening I never had a map and seldom knew the numbered designation of the hills or objectives now that's crazy that's freaking crazy and you've heard me say this the most important piece of information you can have on the battlefield is where you are mmm if you don't even have a map and he's a section leader and doesn't have a map just FYI like nowadays when we go out every single guy has a detailed battle map of the whole area of operations hmm to think that you have a section Lee that doesn't even have a map that's that's crazy and then the number designations he talks about when you know you hear about Hill 348 or whatever he doesn't even know what those are back to the book we only knew to move attack and defend unknown Hills that would stop the North Koreans from breaking through and capturing the city of Teague this was our world following orders fighting for one another being successful and somehow surviving now there they're sort of in a little lull in the fighting and one of his guys comes over the guys name is gray I'm not feeling very good I need to sit down for a few minutes Gray said his head was pounding and he felt dizzy try to come over as soon as you can are you gonna be all right yeah just give me a few minutes when we got to the other side of the ridge I turned and looked back at Grace sitting on a tree stump he had his head in his hands now we know we know what this is a symbol of right this is symbol of like a little bit of combat stress happening but he's just trying to get it together mm-hmm gray and Walsh had been great squad leaders and I hope he was okay I needed him to I needed him and his leadership I had taken off my helmet to wait to wipe away some sweat when gray and the stump suddenly disappeared in a fireball an artillery round landed right on him I was stunned and just stood on the ridge looking at the smoking crater something happens to men who see combat no matter how you try you cannot make death invisible it is there with you every moment that split second would be seared into my mind for the rest of my life but at that time we didn't have time to mourn grey we had to get dug in start digging that round has us zeroed and the barrage will be coming next I said grabbing Walsh get haul over and take charge of grey squad tell him I'll be over there to talk to him later for the rest of the day I kept the men busy anything to keep their minds off gray so let's think about that again you can see you can see that Richardson is he's legit and this is your classic situation where this horrible thing you witnessed this horrible thing everyone sees it and what does he say hey look and this is horrifying you say oh they have us is zeroed in so we're the next round it's gonna hit they're gonna hit all around us so what we need to do is dig in and we need to do it now and then he just immediately says halt go take over gray squad look gray is gone we need to move on tell him I'll be over to talk to him later back to the book what drove me more than anything was a positive outlook and the fact that my men were watching everything I did I often wondered when we were moving down the road what went through their minds this is something that every leader should be thinking about all the time is that everyone's watching you you your boys are watching you and they're judging you as harsh as that sounds that's what's happening so you know what give them a good example I'll tell you what when I see when I would see leaders in the SEAL Teams that didn't act that way that didn't act as if they were being watched all the time they've they usually slacked off like what does that look like word oh it looks like I mean yeah like hey oh no no I can be a little bit late no one's watching yeah yeah that's a big one oh it's okay oh I didn't need this piece of gear oh I'll cut the corner on this thing just all those little tiny things and not to mention when you're in a situation like this without watching you when you say hey you know what they got a style then we need to get dug in now all you got that's grace quad now get to it they're watching that too yeah and they're seeing and going okay they're judging and what are they judging their judging positive the judgment that Richardson's got his shit together and he's going to take care of them mm-hmm back to the book it had to be a lot tougher on them than on me while they had only death dwell on I had dozens of other things that I must be thinking about and prepared for what was ahead where would I be if I were a North Korean how would I react if we got hit from the right or left how was our ammunition water was the bore sighting of the guns still all right where were the men were the men taking care of their feet so he's saying this correctly so but this is a kind of a different twist is you know a lot of times you thought leaders say well I was responsible for these guys and that was a heavier weight but for him he's thinking I was busy with all these other things all these other guys had to do is think about the fact that they're about to die hmm and how that's actually harder on them do you if you go into with the perspective that everything is for you is harder and for for everything you know for me it's harder cuz I'm the leader whereas his attitude is fantastic which is look I'm I have the luxury of having other things to think about these poor guys they're just thinking about you know them being overrun as opposed to if your attitude was flipped and you were you know thinking I have it so hard but these guys have it so easy they little sense that hmm and that's not gonna end up net positive for you and your in your leadership back to the book the next North Korean assault started with screams and machine-gun fire but we beat it back with mortars in our own machine gunfire running between holes I made sure everybody was ready for the next wave Walsh had his section up and ready to fire halt was all also ready which was impressive impressive since he had just taken over from gray the second attack was worse the North Koreans were less than 50 yards from us as I fired at the shadows moving toward us I heard a frantic voice come over the radio Roy Rogers 3 the voice said in a deep southern draw I needs more firepower I need more firepower I'm about to get overrun it was lieutenant Jim Brown from the platoon that was on our left I hope to hell he got more fire support we were all hanging by a thread dead North Korean soldiers were stacking up in front of our foxholes but they kept coming wave after wave I could hear Walsh screaming at the men to stay in their holes I was frantically changing the magazine in my carbine as to the North Koreans were within 10 feet of me Walsh and Hall saw them too and opened fire cutting the North Korean soldiers down I saw another North Korean to my right and fired he staggered back and dropped to the ground I stayed low in my foxhole and kept firing straight ahead Hall and Walsh kept firing to the rear hitting the North Koreans attempting to move through our position we had them in a crossfire and in minutes our position was littered with North Korean bodies sliding a fresh magazine into my carbine I poked my head up waiting for the next wave but it never came stay alert some of them may still be alive if you if you see any movement shoot them we waited a few minutes and finally climbed out check around your holes for live Koreans and he goes on to say that we dragged the rest of the bodies away from our position and piled them to one side I didn't even look at their faces I didn't care and he talks about the fact that his medics would try and take care of the North Korean wounded soldiers that's pretty impressive back to the book as daylight peeked over at its head over the hills at all scrubby looking infantryman carrying a carbine approached me from out of the Mist as he got closer I saw the small white cross painted on his helmet he stuck out his hand as he approached chaplain Kapaun he said giving me a firm handshake where are you from chaplain Emil Kapaun from Pilsen Kansas was a Catholic father who joined the army toward the end of World War two he served in Burma in India until May 1946 he returned home and was assigned a parish in Kansas but he felt his calling was with the troops so he rejoined the army in 1948 he joined us in Korea after spending a few months in Japan his uniform was dirty and he like the rest of us needed a shave it was clear he'd spent the night up close to the fighting and not safely in the rear there was a peacefulness about him though that put me at ease a quiet confidence he seemed to care where I was from and I watched him as he spoke to the rest of the section each time he asked a soldier where he is from and gave him a firm handshake it was not long before he had us all smiling when Kapaun finished making his rounds he sat down near my foxhole and took out his pipe it was missing most of its stem what happened your pipe I asked as he filled it a sniper he said shot it out of my mouth a few days ago we both had a laugh I noticed the carbine laying across his lap I thought chaplains couldn't carry weapons he smiled and nodded if they're going to shoot at me I'm going to be ready to shoot back my section was down to eight men we received two replacements they showed up with their gear and clean uniforms one was named Jackson's one was named Jackson but I didn't catch the others name Jackson had a lot of questions about the North Koreans and where we were on the line stay close to your foxhole partner and listen to him I said I didn't see them again until the next morning we'd been attacked again but this time we were able to keep the North Koreans from our lines but not without cost three men were gone one missing and two wounded including both the replacements we were taking casualties every night and soon could no longer hold our position later that night we got orders to withdraw withdrawing in the daylight was it bad enough now we are going to attempt it at night so a couple things you're gonna hear a lot about this this chaplain Kapaun and well not a lot as you should he's got his own story that needs to be told and about what he did in his service and then you know but I tried to pull out a few sections about him and then the fact that these guys I mean they're losing guys all the time you get two replacements and they're they're gone by the next morning that's not a positive outlook on the situation so they finally get the orders to withdraw and it's funny not funny but it's interesting that they're actually not looking forward to withdrawing at night mmm you know whereas me my instinct is like I'd rather go at night right no of course but you know what if you haven't trained that way because you can train even without night vision you can train to operate at night you learn the spacing that you need to get you learn you know certain maneuvers that you do at nighttime that are easier at nighttime so night time is not something to be scared of but these guys I mean unless you haven't trained that way if you haven't trained that way man I can't even imagine what it's like because I trained so much in the dark and me when I first got in the SEAL Teams we did everything in the dark would have night vision you know we just did we just patrolled the dark how we do we had clothes for spacing you learn how to use persons silhouette in front of you you're you learn how to adapt your eyes to the dark those all these things that you can do to make you a more formidable night fighter but if you don't train that way boom you you you're you're in big trouble hmm so these guys are starting up their withdraw back to the book let's go I whispered I was nervous and one two get going before another attack Walsh standing by looked over me Sarge that's Johnson he's dead so he was too he was kicking a guy on the ground saying hey let's go and he's you know Walsh says Sarge that's Johnson he's dead I felt terrible it hurt to see another one of my men dead in the mud I didn't even know Johnson that well he was another replacin replacement and I'd only just learned his name the fact that I had little time to dwell saved me plus I knew that if I showed weakness my men might finally give in and feel sorry for themselves and I couldn't have that we needed to stick together I became stoic and would remain that way for a long time again he recognizes that his guys are looking at him there's two points there number one he recognizes that his guys are looking at him and if he breaks down he's gonna cause breakdowns and number two the fact that he had little time to dwell so what does that mean translate that to your life if something goes wrong and you decide you're gonna take a break to reflect on that thing it don't do that it's better that's like get back on the horse you know the old saying like you got to get back on the horse that's not only does that help you overcome the fear but it's better than sitting around and dwelling on it you know even if it's something not physical that you're physically afraid of still don't sit around and dwell yeah that's a bad that's a bad thing yeah like are you saying it gives you yeah like you something happens right girl breaks up with you I don't know and you take the day off from work mmm we're gonna sit down and look at the pillows yes gonna jam you up way more but you go to work and you know your minds occupied all these tasks and you know you don't have time to do all and meanwhile I'll say this your mind is still processing it right it's not like it's not like you're at work and so you're not thinking about it it's in the back and it's getting worked through your mind it's doing this job kind of getting a grip on the situation and then you get home and like instead of just going home go train go go directly to the gym you're actually kind of stoked because you're not have that pressure of your girl waiting on you at home to that country up and get home like no so you're try and get some extra rounds and so go get some extra rounds in maybe stop by that little place on the way home grab a little bite to eat you know with one of your buddies yeah and then go home and when you get home clean your room yeah you know when you get home just finished putting together the bit the bookcase or whatever do something yeah and now you're tired and now you go to bed meanwhile like I said in the background your minds been processing this and you're starting to realize like you know what it's not actually that big of a deal that she left yeah yeah you know but isn't there that I mean I wonder why this I'm sure you could kind of figure it out but you know how something like bad or traumatic or whatever will happen and then the person essentially ignores it or what evarin focus on work focus on this and then people close to home or a therapist or whatever would be like hey I'm scared I'm concerned because you haven't like yeah I think there's a dichotomy here I'm not talking about burying it right yeah yeah I want to talk about you still got to contend with it and you know at some point I'll write down like the the the protocol the break-up protocol just straight up right but and then even like the death protocol like here's what you're supposed to do now in these situations I don't have time to do any protocol right so so this to your point this can be a problem because if you're in combat and you lose someone and then you never have the time to set aside and contend with it then you get back and now you get back to America now you're your family and now you're getting a new job and you're getting out of the military in you're making all this stuff happen you never contended with what had occurred so yes you are correct if you don't ever contend with it and face it then it can turn into a problem then it turns into what we talked about with Tim Ferriss which is they tried you even you tried to bury it you didn't realize it it was a seed yeah so you've got it you got to make sure that it's not a seed that's gonna grow out of control in the darkness over there you got it you got to put the shed some light on it yeah because because that's how all right like a lot of the time like oh you you know you know my girl broke up with I don't know whatever like something traumatic and then they'll be like hey I don't want to think about it I want to focus on these are the things I don't want to think about it and they kind of bury it seems like that could happen oh and that's what I'm saying there's a balance that you have to do yeah there's a balance because you can't just bury it yeah you have to contend with it but you want to do it you what you don't want to do is go overboard and just focus 100% on I can't believe that this person's gone whether they died whether they broke up with you whether they what you know I get a little you know it's funny I get little warrior kid questions for the warrior kid podcasts of my friend is moving away how can I not be sad and it's like the same thing like people are gonna come in and out of your life and you've got to learn to contend with it and and what I'm saying is don't focus on it a hundred percent remember it contend with it but don't because we know what that gets you you just down the dot the darkness the spiral of darkness what you don't want to go down no we don't want to avoid it because then it grows yeah behind your back yeah yeah well his situation is kind of different that's more of a small picture scenario where where it's like I don't have time to dwell on my guy who this just happened him because right now is this important things going on and again this is where people get jammed up because they never contend with it they never mourn properly they never go through that process and they look up you know six months later and they go oh you know I'm I'm sad I miss my friend it's like yeah that's okay you know what you gotta take that's why you you should be able to take the protocol and just enact it when there's you know like you get home from deployment it's like okay we're going through the protocol because we look we know yeah or you lose a friend car accident whatever whatever situation you you want it comes time to enact that protocol boom you you you press play on the protocol and then you go through the motions and that gets you get you through it yeah or at least starts to get you through it because it's always gonna be there it's not like you're gonna be like oh you're always gonna remember mm-hmm but don't dwell dwell all right going back to the book it was another attack and when I say that he's actually talking about their being told that they are going to attack again and this is coming from his boss Maccabee the entire battalion is going to attack Hills 573 ridges go direct to the top of the hill K company will be on the left we will move in the center and I company on the right we will attack at daylight with no artillery or air support boom yeah I don't like that no the second and third platoons will attack a breast second on the right third on the left Richardson will follow with the 57s in the center the first Platoon will be in reserve so there's your plan but there it is what is a breast means side-by-side okay yeah and now so they're they're sort of going through and and starting to enact this plan and as they're doing this when his boys says Sarge we're getting out of here by dark right I knew the other men wouldn't speak up but I could just look in their eyes and see they were scared I just hope they couldn't see fear in my eyes we're staying here until we get orders I said finally answering Walsh in hall I spoke up loud enough for the whole section here farther down the hill marked mortar and artillery fire was heavy we could see the North Korean positions and they could see us I was hoping we were out of grenade range and too close for their - their position for them to put mortar fire on us dude what kind of situation are you in when what you're hoping for is that you're too far for grenade range and too close for mortars yeah man so that just puts you in the machine gun range basically unless you've got some kind of dead space or cover but not a good situation but you know when that's what you're hoping for outlook is not good that's your best option yeah soon instead of mortars the North Korean soldiers started sending down taunts we didn't speak the language but each word had a charge silence no one talks back I whispered and put my finger to my lips not that we knew what they were saying as the minutes and then hours ticked off I realized that slowly but surely we were moving back a foot at a time a guy would reposition and then the rest of the whole section would go off of him at this rate we might be off the hill by the end of the war I knew