Jocko Podcast 319: "Shut Up and Return Fire" with Admiral Thomas "The Hulk" Richards.

this is jocko podcast number 319 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening as the seals inserted into a rice paddy near where they had taken fire carl nelson's uh-1bc wolf gunship commenced a right turn at 80 feet above the ground to cover them his co-pilot earl shot worked the lz's edge with his mini guns well as gunners petty officers michael dobson and tom clavon fired their m-60s the seals patrolled northeast and then east on a dike separating the two rice paddies and then moved north on one perpendicular to the first as they advanced the enemy began firing from well-concealed and dug-in positions on a dike covered with heavy vegetation the seals and nelson's gunship immediately returned fire as the patrol continued closer toward the tree line the seals took accurate withering fire from both sides of the dike point man james rowland fell shot through the groin he was hit again as he crawled for cover seconds later the platoon commander grant telfer was shot in both legs both seals managed to return fire despite their wounds but the severity of their injuries and the immediate necessity to extract them soon took them out of action lieutenant jg tom richards immediately radioed carl nelson and his sea wolf for fire support as he and his fellow seal gary lawrence advanced under fire to assist the two seriously wounded seals as he dragged roland to cover one round passed through richard's right hand hitting the stoner's pistol grip nevertheless while lawrence wendell hedge and donald fruttrell returned fire richards continued to expose himself to enemy fire to drag the wounded to cover when the automatic weapons man futrell was shot in the chest he cried out i'm hit i'm hit richard's sensing the rising panic in futrell's voice suspected the man was going into shock to distract him richards ordered futrel to shut up and return fire futrel briefly did so with his m-60 and did not go into shock as futrell became semi-conscious richards pulled him back as well when lawrence and hedge ran out of ammunition minutes later richards passed them the linked 556 ammo for his now inoperable stoner the squad regrouped behind a dike and richards urged the seals to keep pouring fire into the enemy as he radioed for emergency extraction when lawrence and hedge ran out of ammunition minutes later as the battle raged extraction became imperative including himself richards had four wounded men three of them critical for pilot carl nelson and the sea wolves helicopter squadron flying in support of the seals there was no hesitation and here's a quote from him my crew knew that leaving anyone behind was not an option when nelson saw richards dragging the wounded seals to cover he alerted the transport helicopter flown by lieutenant jg edward dyer to get ready for extraction and descended to cover it from an altitude of about 50 to 70 feet from the ground seals lawrence and hedge providing covering fire with their stoners nelson's gunship hit the enemy with devastating rocket and mini fire minigun fire while dyer urgently searched for the seal's exact location on his second pass dyer spotted them huddled next to a dyke and came in hot bleeding off air speed during his approach as the slick hovered skids wet in a rice paddy richards dragged each of the three wounded seals in turn over the dike then through the rice paddy to the helicopter lifting each aboard with his one good hand richards later wrote with one hand it was probably the heaviest lift i ever made the best one too enemy fire intensified during the loading lawrence still providing cover fire was about to climb aboard when dyer began to pull pitch for liftoff as enemy rounds hit the fuselage lawrence grabbed the slick skid and held on for dear life until lieutenant jg richards reached down with his uninjured hand and hauled lawrence aboard for richard's action and disregard for his own personal safety the officer in charge of seal team one detachment golf telfer's immediate superior recommended him for the silver star the award recommendations summary of action stated quote without the conspicuous gallantry and cool perseverance of lieutenant j.g richards it is doubtful that the patrol could have survived the next senior officer in the chain of command located at navy special warfare group vietnam and saigon endorsed the recommendation inexplicably the chief of staff for the commander u.s naval forces vietnam downgraded the award to a bronze star that staff went so far as to change the wording cited in the original summary of action the citation for the downgraded bronze star now read lieutenant junior grade richards courage under fire cool professionalism and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the united states naval service such a substantive change in wording undermined the rationale for the higher award it remain it remains unclear why the chief of staff located more than 150 miles from the battlefield made such an unusual decision no explanation was ever given the honor and recognition that were earned that day but not granted still rankles many of the seals and sea wolves who along with richards risked everything to save first squad from certain destruction some have even argued that his original award recommendation should have been upgraded to a navy cross as carl nelson and edward dyer were awarded distinguished flying crosses pointing out that richard's extraordinary heroism under fire at great personal risk with total disregard for his own life mirrors that of those recommended for higher awards seawolf pilot carl nelson who is on this podcast number 288 expresses the sentiment's best having flown more than 600 combat missions with scores of those flights in direct support of two seal teams nelson vividly remembers the scene unfolding below his gunship as the wounded platoon struggled to survive nelson recalls quote watching a wounded tom richards under intense enemy fire drag each of his wounded seals to safety across a series of rice paddy dykes and load them onto the sea lord hilo it was the most heroic act that i have ever witnessed tom richard's heroism rates a navy cross at minimum he directly saved the lives of his platoon now that right there is from an article from naval history magazine was written in april of 2020 by a guy named captain michael g slattery in another section of the article they give us some more some more details some more background on lieutenant jg tom richards and it says christened the hulk by his fellow seals tom richards was well liked and respected and he enjoyed a reputation as a highly capable operator he was a native of brightwaters new york a graduate of bayshore high school where he wrestled and played football following graduation he attended villanova university on a navy rotc scholarship there he lifted weights and routinely bench press 400 pounds he was commissioned an ensign in the naval reserve in 1969. while still a midshipman at villanova richards was accepted to basic underwater demolition seal training when he began the rigorous program with class 54 the six foot tall richards weighs 235 pounds he graduated 10 months later with class 55 at a lean and hard 215 pounds he was assigned to seal team one in coronado california so that's what the article focuses on talking about that one day in vietnam but the hulk continued to serve in the seal teams and if you follow his career forward from that event in 1971 and you go forward about 20 years to 1991 i was a new guy at seal team one i didn't even have my trident yet i wasn't even an official seal i graduated buds but i hadn't got my trident yet it was a saturday morning and i was in the gym by myself and i was smashing some weights and i was blasting metallica on the stereo system and this was a time at seal team one where there was a five-disc cd player and the entire thing was filled with all the metallica albums at that time there were five and it was locked shut so the only thing you could list you had no choice you were just going to listen to metallica so i'm in there i've got the music cranked up to an unhealthy level and in walks captain richards the hulk now he's a full captain he'd just taken over as the commanding officer buds actually took over before i graduated so we all knew who he was and i immediately i'm a junior enlisted i immediately run over and i turn down the stereo because i don't want to bother the senior officer and as i turn down the stereo captain rich is just me and him in there on a saturday morning captain richards goes hey and i look over and he says turn that [ __ ] back up and so i did and worked out and he was working out and we were throwing weight around and he was throwing around more weight than me by the way i doubt that uh and then you fast forward a little bit further i think it was 1996 or 1997. it was 1997 and now i meet the hulk again now only now he's the admiral he's in charge of all the seals and he interviewed me and wrote me a recommendation to become a seal officer and i got accepted into that program and carried on with the rest of my career but never forgot the impression that admiral richards left on me and on the seal community and it's an honor to have him here tonight to share some of his experiences some of his stories some of his lessons learned from a 30-year career in the seal teams admiral thanks for coming by well jocko thanks for having me here uh when i sit here and listen to those excerpts from michael slattery's article that takes me back to those rice paddies and it is a day that i would have to describe as one of the worst days in my entire naval career had to be the worst day but i also tell you it was the best [ __ ] day because i got those guys i got those guys out of the kill zone over to the protection of the dyke and then into the helo yeah i was a big strong guy there's something called uh adrenaline rush adrenaline high and all that other stuff and you know maybe you could uh you help some you know you know limp dick uh you know pencil neck geek uh you drag some of those guys across the rice paddy but i seriously often doubt it thankfully it was me who was only wounded in one hand and i was able to drag those guys out of there listening to carl nelson make those gun runs i don't know if there's any car nuts in the room or listening in here but one of my roommates in villanova had a 1967 corvette 427 425 damn horsepower and when skip stood on that thing i believe he had a couple of cutouts legal or not but when skip stood on that sucker it roared well that is the closest sound that i can describe to those who haven't been there when a minigun rips off and lights off and that was one of the most beautiful sounds that i've ever heard so as i'm going back and forth uh grant telfer and his uh uh his update to the uh to the award recommendation uh you know use those terms that you used in the article without regard to uh to my own personal safety or my life uh i have to tell you that i never gave a thought to anything but my teammates who were grant was shot in both legs rock jim roland shot in the chest and the groin and of course jim's major concern with those injuries was would the equipment never work again uh and then uh you know you you mentioned how uh don futrell was getting ready to go into shock uh you know i'd never been trained about what somebody going into shock sounds like or doesn't uh i had no clue but as soon as i heard don and uh you know you could hear his voice going up a few octaves uh he referred to it and a note to me about his girly voice you know hey don you were just shot in the damn chest uh and uh you you got a right to be you know you know going into panic or whatever it is i didn't we didn't have that conversation this is flashing through my mind uh but uh i could hear it and i just said you know it just came to me get his mind off his situation and get it back on to our situation uh i didn't realize how badly he was injured and that he was going to be useless as tits on a boar hog after that but you know i just wanted to get him back into action uh and and out of out of any shock because you know we're we're in the middle of nowhere and i have no idea how if we're even going to get out of there and if we get out of there how long it's going to take and so on and so forth so uh you know just the uh the great training from the legends and seal team one before i got there you know that we used to call it seal basic indoctrination training and then we'd go through a pre-deployment uh training program but uh those uh who uh set the history of seal team one before i got there uh those guys made all the uh made all the difference in the training and my reaction and everybody else's reaction in the in the rice paddy so as i was saying it was the best of days and it was the worst of days uh you know thank god everybody got out of there uh i don't know how often it happens but i'm willing to bet not very often both roland and futrell when they were shot in the chest the bullets passed front to back didn't touch a bone you just went through soft tissue and the uh the heat of the round actually uh cauterized the uh cauterize the injury uh those guys you know who are you know goddamn lucky is is all i can say of course i didn't know that at the time uh and uh you know uh it was just uh just a real uh a real uh you know crappy situation but uh as those guys got wounded you know my you know my focus became we gotta get out of dodge you know we gotta just get the hell out of here and uh it was a hot dz we had 70 or 80 90 uh vc we hadn't realized that of course uh but we had all these guys uh uh in the uh in the uh and the jungle on the other side of the uh the rice dike and uh constant fire uh the uh you know heroes you know carl providing that fire at 70 80 100 feet above above ground level he's uh he's right there in the in the in the action uh that's that's not a hard shot to make if you know how to shoot at elos uh thank god they didn't uh so carl and his crew are in danger uh and and uh then the uh then the slick uh the helo is called the slick is because it doesn't have the miniguns and the rockets and so on slick comes in naked to uh to pull us out of a uh out of a of a hot lz uh as you said uh he he hovered there and i had to make those three trips under fire uh and uh without uh wendell hedge and gary lawrence providing that cover fire i couldn't have gone back and forth to that rice dike to get those guys uh you know and so uh as uh i'll i'll never forget it uh gary lawrence is you know you know banging away and he uh he runs out of bullets and uh and he calmly turns to me and he says i'm out of bullets you know jesus h christ uh so seeing as my as my weapon didn't work and i usually went out with uh you know a thousand to 1200 rounds of ammo on my body uh i uh i ripped i ripped off a bandolier and and you know for a little bit of background is you know just like you see in those old movies with pancho villa and all those you know bad guys in the in the westerns i got these bandoliers of ammo wrapped around their body well that's exactly what i had but what i did is i put on a put on a t-shirt or a blue and gold wrapped the bandoliers around my body and then on top of those i put on a on a set of camis not only to cut down on the uh on the noise but it also cut down on the reflection of the uh the brass of the rounds and it protected them from anything that we might run into uh so when uh when those guys ran out of bullets i did a button on my uh on my cami uh you know shirt top and just popped the uh pop the link and you know threw 120 rounds off to lawrence and 120 and it's kind of like if you if you watch it it's kind of like a snake flying through the air and they grabbed it and they uh they pop it down and they uh you know slam it in the in the receiver of their of their weapons and they start returning fire uh quite uh quite a brave situation for those guys and and they were completely exposed yeah well we're all completely exposed and as as i'm loading the uh the guys into the helo uh i'd i'd like to take full credit for that but uh the uh the crew members as i got these guys up out of the muck i mean you know the uh because they hadn't set down into the rice paddy the uh the deck of the uh of the cabinet of the uh the huey was too high for me to lift these guys and i'd not get them up high enough and then the crew members had you know dragged him into the uh dragon of the hilo uh so it was a uh it was a bad day at blackrock a real shitty day at blackrock to be honest with you so was the worst day of my career and the best um i got a bunch of questions we'll we'll get to vietnam uh back to vietnam because i'd like to hear about how that you know what your workup was like how you ended up there we'll get there but just to give us a little background on you let's just talk about you know what what your childhood was like how did you become the hulk well that was pretty tough becoming a hulk i'll tell you and i'll tell you why my my dad was a policeman and today policemen who are our first responders going out and dealing with uh god knows what in society they're not paid well enough for what they do uh go back 60 or 70 years they weren't paid you know period so uh there weren't a lot of second helpings at the the dinner table uh so uh uh while i grew to about uh you know about six foot five eleven and a half is probably the god's honest truth uh if if it wasn't nailed down anybody else in the house wasn't eating it i was you know there's an old story about the only thing that ever broke was a handle on the refrigerator door well i i broke the handle on the refrigerator door more than once uh but somewhere uh in uh i i never wrestled i went to a uh a catholic grammar school and uh i am a retired catholic uh but i went to a catholic grammar school and uh got to uh to high school was the first time i saw anything like uh like wrestling and and it