one thing there was no way we were staying overnight so the situation happens they start they start actually there's a fire firing starts and these guys actually start running down the hill and then they start receiving small arms fire and then he rolls into another position and there's a guy in there named Vail korte who was another experienced guy in charge of one of the other sections or one of the other elements and he comes in where's the executive officer I asked vallencourt when I caught up with him he was killed along with one of the other platoon leaders the company has regrouped and tried to come back up the hill but it was ripped apart by heavy mortar and artillery fire we lost two lieutenants and two platoons took heavy losses so that's that continues and again you got to get this book so you can get these details and not reading them all if there's the detailed combat for anyone that's in combat arms of any kind get order this book immediately because there's so much good information in it that I'm not covering so these guys they're retreating from that attack they get to like an orchard situation and there's a colonel that's in charge of the regiment and this guy Maccabee who's the company commander he comes up and here we go maccabe's kind of talking with and brings Richardson over sergeant Richard sergeant Richardson and his men were the last ones off the hill MacCabe told Colonel Johnson how your men doing the colonel asked looking over my shoulder at the men finishing up their letter to Sears that this little joke that they had made earlier okay but very tired Johnson nodded and shook my hand try and get some rest tonight he started to walk away frustrated with the attack I knew this was my chance to speak my mind and the mind of my men I want to know how many more times we were going to have to climb up a hill only did leave it and fight our way up another from my point of view we were just getting our asses kicked how are we doing it seems like we never make any headway Johnson stopped sergeant Richardson you tell your men they did a great job against great odds we have stopped the North Koreans main attack I turned away and slowly walked back toward the men I thought to myself how great Hall and higly war it was their courage and bravery that held us together as I looked at them it almost brought tears to my eyes Johnson's news had an immediate impact on my section we no longer dragged ass instead we seemed hopeful even optimistic so again this is a good point that when you're in a leadership position your little words have significant impact and you might not realize it and I experienced that a lot with leaders not only in combat or in the military but I see that with leaders in the civilian sector where they don't realize the weight that they carry and this will even be like the CEO of a company will will say something maybe it's off the cuff and it's a negative thing and it has a negative impact but they also don't realize how positive it can be when they say something positive so if you're in a leadership position everyone smile every once in a while throw out some love keep people right I'm not saying you know Lafe likes to use the word false cheerleading which is definitely yeah that's a that's a good term you know which is hey you've done a great job when you didn't do a great job and cheerleaders cheerleaders cheer pretty much no matter what just to sound yeah this is what their job is they cheered you hey good job even though you're down 47 to 0 like they don't stop right I don't think things up they just keep keep cheering keeps hearing so I guess you don't even have to say false cheerleader you just say straight chilly eight well yeah oh I guess when they're when is winning this yes then it's positive right yeah so hey let me ask you this about false cheerleading so because that came up in the mustard by the way someone thought that it was just like focusing on the positives and not the negatives and they were like that's false cheerleading where they implied that that's what and if it was like no false cheerleading is when you're cheering for someone even though they're not doing a pigeon yeah we're making statements that are factually untrue right hey echo you did a great job putting out a bunch of videos this last year yeah well that's actually factually untrue and I wouldn't be able to say that to you yes I put out a limited number of videos yeah but if you were to say hey those are real quality and not quantity like that would be fact that would be factually true - yeah yeah actually technically that's an opinion but hey okay so what about this here's my question so if well let's say okay I'm doing like this um you know 60% of my workload is great and then there's 40 that's like hey you got to change this and then I sort of just sort of downplay the 40 you tonight not meet you like my beau downplay the 40 just to encourage me whatever reason um and you really uh play that the 60 is that false cheerleading it is but there's a little bit more strategy behind this because as your leader I wouldn't only talk to you one time yeah right I'm talking to you over a period of time so what my first comment to you might be something like hey echo that 60 percent that you're over there you're crossed it out that's you're doing a great job super so you know some of the other stuff not quite there yet but but actually the first time I talked to you might be like hey you're you're crushing it you're doing awesome yeah I might of you to mention that forty percent because I'm thinking hey if this guy gets encouraged he's gonna be like yeah I'm gonna do a little bit more right and yeah that you just might pick up the slack anyways on your own accord because you're just encouraged by the whole the whole positivity that I'm giving you yeah so that's cool right well maybe it doesn't work so now I might have to come just a little bit more direct right hey I notice that you know this 60% over here that you're dominating and it's awesome well is there something with this 40% over here that's different that you know that it comes because it seems to be like a different level and it's not up to 60% is there something that's different maybe I find learning something right but I give you the opportunity well yeah it's because of this that whatever maybe we can correct it and then if that doesn't work then maybe I have to amplify or escalate a little bit more right and then it's hey man the 60% you're doing Wow awesome yeah there's there's also that 40% that when I'm looking at it I'm I'm actually wondering if it's the same guy for you to be able to do this over here and still kind of throw this in the mix to kind of yeah it doesn't make sense to me anymore I'm again my whole thing would be trying to figure out why you're slacking in that area yeah if you're doing 60% great why are you doing 40 put that let's hope there's a reason behind that yeah and so once we find out what that reason is it's like okay and so I'm gonna slowly escalate and and start until I get to the point you know if we go to six months and I've done and I've pulled out whatever obstacles in yourway because there was some obstacles on the 40 percent was like well we weren't getting that information at time okay well so now I start getting you an information at time and he said well I didn't have the resources okay well then I throw you another person to help you and you're still slacking so eventually you know I'm gonna have to come a little bit more direct and be less than man the 60% I appreciate the 40% is actually starting to hurt us mm-hmm and either you need to step it up which is what I'm hoping because I see nothing but potential in you or I might actually have to bring someone else in that can kind of handle a hundred percent you see where I'm coming from yes and it would even escalate from there so so yeah there's I don't think of things as black and white conversations like hey I just need to go in and drop the hammer today cuz I don't I don't I'd rather I'd rather have you recognize it right I'd rather have you realize that that there's a problem with that forty percent now I might say something in just omit the forty percent like when I first talked to you man there's 60 percent of this stuff already that you're doing is awesome yeah and I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're gonna straight know about other 40 percent yeah get out your ruler and get it straight sure of course the ruler but oh okay so technically yeah so your whole campaign yeah is not false cheerleading that no so it's like but but let's say you just stuck let's say that for that first one that's step one right a spot on all five steps so if you just stuck with step one I guess it depends on the reason too right so I'm like hey great this 60% is awesome and don't even mention the 40% because I don't want any conflict with that guy or I'm scared too you know confront them or I'm scared for that that conversation is what you should be realistically scared of is if you're doing if you're busting your ass to do that 60% great and all I come in do say like hey the 60% is good but the other 40% sucks I discourage you you know you're like I can't do anything right for jock so now you're not your 60% right there's a good answer you don't even get the 60% now you go down the 50% and then 40% is good and 60% back yeah I don't want that I want you to be on board with the program I want you to be like oh man I can work a little bit more and work a little bit harder discipline myself a little bit better and I could actually get 70% and then let's see what Jocko comes in here and says when he's all fired up that I did 60 but watch this yeah so this is a whole thing so thank you almost same almost that falls cheerleading I guess okay I was gonna say you could almost say if all sterling cheerleading actually has its little spot is it in a bigger can be used in a campaign but I guess technically if it is it's a bit by its very nature if it's part of a big campaign it's not false cheerleading it's just a maybe strategic move over like just think of a little kid I mean let's just break it down to the fundamental realities of life a little kid if you take a little kid that does something okay let's say the kid tries to draw a rabbit and was it look like it was really worth it right so if you say okay I'm not gonna reuse Falls cheerleading hey kid yeah that look doesn't look like a rabbit it looks like a stick you'll fail is that kid gonna draw another rabbit if you say oh I really like that you try I can see where the eyes should go yeah you know and they get a little bit can I hang this up I'm gonna hang this up on my refrigerator what does that kid wanna do now draw more does that translate directly to adults oh yes it most oh yes it does doesn't always translate horizontal of course not it doesn't trans I don't represent but because there's some people that are of course there's some people are just trying to skate and do the minimum and if you say like hey good job you're like okay cool thanks no I'm just gonna keep doing whatever you told me but if you're you know forget again for an extra teacher core in a campaign we're trying to make things happen it's like yeah you know what hmm hey echo man that stuff figure the first time you ever made a video yeah imagine if I said you know I mean decent work you know not exactly i grabbing though would you been excited to make more videos probably yeah probably not yeah I mean you'd probably like okay well whatever I guess maybe this isn't for me or maybe I won't make videos for this guy yeah for this guy that's you know but if I was like oh man I really like to wait that was some good affair that wasn't you know what I mean yeah then you go oh yeah I'm like he's in the game with me well son we're team we're not against each other yeah so I'm just trying to unify things and bring things together yeah I might even come back to you to improve myself more with yes a way ahead that yeah we're a team now yeah that's a good way to do my best leaders that I had all I wanted to do is do better for them they and they never they might give me critique but it was like the kind of critique that makes you feel guilty about being alive wait a minute I can't really they like this you know I wish you know if we could do this a little bit more man that would be really nice and like calm and then you have to also remember that people have different levels of sensitivities right yeah because for you like especially when it's something that they were deeply care about yeah when you critique them there's almost no one that takes that critique well right oh you want to tell me about oh you want tell me about whatever I did this drawing like a little kid right the kid tries to do good drawing you know you tell him that the drawings no good that breaks their heart yeah evil yeah so you're right is that false cheerleading no that's part of a campaign plan is it good if the kid draws a stick and you're like that's the most amazing drawing I've ever seen well now what's this is to Leif's point if you kid draws a stick and supposed to be a rabbit and you go that's the most amazing rabbit I've ever seen drawn now let me ask you this is that kid gonna try and improve at all no and he'll probably not take criticism because they start getting used to like never having everything I do is great and I think that one applies more to adults when you say that doing adult like man that's the best thing I've ever seen they're like oh yeah you know they're a little bit more egotist yeah a little bit more yeah little kids are like well it kind of surprised if you tell them that you're Plus they wouldn't really believe you okay look I'm only six but that's a stick as far as I'm concerned I tried to make a rabbit I got I got an ear on there anyways you know after that don't know yeah yeah I could see that - yes so there you go meanwhile back in Korea here's what's going on they're under another attack it is you can see there's a little pattern developing it's just we're getting attacked we're getting attacked we're getting attacked we're getting attacked that's what's going on we could see the North Koreans pouring over the hill the North Korean artillery fire followed K company down the hill the ground shook like an earthquake as the rounds walked towards us I hugged the bottom of the side of the hole all I could think about was around landing straight on top of me if that happened I'd never know I pulled my helmet and gritted my teeth I was starting to lose it now again this is just continued their continuing getting hammered and Walsh comes over are we going to stay goddammit just stay in these holes until I tell you differently I raced back to my hole on the way a young lieutenant ran by me he was scared he was so scared his voice cracked when he screamed at me get out of here fall back who the hell are you I barked there were men still trying to get back and if we left they wouldn't have a chance in hell so he his group is trying to provide cover fire for the groups that are now retreating he didn't stop and I never got his name he just yelled to fall back you're full of shit I yelled at him we can't leave here we have to help these men yeah this is the he's keeping order in this retreat several other members of K company passed me following the lieutenant I saw some of my men getting out of their holes you sons of bitches get back in your goddamn holes I cook I yelled get back they scrambled back rounds started to crash around us again I could hear the K company men scream as shrapnel shower them slicing into their skin larger pieces punched holes in their chests or sheared off their limbs their screams filled in the silence between the crashes of artillery shells I was not going to be able to control this fucking situation much longer Walsh just stared at me with a vacant look don't lose it now I thought another barrage landed nearby I put my head down my ears started ringing smoke was down on the bottom of the hole again the artillery fire finally stopped the screaming for the medics began go check your men I told wall shaking him out of his stupor I headed over to Hall's position he had the same vacant look as Walsh men from Cake Company were moving down the ridge carrying the wounded everybody was bleeding or bandaged I kept my men focused on the hill waiting for the North Koreans to counter-attack but they never came neither did the artillery it wasn't long and I was told to withdraw off the hill he talks about the Korean augmentation to the US Army or at KATUSA program k80 USA so Korean augmentation to the US Army and this was like soldiers he describes it here KATUSA soldiers were young men picked up in larger cities given a couple weeks training in son assigned to the American units despite the language barriers the koreans fell right in line with the rest of us when we marched they kept up when we fought they stood their ground - over the next few days we continued to attack to the west it was a knock-down drag-out slugfest the North Koreans attacked us with abandon and tried to overwhelm us with numbers they were fanatical one regimental commander said after the war that the North Koreans had no consideration for the loss of life they have no hesitancy in losing 500 lives to gain a small piece of ground it took us three more days to take two more North Korean positions we uncovered large ammunition caches and killed 72 and captured 200 all at a great price I lost two more men and the company suffered a total of four killed with 13 wounded the loss has reduced our strength to around 53 men but the enemy was now on the run and we held the river river lined the morale went sky-high so they kind of turned the tables a little bit as they went on the attack and the counter-offensive and then they're continuing to push and as they're as they're heading down the road all of a sudden North Korean machine guns started spraying the road they had us in the open the North Koreans had us pinned down and unable to push into the village which is what their what their objective was i heard the rumbling first peeking over the dike i saw 3 russian-made t-34 tanks I could tell they were t-34s because of the narrow turret that sat on top of the almost pyramid-shaped body the tanks had led the charge against Nazi Germany in World War 2 the t-34 dominated the German tanks because the Russian tanks could race over the deep mud and snow of the Eastern Front after the war the Soviet sold them to their communist allies the North Korean invasion was spearheaded by t-34 tanks the North Korean lead tech was almost on us it stopped and the main guns started to slowly turn in our direction I looked at the road and saw a bazooka gunner jump out of the rice paddy run to the middle of the road stomp shoulder the tube aiming at the tank I thought this guy must have nerves of steel it was a modern-day David and Goliath Wham the rocket smashed into the tank and bounced off the goddamn thing was a dud or the gunner was too close and the Rockets did not have time to arm a burst from the tank's machine gun opened up and quickly cut the American gunner down I scrambled down the muddy Dyke screaming at he glee to get to his gun up machine gun rounds from the tanks gunner sprayed me with mud go for the treads I screamed I Mashti Lee's assistant gunner slide around under the 57 on his shoulder and tapped him on the helmet I slid to a stop and buried my head in my hands I felt the concussion before I heard the round race by and hit the tank the arm of Hulk tried to shake off the blast but when it moved I watched the tread roll off the wheels the turret still worked and I could see it moved back and forth searching for targets staying out of the North Korean sights I motioned to Walsh to get his gun on the second tank in minutes I heard another blast from the 57 soon the two tanks unable to get there by their crippled mate reversed and headed back to the village just taking out tanks with bazookas unbelievable the next morning we started out toward the hill in the village a thick early morning fog hung low over the rice paddies visibility was zero we were stiff wet and very anxious as we started moving toward the objective up ahead I saw soldiers walk through the North Korean positions and continue toward the village climbing like the last dike we ran up on a road covered in North Korean bodies they were in a heap torn apart by shrapnel mules and Boake and broken equipment sat motionless nearby body parts were strewn on both sides of the road I saw men lying dead and still chained to the machine guns they were pulling as the fog lifted the sight became even more gruesome our artillery had caught them trying to withdraw the