was interesting so i went out for the wrestling team and uh we had a uh a great uh freshman wrestling coach and uh i want to say his name was gordon howe's wrath but uh great a great coach and uh he was kind of ambivalent on the benefits of of weight training but he also was helpful in getting me a a a lifeguard job in a village of bright waters in one of the other beaches uh and uh that was on a bay and a canal so you didn't need any open water skills at that point in time so uh what i did that summer is i had probably like a 110 or 150 pound weight set and i brought it over to the uh to the beach and we had a little you know garage kind of thing and and on my breaks you know i'd go over do a few sets this that or the other thing uh lunch break i'd do a few more sets and before i got on my bicycle and rode home i'd do a few more sets uh i came back to uh to wrestling the the next year uh jv and uh coach uh housewrath calls me out to uh to use me as the demonstration dummy on some particular move that he was gonna do right so uh he you know calls me out and i lay down on the mat and he uh he you know telling the rest of the team what he's going to do and i just locked and here's this you know 35 year old man you know 165 170 pounds uh you know you know wrestling uh you know champion in his uh in his own right and here's this you know smart ass kid who's been lifting weights all summer long and he couldn't move me and he and he said to me says what did you do and uh you know change people's minds about weightlifting and conditioning for wrestling at least at bayshare high school uh where did you get where did you get the idea were you looking at like uh uh magazines i mean how did you figure out even the idea of weightlifting where'd you get the weight set from well ray played if you're listening to this uh it's your fault uh we had a uh we had a guy on the uh uh on the uh on the football team uh name is ray plate uh and uh saw him in a you know 50-year reunion a few years ago and uh he's doing well but ray had arms that looked like somebody's legs and ray wasn't the biggest guy on the team by any stretch of the imagination but ray was our nose tackle and nobody on the other teams pushed rey around and i said that looks like it works let's give that a try and so i did and i learned i learned a lot on my own but uh i uh i went down to uh i got the navy rotc scholarship as you said to uh to villanova and uh uh that's a uh that's an academic scholarship uh uh you've gotta pass a physical but it's it's not like uh you know going to buzz i mean you got a you got to fog a mirror you got to you have 20 20 vision and uh and and that kind of thing and so uh i uh you know got the scholarship and i went on down to villanova and uh yeah i could have you know tried to walk onto the football team they did not have a wrestling team i could have tried to walk onto the football team but you know i said i don't know what this academic stuff is really going to be i've got this scholarship so before i overload my uh myself let me just uh you know not go out for football and so uh the football team at the time used the same weight room as you know the wannabes or the anybody else at the at the school so i you know i lifted uh you know with the uh with a lot of the guys on the uh the football team and uh there were there were a couple of monsters on the football team and the uh the number one rated 119 198 pound power lifter not only collegiately but nationally aau uh was on the villanova football team uh name was john zarenko uh you know stronger than the law allowed uh but uh with a name like zarenko his nickname was dizzy uh but uh john uh john could uh could quote only bench press about three and a quarter 335 and he was always complaining now listen this is 198 pounder you know five foot eight uh 198 pounder played fullback uh and he's benching 335 pounds you know i mean that's something to write home about but john could squat 600 and something he could deadlift 700 and something if somebody tried to tackle him around the waist they were going to break their shoulder so i really got interested in uh in enlisting at the time and uh we had a we had 198 another 198 pounder at the at the school and uh jim robucci was uh was also ranked nationally and uh he was the number two 198 college lifter uh jim was a little bit stronger in the upper body and uh you know jim had uh at 198 pounds a 410 pound bench press competition bench press so uh we uh uh you know we were always going neck and neck and i left it at 2 42. uh yes i did get up to 250 if my wife is listening to this but i lifted at 242 and uh i had uh you know i had uh you know a good strong 415 bench press and my last collegiate meet i went into i opened it for went to 415 because jim's record was 410 so i had to break it by five pounds yeah you gotta screw with to boys you know so i i hit the 415 just to get the school record and uh back then equipment was not as uh regulated if you will as it is today you know you know the bench had to be it did not have to be x number of centimeters high x number centimeters wide so this bench was just a little bit wider than we were used to benching with and when i hit that 415 i came down and it sort of my shoulder sort of tweaked but i pushed it up anyway and i just said you know uh yeah i've you know gotta you know do uh do deadlifts here i don't want to really screw up the shoulder uh because my plan had been to set the uh the the record and i'd done it in the gym at 4 35 but uh i never hit it in in competition hit it in the gym but not the competition uh so uh that that whole weightlifting thing became uh it just well it's something that that i you know i'm still trying to do uh so fast forward to showing up at but no wait a minute we got to go back then we got to go back how did you hear about the single teams uh reader's digest if you can believe it reader's digest magazine was that was that in high school was that while you were at villanova that was when i got to villanova as i said uh my father was a policeman we didn't have a lot of money in the house uh and uh um i'll i'll wail on my uh older brother and uh and an older sister uh if there was any money to go to college they got it i did not so it was it was explained to me if i was going to college i was going to college on a scholarship so uh i actually had a part-time job that i was i was planning on doing the day of the rotc exam and my father says you're taking this test and what it was 20 or 25 bucks doesn't sound like much today but in 19 who was that uh 60 uh 65 that was a lot of money 64 65 so anyway i i passed on you know 20 or 25 bucks and went into that uh rotc test with a little bit of a bad attitude but as soon as i got in the room i said oh wait a minute yeah you're not getting the 25 bucks you know that's that's that's history you know let's let's take the test uh so as you may know you have to take the test then you have to pass the physical and the rotc program tells you that they will provide you with the scholarship you then have to apply to the university and get accepted so a completely different process so uh i did my father being a practicing or a convert to catholicism was uh adam and he says there's you know there were about 50 schools on the list then that had rotc scholarships he says you can go to these five or six those were like you know holy cross uh you know villanova notre dame uh those were those were the schools that i had to apply to uh i applied and uh you know that the rest of that is history uh so uh it was a it was it was a great program so i get to villanova and uh i uh what was back up a little bit more to you know staying in school i was i was a good student in high school i was uh you know i was the one that the rest of the honor class kids couldn't figure out what i was doing in the room so and in new york they had a uh still do probably a program uh called the regents uh regents testing uh so at the end of end of the year uh you would uh you would take a uh a statewide exam in you know math chemistry physics whatever it might be and uh i don't think i got 194 in any of those so that's part of what helped my uh you know my uh transcript for uh review by villanova look looked pretty good and i had scholarship offers to the state university of new york system and uh i was you know pretty much determined that i was going to go to a place called cortland state uh cortland had a uh an excellent uh you know pt program uh you know for uh teaching and uh they uh they also had a pretty good wrestling team at the time uh so i uh how good did you do in wrestling in high school uh i i did better than uh better than it shows and i i'll tell you my uh my uh my uh complaint on that one uh i uh in my in my senior year uh i i was wrestling this one kid and uh i want to say it was from uh from west islip but uh one of our big rivals and so on anyway the uh the guy stood on me uh from the uh in wrestling you have a you know you start to start the match both guys are on your feet and then the second and third rounds you know you start with one guy in what's called the bottom position and the other guy uh his arms around around the wrestlers in the top position one of the most common moves is a stand from the bottom and the guy on the bottom will stand and rip the guy's hands off of his waist the guy was on top and you know get away and get his one point for the uh for the neutral position well i said you know okay stand so what i did is as a guy was standing i just uh went up with him used his own uh his own momentum lifted him off his feet and swung his body so it was kind of like perpendicular to mine so now what i did is i uh instead of throwing them to the mat i just you know bent down to the mat i you know bent my knees and as i said this guy is you know perpendicular to me being upright so he's parallel to the mat so now that he's sliding down my side my knee would hit the mat he'd slide down along the side of my body and hit the mat nobody knew that this guy had had a couple of damn concussions during the football season so when he bounced off the mat he bounced and laid there uh that was not my plan my plan was to teach him not to stand on tom richards uh and uh you know so he's he's laying on the mat you know nice and terms other than oh [ __ ] and you know what the hell is going on here you know went through my mind and uh unfortunately i got quote branded as a dirty wrestler as a result of that and right after that they rewrote the damn new york high school wrestling rule book that had said the man in control's knee had to touch the mat before the opponent which is exactly what i did to the man on top must safely return the opponent to the mat now i suppose it's an all-girls sport not sure you know yes that shows a certain amount of uh you know male chauvinism you're right uh but uh anyway uh i get to the uh i get to the county meet and uh uh i'm in the uh you know semifinals or something like that and this guy a guy stands up and starts to get away from me and i try to take him down uh not in the matter that i just discussed but just like a double leg take down and i and i get him and i pick him up and he squirms away from me i don't have control of him he squirms away from me next thing i hear is a uh is a whistle i get penalized one point because they claimed that when this guy got away from me that i threw him down to the mat and when he got away from me i had managed to scramble around behind him and get control so i should have had two points for a takedown long story short the guy put on his track shoes after that yeah and and the refs never called him for stalling i chased him around the mat yada yada yeah i'm whining but i can say that they rewrote the new york state high school wrestling book uh it was a it was a real disappointment but quite frankly uh had i and so he he ended up like second or third in the state that year and i'm just saying to myself you know you should have been a track star not a wrestler but anyhow but all things considered uh you know i went on uh you know i went on to the to the rotc scholarship and uh had i had i gone to new york had i won new york state i'd probably had any number of uh a wrestling scholarship so you wouldn't be talking to me today if that had happened so yeah we're good here so then you so you pick up a reader's digest at some point you read an article about the seal teams or was it about udt so my father as i said you know didn't have the money for uh for a scholar for uh for high school or college tuition or anything like that so was your dad a vet from world war ii yes he was and what did he do and he was a uh he was a uh a gunnery instructor and uh uh he he actually never never left the united states uh but uh you know one of the places he was stationed was portsmouth new hampshire and after i retired i ended up working for a company in portsmouth new hampshire right on the naval base where he was he was assigned but go back to the rotc scholarship uh that's that was my uh that was my ticket to college my ticket into the navy so as i'm looking around the navy i'm trying to figure out what it is that i want to do i've been a lifeguard for years and years and i was in you know decent shape i could swim and uh so i i i maybe uh you know still had you know pt boats uh you know they were using them over there in vietnam and so on and i said yeah it's small boat stuff you know sounds like you know some fun yeah because i'd cut grass in the summer times and save money and i bought my own uh you know 14 foot uh you know boat with a uh 30 horsepower john cena you know you know evinrude outboard motor and so you know small boats were something i said okay this is what i want to do uh and uh then of course the navy doesn't have much of an emphasis on that and so i look around i find this udt stuff i say okay it's swimming you know working in the working in the in the ocean and i work with demolitions you know that sounds pretty interesting uh so i said you know i'll try for that and then i find this uh this article about the uh about the seals and i said that really sounds interesting and i think i'd really like to do that so i couldn't find out much about it uh but uh while i was there at villanova i let the the staff know that this is this is what i wanted to do uh and i made the made the application for uh for buds and uh and got accepted well in my junior year at villanova i had uh changed majors so in my between my junior and senior year which would have been your first class cruise as a midshipman i ended up going to summer school and i did not make my make my first class cruise so i'm getting ready to graduate my senior year and graduation and commissioning is held sort of simultaneously at villanova and uh i uh get called into the uh you know exo's office there at the rotc unit and he says i got some bad news for you tom i said you won't get commissioned here in the in beginning of may with everybody else because you've got to go on a uh go on your first class cruise before you can get commissioned well yeah you're not going to believe this that's when yeah that's when the guy who did so well on his uh you know rotc test uh you know got his i got his brain back together and that's the first time i learned the power of the uh of the pen and independent thinking of the navy so i write this letter to bupers and say hey i'm going to be a frogman i'm going to be a seal i don't need this first class cruz what an arrogant jackass i was so long story short the navy comes back and says okay you don't have to go into first class cruise i get commissioned with everybody and and i go out the buds got to back up just a little bit here so as i'm you know understanding that there's a certain amount of swimming required and probably running in other conditioning you know i've i've just gone out and you know bench pressed you know 400 pounds at the uh at the the collegiate uh you know weightlifting champion and you're walking around at 2 45. i was walking around at 245 at that point in time uh and uh you know squat you know 500 and something on you know dead lift uh you know five and a quarter or something at that point in time long story short several years later in the career in my uh once i was in the navy uh you know 10 10 years later in the navy 25 pounds lighter 30 pounds lighter i lifted more except for the bench press than i was at villanova but anyway uh so uh nobody in the rotc staff could tell me what i needed to do you know when i showed up in coronado uh and so i said well udt underwater you know got to be some swimming here so yeah i jumped in the pool with villanova about three times maybe four and i said well uh if there's gonna be a lot of running involved you know you know i started doing a little bit of road work and i had i dropped 10 or 12 pounds and i showed up at coronado thinking i was ready to go all right so i show up they give me my first uh issue of equipment and they tell me that the uh the class that was in pre-training at the time is uh is over uh here at the at the oceanfront go over there and tell them who you are and uh that you're joining the class well i showed up and uh uh walk up and the instructors look at me like who the hell are you and uh before they even let me take a step they make me go get a freaking ekg because they thought that i was some short fat you know pile of whatever and so here here's another time when uh when your your alligator mouth overloads your hummingbird ass so uh we got instructors i don't i don't remember if terry moy was there he's a legend in our time and a legend in his own mind uh but terry was uh was quite the guy but there's another guy standing there uh your complexion echo and uh he's uh his name is dick allen dick is about 511. he's the all-navy and i think he might have been the inner service boxing champ and dick was standing there at about 2 15 220 and i you know looked at chief allen and i said you know [ __ ] he can do it i can do it oh my god had to be one of the dumbest things that i ever said in public to anybody so uh they they kicked the [ __ ] out of me i did not pass my first screen test uh because like i said i didn't even know what the screen test was so they rolled me back to uh from class 53 to class 54 i didn't even you know sign up with them but uh what year was this uh this was 1969. so vietnam's in full swing full swing you know you're going to vietnam if you go to a single team absolutely and remember there were only two seal teams at the time and i guess you guys were still getting orders to udt out of buds too at that time the majority guys coming out of bud's got i got orders to uh to to udt uh was there was there any i mean was the culture in america just so split that you just didn't even think about like the hippies that are running around and protesting wars did you did you see any other were those people around villanova were those people in coronado so in my last semester at coronado excuse me last semester at villanova uh all these you know young uh politically active individuals decided that they had to make a statement uh so they're holding a uh a rally and they're blockading uh access to uh to the campus and you know [ __ ] i'm one of these guys right you know well no i didn't i didn't have the bank accounts i didn't i didn't go to puerto rico or the virgin islands on spring break uh but i'm one of these guys they know who i am because i was you know my senior year i was a bouncer at a couple of bars that everybody went to so here they are they're having this big demonstration and uh i forget what particular class it was over barkley hall that i had but i'm walking over to barkley hall and you've got this you know you know mass of students and head camp is closed you can't go you can't go on campus now i say well we we have one minor problem here i've got a class in barclay hall right over there and i'm going to barkley hall and the only problem is that you're temporarily between me and barkley hall so what's it going to be they stepped aside and i went to class it was easy so so you had no idea what was going to happen at buds i had no clue not a clue see i cleaned that up pretty good uh i had i had i had no i no idea what it was gonna be about but uh while i was uh while i was at villanova not only did i left at the gym on base but there was a ymca in town and i ran into this guy who claimed to be a uh a retired you know navy corpsman who would serve with the seals uh i can't remember his name you know 165 pound uh dark complected guy i think he was italian american whatever and uh we we got to talking and he told me a little bit about you know uh you know the war stories and and and how tough it was but one of the things that he said to me is he said every one of those instructors is a humanoid every one of those instructors had done whatever it is they're about to ask you to do or what they're about to do to you so i said to myself i locked in my mind at that point in time i said if that human being or that human being or even that marine over there can do that i can do that so that was the mindset i went into buds with if he can do it i can do it and uh it worked what was that what was was there anything that was hard for you did you suck it running or did you get good at it pretty quick uh i i sucked at running till graduation day uh but uh you know uh you know with a you know 500 and you know some odd pound squat you know going into uh going and training uh i could i could i could run uh i could i could do 50 or 100 yards quick yeah so when we back when i went through training jocko you remember when it was hard uh we uh we we trained on the other side uh uh back where the ball feels our foreman field is yeah so we'd finish up uh our our pt on one side of foreman field uh the side away from the bay towards the ocean and over on the on the base side of former foreman field uh was a uh a row of uh pull-up bars and dip bars so after pt uh we would go run over to those bars and do pull-ups and dips well the deal was the instructors would break you into groups of x amount of guys and you would run over to the to the pull-up bars the first guy in each group got to stand there and you know scratch his ass while everybody else is in the lean and rest punching out 20 50 or however many push-ups i never did push-ups after pt i was always the first man in my running group to get over there if it was over a hundred yards i was the last man but i never had to do push-ups in that group but uh so uh i don't know if we still call them goon squads thing when you went through uh okay i'm sure jocko i'm sure you made a few of those i made some goon squads you probably made all of them the deal was and i didn't realize that the deal was with the instructor staff is that wherever instant richards is that's where we cut the goon squad so one day uh you you know of admiral ray smith he was in his class 54 and 54 is a class i started with went through third phase before i got a cellulitis infection so yeah i'm a man of two countries or two classes uh but i graduated with 55 but anyway uh first phase ray and i were you know we're on one of the conditioning runs and we're running on north towards the north island fence and we're uh we're just about in front of the uh the lifeguard towers at center beach there in coronado and ray and i were running along just having a conversation you know how i mean because these conditioning runs weren't fast uh they were you know hard enough but they weren't real fast so ray and i are running along having this conversation and ray looks around and he realizes oh [ __ ] we're we're right about here at the point where they're gonna cut the goon squads he said tom i got to go and ray literally took off at that point in time and he was no more than 10 or 15 yards in front of me where the instructor steps in and says all right everybody assume the position that is push-ups because we're starting the goon squat boom and so they cut the goon squad wherever i was except one time so we're doing a soft sand conditioning run this time we're going south and uh we're running down towards the uh towards the uh the public beach down there and that's about a a three mile point but uh right across from the uh uh where the marina is there used to be a great big pile of sand and we call that mount suribachi well the uh the instructors uh would take us down the soft sand road uh which was between the uh the ocean front and just probably got you know 30 or 40 yards in from the strand highway we'd run down that soft sand road and uh then we'd get them out suribachi and we'd run around mount suribachi we brought up but over mounts are watching well i got tired of all this running up and down mount suribachi stuff you know what i'm saying i mean i've i've tossed my cookies you know more times than i can tell you and uh and i am one hurting son of a gun so they you know they go up and over mount suribachi they loop around and they head on down towards the uh towards the state park beach there and i don't even have the freaking class in sight right you know today today an instructor gets shot for losing track of of a student but they i don't even have a class in sight so the class goes down and i know with i know what the run is for the day so they're going to come back so i just you know loop around suribachi real nice and easy this time loop around suribachi the class comes back i loop around in the back of the class and and it just worked out the instructors were looking forward as i came up and the goon squad had already been cut down by the state state park i'm i i as i had caught up to the class uh this uh great big instructor uh by the name of tracks bear trax uh williams uh looks over the class and he sees me as the last man in the formation and he looks at me and he says ensign richards i don't know how you got to be here i do know you're not supposed to be here but somehow you did it so i'm gonna let you stay here and that is the only goon squad i ever missed uh how many so i guess you said you were in 54. that's who you went through hell week with right i went i went through uh hell week and diving phase was the third phase at that point in time so i went already all the way all the way into the second phase of the diving week before i got a cellulitis infection that actually hospitalized me how many people quit during her week we started with slightly over uh slightly over 200 guys in class 54 and we ended up with uh right around 52 54 guys uh you know graduating out of 54 so we lost 150 guys just ringing out ringing that bell kind of crazy and then you said at this time some guys would get orders to udt some guys would get orders to seal team it seemed like at one point it was you were gonna go to udt most likely yeah a couple guys would go to seal team and you ended up getting orders to seal team yes uh and as far as i'm concerned that was no accident because what i did is uh i realized that the situation is just as few expressed uh and that only a few guys ended up going to the seal teams well uh i uh petitioned a couple of the uh of the instructors uh that uh hey i really want to go to seal team uh and uh you know one of them was a uh uh a highly decorated uh uh seal chief by the name of uh you know tommy hatchet i don't know if that name rings a bell to you uh but uh tom was uh was one of the few black guys we had in the teams at the time and i went up to uh to chief hatchet and i said you know chief uh i really want to go to go to seal team one i said i think that's where i belong and i i went up to a couple of other league instructors and now at this point in time the chief hatchet was uh uh chief hatchet was in the second phase and i'm in third phase but you know i went to those guys because uh second phase of course not of course second phase was land warfare and those are the uh the the seal guys and i said you know yeah this is this is what i want to do and uh obviously they must have said something to somebody uh because uh because they let me go so you show up to seal team one let's go let's back up i want to tell i want to tell two training stories here hundred percent uh in uh different different hell weeks have uh have different uh layouts you know what's done when uh because of course the uh the the students you know learn too much about what's coming up uh next and then they can sort of you know get their minds uh get their minds around it so uh when uh admiral smith and i went through training together uh one of the events that they did was uh you know i don't know what they called it but let's call it the last man standing that is they drew a circle in the sand put the class inside the circle and said that the last guy inside the circle gets x number of points for his uh first boat team well uh you know ray smith was a i was a boxing champion at the at the naval academy uh she says i want to say uh uh he he was a uh he was a weight man that is he threw uh uh through the uh the hammer or something like that uh so ray was a pretty pretty strong guy ray was about 200 pounds maybe 205 at the most maybe a buck 95. so he was taller too right yeah about my height oh really might have been just a little bit taller oh i mean because he did look kind of skinny so uh ray and i went up to each other and we said hey let's let's make this easy on ourselves we'll throw everybody else out of the circle and it'll be you and i and see who gets the points of the book group that's exactly what we did we threw those other 50 suckers out of the end of the circle and uh came down to ray and i wrestling on the ground and i'm trying to you know pick them up and throw them out of the circle when uh you know instructor moy sees that i've i've raised my head to you know see where the line is and where i've got uh where i've got ray so i can toss them out of there and just as i raised my head instructor moy had a ibs paddle full of sand and threw it in my face you know basically i had eyes ears nose and mouth full of sand and quite frankly i thought i was blinded uh but uh the uh the students say that after i roared at instructor moy that i only missed them by a couple of steps because i i said screw screw it screw it lieutenant jg smith i'm going after that son of a [ __ ] you just filled my face full of sand uh i missed i missed the instructor uh and they had one of the guys take me down the water and clear me out and i you know the crappy thing is that ray smith didn't even get the points for his boat crew uh because uh he didn't throw me out i i left them my own accord so fast forward 20 some odd years i'm now the uh the skipper of uh of buds and uh uh ray is uh is the admiral in charge of uh naval special warfare command and uh ray and his wife kathy are living across the street on the mfib base and uh ray's son is going through seal training so uh ray uh you know we have we have the breakout and uh you know some people the breakout includes uh busting the students out of the barracks giving them all sorts of confusing directions and things to do there's also instructors firing blanks from m60 machine guns using you know flash bangs which are a very bright very loud explosive simulator to disorient the students and yet here you know a couple hundred yards away on the other side of the strand highway is navy housing so usually that sunday night when we started hell week we the phones lit up and uh one night it was admiral smith's wife kathy complaining to ray you know what is tom doing to those boys so as their son goes through training uh i was you know particularly careful to make sure that that i did not single uh you know him out but uh i was it was also uh you know attentive to the fact that you know sometimes uh the son of a we call them legacies going through training uh just like they did and what was that uh was that movie uh uh animal house uh you know legacies uh but uh we we wanted to make sure that uh you know if somebody's father had been jackass of the week to one of the uh the instructors that that that didn't carry over and taint his uh son's attempt to get through training but anyway i remember a member ray coming you know telling me the story about ray do you realize what they're doing to these boys i'm sorry kathy if you hear this but uh ray was ray was concerned about or kathy was concerned about her son ray and kathy were married when when ray and i went through training but you know ray obviously did a phenomenal job of not you know telling kathy about what how bad his day was yeah that's a hard thing to camouflage too because you're coming home with you chafing you're bruised up and beat up you've got cuts and nicks all over your body and sweat your ankles and knees are swelled up it's pretty savage absolutely but you know kathy obviously didn't appreciate what ray was going through when he went through training so we get through nate's first phase he makes it that makes it through hell week and well not quite so when ray and i went through training hell week secured on saturday morning not that you had it easy jocko i understand training training secured on saturday morning well uh when i was the uh the skipper of the center uh training secured on friday morning you got a whole 24 hours off so uh the uh as i mentioned earlier uh you know guys learn you know tricks about what happens at what point in time during hell week and so the classes had come to understand that okay around 10 10 30 maybe 11 o'clock on friday they're gonna secure you you know because the corpsman got to give you a check and then you know they gotta you gotta make sure that we get anybody over to balboa who needs to go to balboa that's balboa naval hospital uh but uh yeah of course the instructors want to get off by uh by three or four o'clock in the afternoon so gotta secure everybody early enough so the students knew this so the students uh you know so i i i get the instructor staff together and say this is what we're going to do the students think that at the end of this particular evolution their week is over so when they get when you get them lined up here they're thinking we're done so we're not done so what i did is i went out to you know they thought i was coming over the uh coming over the dune to these guys lined up by the uh by the ocean that i was going to secure training secure hell week secure means to finish it up close it down so i come over the uh come over the uh the berm and i walk down to the class and i start to engage ensign smith in conversation along the lines of you know instant smith you you probably remember stories of your father that he and i went through uh through buds together and everybody is a soup sandwich at the end of hell week whether it's friday morning whether it's friday morning or saturday morning everybody's a soup sandwich ensign smith was no better and he has no idea what the hell i'm talking about he just knows that they're standing there getting ready to get secured so i said and since smith do you recall that uh when your dad and i went through seal training uh the seal training didn't secure until saturday morning this is only this is only you know 10 30 friday morning i guess you guys got another 24 hours and i turned around and i left i did not secure whole week we got all these kids thinking we're done we've made it maybe i can get a hot shower i can't take another step if i had to and there's guys with tears running down their faces uh and they turned and turned to each other i i can't do it i can't i can't make another 24 hours so the deal i had with the instructor staff was okay they you know you know muster the kids up and you know off they go on a uh on a on an ibs carry towards the uh towards the rocks in front of the hotel dell and uh what i wanted him to do was to suck it up and do whatever was necessary and so these kids sucked it up and they went down to the uh to the hotel dell and came back and i secured him and when i secured him i said