same scene played over and over again as we moved up the road into the village we didn't face a fight taking this position every mile we moved north my outlook changed the whole section looked and acted more self-confident when we got into a fight we enjoyed it the killing was quickly becoming revenge rather than the sucess 'ti rather than necessity to gain ground and drive the North Koreans out we were still being killed only now we were the aggressors and they were dying in their holes knew we were better fighters and had held them under tremendous odds now the tables were turned and they did not have the will or resolve to accomplish what we had in Pusan during the darkest days of summer so the Momentum's kind of changed and these guys are feeling feeling good about the whole situation as they and there's something good there's something that feels good about being on offense right being on offenses is where we want to be we don't want to be on defense and this confidence continues as they continue to advance early the next morning we were back on foot advancing toward the North Koreans behind the three American tanks we were receiving heavy heavy artillery fire and tried to stay close to the tanks hoping the armor would shield us from the shrapnel flying through the air one second I was looking back to make sure Walsh's squad was keeping up and the next I was stunned a shell landed on the tank sending shrapnel and fired into the air the explosion was deafening and I stumbled back dazed falling down in the tracks behind the tank I saw the crew crawling out of the escape hatch machine gun fire was kicking up dirt all around me as I hugged the ground I could see two tankers lying under the tank they were wounded and couldn't crawl away from the Hulk Walsh I screamed help me get these guys a couple of artillery rounds net landed on the road I felt a sharp hop pain in my left shoulder you all right Walsh asked as he raced to my side yeah I said shaking my head trying to reassure him I didn't have time to worry about it the machine-gun rounds pinged off the armor as I crawled underneath the tank and grabbed one of the tankers by his collar pain shot through my arm and my shoulder felt hot and weak I let go but hung on with my good hand Walsh grabbed the other tanker and we dragged the pair into a nearby ditch medic medic I screamed so this again there's a slight heroism after heroism after heroism in this book and I brought bring up some of them but I don't bring up all of them because we just don't have I'm not gonna read the whole book you got a bye book continuing I squatted down and tried to take off my gear and jacket so the medic could get to the wound because I obviously got hit in the shoulder my left hand shook as I peeled off the shirt now a few shades darker from the blood the medic arrived with Walsh he wiped away the blood with a wad of gauze and started to bandage the gash he was on the back side of my shoulder and I couldn't see the wound a few pieces of shrapnel the medic said you can move it right probably nothing torn or broken so now he's you know he's wounded it's not too severe not exactly a good deal though you know you think about you you think about you're in an athletic competition which is what this is and on top of that there's a massive amount of mental stress and on top of that you got to make decisions and on top of that you get you get a big gash in your shoulder hmm a couple days later we were we sat overlooking the 38th parallel we'd push the North Koreans back now and awaited orders to attack sitting in my foxhole I watched as the full moon began to rise I got the feeling that there was something safe and secure as it washed and gently over us I felt like God was protecting us or surely trying to help at least he'd kept me alive even though my shoulder throbbed if only we were back home we could all go to sleep under the moon's calming light and wake up safe to the warmth of the Sun now that shoulder wound that he kind of blew off actually isn't is not all that good he starts getting a little uh starts getting a little infection and it passes out from it I woke up this time they carried me back to the battalions aid station the medics set the stretcher on a dirt floor doctor comes in you're lucky had you waited and no longer the infection would have spread some time goes by the next day I felt fine the doctors had me on a jello diet so when the doctor came on came on his rounds I told him I wanted to leave I need to go back to my unit I said typical fashion the of the American Doughboy the American grunt they get wounded what do they want to do they want to go back they want to go back with their team and that's exactly what he what he does and a couple days later he gets back with his unit and of course what are they doing they're going on attack and as they're going on attack back to the book all of a sudden there was a thunderous roar as an artillery barrage hit us I was blown straight up in the air my feet were over my head I came down on my shoulder in my head the mud soften the blow grabbing my helmet I yelled for my section to run forward out of the Killzone three guys in front of me and two behind me were wounded I could hear the moaning as they clutch their stomachs and legs I checked myself I had escaped without a scratch medics hurried to the down men I I looked back and saw Healy standing days to get moving I yelled he looked at me with a funny expression on his face and looked down at his waist he had been hit by shrapnel in the stomach I could see the blood soaking through his fatigues I'm hit wretch get down I said and I hollered medic he fell to his knees and rolled over onto his back I was torn I wanted to run to him but I had to keep the rest of the section moving it was one of those choices that you never want to make I saw the medics coming and turned to join the other men good luck buddy see you later I screamed over my shoulder I couldn't look back but I knew I probably never see Healy again a stomach wound I thought Jesus Christ I hope he makes it I wanted to sit down and cry but this was not the time or place for that I had damn near lost a whole squad there was only one way to go at the hill so now they're trying to take the hill there's only one way to go at the hill and it was straightforward I looked across the open space we were going to cross there was little cover this was going to be tough there was no time to dwell on he glee or our dwindling numbers the longer we sat behind the railroad embankment the tougher it would be to get started Brahms er was waiting to get artillery support the same guys I had dinner with I hope they remembered what I told them and come through leaning back against the embankment I saw Alan and the Korean hustling across the field each carrying two pack boards with ammo get ready Brahms er said I gripped my rifle and closed my eyes my mind knew going forward was crazy but I willed my legs to move soon I was running and leading the rest of the section across the paddies mortar and artillery fire crashed around me but I didn't notice I only saw the flashes of the North Korean machineguns ahead of me I stayed close to Mac I could hear him hollering too at his squad to move to my right I saw that Walsh was right beside us he had his squad moving it all seemed almost normal it was just another day another attack so you're getting mortar and artillery fire crashing all around you but you're not paying attention that because you're really paying attention to the damn muzzle flashes from the Korean machine guns that are right in front of you when they may end up pulling off that attack and again get the book so you can get some of those details when he attacks complete he writes I was not a religious person but I felt like one that day I gave thanks with Walsh for our gift of life after services that evening we turned in our basic load of ammunition another sure sign that it was over so just to rehash that last little statement there turning in their ammunition because they're getting a positive feeling like they've been doing this good fighting they've been on the pursuit and they were kind of on the defensive in the beginning they go back on the counter-attack and now they're feeling pretty good and now they they get hey you know what you can turn in your ammunition think about that but back to the book that night we got orders to move but not home we were headed north to the town of Busan I was a corporal when we arrived in Korea now less than 67 days later I was going to be a master sergeant the Army's highest noncommissioned officers rank the promotion's couldn't have come at a better time with the war winding down I was sure this would be the last of the fast promotions so he's actually again these guys think that they're doing a good job and they kind of think that things are heading in their direction and yeah 1950 I mean we know just from history that this war is not even close to over yet and yeah but that's the weather feeling and can you imagine I mean he's he's at the highest ease of ease at peace of Master Sergeant right now 67 days he got promoted through all the ranks that's how many guys that's how many guys were wounded her killed that they needed him to be promoted to run these units so they now get sent into a position where they're holding a bridge and while they're holding this bridge he sends a couple guys out on recon to take a look around and they come back and he says what the hell is that I asked him it's just an old glove and a shovel it's all wet it's probably been there for weeks he said in a defiant tone and that's one of the guys that were on the recon talking that was on the recon talking it didn't look like any glove I had seen before it was large and padded what else did you find I shot back just some old positions nothing to worry about I was a little concerned now and continued to quiz him on how many holes there were up there around five or six the sergeant said was the dirt wet or dry goddamn and I don't know it was pitch black I'm telling you there's nothing up on that fucking hill the smog sergeant snapped at me you can guess what's coming you find a shovel up there guess what's going on there digging in that's what's going on there digging in and these gloves these kind of heavy gloves you know probably resupply from the Chinese that's why I didn't recognize them so they hadn't really encountered the Chinese yet that we're about to attack in massive numbers back to the book around 4:00 a.m. the hill erupted four machine guns from the high hills on the south end of the bridge opened up two guns cross firing on each end of the bridge the tracers from the machine gun were skipping off the concrete like firecrackers my guys quickly man the 57 recoilless rifle and got off a few rounds it did little immediately we started getting hit with mortar fire my radio was shot up and I tried to get the company on the landline but it was out to my mind was on my men I'd lost to in the opening barrage and I had lost track of the two men on the south side of the bridge this attack didn't make sense too much firepower for a few stragglers so he's again looking back to the recon report that he got it looked like the 4th of July fireworks as tracers skipped off the concrete but I soon realized that some of the fire was coming from our left flank Jesus Christ it was our own company firing at us so we got a little blue on blue going down which again for folks that are in the military blue on blue is a real thing and if you don't pay attention and you don't plan for it can absolutely happen to you know life was saying that the other day if you would have asked him before we went on deployment one of the chances that you're involved in a blue on blue situation the Folio non-deployment layman like no chance that would never happen to us and during deployment you know there was there was the I think we talked about three blue on blue possibilities well one real and then two possibilities in the in extreme ownership and we know one is the opening story of blue on blue one is Lafe with Chris Kyle who's getting ready to take a shot and you know life is basically getting asked hey take that guy out and leave puts the brakes on it it turns out being friendly US Army soldiers and then one where I got guys on the rooftop of a building and there's a Bradley Fighting Vehicle that's wanting to engage it with 25 millimeter chain gun and they're looking they're reporting that they're looking at one building but they're actually looking and I'm and all indications are yes you can engage those are enemy snipers on that rooftop take him out but on the same block a few buildings down it was actually considered was actually like probably a couple blocks away was my guys and that gunner in that Bradley that was reporting it he just got a little bit a little bit off on which building was which building oh yeah so he was actually pointing at one building and just thought he was yes so he's looking through they have really good imagery on those buildings especially the thermo so you can see like white-hot and he's looking at a building down this long street and he's reporting I don't write for you what the buildings were but the building he's you know reporting building 50 I got enemy any personnel on the rooftop and my guys were in building 100 yeah so he's asking does anyone have any true you know any friendly troops in building 50 no no one has any troops in building 50 oh there's there's enemy with with scoped weapons there and everyone's thinking hey this is the sniper that's been killing our guys by the way right let's take him out and then looking at via and what I actually told him to do I was like hey before and and the reason I was heads up was because we had blue on blue I knew that this was a possibility so I said count the buildings from your intersection up to the target building mhm and so that it just went quiet for a little while and he comes back as a standby because he caught himself you know keys you can see on the battle map it's like okay one two three four five six seven and that's what whatever he gets to 12 he's like oh wait I'm in the wrong spot and you realized it says I got you know so stood him down but yeah you don't want to be on a rooftop getting hit with 50 or 25 millimeter chain gun from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle it's not gonna be a good situation no at all and so the same things going on here you got firefight going on at night you got troops moving around and these guys are getting lit up by their own men all kinds of ways tactically to deconflict these things but you have to pay attention to and one of the things you have to do is you have to have the humility to recognize that it can actually happen yeah back to the book the Koreans were all over the place Mac was hit worse than he's thought I could feel his back it was drenched in blood he started to choke I talked to him but he didn't answer I laid him down and at the same time hollered to the rest of the men to pull in tighter around the road I had four men left our two jeeps were shot up one was on fire I knew at this point we could not hold the bridge get the breach get the breach block from the 57 and throw it in the river I yelled to my guys so so that's sort of like that's like one of those when you make that call right there which is disable our weapon permanently because we're gonna not make it we don't want the enemy to be able to use this when they capture it in a matter of minutes that's what he's saying his you know get the breach block out and throw it in the river and then of course the North Koreans attacked again and got within 20 feet before we stopped them I rushed to the other side of the road and got slammed to the ground from an explosion confused I stumbled into a nearby ditch my head was ringing I checked Mac he was dead and so were the other two men on his side of the road with only two men left we had to leave the bridge I shoved a grenade in the breech of the 57 the grenade exploded destroying the gun and we started pushing up the ditch away from the bridge I couldn't see or hear anything we had not gone very far when the pointman told me someone was coming down the ditch toward us I took a knee and reread eat my rifle hold your fire until they get closer I whispered the point man yelled quickly back Sarge their own guys to two of them from battalion come over here what's going on I barked at them the men looked crazed both were talking a mile a minute and I tried to settle them down look take it easy I told them slowly tell me what you know the battalion got hit they were in the headquarters before we knew it the whole damn place was a mess one of the soldiers said they were dead and wounded all over everything was shot up it looked like an artillery barrage made a direct hit it was total chaos what are you two trying to do I asked they said they were trying to make contact with someone Sarge I'm Taylor one of Walsh's men the other guy is from 1st battalion in the dark I didn't recognize him where's Walsh they're all dead Sarge Taylor said so they make movement towards that battalion headquarters area and there's still some friendlies there we stumbled into the battalion headquarters area and I introduced myself and asked Jones what the situation was it was not good there were 30 or 40 wounded her dead doc Anderson and the chaplain and are in the command post trying to take care of the wounded Jones thought the battalion commander was dead they just walked in on them and shot up the whole damn place so at this point they kind of Ziggy out of there into a tree line and we got into the wood line and threw ourselves to the ground completely exhausted and from there the chaplain moved on to another position but before he left he told me we were fighting the Chinese we'd heard rumors about the Chinese soldiers coming over the border that pretty much confirmed what I had fought for the last couple of hours Jones had basically told me when he mentioned that there quilted uniform jackets looked much different than the North Koreans first lieutenant Phil Peterson and Walt Mayo had also scrambled into our perimeter both officers were artillery forward observers but had lost their radios in the confusion they've gotten reports hours before the attack that the Chinese were in the area the Chinese soldiered soldiers had crossed the yellow to protect electrical generators along the river that night Peterson had seen a Chinese prisoner in his quilted jacket but had no idea the danger we were in they'd been ordered back to the battalion and then tried to escape when artillery unit tried to save their own howitzers but the Chinese had already cut the road we were trapped for the rest of the day we set up our defenses we knew the Chinese would come for us that night so that's it right now they're there surrounded and they set up a perimeter to the best of their ability and they got a bunch of wounded they're low on ammunition they're low on food too low on water and so a perimeter is basically for those that don't know you set up 360-degree security perimeter you dig some foxholes you put machine guns pointing out it's your it's your last stand the situation now it doesn't always the last stand because when you're on a normal Patrol you set up a perimeter anytime you stop you set up 360-degree security and in this situation that's what they're doing they're set up their perimeter to the best of their ability with what they've got left and then there's a little command post in the center of the perimeter and here we go back to the book inside the command post I knew what the officers were talking about it was a forbidden subject what worried what were we going to do with the wounded in the terrible final moat moment that everyone knew was coming the battalion surgeon doc Anderson and the chaplain were doing what they could for about 40 wounded men but we couldn't hold out for long without a relief column meaning people coming to back them up and if we had to run the wounded officers were going to have to decide whether or not to leave themselves and the other wounded men behind to the mercies of the enemy and once he kind of hears that inside the center of the perimeter during the at the command post there he goes back out to his edge of the perimeter and then here we go back to look I saw a group of 20 men running right at us they were Americans and were hollering and waving at us I prayed they were they were the lead element of a relief column because of course they're hearing rumors that someone's gonna come there's big there's friendlies on the way that's what they're getting they're kind of and it I wasn't clear where they were getting those