this is a lesson you're probably never going to forget in your life you thought that this was going to happen that is hell week was going to be secured an hour ago it didn't happen you needed to suck it up and figure out what to do at that point in time and maybe it still goes on today but classes uh would have a t-shirt made for for their class and there'd be some kind of a cartoon or caricature on it and a uh and a saying well that class is saying was it isn't over till it's over and every one of them every one of them learned a lesson not only in that class but for the next several classes they didn't know what was going to happen that was my objective keep them confused keep them confused something else i did when i was a ceo of buds was establish something called the junior officer training course now as we all know today uh seal training is broken into several sections but two distinct sections the first approximate six months is equal to what i did back when i went through training the second six months where you earn your qualification as a seal is more advanced training in in my day [Music] they had something called seal basic indoctrination training that is you would get to the seal team you would go through this five or six weeks of advanced training which is what today's second six months is uh you would go through that next six weeks or so of advanced training and the decision would be made whether or not the commanding officer is going to recommend you for your trident or you to become a seal when i graduated from seal training me and x number of guys as we discussed a few moments ago went directly to seal team one a bunch of guys went to udt's 11 and 12. uh 13 was still around then too so uh what happened was those friendships that you and believe me as you know jacqueline i'm sure you guys understand there are no tighter associations of friendships than you form when you go through buds training so what would happen was naturally when you get a bunch of guys 10 or 15 guys from a particular class going to a particular team they tend to hang out together to include the junior officers and the uh you know uh naval special warfare is probably one of the few organizations where there are a lot of close friends between the officers and the enlisted and i mean really close friends first name basis you name it uh you know grand you know godparents to kids you name it um close association what i wanted to do was i wanted to break that bond i wanted to break that dependency i wanted those junior officers to have to go to a team and stand on their own not be able to lean on a bunch of guys that they had gone through training with they were now officers they were now going to have to make some significant decisions that would potentially affect some of their fellow classmates they were always officers if you will and you know going through training that officers were assigned more responsibilities and leaned on harder than the uh than some of the troops but i wanted to give these guys not only separation but i want to give them some tools to work with so i started at that point in time what i call the junior officer training class uh and it was only two and a half or three weeks at the at the outset i don't know what it is today uh but we set that set that program up for for two reasons leadership training uh you know uh management uh you know uh you know training uh exposure to uh to other other factors about the navy other than buds training so uh i i i set that up and and now that junior officer training is is part of that uh second six months of uh of of the of the buds training uh but uh i feel i feel proud the fact that that still exists and and and of course it's part of that evolution of training that is naturally going to happen but uh it was one of the one of the best things that i thought that i did uh while i was the ceo of butts yeah and just it's expanded a ton i know my buddy leif was actually when we got home from our last deployment together he took over the that jotsy course expanded we started he started taking guys out in the field we really focused on leadership and i think it by by the time he was done i think it was out to maybe six weeks and just trying to make it more more comprehensive and get the guys more prepared for when they do show up at a seal team yeah so yeah it's still there yeah we put together a uh a reading list uh you know and uh we uh not just so that uh guys that have a list to refer to we we made everybody take a book and provide a a summary i forget the name of the uh the young ensign who took uh dick marcinko's first book uh rogue warrior and before i say anything else sorry to see that dick has passed uh he was a uh a very influential individual in the development of uh development group seal team six whatever whatever they're called today uh although you know dick did things his own way ruffled a few feathers in the process i have nothing but the greatest personal respect for dick marcinko so dick gets out of the navy after a some kind of a felony conviction uh tom richards personally feels it yeah i don't think i don't think dick marcinko would do anything like you know of a felony nature just that's just not who dick was dick could be a royal pain in the ass and uh you know you you name it but uh uh you know dick dick got some things done so anyway he writes this book rogue warrior uh first of his books and uh in it he reveals a number of things that were probably uh you know you know classified at the time and but he he just uh you know served some time and i think i think he retired as a commander i'm not sure what uh what happened to him he had been promoted to captain but in any event uh the the navy decided not to uh slap his wrist about some of the things that were in the book but you could tell reading the book that dick had not separated from the navy on the greatest of terms and so this young junior officer who was the first guy to review dick's book titles his book review rogue winer as opposed to road warrior uh i'll i'll i'll never forget that uh that that incident and he had he he noted some of the things that uh dick said and he saw some of the uh the way that dick was uh you know poking his finger back in the eye of the united states navy kid did a very good uh very good job and of course that's exactly what dick was doing saying [ __ ] you the united states navy because uh you know dick uh well that's who dick was that was a junior officer training course was a uh was something that i was really proud of so you obviously at the end of buds for you you didn't have junior officer training course you just showed up to the seal team and that's why that's why i created that junior roster training course because i i saw what i was missing i mean i walk into a team and now i've got to uh you know how many years have you had uh before you got commissioned jocko i had eight eight years here i go you know what behind the years uh yeah ensign and i'm walking in and i've got to be the guy in charge of guys like jocko who's got eight years under his belt or uh in in my seal platoon we had uh uh jack schultz and uh who was the uh randy sheridan two uh two first class i think jack made chief during that period of time you know i really should have been in a learning mode as opposed to a leading mode at that point in time and i learned as much as i could from those guys uh so again that that goes back to uh the whole uh whole premise of that jotc so so you graduate from buds now it's just checking into seal team how many guys from your class went to seal team one i don't remember uh you know uh gary stubblefield uh you know best man of my wedding and so on uh and uh he and i deployed to vietnam surely right there after was it right 1970 when you graduated right i graduated in april of april of 1970 uh uh that was 55 class 54 graduated in february uh and uh uh gary was from 54. uh there were there were half a dozen of us maybe um no more than a dozen now that went to uh to team one and uh you know right into uh right into platoons right into pre-deployment training and boom gone i know i talked to some of the guys from vietnam and they said when they checked into team one i remember one guy telling me like you got in the shower you know after a pt or something he's looking at every everybody's like shot up everybody's wounded it's just uh so much combat for those guys back in that time and the seal team seal team won until team two that's the for the seal teams and there's what you have 150 guys at the team thereabouts that's a that's a good number and we had uh we had situations in uh at seal team one where a platoon uh uh would be uh you know scheduled to uh uh you know come back from a uh from a deployment and the deploying platoon is headed on over there and uh and maybe they they hook up in the philippines where a couple of guys from that platoon that was supposedly coming back to the states a couple of those guys would augment that platoon and go right go right back in country uh there were there were a lot of uh there were a lot of deployments like that and uh and a lot of a lot of hard men how long did it take for you to get your training so you went through sbi and sbi you said was like eight weeks long uh about uh probably closer to six uh and uh and that must have just been straight just jungle training uh jungle training uh you remember an island out there in california and the salton sea and the uh the uh uh irrigation uh canals and so on that feed into that provided some really uh you know interesting terrain and of course it's the freaking desert so it's hot uh so it was uh it was it was a really good place to train and then you and then at the end of sbi that's when you get your trident right and then you get put into a platoon absolutely and at that point in time you were going into a platoon and the uh the challenge for the co and xo at the time of course is okay what's the the makeup of the platoon now we uh normally want to have a uh an officer making a second deployment uh and uh then you've got uh a couple of a couple of senior enlisted uh and maybe a couple of junior enlisted senior enlisted might be on their third trip the junior guys might be on their on their second but we had a uh we had a a green platoon uh grant telfer was a uh a surface warfare officer before he went through training and he started training as a lieutenant so and i don't remember how many uh you know how many years senior to me he was but he started training as a lieutenant uh and uh uh was that his first platoon as well exactly uh he he he and i graduated in class 55 oh okay so uh the exo called me in and you know asked if uh asked if i uh wanted to be uh the uh aoic and in grand splatoon and i said sure uh yeah that that gets me uh get it gets me where i wanna go sooner than it normally would have so you bet and as i said we had jack schultz who later got commissioned retired as a commander out of uh had a dev group and randy sheridan who got wounded and i think he was medically retired uh uh from uh from uh you know an action in uh uh in vietnam with uh with the platoon uh randall hedge uh and i think moses marquez were the other two guys who had prior uh prior deployments so we out of out of 14 guys uh 10 of us were fngs so you do a workup and you're preparing to go now you're together with your platoon and how long is that do you spend six months like nowadays we do oh no uh in in that case as i said so i got i got there in april we deployed in the end of august i got there in april and went through sbi yeah doing the math yeah i i go through sbi and finish up sbi and they're putting together this platoon zulu platoon and uh then we we get zulu platoon put together we go right into uh right into pre-deployment training so uh and it was only x number of weeks uh in a couple of months uh because we had to finish up uh you know with enough time to give give guys a a weaker days off before uh deploying just to you know take care of business uh so it was it was a pretty uh you know slam bam situation but you had the the awesome thing is you had guys coming back from vietnam that were running your training for your platoon oh absolutely uh the sbi program uh when i went through it was uh run by uh guys like uh uh master chief al hui uh and uh you know uncle al uh master chief alu he was i was a fantastic individual i don't think i ever heard him raise his voice and i don't think i ever saw anybody working for him not to exactly what the hell they were told to do uh he was he was a piece of work i remember i remember working without later in life it was just uh just a pleasure but uh al uh gary gallagher uh you know gary i just know these names okay gary gallagher nicknamed muncher navy judo champion he's one of the instructors so we set up this uh this event where we're supposed to uh take down a hooch we're supposed to enter it search it and uh if there's anybody in there you know take him hostage and uh you know search for whatever might be there so we go to the uh we go to the hooch and uh we we set up i'm i'm on the outside of the door and i'm i'm facing away from the hooch just as security just in case somebody comes up while the guys are inside well the bad guy in there is muncher muncher is 200 pounds like i say all navy judo champion right muncher throws a couple of guys away in the in the inside of the inside of the hooch he comes blasting out the door the hulk is on his knees you know you know there to uh to provide security i got my my my weapon uh you know at the ready and as al huey ripped on uh chief gallagher you let that 220 pound incident who's on his knees catch you and wrap you up because i mean i caught him from behind i caught gallagher from behind and just wrapped them up in a nice neat package and uh master gpu he had a uh had a blast with that but uh yeah but lesson learned you know there there we go here's this uh here's this bleeder coming out and uh you know you got to be prepared for uh for those uh for those bleeders coming out and you guys were re there was no other mission that you were looking to do other you know you're going in vietnam and that's just 100 of the focus complete uh i mean when you look at the the mission focus that the the seal platoons have today uh the breadth of uh the breadth of the the type of missions they can get you know like interdiction at sea taking down a ship at sea i never thought of that you know i mean uh i wouldn't have had a clue of how to do it yeah i'm sure uh as our guys have done today we've clearly figured out how to do that uh and and those type of things no you know we uh we were we were focused on one thing we were created by president kennedy to do that and did you always carry a stoner right that was my that was my weapon in the field and even when you were telling that story you you were throwing linked 556 ammo to two other guys right so how many stoners did you have in that squad uh let me see where gary and gary and wendell might have been the only other uh because i think uh yeah i think gary and wendell were probably the only other two guys the rest of the guys had m16 or m16 variants but the important part of that is and one of the reasons why uh multiple guys were carrying stoners is so that you had that ammunition interoperability and you know my uh the receiver group of my weapon took four rounds uh and the guy said if if that stoner hadn't been across my chest where it was i'd have been i'd had four holes i i wouldn't be i wouldn't be here having that conversation today so my gun was an inoperable model uh but as i said i carried anywhere from a thousand twelve hundred rounds on on an op and uh i had i had plenty to give away when you so when you guys so you guys get done with deployment and now you're going you're flying over to vietnam do you guys fly commercial over to vietnam how'd you get over there fly commercial no yes all kinds of sock guys flew over there a lot of army replacements they flew over their commercial air or i guess it was chartered flights that's what it was so the regular army guys which fly over there in commercial flights we we flew over and i believe what might have been the last united states navy c-118 i believe it was and uh you know we were going to go to hawaii from hawaii to the pi and then to uh and then to uh you know tonsille airport and uh in saigon so as navy pilots would have the habit of doing ah shucks we got the hawaiian broke down for a few days well uh uh none of us none of us were rich at the time uh or now but uh you know i had i had a few bucks and uh you know managed to waste it uh but i also uh you know was able to distribute a few bucks to some of the other guys in the platoon because we had no money we didn't figure we were gonna be anywhere we were gonna have to pay for anything or have a chance to go buy a beer uh but uh so we uh we broke down and uh broke down in hawaii and uh that's where that's where grant telfer showed us his uh his uh palm tree climbing skills to go up and uh you know pick a coconut and then from there you go did you stop in the pi um we did and then from there you get into vietnam what what's the what's what's it like when you hit the ground in vietnam hotter than i could have imagined we're talking august in in vietnam and uh yeah i i didn't grow up with uh with air conditioning but i grew up on long island and you had the long island sound on one side and you had the atlantic ocean on the other side so it never got really got you know particularly hot uh so uh you know the uh uh going through uh going through training in the summer and coronado was as hot as i've ever been before i got to uh before i got to vietnam and uh it was just hot humid muggy uh and uh a uh a hyperkinetic level of activity like it's hard to describe so what was your where where were you located uh we uh we spent a few days in saigon and then we were shipped down to uh uh the the very southern tip of vietnam if you look at vietnam on a map there's kind of like a little tail kind of like the uh the keys in in florida well there's a little tail down there and uh the very bottom part of uh of vietnam and we were on the uh we're on something called the coulon river down there and did you have another platoon with you or is it just zulu there were several platoons you know cycling through there what we had was something called uh sea float and sea float was a series of barges lashed together in the in the river uh with detachments of uh you know patrol boats operating from there and seal platoons operating from uh from the uh from the barges shortly after we got there and when we arrived they had already started building a uh a uh a short airstrip uh and some uh what do they call them sea huts uh you know uh you know plywood and uh you know screen sides and uh yeah you know didn't do much more than uh block the rain of course there was no no ac and what was the mission set you guys were given we were we were there to uh to look for uh for vc uh vc tax collectors uh you know anybody infiltrating that uh that part of the world gather the intelligence try to find out who these folks were where they were and go after them uh we did we we did specific ops going in for an individual at a location uh we did things like going out in sandpans patrolling at night looking for the uh for the vc tax collectors uh you're trying to hit up the uh the locals uh we'd sit on uh sit on uh you know riverside ambushes uh you know looking for these guys uh i missed a particular uh operation but uh uh grant uh grant telfer's squad had a uh had a phenomenal op uh you know based on some intelligence that we generated uh and again uh you know jack schultz uh uh would uh would go off uh you know uh checking with uh the prus the uh the advisors and you know looking for you know bits and pieces of intelligence and one of the uh one of the coups that they came up with was a uh a weapons storage facility uh not too far from uh from where solid anchor was located down there in the uh namcan province at that point in time our squad was up in a place called damdoyer you know 25 30 miles up the river or something like that uh and operating out out of there we thought uh you know it might be some virgin territory we could uh go find some bad guys but while we were up there uh you know grant and uh the other guys found this uh you know one of the largest uh ammo caches uh you know vc ammo caches located in the in the war yeah what was your op tempo like how often were you guys going out i've heard didn't they sometimes rotate squad one tonight squad two tomorrow night and then go back and forth absolutely uh and sometimes if you if you didn't have something to work with uh it might be every third day might be every fourth day uh but uh oh boy uh we had a uh we had a a little uh sign hanging on the uh on the uh on the outside of the hooch actually that uh that's that you know where you draw the little lines and then a slash through it you know five uh those are the uh those were that was a tally what we of the of the known kias uh i i really don't remember the uh the total number of ops that we did in that uh in that six months but it was a but it was a heavy op tempo you were working a lot it it was it was heavy enough yeah i i would not have wanted to have to go out more often than that uh you come back yeah because you go out and you completely break your uh circadian rhythms uh you know you you go out and you go out at night and you're you're exhausted you're slogging through uh through your ankle knee deep uh you know mud carrying you know 50 60 pounds of of gear and if you uh you you patrol you know five ten uh clicks 15 clicks doing that stuff you're a whipped puppy and it takes a couple of days to respond because you don't want to go out tired and you don't want to go out not fresh because if you do somebody's going to die so you had would you guys have did you guys have 14 men in your platoon exactly 14 guys the squads you're going out with was seven seven six five whatever whatever whatever we felt was uh necessary we uh we were sitting down there at uh on the on solid anchor and we were routinely getting mortared uh you know from some place you know a few clicks uh to the east and a few clicks north so uh what you do is you you look at the at the impact of the mortar and you can tell by the uh the size of the hole that the mortar makes whether it's a uh uh 51 or uh 82 millimeter mortar that's the the bad guys did the 82. we had 81s right okay thanks it's been a while uh so you could tell by the size of the uh of the crater what what uh what size mortar it was and that tells you the uh the maximum range of the mortar and again again looking at the crater you could also tell if it was a uh it was a high angle shot coming down from a short range or and so you could you could kind of figure out that range and then of course the orientation of the of the crater from the impact tells you the uh the azimuth the back azimuth where it's coming so we kind of did that and we said okay they're probably coming right down this here river and setting up about here so we went out early and set up further so that they'd have to come down in front of us uh you know we were tired of having card games interrupted by a motor attack you know so uh we uh quite frankly that's true there were several motor attacks where we were out of that out of that card game and into the uh into the bomb shelter before the freaking cards hitting the floor i'm telling you uh but so we went up there to uh to try to intercept this uh this mortar crew and uh of course you want to be careful and not tip your hand with uh with any kind of a uh vr visual reconnaissance of the uh of the area so we we did a vr and then we came and then we set the opa a few a few days later but the canopy was so hard what we missed was another trail on the river so we set up x number of yards off the river so we'd have a field of fire on the river because we figured they're coming down the river oh no these boys are coming down this well-worn track behind us you know you know whistling dixie or whatever the vietnamese were uh we're doing there you all of a sudden we're sitting here facing the river and we hear this chatter going on behind us as these guys are walking behind us with the uh with the with the mortar and we couldn't we couldn't do anything that is if we started to make the noise to shift and try to take them uh under fire we'd have given uh these guys are walking down the trail with their with their guns in their hands you know we're sitting there uh sitting there lying there kneeling there uh you know in position facing the river without guns pointing in the wrong direction guns pointing in the wrong direction so we'd uh we'd have made a hell of a lot of racket and we we'd have taken some hits so we call off the mission and uh you know later on we were uh we're in our own sandpans paddling back to uh back to solid anchor and you look off in the distance and you see this flash well the the vietnamese had a uh millimeter battery across the river from solid anchor and uh we also had a uh a shared talk a tactical operations center and before we went out we put in a designated no fire zone so we're paddling our sand pans back down the uh the river and i see these flashes and because of the angle of the flash you know it's headed in your freaking direction and you know i said well and that could be anywhere near us all of a sudden there's an air burst almost directly above us and then a few more air bursts you know up and down the river where we are i get on that radio and and i you know to the u.s side of the talk you know ceasefire probably said a few things in on the air that i shouldn't have said but cease fire they cease fire uh and uh and i got back to the talk and and and i'm a jg i had this [ __ ] lieutenant about uh hanging from the rafters as i was explaining to him you know how he almost how he almost killed some of us i could not believe you could see you could see the shrapnel peppering the water all around us nobody got hit i don't know how that happened another lucky day on the ranch uh how often would you say you guys would get an enemy contact when you guys went out i don't want um the kind of guy i am not enough uh yeah we went over there killed bad guys you know uh these people had caused the united states of america to get into a shooting war over here and so my job was to kill the bad guys and we didn't uh we didn't have enough contact as far as i'm concerned you know you know i'll i'll finish up with another thought on that but uh you know that's that's that's what i signed up to do and if the nation comes to a point where that needs to be done send me coach you know that's that's that's that's who is in the seal teams that's why you have seal teams special forces green berets air force special operations guys these guys you know send me coach that's what we're here for so as you got towards because the the event that we started off talking about that was one of the last operations that you guys were scheduled to do is that right absolutely we had we had deployed in in august of 70 and uh we were you know scheduled to uh to come back the uh beginning of february of 71 and uh and my squad had uh you know started uh you know you know cleaning the gear and preparing the gear to pack it up and uh and send it home because one of the last things you have to do is is clean everything because it's going to be inspected to make sure you're not bringing back any particular mud flora fauna or whatever from uh from overseas so you gotta it takes a while to prepare we'd started that process in my squad and grant grant wanted to do one more operation and since it was grant uh with whether whatever information he had had i wasn't paying attention to it uh i was working with my guys getting ready getting ready to come home but his operation didn't quite go as he planned because he flew they got contacted in the helicopters they they took fire on the way into the area where they were going to go and that's when uh marcus arroyo got shot in the shoulder and wounded it seriously enough to end up uh being medically retired so they they so squad one goes out to execute this mission as they're flying into this lz they take fire arroyo gets wounded it's bad enough that they can't they have they have to abort the mission they come back to base they come back to base and uh they take marcus off the uh the plane our corpsman uh doc harris tom harris who's on his deathbed uh tom harris takes uh marcus down to you know we had a calling sick bay not much more than that uh there at solid anchor and tom is monitoring uh you know what's going on with marcus uh doc harris was uh excuse me marcus was uh the radio man for that that squad uh doc harris was the other radium in the other radio men in the platoon uh doc harris has taken care of marcus arroyo and uh so uh grant needed a radioman and so uh my basic thought is it's not smart to go back grant wanted to go back uh and i said well you're going back somebody's gonna have to carry your ass out of the rice paddy i'll carry the radio uh words to uh words to that effect uh and uh we uh you know it wasn't too you know to to grant and i don't want to say in defense but you know in grant's thought process it wasn't exactly where he was going in uh but so anyway we go back to that area and uh we uh we took fire as we were coming in and uh we uh uh we we landed and we went up a rice patty over one and up the next and uh we were as i say taking fire almost immediately but we went up that uh third section of rice paddy uh we were just uh we were just in a kill zone had you guys had anyone wounded prior to that yes uh uh randy randy sheridan had been seriously wounded uh he uh he basically lost his elbow as a result of the one that he got on on one of my squad operations had you guys had anyone killed in your platoon no oh yeah and uh you know you know i feel fortunate to be able to talk about the operation bone 31 uh january uh 1970 30 january 1971 uh because nobody was killed uh with that number of bad guys uh and without the uh uh the the the flying and the dedication of uh hal three uh carl nelson in particular and uh and his uh you know his door gunners uh i'm not here to have the conversation so i it's uh it's interesting to be able to have that conversation uh any uh any smart ass remarks that i might uh make about it call it seal humor uh but uh you know that's that's what it is uh i'm happy to be alive i'm glad those guys are alive too yeah um and then that ended up being the last mission that you guys did absolutely there was nobody left to go anywhere uh we uh and uh unfortunately uh there was not much of a debrief uh you know we were all there and uh were we all there being two i think except marcus uh marcus said uh marcus went well i don't know what his uh his uh his evac process was but uh the rest of us were there in uh in uh in ben tui third field surgical hospital uh you know together for a few days but then then we went different directions in the uh in the process uh jim roland went one one place i came back to san diego i don't remember where grant went uh but uh you know i basically jesus i don't know how many years it was before i i saw grant again it was just one of those deals how bad was your hand messed up i can't imagine getting shot in the hands it seems like for you to be totally mobile with your hands just get lucky uh yeah i got lucky and you know when when you tell somebody that you were wounded people wanna you know you know people are almost hesitant to ask about your war wing because they figure you're gonna pull down your pants and show where you're shot in the ass you know but i've i've i've got a better one because i was i was holding holding on to the pistol grip of a uh of a machine gun the round went through the end of my thumb through my finger you can see how the uh nail there is uh somewhat damaged and then through the uh through the hand and just shattered the uh the bones in the hand so i was a radio man at this point in time and uh i was fortunate i was able to use my thumb my index finger uh in order to uh to operate the handset because the the end of the end of my middle finger was no good my ring finger was no good and neither was my uh my pinky finger so i had i had two fingers to uh to work the radio with and uh you know i was fortunate to be able to do that in uh in grant telfer's recounting of how uh this uh this went down he said uh you know he he heard me uh yelp or scream when i uh first got hit and uh then he uh then he mentions and uh in the summary that he provided for uh uh captain slattery uh he heard you know tom uh yelp a second time well let me tell you about that second time uh we've all seen uh people like uh john wayne or uh what's the name clint eastwood uh get get wounded and you know go on and do great wonderful things and i don't remember if it was two mules with sister sarah where uh you know eastwood takes an arrow in the shoulder and he puts a little gunpowder on the you know hole in the front of his uh shoulder in the hole in the back of the shoulder and pulls the arrow back out through so i said hey should eastwood could do it i can do it so i looked down at my hand after i got hit and i see what i thought was the bullet sticking out of the back of my hand so hey you know let's just take a second and take care of this so i reach down and i grab what i thought was the bullet between my teeth and i and i just give it a good yank to uh to get that bullet out of there well it was one of my finger bones and that finger bone was still attached that's as grant heard me yelp the second time [Laughter] i mean i don't know what the pain is like giving birth but i'm telling you that was that was absolutely amazing i swear to god my toes curled and but that's the kind of guy you have in the teams that's who the [ __ ] we are yeah okay i got a hole in my hand that's a bullet let me get rid of the bullet you know there's an old saying you [ __ ] with the truck and you get dumped right that's who the special forces are if you want somebody to go in there and do the job you want somebody to ignore pain and do what it is that they're supposed to do 1 800 special operations uh you're coming home now from vietnam did you know the war was gonna did you know that was probably gonna be your last deployment no i didn't and uh quite frankly i uh i got got that information sort of like as a surprise uh my uh you know when i was first wounded they told me they were probably going to have to have a second operation on my hand to restore you know full function so i i get to balboa hospital and they uh they unwrap the uh the cast and so on and and they say uh you you we don't think you're going to be able to uh to move your ring finger and so i moved my ring finger and you know not a whole lot of strength there of course but i said oh well you know if you don't think we need to go in again uh and you know straighten out the uh the bones and so on it seems to be functioning uh uh just go through a recovery process and you're good to go so i uh i said well if i don't have to have another operation on my hand that's good for me and uh so i went through the rehab and i as soon as soon as i was given a medical clearance that i was good to go i went back into the exo's office and said xo sign me up and he said uh tom uh i'm afraid freddie can't do that uh the uh the war is starting to wind down as you just said jocko and uh the uh leadership rightly so wanted to make sure that a bunch of guys a bunch of guys the rest of the guys who had not had actual combat experience would have that opportunity for that exposure let's make sure we understand opportunity exposure and the required experience that you want in your military fighting forces so the the co and the exo we're getting as many new guys the opportunity to deploy and get that exposure