rumors from or whether they were just assuming like hey we're here Americans are gonna come to get us they've got to be sending a relief battalion we just need to hang on so that's what he's saying I prayed that they were the lead element of a relief column the other guys were cheering them on as they made the short dash to our trench they slid inside their Jeff's chest heaving what unit are you guys from I asked second of the eighth an officer said between deep breaths the stragglers pushed by us and collapsed in the center of the perimeter everyone's morale sank lower than whale shit the energy and excitement seemed to deflate from the men in the trench and all at once their heads hung and shoulders dipped these guys weren't a relief column they were just more stragglers from the second battalion I couldn't shake the thought that no one was coming for us there's a soldier that he talks about a Polish guy I mean American guy but of Polish descent last names of Wallach it's later that day why so now they're in their perimeter later that day Wallach sent for me I walked across the west side of the perimeter and saw him standing near a machine gun positioned he looked concerned and started pointing out towards what looked like an open field look over there he said I watched where he was pointing I didn't see anything I looked at him and shrugged my soldiers no keep looking he said this time staring intently then I saw it a faint shovel full of dirt flying right into the air the little bastards were digging a trench there were about a half dozen or so digging a path right for us our machine guns had been keeping them at a distance but when their trench was done they could move under cover right up to the edge of our trenches so that's a determined enemy they're just gonna spend all day digging toward you mm-hmm as clandestine as they can but they can only keep it so clandestine and no one the only only one soldier noticed back to the book sunset was a bad time night always meant another attack it started with a probe a few Chinese soldiers would move up to the perimeter followed by a short and violent firefight shortly after the probe the artillery and mortar fire would start followed by the demonic ball of brass bugles and whistles as the Chinese infantry attacked and now he's talking about his guys the men looked at me with weary and tired eyes all of us had scruffy beards and our skin was caked with mud and blood none of the soldiers could look at me they knew that they wouldn't survive unless they got up and fought but they just sat there they were not cowards just frozen by fear for some this was their first taste of combat boys who overnight were forced to become men I could only imagine the terror they must have been through must have been going through you've got two choices I yelled get up and get to the line or I'll shoot you that shocked them into action I don't think they thought I would shoot them I'd no sooner finished prodding the men out of their interior holes than one hell of a fight took place at the battalion command post I knew there were mostly wounded soldiers there and I feared for Jones the lone man on the machine-gun but I had my own problems the bugles and whistles broke the silence and the Chinese rushed the east side of our perimeter they came in waves straight into our fire as quickly as they fell more appeared they moved into our fire like they were possessed I raced from trench to trench moving men where the Chinese concentrated their attack when their attack on the east side slowed they launched an attack on the west side although we were dug in our casualties were mounting I kept moving men to wear the most Chinese were concentrated the attack slowed down but it was not long before they began an assault on the west side of the perimeter now they get this idea as these attacks are taking place there's these trucks that were their kind of abandoned trucks and they figure it's nighttime if they can set these trucks on fire then it'll allow them to see the enemy and so that's what they do they want once one of these attacks starts they say shot the gas tanks and then shot tracers until all the vehicles were on fire when the Chinese infantrymen ran past we could see them silhouetted against the light it was a shooting gallery we cut down the first wave only to watch the next ones climb over their comrades and keep coming we mowed down the next wave but they still kept coming for the rest of the night the Chinese came at us like waves to the shore but each time we stopped them they never reached the perimeter the next morning we took stock of our situation water and food were a problem but ammunition and the wounded were our biggest concern we had 85 able-bodied men left out of about 200 the rest were dead or wounded we were also out of morphine and the screams of the wounded were starting to have an impact on the rest of the men I could see in their eyes a tired Haggard look a relief calm is calling for us they'll get through today I told the men as I walked the line I said it over and over again hoping to calm them and as I realized in hindsight probably hoping to convince myself I hope to hell I was right now this is just a little report again about chaplain Kapaun and he gets a report richardson gets a report and it says this the doc said that when the Chinese got into the dugout chaplain Kapaun stopped them from killing all the wounded by surrendering himself the Chinese took him and 15 of the walking wounded including my old company commander captain Maccabee what coupon did was heroic stopping the Chinese when he left he was carrying sergeant Miller so chaplain Kapaun just but once again heroic actions saving the lives of these guys before they were slaughtered by the Chinese by surrendering himself when I got back I organized about a dozen guys to follow me out of the perimeter and gather up some of the Chinese weapons and ammunition we were out of almost everything but lying in front of us were weapons and ammunition including much-needed grenades before we left I told the men to be careful because some of the Chinese might still be alive it was gruesome business but the only solution to our most pressing problem crawling over piles of dead Chinese the smell was overpowering at time I could hear gasp seep out of the decaying corpses I could hear men behind me gag and throw up yeah so this is like an this is like you you've got to sit around you've got a you gotta imagine what this is like that they are vid Chinese attackers are literally stacked and piled on top of one another and you're so low that you have to go out and gather weapons and ammunition from them and as you're doing that they're bloated bodies are giving off gases and it's that smells so horrible and the whole scene is so horrific that your men are dry heaving and throwing up as you're trying to do this back to the book for the rest of the morning we passed out our new trove of ammunition and dug in deeper as we worked I heard the faint buzz of an airplane overhead the spotter plane that had dropped bags of medical supplies was back so I skipped over this part but there was a they got some medical supplies from a little plane and this time instead of dropping supplies it dropped the message and this time the pilot dropped it on target guru Goro opened the message that's one of the one of the other guys Goro I hope I'm pronouncing that right gir oh you ex guro open the message I saw the caller leave his face I knew what the message said before he told me we were on our own no relief column was on its way our new order was simple we needed to get back to friendly lines the best way we could while Goro got the officers together I gathered up a few of the sergeants and we had a meeting well we are on our own that message told us to get back the best way we can I told the sergeants Wallach was the first one to speak up we can't just leave the wounded what the hell else are we going to do a sergeant I didn't recognize said the meeting was tense I realized that what I had been telling them was going to happen wasn't going to no relief no rescue and if we stayed in this hellhole we would all die I don't think we didn't keep the Chinese out of the perimeter for one for more than one more night if we can even do that I said there was silence we were facing death but bravery is a funny thing it comes in all shapes and sizes and appears in men you at least expect it from most of us didn't know one another but we fought hard together like we were blood brothers what do you say about staying one more night maybe somehow they'll break through to us tomorrow I said tomorrow we talk about the wounded Wallach nodded his head and looked at the others I'm for staying one more night everyone quickly agreed no one wanted to leave the wounded I told grow the way the men felt and after he meant with Brahms er male and Peterson they all agreed no one was comfortable leaving our wounded or the wounded nearby in the battalion headquarters the Chinese that night the Chinese attacked three times and three times we held but not without suffering more casualties after the last attack I literally fell into a hole near the center of the perimeter I was fighting a losing battle against sleep I could feel myself slipping away my body felt numb damp and heavy there was no noise no sound I was paralyzed and the harder I tried to move the more I felt the more my body felt like stone I tried to scream nothing I tried harder I couldn't make a sound bugles in the distance cleared my hazy mind I could hear the burp burp of Chinese submachine guns but the cup but not the constant rattle of our own machine gun closest to me I instantly got a sick feeling I bolted out of the trench and crawled toward the machine gun position and fell into the hole headfirst the gunner was wounded and the assistant gunner was trying to put the gun back into action there was ammo but the gun was jammed I racked it back nothing the head space was screwed up the Chinese were the were the the Chinese were within 20 yards of us and I was screaming for the men to keep firing I pulled the gun into the hole and started to take it apart I adjusted the head space put the barrel and chamber in alignment and reassembled it the a gunner the assistant gunner laid the ammo belt in and slapped the cover down I racked the bolt back and pulled the trigger the gun jumped back to life the fire immediately had an impact and drove a wedge into the advancing soldiers the first book the first burst took out half a dozen some of the wounded and dead Chinese fell into our trenches others crumbled in a heap near the edge close enough that we could reach out and touch them I looked down and saw that the gunner was dead the a gunner was hit in the arms and I could see blood staining his fatigue jacket but he kept firing his rifle and replacing ammo belts when the machine gun went dry just as fast as it started the attack ended there was some sporadic firing from the other side of the perimeter a couple of guys close to the gun position came over to me and took over as I headed back to my hole I crawled over several dead American and Chinese every trench and holes seemed to be filled with wounded men screaming and crying for their mothers always their mothers we had an added problem now since some of the wounded wore Chinese soldiers the dead were not a problem we just pushed them out in front of the trench but the wounded we had to help if we could the medics did their best but we barely had enough for own men the Chinese were all scared to death crying and moaning they were the enemy but they were also soldiers just like us and it was difficult to see them that way the next morning bronzer and Goro called me over to them the two artillery lieutenants Mayo and Peterson were also there Goro said what we all knew we can't stay here any longer there is no doubt in my mind that the Chinese will overrun us tonight he said we need to find a way out Willie will you lead a Patrol lieutenants mayo and Peterson have already volunteered to go I looked at the lieutenant's and nodded my head yes so they're gonna try and find a way out of this perimeter and they're going to do a little reconnaissance tonight or now to try and figure out their route so that then later they can get out of there and come up with a plan to get out of there back to the book as we didn't so they're crawling down a trench to try and look for the way out as we crawl down the trench toward the east side word got out that we were going on Patrol Peterson crawled by a badly wounded radio operator lieutenant Peterson where are you going looking for a way out he said lieutenant Peterson the radio operator pleaded please don't leave me here please don't leave me you can't leave me here for them to get me Peterson looked shaken and I urged us forward I heard him say he was sorry as we crawled off others reached out to us patted us on the back and wished us good luck as we moved down the riverbed the Chinese soldiers grabbed at us and held out cops begging for water I took my canteen and turned it upside down to show them that we had no water so there's the enemy they're also wounded laying in these trenches it's just a total bloodbath and the Chinese soldiers are asking these Americans and he can even imagine what these guys look like at this point they've been fighting for weeks on end they have no water they've had no food they're out of ammunition they're covered in blue I mean Richardson's actually wounded and a sorry state they're in you got the Chinese soldiers that are even worse State begging for water so these guys find a route and I want to make it sound like they found some easy escape route that's gonna work they found a possible way of getting out of this perimeter and when they get back they they come back and put out the word like okay this is what we're gonna try and do and to grow talk and he says we move at 1700 before the Chinese move in guro said word was passed to all able-bodied men they were told to make sure that they took what ammunition they had left I got a burp gun and some ammo the wounded man knew what was happening some broke down cried and begged us not to leave please dear God take us one soldier begged me grabbing at my shirt don't leave us to the Chinese others just watched in silence they knew they'd slow us down they also knew that they'd be dead soon they simply asked that we come back for them but I knew we were leaving them to die or worse get captured I knew my orders and agreed with them but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was leaving so many good men men who'd fought well only to be left behind to die I wasn't sure I could ever forget this this was the hardest thing I had done in my short lifetime this is your classic scenario of a what do we do we do you know we leave no man behind so then what's gonna happen if they do that is everyone is going to die and they make the decision now we could have a theoretical debate on well maybe if they fought it out maybe if they stuck together maybe they could defeat the Chinese that are surrounding them in my estimation this is wrong and you can see these guys already stayed longer they've already done everything that they can they're out of ammunition they're surrounded by Chinese the Chinese have unlimited number of men that are literally in piles around them and they know that if they are going to if anyone is going to survive then they need to make a break for it hmm and again it's theoretical for us to do sitting here it's hypothetical we could say all we'd stay and fight we could say whatever you want to say right now you're not in that position so now they leave at around five o'clock they start making a move a few hours into the march that rain turned into a downpour in minutes we were soaked to the skin the temperature was dropping and started and I started to shiver moving was the only way to stay warm I pushed on trying to get as many miles as possible between us and the old perimeter we were well behind Chinese lines and because of the size of our group it was likely that we'd be spotted soon now this is interesting trying to move with I think they said they had 80 able-bodied men maybe it's 60 that's a massive number of people you can't hide 60 people it doesn't work you can well I shouldn't say you can't it's very very difficult to hide 60 people like a platoon of 40 guys like it it's hard you know in the SEAL Teams we have little tiny elements too little tiny platoons of 16 guys you can find some terrain that will that will hide you we just work in squads with 8 guys like ok we can we can find a place to hide when you have 60 or 80 guys behind enemy lines that's gonna be a challenge I mean just think about where can you hide that many people like a perfect terrain feature a ravine you know something like that that's a lot of people to put new ravine in just the noise discipline okay well you know who's gonna COFF you get 60 people someone's gonna call I mean just you and me sitting in this room and we noticed when one of us costs because or one one of us grunts or whatever because we're recording it but you think about what you know you and I sitting here for two hours for three hours I would say five times during that one of us walk off right and you got to go edit it out so if that's happening with two of us you put 80 people into a ravine where they're trying to hide from the enemy and there's how many people are coughing you know how many people are sneezing right and it's not it's not good odds and that's where these guys are saying he is Richardson saying look we have a massive group but it's not gonna be easy to to hide back to the book we need to get moving to take advantage of the dark I left the house they had been a little house speaking of hiding I left the house frustrated sergeant Mayer from the battalions intelligence section called me over let's get out of here he said you and I have a better chance to get back in this group is too large we don't have the firepower to fight and they're slowing us down so here's a guy's saying look borough buses make a run for it he was right I knew that we'd probably make it back to friendly lines together breaking down into smaller groups would be better but I'd help Shepherd these men too far to turn my back on them even if it cost me my life sorry can't do it mayor shrugged and disappeared into the darkness so exactly what I just said this guy made the decision you know what now going alone that's not a good idea there you know cuz now you got no one to support you you got no one to watch your six I mean that's just a bad idea you can't even need to sleep at some point and you're by yourself what happens when you start snoring right you know but this guy figured I got a better chance of doing this by myself so I'm gonna break out now you could have given an order like hey everyone there's something called escape and invasion we're just everyone's basically every man for himself you could do that but at this point Richardson is like hey we made it this far we're gonna we're gonna stick together back to the book my group climbed to the top of a knoll I could see the rounds hitting a mountain no more than five miles away we were closed for the first time I felt hope then the hail erupted with machine-gun and mortar fire I was knocked flat on my face I quickly got up and just as quickly got back down in the prone position the Chinese were shelling the hill my lower back felt wet and I could feel what I thought was sweat running down the crack of my ass it wasn't sweat it was blood I was hit but I didn't feel anything there was so much smoke dirt and dust that I could barely see I stumbled off the hill followed by three others there were about a dozen Chinese soldiers chasing us i prodded myself too think and move we started to head for a village on the other side of the road behind the village I could see a massive rice paddy that ran up to a hill I figured we could escape but if we got over the hill first the paddy had about three or four inches of water in it we stayed on the tops of the dikes and God halfway across the paddy before I turned to fire back the Chinese soldiers douve recover when they did we started running again as I was running I saw rounds hitting the water in front of me it's not good when we got to the other side we got down behind the dike and started firing at the Chinese again I didn't see anyone behind them if we could take them out we had a chance but the others didn't have any ammunition left and I was down to a few rounds myself get going I said I'll hold them off they looked at me for a second go I screamed and turned toward the Chinese soldiers crossing the paddy I fired a few shots and then douve