to holy [ __ ] i'm gonna die or maybe i'm gonna live uh and live through it and you're a different person that's what they were trying to do exo tells me that uh unfortunately i'm not gonna be able to become a member of another platoon and i said well i i'm out of here i can't i can't stay here and watch these guys go do what i want to do so at that point in time i went through a decision process trying to figure out do i get out of the navy uh if i do what do i do border patrol fbi uh you know what what's uh what's gonna be uh do i do i stay in the teams if i do what do i do and so i uh i went from seal team one to the training center as the diving officer uh and uh that was a uh it was a great experience uh you know dealing with the uh the kids the new guys kids new guys they're like four year the officers are like three or four years younger than me right so uh i uh i had that job it was a it was a great experience so i said well i'll stick around for a little while longer and yeah ended up being 30 years but i was i was really i was really disappointed not to get the opportunity to go back and as you know i went to el salvador when lieutenant commander schofelberger was killed and as soon as i heard about al's death i raised my hand and i was surprised that there weren't a few more people raising their hand but i raised my hand to go go down there i mean that's where that's where my trade and my experience and my skills were going to be needed in some way shape or form i want to do that that's why i signed up so before you went down to el salvador so you did you went to buds for a little while as a dive phase officer i had a two year two year tour at buds and uh one of the things that i felt was a uh was a failure on the on the mission where we all got uh got wounded there in the 30th of january was an intelligence failure so from buds i went to defense intelligence school it was a nine-month program back at uh at the navy yard in uh in washington d.c actually the anacostia annex nine-month program and from there i went to uh two years as the as the intel officer at naval special warfare group two uh then i got to uh to team one to team two as the as the ops officer and uh uh that's where i met folks like uh uh bruce fan heard him dick marcinko uh uh you name it uh all the uh cast characters uh bob uh was it bob bob wagner the uh navy cross navy cross winner from uh one of the navy cross winners from seal team two was uh was running the uh the training program uh at uh at team two and he was uh he was a uh he was just uh hard as now son of a [ __ ] uh you know you know great guy he wanted to make sure that the guys were trained and ready to go and do what uh do what they needed to do what was the uh at this time in this late 70s i mean there'd just be no money for the seals i'm imagining no like what was the as the as the as the navy drew down you know during like the carter years what was that like seeing as i'm not sure if the navy can stop my pension i have a hard time answering that question when when i came back from vietnam uh we had before i left to go to uh the be the diving officer uh the navy was uh the navy was tearing down uh its uh brown water navy uh and and they they weren't really thinking about special operations they were just thinking about brown water navy uh the uh you you interviewed uh carl nelson from uh from hal three the helicopter attack light squadrons that were set up in vietnam were commissioned in vietnam and disestablished in vietnam never even came back to the united states there was not a commitment by the navy to support special operations aviation assets when i came back uh seal team one had a uh had a directive to reduce end strength uh by it was either 30 or 34 the oh yeah they sent guys to the fleet right they sent them back to the fleet the the expression that sticks in my mind was a 30-34 as we called them might have been the dirty 30 but it was 30 or 34 guys uh and uh you know uh bruce bruce van heard him and uh george worthington uh you know god rest his soul george uh just passed away but can you imagine you know somebody in in the navy where reducing end strengths comes down and they tell uh commander worthington and lieutenant commander van hernam okay you got a [ __ ] can 34 your guys who've just been through some of the most difficult training in the world and uh and and send them back to the fleet uh they they came up with the best uh set of criteria that they could at the time for people who had only been in the team for a certain period of time guys with no deployments uh guys under the rank of such and such you know uh there were there were a number of those things but they did they did the best that they could but it sucked uh and and a bunch of those guys came back uh probably most of those guys came back uh but what that shows i just said about the the house situation uh the seal team won and i'm sure seal team two went through the same thing uh i actually have never talked to anybody about that but uh you look at the uh at the green berets they uh the army was were tossing those guys left and right so the military did not understand the department of defense state department did not understand what was going on in the world and the and the type of conflicts we were going to see coming down the road to your point there in the 70s it was a it was a period of time when not much was going on but you turn around and you start looking at at el salvador and other locations uh the the operations we uh we did down there in panama uh you know things things are starting to look pretty pretty stinky uh around the around the rest of the world and you're not gonna send an aircraft carrier or battleship to do that you're gonna send somebody like us and uh you even fast forward to the uh to the to the gulf wars you know multiple uh who was it that was getting uh you know most of the assignments uh every once in a while a uh ship or submarine would launch a few missiles on a particular strike but you know who was uh who was getting all the uh who was getting all the press who was doing all the missions naval special operations navy special warfare uh we've uh we've evolved as you asked me earlier about the some of the types of missions done then as compared to now uh we've evolved incredibly and that that evolution is is absolutely key we today are the same people that we were 50 years ago jesus on time flies we're we are today the same guys as we were 50 years ago the guys who figure out how to get it done uh you know people like to use the term out of the box thinking if you think there is the box you're already constrained there is no box and as we move forward people people wonder about what it is about naval special warfare we are problem solvers we need we figure out how to get it we are given some of the most difficult missions there are in the inventory of missions and told to get told to figure out how to do them sure we draw in all kinds of other specialties but that's exactly what we do we draw in you know look at that whole business with uh you know bin laden uh you know that wasn't all us but look at what was brought to bear when we went from incredible intelligence assets incredible aviation assets incredible planning assets our guys figured out how to fly behind mountains and out of out of radar signatures so so the host nation wouldn't even know we were there that takes a lot of innovation problem solving when i talk to people about who the military is what we do people think of us as you know you know bullet launchers tank drivers airplane drivers you know submarine skippers they don't understand all the planning and thought and problem solving personal management you name it that goes into having a successful successful unit it's not it's not just pushing the button and launching a missile that the general dynamics might have built it's all the other planning that goes on before and after that is so important it's what sets that sets the military aside so when you let's talk about el salvador and this is one of the small conflicts that was going on um how how did you end up getting down there well uh unfortunately i was at a uh in a team party uh back in may of 1983 and people were shooting the breeze and it turned out that uh lieutenant commander al shafferberger who was you know serving a tour down there as a seal member of the military advisory group had been assassinated uh boy there's there's so much that i can i can say about that uh i learned i've had i've had the opportunity to have some great jobs in the navy uh each one of them i've learned so many things and you you don't have enough time to listen uh but uh look look at el salvador uh so i've uh out gets killed i volunteered to replace them and i was a commanding officer of special boat unit 13 at the time great opportunity so the requirement for the guy for uh you know replacing al salforberger was they wanted seal experience they wanted boat experience and they wanted the guy to be able to speak spanish they also wanted the guy to be a volunteer well when the uh when my name was forwarded to the uh uh uh to the commander of the military advisory group he said well three out of four ain't bad because i didn't i didn't speak spanish but uh i i had had the other stuff down but that's exactly what i did as i mentioned a little bit earlier that's that's why i went to naval special warfare that's what i wanted to do you know the uh you know uh one of the uh one of the guys that uh seal team one had his uh when i was a skipper had uh had his brother come out and they were running around and uh uh did pt with us and so on and so forth and uh this guy says to his brother the seal uh he says who is that guy it looks like uh there ought to be a sign there it says in case of war break glass and uh he told me about that and and i had to laugh but that's what i want to say about each and every guy in the teams in case of war break glass so that's why i went down to uh that went down to salvador uh i wanted to see what was going on i had two or three weeks of uh personalized spanish training and but i was the outgoing commanding officer of a unit i had because it was active and and reserve i had x number of active and i had three time that many reserve officer fitness reports you know chief evaluations to get to get out uh and the other thing is a lot of those guys did things that deserved recognition during the period of time that i was commanding officer so i had awards to uh to get written up and so it was uh it was a hard period of time it didn't get a whole hell of a lot of spanish but by the time i left el salvador i was dreaming in spanish how long were you down there i was down here for a full year uh but uh it was uh uh i first got down there and i working in the embassy uh whether they were americans or uh you know salvadorans they all had to speak fluent english so we could get business done because numbnuts here couldn't speak spanish uh we could get business done speak in english and i tried tried doing it all in in spanish when i first got there and uh it was enough of a uh of a delay i said okay we'll we'll work on this gradually you know yeah habla and glaze so we uh we we went and uh we we spoke english but that was one of the most exciting times that i've uh that i've ever had in the military uh i got down there and there was a there was a civil war going on the uh the mill group commander a guy named joe string and colonel joe stringham smoking joe stringham uh the uh uh i don't want to say the guy was on speed [Music] i i don't know what made this man take that man never slowed down that smoking joe i mean you know peripatetic hyperkinetic you pick your term that was uh that was joe i couldn't keep up with the man and i thought i was pretty good so i get down there i'm there for about 10 days or two weeks and i have i've you know taken over the job that uh al was doing part-time uh and uh um i'm i'm the exo at the uh at the office as well as a navy rep and uh there's a there's a uh a retired or i don't know hilda hilda wasn't in the air force long enough uh hilda the secretary uh was uh uh uh a hispanic american and uh she was uh uh a piece of work she brought out this piece of paper that colonel stringham had written you know this is the colonel wants me to type this up i can't read this and so uh hilda and i were going over this particular piece of paper and said the only reason i could make sense of it and figure out what it was was because i had been part of the conversation and knew what he was trying to do but that's i mean he didn't he didn't have he didn't have time to to write that right clearly so 10 days after i'm down there i finally you know he's my position as i could i could see uh see the daughter's office and maybe even see see partly into his office and colonel stringham is getting ready to uh to go off back over to the estado mayor the estado mayor is is their equivalent of the joint chiefs of staff uh he worked with the uh all the uh the leadership of the salvadoran military he's getting ready to blast off and go over to the estado mayor and uh i was not at my lifting peak but i was uh i was you know pretty big but almost jocko's size and uh uh colonel stringham was a few inches shorter and uh you know you know a good 50 pounds you know maybe 60 pounds lighter so i just stood in the door and i said colonel we got to talk i got to have some left and right margins and so he said okay come on over the house today all right so uh but uh that was a fantastic year colonel stringham spent his time working very closely with the estado mayor because as you remember there were things like death squads going on uh before uh before i got down there and before the colonel got down there uh i think there had been a uh a number of uh nuns who'd been kidnapped raped killed and all that other stuff and it was being blamed on some of the salvadoran armed forces not the bad guys but this i would argue so colonel string was doing everything that he could to provide that uh u.s influence on on on how to conduct warfare uh and so in order to do that he needs to spend a lot of his time over there so i ended up being the stuck e in the embassy uh and when i said when i'd say stuckey you know that meant this this meeting that came up and that meeting that came up or this delegation coming down to salvador and and so on and so forth so it was a wonderful opportunity let me drift right back to ray smith for a second uh secretary armitage uh named rachel armitage was a naval academy graduate uh and uh you know secretary armitage at the time was the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs i think it was he had a couple of active duty military assistants ray smith his classmate from uh from the naval academy and and another guy so uh international security affairs is what paid for uh what goes on uh you know what money comes to uh to el salvador and they they monitor it and review it and so on and it was a lot of money at this time it was it was a lot billion billions of dollars for going down i i don't remember the uh the numbers but uh and i should because i can't tell you how many how many hours or weeks i spent going over the numbers this that and the other thing so about uh after we had that conversation uh you know colonel and i uh yeah so i'm i'm in country you know no more than three weeks no more than four weeks and uh secretary of defense comes down to visit kasper weinberger secretary weinberger comes down and assistant secretary uh uh armitage is with him and in my uh accelerated preparation to go down to uh el salvador i went to a couple of courses and there was this air force uh was a major at the time uh anyway he and i became friends in this three-week course at air force base and uh he ends up being an assistant to uh uh to weinberger so weinberger comes down for the uh for the uh for the full full treatment and and i'm i'm handling the backside of operations making sure that you know everybody's where they're supposed to be yeah and uh so i didn't have any contact with uh with armitage you know uh you know weinberger this you know air force major uh that i had met colonel uh colonel stringham comes back we're having a debrief of the day and first thing out of his mouth is it says who are you what do you mean who are you he said three or four people on the secretary of defense staff today asked me how's tom richards doing who are you so so i said to him i said well one of my uh one of my bud's classmates is a special assistant to uh you know uh you know secretary armitage and uh you know uh if we ever needed to play an ace in the hole and things weren't quite going right yeah and i could always call ray and uh you know he'd i'd be more than happy to help figure out how to unscrew something and string him just shook his head but one of the uh there's any number of stories uh you may recall that we had a limitation on the number of advisors we could have in country at a at a given point in time and that number happened to be 55 and as i say there's a number of stories about how that number came up be that as it may that was a number that we had to live with i can count to 55 in my sleep starting with my left hand my right hand my left foot my right foot if we had 56 american military individuals in country the press was all over us like a hangover on saturday morning oh you're not living up to your obligation you're trying to get too many trainers in country you're doing this bottom line is my job my ass was gonna lose a chunk if number 66 was in in country we were at some points in time we had guys getting off the airplane in uh at the uh at the salvadoran air force you know base and other guys getting on at the same time just to make sure we stayed at 55 and at one point in time we had a series of challenges security challenges in country uh i had my go bag packed i always had my go backpack that 55 include like the embassy security marines and all that no that's where i was going to go the the marines had a security detachment and it was one of the largest it was oh 25 28 guys it was it was a large uh you know marine security detachment and so you had the marine security detachment you had the military advisory group staff so that was me the colonel uh ms martinez uh you know a couple of uh you know three four uh army officers and air force officers who were five six uh air force officers who were uh army and air force officers who were doing uh various things as part of the mill group staff then you also had the defense at day's office defense attached office uh there are only a handful of guys over there having no more than half a dozen so uh we had a meeting at the at the embassy we called everybody in to get everybody in uniform on the same page uh it was about you know security kinds of things uh and of course there's a half a dozen uh uh media personnel always keeping an eyeball on they counted and there was no way we had 55 of our advisors there but we had a bunch of our advisors there we had a bunch of the marines there we had our uh mill group staff we had our attache staff so they counted well over 55 uh you know you know military guys and uh so i spent part of a press conference explaining to them you know who these people are and how they count and how close attention we do pay to that paid to that number uh but that was a real real pain in the uh in the butt so so as i mentioned i'm talking to the uh to the press about that mrs richard's little boy tommy did not go to salvador prepared to be you know fielding questions from the washington post the new york times san diego union i mean give me a break uh i was a fast learner though but it was uh it was uh it was difficult you know they had they had they had a they had an agenda and uh i had a uh i had a mission and so uh i won't say never the twain shall meet uh but uh i had to i had to be very careful with uh with my answers and i had to uh debunk a number of their of their concerns while i was there and i apologize for not being able to recall a man's name there was actually a reporter from san diego who was killed uh on a on a battle zone and of course the colonel was over at the estado mayor so i was taking that next press conference and i'm saying that they you know one of the things they press complained about was the the number of uh uh what they were calling non-combatant injuries that were occurring and of course this reporters and your ear death is uh his is his non-combatant as you can get but i try to explain to them there's a fire fight going on there there's a gunfight going out there these these bullets when they come out of the end of the gun that are aimed by people are not necessarily the best marksmen that they are that there could be these bullets don't have name tags on them and uh you know it's hard to tell where they're gonna go and who's gonna get hit one of the things that the that the guerrillas did because they were you know gorillas and they didn't have the the kind of funding that you might have wanted to have was uh when the shooters the guys are out there one of the guys gets hit fall down one of the women or one of the kids go right out onto the battle zone to collect the gun and the bullets for the other guys so they still have weapons and ammunition to carry out the fight they're right there in the middle of the of the fire fight of course they're gonna get hit it isn't our decision that they choose to make them combatants but that's what they have done they're no longer women and children they are they are combatants they are right there on the on the combat zone that's the kind of thing that these different countries with these different senses of values do to the americans and and they do it uh throughout the uh throughout the middle east they were doing it in in salvador and that's the type of battles that our young servicemen are forced into you take an american kid whether he's come out of high school or college what do we talk about today we've got uh we've got uh uh you know women's rights we've got gays rights we have uh equal opportunity uh you know lgbtq whatever the whatever the variety of things are that our youth of today is drilled to be so aware of and so conscious of uh we treat women in the united states uh my wife weighs about a buck 18 or a buck 20. if i was to raise my hand to that lady i'd break her in half i've never even thought about it in foreign countries they use women as flak jackets to protect themselves from from bullets coming in those kinds of things are so antithetical to what we think and we believe as americans and yet we take this kid out of uh you know uh peoria or uh yeah you know pick your uh you know uh central united states or central american values we take this person and we put them in the middle of this shitstorm this this soup of total disregard for human rights and human life human values and uh you know we we do this to people on a on a daily basis uh that's uh that's the kind of thing that i really first encountered in vietnam saw it brought home again in el salvador uh you know being on the uh being on the ground as i was so we we do some pretty interesting things to our uh to our youth of america by throwing them into this cauldron of of discontent that we do i could i could go on and go on for that one uh a little bit more but uh that's uh that's a uh that's an incredible thing so i will go on with that for just a little bit more let me talk about something people call ptsd and i won't use some of my terminology on your on your podcast but we need to lose the d let's just go back to my day in the rice paddy in uh january of uh of 71 i got don futrell with a bullet hole in his chest i got grant telfer shot in both legs i got jim roland with a bullet hole in his chest and his groin my hand is you know looks like a uh looks like kind of you know you know raw hamburger you know left and uh left in a pile of juice i'm not ever going to unsee that i'll say that i don't mind and i really don't because we had signed up to do that that's what we're there for but people today are coming back from uh from wars and they're seeing far worse they're seeing roadside uh ieds you know uh supposedly uh impenetrable uh you know armored vehicles you know you know ripped apart like a uh like like a beer can and and and the parts of the people inside of that that they try to drag to safety if they happen to be a survivor and they just watch bleed out or the or the corpsmen that have to deal with that on a daily basis you cannot unsee any of that it's not going to go away you look at our first responders of today you've got a you got a knife fight you've got a gunfight you've got a fire at a house you've got a gas explosion what do those people see they see fellow members of their township or whatever their association is in parts blood everywhere you know sometimes human forms irrecognizable if there is such a term you're never going to unsee those things so let's not talk about post-traumatic stress as a disorder if you don't have some thoughts some concerns if you didn't wish your fellow american wasn't such a jackass at times to cause this kind of hate discontent pain and misery on other people if you didn't have some form of thought process of again regret that that these things happen wish they didn't happen wish that you didn't happen to see it if you didn't have those kinds of thoughts that's the disorder you know i tell my wife that i don't have any post-traumatic stress i don't have any flashbacks you can call me a lion mother but uh uh you know i there are things we were standing outside a uh a dinner theater shortly after i came back from vietnam car backfired jackie looked where am i i'm on the ground i'm looking for what the problem is where it came from what i need to do about it i wouldn't call that post-traumatic stress i'd say that's good training but as we as as we look at all these uh all these individuals who come back from these situations and i want to i want to include the first responders who face these things every day as as we look at these people we need to understand we will never understand some of the things that they cannot unsee but we need to understand that they have been in those situations and we have put them there we the american people sent choco and myself the rest of us to various places around the world we never could find on the map before we went there to do things to try to support people in democratic pursuits and [ __ ] happens and it's not it's not pretty but yet we do that to the youth of america time and time again so we need to understand that this post-traumatic stress exists it's not a disorder and we need to make sure that we address it so what did you when you when you came home from vietnam and like you know you just talked that story about the the uh gunfire or the backfire in the car what about the rest of your platoon it sounds like you guys kind of went to the four wins in all in different directions we sure did i think i mentioned earlier in the in the podcast that uh i hadn't seen grant telfer for you know you know 15 20 years maybe even more after that and he he later became a commanding officer of seal team one while he was in that position i was on the uh on the east coast uh and uh years later i i bumped into uh into jim roland uh and uh don futrell went to uh went into eod another one of those easy easy warfare specialties uh he went into eod and don retired as a as a w-4 but uh shortly after after he went uh left a platoon uh i i lost track of don i knew he went into eod but we reconnected and i i spoke at his retirement uh but you know crap that was not much to say for uh for uh you know keeping tabs on your platoon members other guys got out uh marcus arroyo was a uh was a highly successful uh you know uh um uh executive in the uh uh i believe was the f uh faa or it was the tf faa i believe uh and uh you know so uh but but we lost track of each other and so we're really uh uh i know i am really looking forward to seeing some of those guys again here uh this weekend but those guys you know they they carried on right so whatever pts they had they were able to say okay this is my this is what i'm going to do now i'm going to go to the faa or i'm going to get out and go to eod and and we're able to kind of push through those whatever what is whatever was going on in their heads that appears to be that appears to be the case and of course not of course uh jim roland got out of the navy for a little bit after uh uh after vietnam but he came back uh and retired as a senior chief so let's go back you get you get home from el salvador what's next on on the agenda uh let's see where do i go from el salvador i came i came back here to beautiful sunny southern california uh and i uh i was i was on the staff of uh special warfare group one and uh i work for a couple of folks uh who end up being flag officers uh chuck lemoine and uh uh george worthington uh a couple of a couple of good guys and and of course meta got a whole lot of other good good guys and and and what i'll say uh what i need to say here is when i retired that's what i miss most the guys i miss the guys and of course knowing what was going on in the world but you missed the guys you miss miss the organization the association so i went to uh i went to uh to group one uh and from group one i went over to uh to be ceo of seal team one now that's almost like cheating because i was the operations officer at group one so i knew i knew how the group staff worked uh i knew how the group commander worked uh and and uh when i say the staff just just how it functions who did what to whom and uh so who you could call to build those little relationships right and uh uh uh admiral worthington and admiral des moines uh had a uh and several other guys who were the commander there had a secretary by the name of lena and i am i'm embarrassed i can remember his last name but lena was was a piece of work uh lena knew everything and if you were good and elena you learned a lot uh but i remember uh i uh you know one day uh uh you know i think it was uh it was lemoine uh lemoyne comes out to lena and you know all right i want this this this and this lena knows that sounds kind of familiar she comes trotting into my office and we uh you know we try to piece it together and figure out you know she had some of the files for that and i had some of the files but uh you know she was uh she was uh you know quite a quite a young lady it's a young lady older lady uh but uh there were some great folks on that staff and like i said it's kind of like cheating uh to have that chance before i went to seal team one and then your ceo of seal team one for a couple years and this is what what years are you the ceo of steel team won 86 to 88 okay and uh during that period of time i had the chance to deploy to the persian gulf the uh the oil rigs and the counter iranian right stuff right so we had uh uh we had two uh uh uh two barges uh that were really oil rigs support barges we use those as floating floating operations bases for a couple of elements of you know a couple aviation elements i think their participation was later declassified but we'll just leave it at that a couple of uh you know aviation elements and of course we had our our patrol boats and our patrol boats were you know doing escorts uh of uh of u.s navy big holes they were also doing escorts of tankers you know as you may recall a number of those foreign flag ships were reflagged to u.s ships so we could actually excuse me we could actually escort them up and down the uh up and down the gulf what was was there any highlights to those deployments there were a number of them uh we had uh you may there's a uh uh paul evanco led an op on uh uh something on a boat called the iran ajar and the iran ajar uh trying to uh seed a few more mines after you know iran had been been told stop what you're doing anyway they they conducted the op uh you know it sees the seize the boat a bunch of mines and so on well fast forward you know several months later i'm out there as the uh the task unit uh commander and uh we get a report of a uh of a craft in restricted waters and it looks like there might be mine like objects on the back end of this boat and that this is another group going to be laying mines in the sea lanes so we go to gq we uh we launched some of these aviation assets to try to get some uh night shots of the uh uh of the of the boat in question and uh it was uh it was coming up you know coming up towards dawn and uh you know obviously you know those early hours uh are the good time to at the hit folks some folks are getting up some folks are going off a watch some folks are eating so a good time to to make a hit if you're going to do that so they came back and they had some they had some some pictures and uh sure look like mine like objects but you know you got that little we call it spidey sense something's not quite right with this picture and one of the things that i always say to the guys if you think that there's something wrong with this picture you stop what you're doing and to figure until you figure out what is wrong with this picture so we got guys locked and loaded we got the uh we got the slicks we got the gun ships these guys are ready to go take down these boats this boat and i said hold fast we're not going anywhere give me one more shot at the at the early twilight it turned out to be another oil rig supply boat that had a bunch of 55 gallon drums not mines on the after deck i won't say what country it was from they were in waters where they shouldn't have been they have no idea how close to death they came so i'm sitting out there i'm i'm in the talk i'm i'm i'm monitoring all the uh the communications and and i'm the i'm the one that you know we had these guys in the air said you know and uh the uh the three star navy type uh who was in charge of uh of uh uh you know mid-east foreign navy minister uh he uh i didn't realize it but he was in the talk the whole time uh you know listening uh you know i'm sure the the lasalle uh was uh uh was based in bahrain we're out there in the middle of the persian gulf and uh the uh uh the admiral was there you're just listening and listening and uh you know uh when i when i called it off when i saw what it was you just went yeah and uh went in so i i came i came ashore uh you know a week 10 days later and the 06 uh you know opso calls me over and he says good job but uh you know we had we had american lives on the line we had international lives on the line uh could have been a mining operation i just did not know uh and uh i was not sure that this was a minor uh the mind laying uh vessel so i said nope we're not doing that what were your major lessons learned or what was like a good take away from being the commanding officer at till team one uh trying to train the guys are gonna follow me prepare them for their jobs uh there was uh a platoon uh with uh uh dave piddlecow who's the commanding uh commander of the platoon and uh gardner howe was his assistant uh that would be vice admiral how was his assistant and they were going over to the gulf uh and uh as they're in my uh in my uh in my office getting ready to go uh one of the things i explained to him is that i feel that you guys are as prepared as you can possibly be to go over there and to conduct the litany of operations that you would be called upon to do but i said to him i said my fervent hope is that that doesn't happen and i got these two confused looks or inquisitive looks from these two you know gung-ho seal officers who were you know getting ready to go to war because it wasn't the shooting war at that point in time and what i explained to him was if you guys have got to do the things that we've trained you and prepared you to do that means that somebody has failed big time uh and so uh that was a learning experience for uh for dave and gardner uh but it was one of