behind a dyke a few seconds later I fired two more bursts before I was out of ammunition between bursts my mind was searching for an escape route I knew that if I ran straight up the hill I didn't stand a chance about 30 yards to my right there was a house a woman and a baby were crying and wailing in a dugout near the hill I went into the house if I went into the house I was sure the woman would tell them but I couldn't stay behind the dike with no ammunition jumping up I ran behind the house and started up the hill I tried to keep the house in my back hoping to mask my movement I went as far as I could go without the Chinese seeing me and then dove into a large bush rolling onto my stomach with my Chinese burp gun underneath me I waited I had no ammo but I had a death grip on the weapon it was like my security blanket I could hear the Chinese soldiers climbing up the hill they were yelling at one another I was trying not to move not even breathe a fly hovered around my face landing on my nose and mouth I tried to keep my mind too close to everything I closed my eyes as they passed and took my first breath as I heard they're yelling behind me in a few minutes I was sure they were gone but every unit has one a straggler that can't keep up the Chinese straggler was so slow that when he got close to the bush he saw me I never moved and just shut my eyes he started to holler to drove his bayonet into my butt I felt the tip hit the bone when I opened my eyes I saw boots all around me my mind went to the burp gun if I rolled over holding it they'd shoot me for sure I shot my arms out along the ground and rolled over leaving the burp gun in the mud they reached down and jerked me up the barrel of the pistol looked like the business end of a hundred and five millimeter howitzer a Chinese officer with red piping down the side of his pants had the pistol pressed between my eyes he was screaming at me in Chinese and pointing up the hill I was numb and couldn't speak I lifted my shoulders and let them drop I thought of this moment many times and I know that if he pulled the trigger I would never have known it that would have been the end I've been captured now and I had no idea what to do at least when I was on the run I knew where I was going even fighting for my life was easier than giving up all control I was now at the mercy of the Chinese so there you go captured just fought until he's literally out of ammunition and there's nothing else you can do hmm nothing else he can do ends up they must have some other guys that got captured they must roam all together now we're going back to the book there are about ten Chinese guards they lined up us they lined up beside us and moved us down the road a couple hundred yards suddenly the one in the lead started yelling and the whole column stopped the grass the guards grabbed us and made us kneel down in front of a ditch I could hear one of the soldiers barking what sounded like orders in Chinese my mind went on full alert they were going to execute us I felt the guy next to me shaking and another started sobbing my god this is it this is one of those situations where you expect to see your life flash before your eyes I was ready to relive relive scenes from my childhood good times in Austria anything to take my mind from Korea and this ditch that didn't happen to me I just closed my eyes instead of shots I heard laughing they motioned for us to get up the guy next to me was so emotionally drained that he couldn't get up I tried to help him but my hands were tied behind my back get up I yelled don't let them laugh at you get up they get to like a little building and they'd been carrying captured rifles this whole time so they get to a little building in back to the book the Chinese dropped the pile of rice on the ground and motioned for us to eat it the prisoners rushed in and started fighting over the grains I staggered back from the melee and angrily watched we've been turned into animals after all we'd been through why were why were the others not helping one another instead they pushed and fought I refused to join in we needed leadership and control more than ever and I was going to begin leading by example so they go to they get some initial interrogation of course you know that mock execution horrible and then they moves into the next chapter which is called Death March we started north up the road at a good clip the guards circled us like sharks sharks pushing stragglers with their rifles hitting and kicking anyone who stopped many in the group were wounded one man had a massive chest wound it was covered by blood-stained bandages he wheezed as he shuffled down the road my shoulder was a little stiff and the shrapnel in my back was wet and sticky but I felt lucky it was nothing in comparison so yeah next time you're thinking you have a rough day how about you're a prisoner of war on a death march and you've got a massive chest wound so now one of these some of the Chinese could guards could speak English and here we go pick up the wounded he kept saying and like a broken record guard started pushing us back toward the back of the formation on the ground we're about 20 soldiers on jerry-rigged litters made out of burlap bags attached and stretched between poles 10 more soldiers stood around them pick up the wounded the officer barked again it took four of us to carry one litter I grabbed the closest litter and hoisted it up the soldier in the litter had a horribly mangled leg his calf muscle was long gone and his foot rested on the inner limp on the litter of limp and lifeless none of the wounded men had seen a doctor since being captured I heard someone say they'd been in trucks but were dumped on the road when the trucks were needed elsewhere a whistle sounded and we started to shuffle toward the men none of us were strong enough to carry the stretchers very long my shoulders burned I tried to focus on each step left right left right whenever things got tough my won't mind wandered back to the guy with the sucking chest wound or I stole a glance at the guy on the litter with a mangled leg I vowed to never quit but soon my body started to break down I tried to get another prisoner to relieve me but everyone I asked looked away or moved ahead most hid in the dark trying to stay as far away from the stretchers as they could you son of a bitch I barked at one soldier who almost jerked away when I asked I was disgusted it reminded me of the soldiers that first night fighting over the rice we'd forgotten that the backbone of any military was the bond of the soldiers we fought for the guys to our left and right that is why we fought to protect our unit buddies and we expected them to do the same but on a death march every man was an island there seemed to be no place for anything else I refused to be that way it's a heavy burden each night the guards were getting tougher they were constantly pushing and hitting men with the rifles if a man fell behind he was shot and pushed off the mountainside everyone was rapidly losing weight lack of food wounds and disa dysentery were taking their toll carrying the men on stretchers was becoming even more difficult we looked like skeletons our uniforms hung off us like a scarecrow is quote coat each time we got topped each time we top one of the mountains we faced another one ears nose fingers and toes were becoming numb at times I felt like I was walking on my ankles I was lucky that my legs had always been the strongest part of my body many of the wounded men who were strong enough to walk earlier were now in the need of stretchers however there were none and we found ourselves carrying them along between two of us in some cases we are practically dragging them when I heard a single rifle shot back down the road I knew another man's struggle was over my heart was aching for them but at the same time my mind kept telling me to move we had two choices march or die my survival mode kicked in not allowing me to surrender to pain and fatigue the guards shoved us into a cluster of huts so after walking a long time they get to get to like a little village we were jammed into the room so tightly that my legs rested on another soldier the only thing good about sleeping this way was that we were warmer a cold front from the plains of Manchuria came roaring down and slamming into the very mountains we were struggling through we were facing the coldest winter in 50 years as we got ready to move out the commander of the guards told us to leave the stretchers the wounded were pleading with us to take them I started to move toward one and got a rifle but in the gut others tried to grab the stretchers but the guards pushed them away too I started to move toward the helpless soldiers again but couldn't risk another blow I let my mind drift into a zombie State hoping to block out the screams of the wounded left foot right foot left foot right foot over and over again I repeated it until I couldn't hear their screams yeah absolutely horrible just absolutely horrible after 10 nights we marched into a fairly good-sized town and this is when he decides that he's gonna try to escape pretty early on and he's got a couple buddies and there's some confusion and there's some chaos that that happens as they're trying to round up the prisoners and he kind of jumps over with a couple of the guys into a little ditch and they cover up with some branches and they start talking these three guys start saying look what you know can we make a move well let's you know let's head south and then finally one of the guys says that would be suicide in our condition we won't make it over those mountains we don't have warm clothes and we will probably die of hypothermia we knew he was right it was smarter to wait until springtime we needed to try and survive and hope our forces liberated us now they're starting to get into like a little bit of a routine my goal is to bring back discipline and start acting like soldiers again the scene the first night with the rice dropped on the ground was burned into my brain the only way we could survive until spring was and a possible escape attempt was to start working together the second wound had suffered the most are frostbitten feet had turned to trench foot and open wounds were infected or gangrene and said in for those guys it was only a matter of time before they died since we had no medicine to treat them and finally from his little group he loses a guy whose last name is graves graves was the first to die the valley had turned into one of death and suffering soon after graves death chaplain Kapaun came to the house we were all surprised to see him I had last seen him at Osan but when he walked and I barely recognized him the man I'd met on a region Pusan was gone he'd lost a lot of weight and his uniform kind of hung on his frame his tired and worn-out eyes bolide his warm smile Kapaun told us who was dead or wounded before he left he told us to get organized we'll need to take action when the troops show up he said have a plan when the troops get close the North Koreans might try to kill us all Kapaun never came back to my house but he continued to visit troops in the valley I know he prayed for each one of us when he could brought food to the starving until he became so weak that the guards took him to the hospital that we're gonna hear about what that hospital consisted of he died of pneumonia in May of 1951 it was buried in a mass grave by the Yalu River and if you don't know the story about chaplain Kapaun he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Korean War then I'm sure we'll cover that in more detail at some point on this podcast but in the meantime you can look it up and read about a hero of war and a hero of faith at one point Richardson tries to steal some kimchi and again now I'm fast-forwarding a bit to where to where there a little bit more settled in and he he steals like a bowl of kimchi and they started the guards call nuts and they're trying to find out who took the kimchi who took the kimchi and they threaten them with hey no one's gonna be able to eat until we know who took the kimchi and finally he breaks down and says I did it only me now was the officers turned to shake his head you lie more do it no only me and the guards I said the little son of a bitch looked at me and then nodded to the guards who grabbed me and tied my arms behind my back you learn lesson now the officer said the guards threw a rope over an open truss and pulled me up by my arms until my feet barely touched the dirt floor the pain was excruciating I could feel lightning jolts of pain in my left arm and shoulder where I still had shrapnel wounds the pain quickly crept up my arms driving straight to the top of my head I gasped for air the pressure on my chest allowed me to take only sharp short breaths I could hear myself moaning and once I cried out in pain before I passed out I woke up on the dirt floor I could barely feel the guards pulling the ropes off my arms I could hear the son-of-a-bitch rattle off a few a few orders he sounded far away but I could see his boot ii knew he was standing over me the guards dragged means my feet throwing open the door that tossed me on the floor of my room I could barely move my legs and arms and stayed where I landed the rest of the night Martin helped me get comfortable and told me that the house had been fed earlier that night he had no idea how long I'd been strung up the next morning i sat up and started making jokes some of them laughed with me others were just scared laughing hurt my ribs but it was the first time I've done it since you saw I was determined to keep my sense of humor I was tied it was tied to my will to live from that point on I remember to laugh whenever I could well I guess we won't be having kimchee anymore after two months in the valley the guards marched us out of the valley and back up to the road in Pew Tong so they're in a different location now and in this location the Chinese finally full fully take over the operation of the camp as opposed to the the Koreans the North Koreans so now the it seems like the Chinese were a little bit nicer to the prisoners the Chinese issued each of us a small drinking cup along with a bowl for our millet or our maize no more eating out of a helmet liner we were also allowed to start a cook house for each company and we were occasionally given soybeans the wells were contaminated from animal and human feces seeping through the ground and into the water well so we didn't have fresh water there were about 3,000 men in the camp conditions were about as bad as a human being could possibly live with so again I pointed out that the Chinese were a little bit nicer because they gave them like a bowl but it's a don't get me wrong this was about as close as you could get to Andersonville in the Civil War which that was a Confederate prisoner of war camp of for Union soldiers and there was about 45,000 soldiers that were captured and that were in that prison camp about 13,000 of them died from scurvy and from from diarrhea and dysentery so you know it's funny we think of like diarrhea first of all we think of it's like a joke and then we think of as like an inconvenience but when you're in these situations it kills you hmm back to the book we were full of lice the farm boys told us we were they were hog lice growing larger every day on our blood while the lice got fat we starved the guards brought us two bowls of millet a day and one bowl of boiled water which barely kept us alive and even when we ate dysentry kept us weak and dehydrated hunger can do some strange strange things to your mind I was at the latrine a slit trench and I noticed that many of the soybeans were passed whole I thought if I picked them out of the feces and wash them off I could eat them then it dawned on me that I must be going crazy or turning into an animal it would be a few days before I was able to get over the fact that I had let myself sink to a disgusting thought like that so next time you're feeling hungry you're not feeling hungry you even know what that feels like they ended up like forming a little group he just mentions this this one guy in this group named Vincent Doyle Doyle became the leader of this little group an infantryman during World War two he had a wife and a son in Fall River River Massachusetts he received a battlefield commission in France and left the army as the lieutenant he opened up a frozen food store in Fall River a little ahead of its time not many families had freezers he went out of business and re enlisted as a master sergeant not an officer he was an inch too short to be an officer the army told him yeah that's one of the reasons why I left that and there's like the guys just humble like oh I can't cut it as an officer anymore even though I got a battlefield commission in World War two oh that's okay I'll just do I'll just enlist that's known for no factor that's that's like the humility but if you see that kind of humility anymore normally I don't make a big deal out of the generational differences but that's a pretty humble guy right there back to the book our biggest problem was our physical condition brought on by the March men with open wounds many with gangrene didn't survive long some were saved from gangrene by maggots eating their dead flesh which only meant they suffered longer no we've been through that before with the Forgotten Islander who they would actually put maggots to get rid of dead flesh to try and save themselves some of the soldiers had black feet from frostbite and trench foot I watched while one man pulled rotted flesh off his toe bones the soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division had it worst they'd been issued shoe packs rubber boots with felt liners and insoles their feet would sweat and they were continuously wet while marching and they would freeze when they stopped marching since they never took off the shoe packs the soldiers got trench foot it's easily understood when men of wounds or pneumonia it is more difficult to understand when men just lie down and quit I've seen strong men seemingly just give up and die first they would stop eating and stare with blank eyes at the mud walls of the hut their minds were gone and life just slipped away then after a few days you heard an all-too-familiar death rattle we were dying at a rate of about 30 a day each morning we took out the dead stripped him of their clothes and stacked them like cordwood in a pile at first we tried to take the uniforms and coats and give them to other prisoners but the Chinese guards wouldn't allow it what they did with the uniforms is still a mystery I hated being part of the burial detail the physical part was bad enough but the mental part was much worse thoughts about the families of the dead men and if they left children behind who might never know what happened to them I knew from listening to men talk that what bothered most of them was the thought that they might be next that's one thing I never let my mind to think about and again he moves around a bit to various places and various camps and gets various jobs and again you have to read this book to really comprehend this the level of suffering that was endured by these prisoners back to the book in early spring 1951 the Chinese were building small docks on the river and I was unlucky enough to be put to work on the crew a group of us were carrying one of these Timbers up a hill when someone in the center stumble stumbled and the timber fell pinning me to the ground and when that happens his back gets jammed up and and even though he makes it through that day it starts getting worse and worse throughout the day now there's a hospital right it's a hospital but they actually called this hospital it's just like every other prisoner camp that we've heard about when you go to the hospital you're dead that's just a place they put you to die and it's the same thing here so his guys are trying to prevent him from being taken to the huh to the hospital so they're carrying him back and forth to their formations and finally the Chinese realized that he can't walk so the Chinese come to the door and back to the book they were taking me to the hospital we called it the morgue we had never seen anyone return from there I wanted to fight back but I couldn't the guards closed the door to one of the rooms in the cluster of houses that served as the hospital and threw me in it was dark and I could not see anyone I landed on top of a wounded and sick lying on the dirt floor they immediately started kicking and cursing me the stench from the wounds and the human feces was unimaginable I started to gag so this is I mean this is just the daughter you can't even imagine anything is food gonna be worse than the situation is and now he's put in this reliant room filled with shit and wounded people that are going to die and by the way it's like they've got dysentery and they've got diarrhea so it's just a total nightmare and he's trying to maintain a little bit of dignity and he asks one of the guys in where's the where's the latrine he had to use the restroom and the guy tells him out the door go left to the end of the building left again in 25 yards on a knoll you'll find the latrine the temperature was freezing but I welcome the fresh air I dragged myself out on my buttocks pushing myself along with my hands I reached the latrine a trench a foot and a half wide and ten feet long the trench sat just outside a strand of wire that separated our camp from the black prisoners the human waist was like pudding and almost reached to the top of the trench I managed to get my pants down and had worked my way to the edge when the side caved in I fell into the trench finally catching my shoulders on the edge the waist was at my chin as I clawed at the dirt trying to pull myself free my legs paralyzed like an anchor pulled me toward the bottom I yelled out and kept crawl clawing but every second I slipped deeper and deeper into the trench two black prisoners on the other side heard me they crawled through the barbed wire grabbed me by my arms and pulled me out a second later and I would have slipped under the surface the guards heard all the commotion and were closing in my saviors scrambled back through the fence just as the guards arrived to this day I have no idea who saved me fearing I was trying to escape they started to beat me with the rifle butts I covered my head to try and protect myself as I lay there covered and shit I lost control of my bowels that was it I was done but giving up meant deaf I had lived with death everyday since coming to Korea the battlefield was like a movie and fast forward there wasn't so much going on and I couldn't dwell on death very long call from the medic possibly hold the wounded man in my arms or say a word or two as he passed from life to death it was different as a prisoner I had no way of defending myself other than using my mind and what physical capabilities I could muster I realized my mind had to be my strength for a split second all of the pain and suffering could have ended No my mind screamed I could not give up I'd come this far and in that second I set my mind to doing something no one had done I was going to come back from the morgue as the Chinese soldiers landed blow after blow on my back and legs i banished death from my mind never again did it enter into it many lost control of their minds and did things they would never have done under normal circumstances I didn't know what to say when I heard stories or saw things where men were mistreating one another I thought of the first night of captivity when the Chinese dumped the rice on the ground what happens to men when they become prisoners why did they change from helping one another and becoming and become totally engrossed in themselves with totally selfish outlook on life understand I'm not talking about all men but many never come to grips of losing their freedom they feel abandoned by their country and are no longer longer with men they trust in their minds their personal survival becomes paramount and group survival no longer matters so again I mean going back to that part at the latrine that's a little that's a little footnote you can put in your brain for the rest of your life because we're all gonna have bad situations I get it I mean there's gonna be horrible things that are gonna happen I don't know if there's much I don't know if it can get much worse than the situation that he was in right there and and realizing that his mind was his strength realizing that he had no other way to defend but his mind had to be strong and he had that little split second thought that he could give up and just let it all go just let it all go let that pain and suffering stop but then he realized no not gonna do that not going to surrender not happening so eventually I mean he goes through more hell and eventually gets on a to crutches and then one crutch and eventually he makes it he makes it out of the morgue then he gets sent back with the rest of the rest of the team and when he gets better they're like completely amazed this is a guy that they they probably mourned his death because they thought when you go to the morgue you're dead and when he gets back he's with Doyle and smoke these are his boys Doyle and smoke SM okay welcome back Doyle said says no one had ever come back from the morgue the guys peppered me with questions about his treatment what treatment I said and they all laughed I told them we never received any medicine got less food in the room smelled like a cesspool I told them how I'd almost drown in the trench and that two guys from the black compound saved my life it was a shitty situation I said and again they all laughed so this guy does a great job of trying to keep keep track of that humor continuing since I've been in the morgue the Chinese had started putting a lot of pressure on us we were required to spend hours and lectures and discussion groups supervised by Chinese political officers this is when the indoctrination has taken place don't you explain that the political officers began by breaking you down physically so you started to agree with them and then just just to get them off your back when this happened they would be on you full force pushing you to make a statement against the United States government or to make a statement as to the next wonderful treatment that you're receiving next you'd be one of the turncoats standing up on stage giving a lecture so they're going through this even though they're getting trying to get propaganda statements out of them they're still getting treated horribly we were still dying in great numbers it has just been removed from our sight they also tried to improve our diet prisoners even started to make steamed bread by taking balls of dill and placing them on a bamboo go for a pot of steaming water and one of the one of the leaders I just had to note this one one of the interrogation propaganda communist leaders said I will leave a hundred men to die to save one progressive meaning communist and they spoke English those are the words that they used the Chinese interrogators propaganda people who spoke English and he says we outwardly challenge the loss of individual freedom under their system the Chinese became quite agitated and I like this part so there again I mean I want to say that they're getting the treatments good by any stretch but it's at least a little bit better and it's part of it is them trying to convince them to you know beat communists so they can make statements against American do that whole thing so they here's here's this one part despite working many hours building the longhouses we were still required to attend lakh lectures and once a child it was their version of a USO show called the white haired girl the storyline was simple a peasant family could not pay the taxes demanded by the dastardly landowner so he takes the peasants beautiful young black haired daughter as his concubine she suffers terribly under his demented date demands but eventually escapes to the mountains years later as the people's libera libera army frees the people the girl returns to the village but now her hair has turned completely white the play was well done and the Chinese officers and soldiers hung on every word they saw the girl's story as their own they clapped when the People's Liberation Army arrived the play of course omitted the fact that Mao had killed thousands and I'll correct him there millions of people and his drive to take control of China and this is why I read this part cuz he says we laughed and cheered when the landlord dragged the young girl away the Chinese guards were not amused and for days there was an awkward silence I kinda got a kick out of that a bunch of rambunctious prisoners of war ruining your little play when I got warm enough the Chinese let us stakeout a baseball field near the river we didn't have any balls or bats but we went through the motions we made teams and selected umpires we called balls and strikes it sounded weird but we had a lot of fun we spent hours out there and then he goes on to tell this story late one afternoon I got when I read that I was like that's kind of interesting I mean I could see we'd do something to entertain yourself but they had a little bit of a bigger plan late one afternoon a lone American fighter jet came screaming down the river we were out on the ball field at first it scared the hell out of us and went by us in a flash but doubled back and flew straight down the river we could see the pilot looking down and as he passed the pilot waved and wiggled his wings at us there were no words to describe how that incident made us feel god bless him he probably never knew that's what that simple act did for us it was very long time before we stopped talking about it and we'd achieved our goal with the ball field the Chinese refused to identify POWs camps but the ball field did the trick yeah soon after wet winter set in so now they're going another winter I got sick started running a high fever was coughing up green and yellow mucus toil and smoke moved me near the stove and kept me hydrated with hot water a medic told me I had pneumonia I thought of graves and was grateful that I wasn't still in the morgue after a couple days that favor the fever broke and I got better Doyle and smoke both said they were sure I'd make it yeah yeah rich some of us thought we might need to dip you in the shithouse again to make you matters what smoked all them in early spring my legs were finally in shape to begin thinking about escape again when I read that I just wrote the words long game next to it I mean bro can you imagine you're three years deep in prison camp and the whole time you're thinking well if I can just take the next year to get my legs healed up enough where I can walk then I can try and escape again he when he first got captures like okay if I can just make the springtime will be a little bit stronger let the weather just talk about playing the long game they as they were planning this escape they were gonna take Doyle and smoke and they were talking about it and soon smoke was doubled over Doyle tried to get the Chinese to do something but they ignored us please soon smoke couldn't talk he just lay in bed and moan when it got really bad he screamed finally he passed out his face was locked in a torn tortured grimace and his skin turned ashen at noon the medical that was helping him turn to us and shook his head he's dead the words landed on us like mortar rounds I just stood there staring at his face and shocked dead how could this have happened in such a short time only seven months ago men were dying all around us it was normal since we moved prisoners didn't die anymore we were the survivors this wasn't supposed to happen to anyone anymore the shock quickly boiled up into a rage and these guys kind of you know kind of yell at the Chinese and you make a little they they kind of cause some some problems nothing too drastic but you know they weren't they weren't just cowering anymore hmm back to book the winter of 1952 to 53 was livable compared to the past two winters we were allowed to select our own leaders and organize committees to work on different facets of our daily life a sanitation committee athletic committee a daily action committee all brought some semblance of order to our lives food had improved too we got steamed bread vegetables and rice once in a while some fish and meat but it was usually just a scrap the change in diet was enough to let us gain some weight July 27th 1953 the Chinese had us all in a formation when they announced that a peace agreement had been reached we stood silently looking at one another no one said anything this news had been a long time coming I just stood there a smile plastered across my face I looked down at my rail thin frame like a map it showed my journey scars on my back from shrapnel a missing tooth night blindness from lack of vitamins which luckily only lasted for a couple of weeks I was one of the fortunate ones I'd survived and that's in it I mean that's like it like it just changes immediately now they still have to get out of there to this day when I think of our movement south I still get butterflies in my stomach they were moving us to the railhead at mam PO the Chinese gave one of the prisoners a lock and told him to close the gates after the trucks pulled out after we passed he snapped the lock shut closing some of the darkest chapters in my life and they continue this trains planes and automobiles to try and get to freedom we boarded that finally we get to we boarded the trucks and proceeded to cross the freedom bridge to freedom village when we arrived I didn't wait for the tailgate to drop I jumped right out onto the ground there were two American escorts for each of us they grabbed me and I thought holy shit these guys were big and muscular I quickly realized they were average guys I was just a little skinny and at one point he gets on a scale he weighed a hundred and eight pounds our first stop was tent city in a thousand-yard neutral circle in the rice paddies we stripped we stripped showered and deloused having put on slippers and pyjamas we were checked by good-looking nurses we stayed less than an hour before we moving to another building to get uniforms and our first meal after our meal we were flown by helicopter to a replacement Depot Ninh Shan it was my first helicopter flight and I sat near the door and watched Korea pass in a blur below me I felt like screaming singing and dancing but instead I remained subdued quiet and happy inside fifty-seven years had passed and I can still remember how great it felt like being born again then he gets on the phone and he says I reach my dad I could hear the excitement in his voice he bombarded me with questions are you alright when are you coming home don't worry about me I'll be okay there was some kind of calmness inside of me that was difficult to describe I've been through so much that just being free and headed home was enough after worrying about living day in and day out I wondered if anything would ever bother me in the future the voyage back to California on the Brewster which was the ship they were on was great they served three meals a day the small things mattered more now than before we were subjected to daily debriefings which were more like interrogations by intelligence officers he goes through answered a bunch of questions about what he saw and what he went through and they were actually trying to figure out if they were more like how many other prisoners were there other prisoners that were left behind he finishes those and those interrogations are those questioning or Intel gathering situations and then for the rest of the voyage I stayed on the deck I sucked in the fresh sea air and bashed in the warm breeze everything I could hear smell and see was so full of life as I looked over the rail of the ship I remembered three years ago looking down at the sea and praying that I would have the strength to lead my men in combat now I was returning by myself I'd been born again a chance to live for tomorrow to make the most of every day and never look back I had survived the greatest laboratory of human behavior one that no education could ever equal weeks later the Golden Gate Bridge gutted out of the fog as the ship pulled into port we had a few hours before our flight so I left and walked around the post my path took me to the post cemetery it was very quiet and my thoughts were on all of the men and Friends that were no longer with me Walsh the ROE smoked I could feel them standing above me I hope they were smiling and happy for me because it was my men my section that had kept me motivated and alive I owed my freedom and survival to them a number of us flew to Chicago where we changed planes when the plane left Chicago I was the only returning prisoner of war aboard although the plane was full of people I felt very lonely I was free and on my way home with mixed emotions realize that I just left men that I had lived with 24 hours a day for 34 months it was sad then with all the freedom surrounding me that there was an empty feeling there were also thoughts of the ones who would never return the ones whose lives had been lost almost before they began when we landed in Philadelphia the stewardess asked if we would remain seated for just a minute while a special passenger exited the plane to my surprise that special passenger was me I walked down the stairs and onto the tarmac waiting there where my mother and father they hugged and kissed me this time unlike on the street before the war I realized the act of affection between father and son was a wonderful thing and I will never forget the emotion on my father's face as tears welled up in his eyes and he goes on and there is a whole story within a story within a story in this about a woman that was an associate a friend and and and several others and there was there's a whole other realm to this but he gets you know he starts to get back on with his life a little bit back to the book while I was absorbing the sounds and sights of freedom I was beginning to think about my future I had been given a second chance and was determined that I was not going to blow it Claire and I had become inseparable and I was falling in love with her my only fear was that the feeling might not be mutual we had a wonderful Christmas holiday and both realize that we were definitely meant to be together during a New Year's Eve party I gave Claire an engagement ring she said yes we announced to everyone that we were going to be married there were happy people sad people and mad people to tell the story behind this statement would take another book but five children and fifty-six years later we're still happily married and from there and this is this is like as I was you know researching this whole situation this is so he gets done with this and he ends up going to Officer Candidate School in the army he gets assigned to the 551 Infantry Regiment that's fine awesome of just outstanding and then he then he goes to Special Forces at Fort Bragg North Carolina and so he's you know becomes a green beret special forces guy and then he goes to Vietnam and he is the two-time commander of project Delta in Vietnam which is like the the the deep reconnaissance like the the the the the format like this is how we do deep reconnaissance is based on project Delta and project Delta has also had Beckwith and it Charlie Beckwith who is the the founder of Delta Force so you know Richardson just drives on and does deployments to Vietnam going into enemy territory deep in enemy territory mm-hm and ends up doing 39 years in the army and and you know like you said has you know the wife and the kids and the incredible career and after that you know we had us it has a civilian he's still alive by the way yeah then here's what he closes out with he says every day on this journey I believed the men of the weapons platoon and my close buddies in prison were watching me to see how I looked after my men and prepared them for whatever they may have had to face I tried my best to make them proud of me so well I think that Colonel Richardson I think we can absolutely answer in the affirmative that yes I think anyone would be proud of how you handled yourself how you led and then on top of that how you lived your life I mean I think that's just self-evident in every page of this book which once again valleys of death his unbelievable book should be handed out to people it should be issued in the military as far as I'm concerned and I mean I think in reading the book I mean it's like your actions Colonel Colonel Richardson's actions his behavior I mean how can you not be how can you not think to yourself that you can do a little bit better with the situation that you're in and realize how much people are how much human beings are capable of I don't I just don't I don't see how you could read this and not walk away and say you know what I'm gonna do better and whatever situation you're in look and I know people who end up in horrible situations but no matter what that situation is no matter what it is you can you can move forward you can move forward you can keep your mind positive you can use your mind as your weapon and also you can you know one of the parts in that's encompassed and that is like oh you can actually have have fun and keep your sense of humor when you're going through these terrible situations which people ask me that all the time like don't you do you think it's important to have a sense of humor of like of course I do you know of course I do but again Colonel Richardson if you ever hear this obviously there is a wide open invite for you to come and debrief us and teach us life lessons here and tell us about tell us more detail and the parts that I know I missed and things that I messed up I apologize but thanks thanks for your service thanks for your sacrifice and thanks for showing us showing us how to live properly even in the most dire of circumstances with that tells oh yeah I was reading this book and it was just I couldn't I couldn't stop and I couldn't stop I couldn't stop it's one of those books you just don't you just don't see it's it's so hard to understand like some of that combat the beginning is crazy mm it's crazy just the situation that they were in I mean you're surrounded by the Chinese for three days and they're just a hammering your perimeter all night with waves human waves and then you get the note drop from a point from a damn plane that says no relief is coming find your way out hmm appreciate it yeah and then you got to leave you wounded that's that's what happens it's like okay we either all die really this is just like it's incredible yeah it's incredible and you should read this so you get some sort of semblance of maybe what your thoughts are gonna be when you if you get into a situation like that whatever it is hmm so yeah always learning always and for me again I get done with this and I can't even sleep because I think to myself I got so much opportunity as I guess what oh I wake up and I'm I can walk around I don't have shrapnel in my back yeah I get to eat food whatever you like yeah whatever you want whatever you want there's a natural like we like people complain about working out you complain like no I don't feel like working what are you talking about I got a good idea once you just be quiet just stop people complain that they gotta go to work guess what your blast you're lucky you get to go to work yeah you're lucky best thing about that yesterday that working out thing I like people complain only cuz my arm you know you have your situations that keep you from working out or training yeah and on the up like did you check yourself when you get it well it was a moment of appreciation or what it was but you know when you get you know you get injured or sick and you feel yourself getting better and I call shoot like I'm mark you know like today I felt better than I've felt this whole time kind of thing that's when the waves of appreciation you come back come back come back you know what the thing is also for those people that you know when you get an injury you think it's gonna last forever this one it feels like oh it feels like forever and then you realize when you get back you kind of forget that it even happened yeah yeah so yeah so the eating and that's a big part every time he mentions um eating or starving or all the weight that he lost and 108 pounds yeah so that for whatever reason those that affects me a lot when I hear it it's like oh man cuz you picture your biceps well you know just being hungry the whole time you know yeah like yeah what's so long as you fasted for like 24 hours like a you need to get your 72 oh no I don't know cuz you're you're saying for me cuz cuz being hungry goes away after a while yeah yeah I haven't done I haven't done hunger for thirty four months yeah well it goes away like after like seven hours I think our sides like to me in my experience it depends on you who you are I'm sure but at about 4-5 hours that's when that's peak hunger again in my experience but either way so you know when he gets back like he you know I can't even believe wait just so everyone knows we are in no stretch of the any sort of imagination trying to compare a fast for 24 hours with 34 months thirty four months and I mean look at look at captain plum six years then I know Hilton eating rice ball in the morning in a rice ball in the evening with filled with woodchips what's up wood chips you know what you go to a restaurant right now if your rice is like slightly overcooked you're complaining or just back yeah nevermind bugs and wood chips in that yeah no no it's typically no yeah it's yeah that's that's rough to say the least but now you know and I look I'm living you know we're living kind of this journey with him in a small way right and he the piece you know they come to you know peace agreement so he's back on the boat feeling the warm air eating three times a day man it makes you think like now okay what 2018 right but there's like there's more than one to there's many many apps on your phone mmm that you can be like hey I want a triple burger double cheese bacon bacon avocado and you know what onions grilled onions and I'm gonna need that grass-fed yeah oh yeah I'm kind of steak isn't quite good enough unity over here so and by the way can I get the what's the special kind of mayonnaise that has like something else in it well there's a few thousand a aoao a only man is because that other normal man isn't quite in your you know I need to stop at all we just don't want that yeah we don't we don't we want the good one so haha and so let me go ahead and click this button so spoiled yeah and then it comes to your door oh yeah about 15 somebody brings there in 15 minutes to drive seven and it's if it's 22 minutes you're kind of mad kind of death like you know I was hungry you know you know that and it'll say 10 to 20 to 1 on that like people people they get separated from their phone and they freak out right I mean you imagine this like what you would even know yeah what what's happening anything in the world you know nothing you know nothing of what's happening in the world with your family yeah nothing yeah yeah so with this since other people have suffered through that maybe in in our world you can you can try and get yourself on a little bit better of a path with a little bit more discipline in the world is what I'm saying yeah I know I need to step it up harder you know to do more trying to make more stuff happen yeah cuz the opportunities there think about you know and the crazy thing is Richardson's one of the people that survived because there's thousands upon thousands that didn't that died of diarrhea that died of dysentery that died of gangrene and infections yeah so man we got it made so you know what we got it made so make something how's that sound we got it made so make something of what you got which is everything which is everything by the way unless you're in a next - unless you're drowning in a trench full of shit a hundred and eight pounds with no with your legs not working with scars in your back unless you're in that situation how about you step up and die just start moving in the right direction do a little we're doing all right yeah and in the helpful or what makes it helpful is like perspective right when you put it into perspective let's say you live in your life every day gyro used to it we're all used to it and you don't feel like doing something that's really what it what it comes down to and of course there's different levels of not feeling like doing something it's like kind of not feeling like judgement or hey that this is straight I'm not gonna happen today kind of feel it not if you like doing something so when you put it into perspective I don't know if you can like right it's like no it's a not our it's not argument exactly right even if it doesn't hold zero water whatsoever exactly right you can't get to a place that you don't feel like you can't convince me ever that whatever you're saying is is even remotely weighs in on the situation at all ever exactly right that's where I don't want to know whatever yeah when you know it needs to get done and you don't feel let's say it man I haven't slept in two days let's say that that's legitimate in everyday life like man you get your ass bro oh yeah but if it needs to be done after you read this book let's say you didn't sleep because you read that book and this up for two days you really don't feel like going to the gym I'll tell you that physically but leaving it back to just going and doing a bicep workout whatever you know but I hope people want I hope people as a bare minimum I hope people use them the mindset you can pull from the from the perspective you get from this I hope at a bare minimum you get your workouts at the maximum I hope you step up and just take over the world yeah cuz it's sitting there right in front of you yeah you're not locked behind barbed wire and you don't have your arms strong up behind your back getting hung from the ceiling so painful that you pass out so hateful that you pass out which that's just what does that even mean it means you can kind of do anything really when when you kind of put into perspective so so what are we doing me and Dave Burke good deal tea yes yes but you know what he does reads a lot of books too and he just like man we didn't we just suck yeah I'm like yeah it's just you can't even know like I sent him a note I was wanting to know I said hey you had combat you did combat flights in Afghanistan and Iraq and he's like he's like bro come on you know that's just come on and I'm like well he's like yeah ten I technically did I drop bombs in those countries yes was where they considered combat operations I'm like yeah and he's like put come on music he's like I got two words for you Iwo Jima and I was like all right I get it oh yeah that's that's how you feel when you get done or something cuz and then but by the way he's got a 1 1/2 of a paragraph where he's like oh by the way I did 39 years in the army and by the way I was in Vietnam and by the way I was in charge of project Delta for two times twice yeah it's not like a little sub that's like a little little something like it's just a little sub nope yeah no PS the PostScript yeah geez talk about that should be its own book each one of those command tours is its own book about doing deep reconnaissance in the Vietnam are you kidding me yeah that didn't even make the cut for the colonel yeah whatever you know I talked about I'd put up a paragraph in a half a paragraph you know yeah so he not only did he power through it he went back yeah and he did power through it by the way yeah he didn't like no he didn't yeah that part where he's talking about don't let them laugh it you don't let him laughing I like I underlined that and highlighted it and then I put stars by it cuz that's the kind of thing that you think about like like do you know the world sometimes seems like it's having a joke with you yeah you know like it's been like the joke is on you you ever wake up you're like the joke is on the joke's on me and everything laughing at me that's everything like that's not a good feeling right no let that happen no you don't and yeah thank you see even keeping the sense of humor all this oh yeah man such a humor laughing it was a shitty situation never next time you think about something being shitty now you know what a shitty situation is we all knew now we all now have a new definition of what a shitty situation is you still that's it that's the standard and there that's it that's the standard that's where you're at you know I know well yeah so we're on the path like there's no one's off the path anymore no I can't you're not even allowed you know I'm just on the path alright so when you get when you start jujitsu if you have it already which most of us have yeah holy cow moose is a self oh yeah it's like everyone that's thinking that's still on the fence right just just get over the fence because every single person no I won't say every single person there is a what percentage I've heard feedback I think from a total feedback of three people and it might only be two that actually just didn't like jiu-jitsu actually it's three one female two males the one the one male I went back and forth with for a while you know he was like hitting me up on Twitter this was pretty early on he's like I just don't like I don't like riding on me and and finally with that guy he just didn't want to do it man yeah and I was like look you know hey cool you don't want to ruin your life don't make this into a living hell because you do something you do fully hate it wasn't until the next guy that bitterly complained that I was like listen okay here's the point keep doing it until you submit someone once you submit someone you can stop yeah I didn't think of that plan yet until the guy number two and the other end was a female that it was two things didn't really like it but more important didn't have anywhere to train and kind of just got off the path but yeah so but that's three out of many many many me I'm een most people are like oh you know I'm obsessed now I'm upset ya win or lose like sometimes people will be like hey I got beat up for hour now well everyone says just went to my first jiu-jitsu class got choked 28 times by a 14 year old kid yeah I love it yeah you know if you got your ego and checked you say I love it you know God sure you go and check your leg but you know oh no this is for me I could punch him try and punch him try and punch that 14 year old see what that triangle feels like then you because it doesn't feel good yes people though hard here at Dean go hard on a triangle on you like actually offensively he did a triangle meet - yes he was just showing me something he locked that triangle up so tight I felt it in my lower back that doesn't even make sense they moved my spinal cord yeah yeah yeah I don't done it for sure but alright so we aren't doing jujitsu that's kind of that's kind of a deal yeah so what Geeta you get what rash guard do you get hey look there's plenty jeez plenty rash guards I'm not really all from origin yeah there's only one well the good news is and I was talking to some folks at the muster about this few times actually you know hey what geese should I get they're still asking that question well that's the thing they already know the origin game Oh now which one would you wanna get whatever one you want more advanced questions yeah because not the kind even if you get that look you know how there's like levels if you don't want to call them that will say price point if you will like the more expensive oil it's not the kind of where you get that and then you come in as a new wipe everyone's like oh you're kind of flossing hard with that that you know no like if you get snot like in wrestling if you wear gold shoes and rust yes exactly it's not like that it's not like that or you dye your hair or yes that's a little statement that's a statement yeah it's not like that right orange hair yeah I'm really good yeah geez not like that no no sir he's just to give functional yeah man you know maybe you know I don't obviously I don't go with key in be lurker what are we doing this this is particular so I don't know but I'm assuming maybe it took more to make certain ones or whatever but get to the point is get whichever one you want yeah straight up yeah lightweight heavy weight whatever mm-hmm from origin main dot com true true also you got rash guards if you want a rash guard that you can get a legit rash guard you got t-shirts as well at from origin so basic like clothing that's what we're making right now at this time denim yeah no I'm getting my I haven't gotten my pair yet but yeah we're making jeans so just be on standby it's gonna take a little while to get that ramped up but I saw a picture yeah oh yeah that's already posted them yeah yeah so we will be will be make because you know why because everyone needs every human wears jeans yeah because they're functional you know so every human needs jeans yeah and if everyone does then why not get jeans that are made here made with the highest quality all that stuff anyways so yeah jeans are common we also got some supplements yep Jocko supplements so what joint warfare krill oil discipline Mulk and worry kid milk so what are these cover the most important elements i think of slept supplementation so joints those are gonna go out on you that's a if you're into lifting have you did you Jitsu hard you into you work hard if you have like a manual labor type job you know moving company yeah I know I know you're a mover I was American a bouncer a bouncer that that wasn't very hard sometimes yes on your like feet in these maybe depending but I would say you know just when you're I would say the workouts the workouts get you joints I think especially over time especially if you're going very often and here's one of the things about the joint stuff a big part of it is you don't realize how much the how much benefit there is to taking krill oil and joint warfare on a regular basis until you do it yeah well into or until you stop oh yeah big temperature I haven't stopped I can't even answer that question but you've told yes I have stopped yes so yeah joint warfare krill oil discipline which discipline like during the muster I drink a lot of discipline because like you know it's like go time the whole time yeah so that's what now I'll tell you we got something else coming out we got discipline in little pills go pills and I'll tell you why I can't always pound a bunch of discipline drink before let's say I'm going out to speak sure I don't want to have to like hit the head in the middle of the speech because I drank like a bottle of water right before I went out there so anyways I was like hey can we make these things in little pills and I can take that can gonna get me yeah in the rock and roll mode real quick so yeah those comments not to mention you gotta mix it up which isn't a big deal but if you're on the good-good go yeah and you know so yeah discipline go go pills comments and they got a little bit of a nootropic in them they got a little bit of caffeine in them they've got a little bit of go you know that's the main ingredient the meeting greedy just go hey also okay so as we know the warrior kid milk is live and as we also know is tasty it's live or it's live it was this morning I was I was making some strawberry mole for the kids for me but it's the kids mark and everyone at my house is freaking going nuts everyone in meiosis is drinking strawberry more lame except for my youngest daughter she's all about the chocolate but somebody took the Molk scoop from the ward and like they was gone and this is what I realized there's something going on because I I said to my wife I said hey where's I said hey where's the scoop for the for the strawberry Quik I actually called it strawberry Quik right because it tastes yeah yeah you know but now I was talking to Brian and Brian's got people are like notifying him that they're getting like the nostalgic memories of drinking Nestle's Quik because that's where we're at the strawberry one the chocolate one doesn't taste as much like it tastes delicious but it doesn't taste the same like whatever like the quick like they think exactly quick does because that quick let's face it isn't really that great but the strawberry Quik is great our chocolate is probably better than the Nestle's chocolate the strawberry Quik is almost a replica and this is illegal - for me to say this is like comparing the no brands or something like Mohammad okay all good and the nostalgia part that is that is something and I felt that you the apartment used to get from the 7-eleven yeah this strawberry Quik from the 7-eleven yeah we got it from a store called big safe on Kauai but yeah that's for you before the protein and the regular milk that's for the protein so so this is the other thing I wanted to say is as soon as I had the warrior kids strawberry milk I texted Brian 14 seconds later and said make adult you know milk strawberry so it's in the works there's a couple that there's you can't just say well I'll just double up because there's a little bit more protein in it in the you know when you want to get a little bit more protein in the adult milk yeah yeah that's nothing for those of you that are freaking out in the meantime take two scoops of two scoops of warrior kid Morgan you're still doing all right yes you are also if you want to represent the discipline equals freedom way mmm cuz this one does equal freedom I think the more you grow up in life and embrace the discipline you understand that more cuz there are there are levels of understanding to the core to the core anyway if you want to represent go to Jocko store.com because dockwise a store which sure it's on there please eating any second now hoodies more of a winter hoodies winter hoodies well Michigan hoodies if you're in Iowa winter hoodies put Minnesota potentially yeah kawaii their mainland mainlander at least we're in the mainland yeah we are in the mainland on the main what about my people probably yeah anyway the point is there's a lot of cool stuff on there I think it's cool def core difficult stuff to the core all all things technically are def core chemically true I'm gonna leave it at that also hats on there and women's stuff also rash guards too and the the hats are legit yeah shockers hats by the way yes so those of you that are moral more old-school in my opinion truckers hats are more old-school that's what I wore when I was a kid truckers hats yeah they come in and out though you know they go out then they come back no that's just the urban wear oh you don't know about style yes anyway flex it hats on there as well a lot of good stuff if you want something get something good way to represent while staying on the path there's some tea on the dock ot is on there and various other things anyway chuckle store.com yeah and if you want to you can subscribe to this podcast why do we even say this well I guess okay if you're listening right now and you've been listening for three freaking about for I don't know three and a half hours if you're if you've done that go ahead and subscribe cuz your your you definitely are part of the team yeah thank you if you if you haven't heard if you haven't listened to this point well then guess what you're not gonna subscribe because you don't want to subscribe so if you haven't subscribed and you hear the sounds coming out of my mouth right now go ahead and subscribe iTunes Google Play stitcher and then leave a little review action so we can have a good time with it also don't forget about there the warrior kid podcast the warrior kid podcast you can ask kids ask questions to Uncle Jake and uncle Jake tells stories about when he was a kid and where he got his way from where he where he uncovered the way also you got the warrior Kid soap from Irish Oaks ranch calm Aiden's up there he's taking advantage of life yeah guess what you got goats you're in California you can't sell goat milk guess what you can do make soap yeah that's what Aiden's doing young Aiden you know I was watching shark tank you know that show and you know there's a kid on there doing his thing it was respect uh what was it some glue okay some washable glue using it for Legos which was kind of odd but I guess if you're you know anyway long but I thought it I thought about Aiden yeah and the Jocko so here I see Aiden up there with Jocko next julesberg good or whatever you say all the time anyway yeah good and while you're in the subscribe mode then also subscribe to the YouTube channel the Jocko podcast a YouTube channel if you want to see echoes videos which he puts all kinds of time and effort into he's real super he gets super things but crazy about it it makes everything explode sometimes reflecting off of things and music cello music so that's on the YouTube channel and we got some other things planned for the YouTube channel coming shortly coming quickly we'll see I don't know quickly is really a word that we used a lot back in Hawaii but you know we'll do our best and we're gonna we're making it happen and then you got a psychological warfare little-little album with some tracks to kind of help you push through some of those moments of weakness where you're thinking you just want to eat that doughnut you don't need to know just don't need to and so that'll help you out and we're also making a second psychological warfare album and if you want that then you can if you want to if you want if you have a special request for that should I do some stop smoking cigarettes I've never smoked cigarettes I think you should at least yeah doing it and then if it's like yeah cuz I would think but as far as potential problems you might run into like you know how like on the other ones like you can I get you can relate so you you know kind of what to say about it you know like hey you're thinking this or whatever yeah um yeah with the smoking maybe you could compare it to something maybe felt that you might be addicted to in the past but I don't think that's a whole that's a whole different game ladies dogs like it's you know yeah but I again I think it's a different game to really like meet onsen to be addicted to smoking I don't know I've never smoked well yeah yeah that's what that one's available wherever you get mp3s I Tunes Google Play also if you're on the path working out this part of it and write my four things working out was one of them and you want to vary every workout so this is where you get your kettle bells on it uh-huh come Tom it's called on it calm slash jaco slash jock oh by the way get some rings kettle bells a mace I'm you got it the mace is dangerous if you don't know what are you doing so yeah all the maces seem like they're not heavy yeah and you pick that thing up and you have a big what's the big long thing with the ball on the end called oh that's the mace know I'm thinking about the club Club bells yeah bells are way more dangerous than the mace yeah and that's what I'm saying where the club bells if you drop a club bell on your toe you will lose - yeah and the word that should be called a toe remover yeah you are in a hospital and you're like oh you got a bad toe we're gonna have to remove it okay cool come over here whack that thing's gone yeah I like to workout barefoot sometimes yeah and like you yes a dangerous proposition so yeah just be yeah and really I mean us saying it it makes it sound like oh like almost more dangerous than it really uh my point is go on there and look at the workouts first just cuz I've never done it and I still have all my toes yeah well never I've worked out with it a bunch and they still have all my toes so it's not that big of a deal right but when you picked it up you're like dang this is kind of having then when you swing in you're like whoa whoa whoa let me get the smaller one you know well that's how I was anyway but anyway you can get that stuff their rings are a big deal in my opinion rings yeah definitely you should have rings if you don't have rings get them you see I said in my opinion like I just know but they even though you were preaching the rings from day now I'm signed under the ring housing a big stability muscles anyway yeah I posted a picture of my son I don't really post that many pictures like my kids all the time like did everyone small sure but he was lifting you know when you lift and it's like he just jumps in and says my attorney doesn't deadlift they're pretty good kids a good form by the way yes they do so he does a deadlift on one of the little on it Kendall knows the smaller one z22 yeah and he's like watch me he did was away 18 pounds how much does he weigh I don't know 18 pound seems a little light it was like he did it easy laughter that's why I watch you weren't you get him a bill he did start pushing the envelope no and I'm just saying that's what he did at that time and I took a picture of it I'm not saying we were maxing out me and my two year look I'm maxing out deadlift and he only could do 80 that's not what I'm saying I'm saying anyway I took a picture of it so you can see it okay and it's and it has I looked at the future and that kind of evaluate I was like this is a good picture because it has like all the Kettleman in a sense it's kind of scattered about you frames it up well technically I mean should be told I was I'm making a video okay which may or may not have warrior kid things to it and so while I was doing I took that picture anyway it looks good on it was highly represented in that picture and it let me tell you this you know maybe if you would give your kid some choco white tea he would be able to deadlift more than 18 pounds he would might be able to deadlift 8,000 pounds in fact there's an actual guarantee because there's no aged minimum requirement if you get that kid on the jock a white tee there's the eight thousand pound deadlift actually my girl drinks - drinks legitimate drinks of my wife's jakka white tee and she deadlift at 8,000 there you go yeah we later yes you know proven percent kids everything chocolate white tea you can get the cans which are ready to drink or you can get the teabags that you have to boil water too big oh god I'm gonna boil water then you have to seep you have to seep it but then what when you in the morning I don't drink Jocko white tea warm in the morning every morning but there's certain city like at the muster sure oh I'm all about it and you know what a seat means seat means you put the tea bag in there and you let it sit for a little while and for some people they pull it out I just leave it in there the whole time you know Alan Alan stages Oh Ellen from mustard mustard Alan he stages he stays like when I get up to the podium it's staged so what's good about that is it's in the morning time you just have a little warm well guess it's hot technically is hot but I drink it warm yeah I'm with you I don't know that there's a better beverage for that little morning a little morning scenario yeah this is a little morning's note so a cup of dark a white tea so you can get that also I've got some books I got the way the warrior kid one end to end marks mission it's one and two it's the same series and those books I get more incredible heartfelt back on those two books then I could have ever imagined and it's awesome because kids can relate to the books and it is great for the kids and it's great for the parents too and I get parents that just say this is making me a better pair because it's all just a big it's all just a cover and move right I'm giving you this information here you get to flank your kid because your kids aren't gonna listen to you not 100% that listen you a little bit but they'll listen to someone that they some some other person that seems like kind of tough you know that they want to listen to Uncle Jake yeah Uncle Jake starts telling them what to do and they're down totally dumb and yeah so the warrior Kid books wanted to obviously get one first mm-hmm because it's a story and it kind of continues you need to grow and it's gonna continue to grow we're gonna see this we're gonna see young mark all the way through through high school yeah right and yeah so those books will help kids get on the path teach them about discipline teach them about hard work teach them about eating right teaching about study habits teach them about taking responsibility it's like everything that a kid needs to know to be quite honest with you well this is and this it's kind of mean I guess in a way so I've worried kid to Mark's mission on repeat in the household helps that for my daughter's kindergarten they suggest like all these things that you should do every day and you can kind of choose one and one is reading know for certain amount of time so I just read one chapter every single night every single night as punishment I won't though which is pretty rare that's totally awesome though yeah like if I see all threatened hey hey no chapter tonight you know she scrambles to you know fall in line anyway um so the good thing about having it on repeat because obviously we finished or whatever I'm on around to like towards the end of the book and she just knows she knows that the answers now you know she's still excited yeah because of all now she knows so it's all familiar you know so she kind of know it's almost like now she's Jake five yes I think she's yeah that's amazing yeah that's amazing so that's the way the warrior kid and marksman get it for your kids get it for your neighbor's kid to get it for your kids across the streets kids oh I'm sorry cuz why not just help kids out yeah and it does help whatever what I was about to say about I feel bad cuz one night this is like two nights ago she got this new unicorn book kids book I don't know where she got it from or something like this oh yeah from their library or whatever you know part of the book exciting new unicorn book I read that thing the thing is so lame it's a kindergarten level book by the way and so I'm reading it and I'm thinking this thing is lame I'm looking at her she's over there playing with LEGOs while I'm reading it Express she disengaged so quit something yeah just she was just off that get the word get books background yeah uh discipline equals freedom Field Manual this was called the muster a lot of people this this book definitely definitely hit people hard yeah this point equals freedom Field Manual so that book is it good you know what this book is gonna be good for Christmas I know it's only what Thanksgiving Halloween Halloween yeah but this book Christmastime this is the book you get for the the person yeah you know who you need it for those that needs to get a little little help getting on the path people read page a day two pages a day I read it yeah I wrote it and I read it because it keeps you on the path so this Michals freedom Field Manual then you got of course extreme ownership which I wrote with my brother life babban which is just universally kind of become and accepted as a as a as a book that you need to read as a leader and that's followed up by the dichotomy leadership which just came out both those books New York Times both sellers both those books number one Wall Street Journal bestsellers both those books continued to be on those lists why because that's not through bit the big advertising campaign mmm that's just through word of mouth people get it for themselves and they get it for their teammate then they get it up the chain of command down the chain of command get your get your get your team in the game with the dichotomy leadership and extreme ownership and then we got miking the Dragons which comes out November so here's what it's about Mikey young kid scared scared of everything finds a book the book that he finds it's called the dragon Prince and he's scared to read it because his pictures of scary dragons in it but then he gets the courage to read it cuz he sees a little boy in there too that kind of looks like he knows what's going on so he sees that little boy because I'm gonna read it so he reads the book and in the book the dragon Prince there's the king is dead and the boy is now the only one that will defend the kingdom from the Dragons that are over the hill in the dragon cave and the boy is scared cuz he's only seven years old and doesn't know what he's gonna do goes and finds his father's war chest pulls out the shield pulls out the sword they're too big for him and now he's even more scared but then he sees a note in the bottom of the war chest and he picks up the note and here's what it says after he finds this note it says to my son if you are reading this now it means I am gone and you are the one that must carry on our kingdom is now what you must save and to do that you have to be brave I know that you think you don't know what to do but remember that I was once a little boy - I was also small and had fear in my heart and I didn't even know where to start I couldn't imagine going over the hill to face the dragons that wanted to kill but don't worry son you will be just fine if you can just keep these things in your mind and then he goes on to explain to him how he can overcome his fear of the dragons and that's what this the Prince does the Prince stands up to his fears and faces the dragons and then the boy Mikey learns from a lesson and you know we have to remember that we all have dragons to fight so and also remember that this book is coming out on Jocko publishing mmm why is that the big publishers couldn't get it out in time for kids to have it for Christmas and that's what I once I had the book in my mind I wanted kids to have it by Christmas and the big publishers couldn't make it happen because they're big they're big you know they got a lot of moving pieces we're nimble over here you you know we're nimble so since they couldn't get it out in time I had to kind of like they're a big dragon that's what they are and so I had to kind of like stand up to the dragons and we can stand up to the dragons in our own right with this with this book so if you want to help fight the Dragons then grab a sword or at least grab a copy and together we'll slay the Dragons also we got national on front leaders of consultancy that's what we do we solve problems through leadership it's me it's life it's JP Dave Flynn Mike Cirelli and Mike bimah don't call a speaking agency to get us we won't do it email s law in front or check the website national on front comm or you can email info national front calm the muster we just got done with the muster good show good show it's awesome awesome to be up there awesome to meet all these people coming from all over the world South Africa New Zealand right it's interesting just one woman came from New Zealand and like didn't get a shout out life was kind of name in some of the countries where people from from and I don't think well we didn't have it on the list or whatever we should have done a better job of screening it but she came oh she's not come from New Zealand I was like how that's awesome because you guys didn't say it was like New Zealand was represented strongly and I signed a book she had to go up she had to do a little like I think she did a coin flip to figure out who gets to go to the muster her or her husband she won so I signed books for him so yeah come to the monster with it the next one there's going to be one in Chicago in the spring and one in Denver in the fall so looking like Australia in the winter so down low but every every monster we've done is sold out and these are gonna sell out too so check extreme ownership calm if you want to get into that game of course now we also have EF overwatch big subject lots of people it's it's the war on the war for talent that's what it is yeah everyone needs good well if you have a problem in your world what's gonna solve that problem good leadership where do you get good leaders from well well we figured out is we get good leadership from the military so we got Special Operations and combat aviators that are ready to go out and do work and we're putting them into companies that need leaders so if you got a company or if you're a vet spec ops or combat aviation go to EF overwatch and you can get in the game there and if you want to continue this conversation that we're kind of having right now you know it's been kind of a long conversation but if you want to keep it going so you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter on Instagram and on Facebook EKKO is that EKKO Charles and I am at Jocko willing and thanks to all of you for making this podcast possible by all of you I mean first of all the military who protects our way of life and who sacrifice so much for our freedom and our security and here at home police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs correctional officers border patrols first responders you know who you are those of you in uniform thank you for your service in protecting us here at home and everyone that listens wherever you are and whatever it is that you do teachers investment bankers plumbers engineers electricians doctors and nurses and builders and bricklayers and everyone else that is out there making their way like I said earlier it can get hard sometimes that's the way life is and sometimes you can actually hear life laughing at you sometimes but I say don't let it it's like when the Chinese guards conducted a mock execution on Colonel Richardson and the other prisoners that he was there with and then the good the guards they stood there and they were laughing they were laughing at these terrified prisoners and only didn't like that at the time the Master Sergeant he didn't like that so he yelled he yelled get up don't let them laugh at you get up and I recommend that if you feel like the world is laughing at you you do the same you get up and get after it and until next time this is echo and Jocko

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 178,286

Keywords: Discipline, freedom, military, extreme ownership, leadership, advice, jocko willink, echelon front, navy seal, jocko podcast, excerpt, echo charles, leader, lead, win, latrine, korea, pow, 1951, hero, book, back to the book, book review

Id: _K9ICXapatg

Length: 225min 17sec (13517 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/mrdeepsquats]

This is one of his best book review episodes, IMO. A lot of great takeaways for me

[u/ajsimz]

Did JW performance manage Echo during this podcast?

[u/nforrest]

Great episode! The nearly drowning part is a bit uncomfortable - you'll know it when you hear it.

[u/youcanthandlethelie]

Great episode!

[u/ChazzBeef]

This was a great podcast.

Do you guys know of any others like this where Jocko reads a war book and analyses it for life lessons?

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Thanks