the things that i tried to uh try to impart to those guys you know there's there's well in case of br in case of glass excuse glass in case of war break glass that's us absolutely but if it devolves to that point that means that white house policy has failed uh the state department policy has failed uh any number of things uh across the spectrum of the leadership of our country has failed so it is truly in case a war break class one of the uh that same platoon as it turned out as they're preparing to uh uh preparing to get ready to uh to go overseas uh you have any number of uh your training operations and uh you know where we those of us in the teams are familiar with something we call a rubber duck uh a rubber duck is a uh is a air drop of a uh of a small rubber boat uh on a uh on a on a platform as it were drops out in the ocean and you uh you sink the platform and from that point in the ocean you go ashore and you uh do your job and if everything worked all right everybody everybody else in the world doesn't know that the uh c-130 or 141 might have dropped this uh you know boat and seals off the uh off the coast well they uh they had a uh a rubber duck drop uh you know practice event and uh there was a uh parachute rigging malfunction and instead of the parachute deploying the uh the rubber duck creamed into the ocean you know the uh the uh the platform breaks into uh a thousand pieces the uh the boat is shredded the outboard motor is lost etcetera etcetera so uh i had not stayed up uh for estate at the commander uh for the uh for the event but i get to the the command about seven o'clock in the morning and uh i get a uh i get a a high speed uh you know five minute uh brief that the uh the rubber duck died and uh it was a uh it was a rigging malfunction so uh before seven o'clock is before quarters our day at uh team one started with quarters at 7 30. so uh it's it's about 7 15. before i could even get to uh lieutenant pedal cow or lieutenant howe uh the parachute rigger from the squad comes in bangs on my door petty officer second class bacchus bacchus apologizes to the commanding officer of the team for letting his platoon down for letting my platoon down for not meeting the expectations of uh of uh of everybody that they had for bacchus and the uh the troops to do that job when bacchus came into the t into my office to do that that told me that i clearly had some level of communication with the guys some level of respect from the guys that before i could go out and try to rip him a new one he shows up at my office and apologizes you know that told me that i must have done something right at seal team one because that was that was probably one of the greatest experiences from team one you have people taking ownership and that that's a an attitude that starts at the top yep so you wrap up at seal team one um and then you your next big command is taking over buds that was uh that was my uh my next uh uh my next opportunity i spent i spent three years at uh naval sea systems command learning a lot about money purchasing and all that other kind of stuff and i followed a guy by him tommy hawkins who was a legend in the world of our research development and acquisition and even though i left that job as a quote certified navy acquisition professional i was i was offered jobs in the acquisition side of the house i was offered the opportunity to take jobs and acquisition as opposed to uh continuing uh in in naval special warfare so yeah and i could have been a program manager at navsea or as i went to uh you know the the job at the uh at the center but uh i know i probably never learned as much as tommy hawkins uh knew about uh knew about acquisition uh quite a uh quite a guy so yes my my next uh my next uh my next command was uh was at uh at the center and there a couple of things were really really fun about the center you watch young men come in there and they're not entirely sure what they're getting into and they're also not entirely sure whether they can do this or not they're pretty sure they can that's why they're there in the first place they really want to which is why they're there but a lot of folks have a uh have a little bit of a uh a nagging doubt and uh a lot of those guys success uh is uh at times a uh somewhat of a surprise perhaps to their parents uh but a uh in in many cases uh a uh an achievement of of great great pride on the uh on the parents part and as the uh as a commanding officer of the uh the center one of the things that i did was i attended every buds graduation now again this was uh this was when buds was the uh was the six months before he went on to the uh the follow-on uh sqt i believe it's still called these days uh so they would com they would complete the uh uh the six months and then they would go to the various teams for that follow-on training before they received their special warfare designator anyway i cannot tell you how many parents would come up to me at these graduation events and they would say uh you know captain richards uh you know we really want to thank you and your staff for uh what you have done for uh you know for frank or uh or echo or gary and uh and their uh and their development and their maturation process uh you know the he's a uh he's a changed man after these uh yeah six uh six eight months i said no mrs smith you really have to understand we took what you gave us an individual who had some pretty high aspirations and you taught him to have those high aspirations we taught up the individual who thought he had the qualifications and you helped him develop these qualifications you might have thought he was a little bit of a misfit here and there i'm probably speaking from personal experience but you prepared this this young man to uh to get there we wouldn't have this young petty officer or this young ensign graduating from seal training if it hadn't been for you and you know these parents would just kind of look at me and look at each other hmm yeah you know maybe there's uh maybe there's something to that but that's a that that's a point that i would really like to make that the individual who is who graduates after now it's a year uh but that individual came to buds with a certain amount of preparation a significant amount of preparation and it's preparation that reflects family values family uh you know family motivation uh family support for a uh for an individual and i can remember some we never thought he was gonna be any good you know we kept trying and trying you know he always kept getting in trouble and whatever it might have been and that's my point you kept trying and trying and trying and look where he is now yeah he said that's your fault and uh you know they'd stop and they think but it's that it's that that preparation that uh that growth that goal setting that these uh these young men have as they as they start uh looking around and figuring out what they wanted to do as as we talked earlier in the uh in the podcast i really had you know when i was in high school i didn't have a clue what i wanted to do when i got out of college if i was going to be fortunate enough to get to college and in today's environment it's significantly different our youngsters grow up seem to grow up a lot faster but that said they're not going to make it through buds without that without that background without that preparation without those family values that's uh that's so important they have to have they have to have that base whether they realize it or not they have that have to have that base to succeed yeah and it's so strange to to look at buds it seems impossible to predict who's going to make it and who's not uh the the amount of incredible athletes that show up there and quit the you know i know i had a guy that was in my class that was a you know ncaa water polo player had another guy that was a gymnastics alternate on the olympic gymnastics team and both those guys quit and you know i was like an average maybe even a little below average athlete in high school and you know like i just was ready to just stick it out and what i was wanting to ask you and i don't know how close you were to it to see this but you know in talking i remember talking to some of my friends that worked as a physical therapist right at buds and i had a couple of them that had come from uh professional sports and so in professional sports he was telling me you know he worked with a baseball team or a football team pro pro level teams and he'd say you know i might see one or two cases of patella femoral syndrome or what is it itb swelling or this type of back thing he goes i might see one or two of those in a season he goes i literally saw 48 cases of patellofemoral syndrome in the last three days it's like this highly you just get this so much repetitive uh you know injuries that happen to all these guys coming in but then also what the thing i was going to ask you about is the did you start to see any commonalities i mean you kind of just mentioned but in the like the psychological makeup of the people because you got kids that come from rich families that show up there that were you know two parents that went to church on sundays and the kids do great you also see those same kids quit you see some kid from the hood that grew up without parents or you know a single mom or a single dad and didn't have any money didn't have anything and they make it and you also see kids like that that quit what it looked like to you i i agree with you 110 uh you mentioned the uh the gymnast uh we had a uh we had an olympic swimmer in our in our class uh fred was a butterfly guy fred made it there was another ncaa swimmer in the class i believe his name well his name is not important there was a ncaa swimmer in the class that uh that means you're like what the top six or top eight in your uh in your event in the country one of those in any event uh uh this guy busted his ass and one day in one of the you know series of nuisance races in the pool this kid beat fred in in one of the races two days later kid's gone his goal was to be able to say that he beat this olympic swimmer he was in there for the wrong reasons i have never really been able to tell you who was gonna make it it was not uh but as i've as i've looked at it you know for years and years and i've uh worked with a guy by him of captain bisset up in in new england as he uh tries to prepare guys for training he has he has somewhere around a 70 better than a 70 success rate for his candidates uh the average success rate of any class as you know is somewhere around 25 or 30 percent graduate in uh in drew's case 75 graduate so as i've as i've looked at things over the years there was another group when i was a ceo of the center who had a 75 graduation rate that group was a naval academy candidates let's stop and think about we're like how many like how many of them were naval academy seven of the of the naval academy people who came in oh i see so 75 of naval academy guys make it right yep let's stop and think about it in order to get into the naval academy that is one hell of a competitive process i don't think the american public realizes how competitive it is to get into a a military service academy it you you know it's either political appointment or combination of political appointments and uh exceptional uh academic capability and uh and physical ability uh for years those academies only gave engineering degrees uh i don't buy might be somewhere back in the in the 70s where they started with some other degrees but it's very difficult to get into the academies so if you get into the academy you have set a goal you have worked hard to achieve that goal and you've attained that goal now in the case of the naval academy and the uh in the individuals who end up with a quote of the buds uh i'm not an academy graduate i'm fairly sure of how it works but if there's a guy out there who wants to correct it please do so they have a a warfare specialty selection process and the number one guy in the class at the naval academy can pick what warfare specialty he wants to go to uh the uh the way it works and that's the way it works whether he decides he wants to be an aviator uh of course if he wants to be a seal he's got to pass the uh the pft uh but uh if he's got the uh the pft and today he's got to go to uh soaz the special ops uh acquisition and selection but uh you've got to be at the top of your class so you've you've not only fought to get into the naval academy you have fought to keep your uh your grades up you have fought to keep your uh your physical conditioning up because out of the top hundred guys in the naval academy they're probably going to eat up those quotas to go to buds and so now there's 1100 guys in the naval academy every one of those 1100 individuals was pretty outstanding to get there in the first place now you've got to work to be in the top 100 plus in the in that group to get selected the buds so those guys this is my reasoning those guys have fought and challenged for every everything that they have gotten every step of the way and so they're used to fighting and they're used to overcoming adversity and they're used to succeeding so i give you that as a that goal setting you know attain those goals figure out where you want to go set those girls early and and and drive towards those goals to your observation about the uh you know patella syndrome yeah that was one example i remember kids in my class got this thing called patella femoral syndrome or they got their it band was this problem or they got this ankle you know the my ankles rolled you know the the the medics at buds will see instead of being you know football practice and in one season they see whatever in a whole season they'll see 10 bad ankle sprints in buds they see that every week every every week they see that and they just see these injuries over and over again and i was just wondering from your perspective what you saw you know what was the reason when someone says it why they quit it's hard for me to comprehend [Music] that you enlist in the navy you know you enlist in the navy when i enlisted the navy i enlisted for six years in the navy i'm freaking 18 years old i enlist for six years of my life that's a what is that a third of my life right i enlist for a third of my life i sign the dotted line i i run and swim to get ready i go to boot camp i put up with all that crap say goodbye to my friends and families go you know tell everyone hey i'm gonna go try and be a seal get through boot camp then finally show up to buds and like the first day after going through all that stuff people are quitting it's it's it's hard to comprehend did you ever were you able to put together any kind of understanding of that no uh and and uh i have i've gotten into some uh conversations with people who think that they've uh come up with the uh with the test that's going to show who's going to make it and who's not and uh as far as i'm concerned they're full of horse manure let's go back to my observations about those families of the of those successful kids they have they have a sense of values um they uh you know whether they know uh right from wrong the way we would want it to be uh that's that's uh that's hard to say but they have they have a sense of values that they have grown up with uh and and like the uh the naval academy individuals that i've said these individuals who succeed have set goals and they they are very determined in getting to those goals and like i said to the uh to the family we didn't give them something that they didn't have before they got here and that's the thing that i don't know about uh i will tell you out loud that i never thought about quitting in buds me neither i puke you know uh yeah i i cramped uh i used to you know i was the worst runner in the class you know everybody knows about getting a stitch in your side when you're running i had a goddamn freight train running through my liver and i can't tell you how much it hurt but i would actually say to myself to my to my you know sniveling body i would say is that all you got the as you go through training it's all between the ears you've got to have that goal in mind and you've got to be willing to put up with whatever it is there's a couple of things i'm going to say here from the neck down is a life support system for the neck up the for the for the brain housing group as we call it it's all between the ears and and i don't know who said it first but there's an expression that i use about mind over matter if you don't mind it don't matter and and i i mean i can't tell you uh again how how how much i i hurt on those runs as i as i look at you know so there's there's something either right or wrong with with with with a few thousand of our american service members called seals uh that have this that have this mindset there is a there is definitely a mindset it's not a killer mindset it's a success mindset it's uh you know wolves and sheep mindset you are what you are what you are and i strongly believe that there are people like that uh you know my wife my wife knows who i am and you know don't don't mess with me you know uh so uh and and that's the way it is with with with every seal i know yet you don't mess with the guy and it's not just because of my size or jocko's size it's because of the attitude you're gonna lose uh you know uh instructor moy one day uh i'm on the i'm in the goon squad i've uh i've uh i maintain for those of us that are old enough to remember there used to be a half a dozen pi or a half a dozen palm trees uh out in front of the hotel dell that go down to the uh go down to the rocks where we do our rock portage i maintain that i that that i have probably caused the death of at least one of those palm trees because i ended up puking at the bottom of those because of what the what those guys made me do in the in the goon squad it didn't matter i didn't give a good goddamn what they did to me they could not get that four-letter word out of me quit it was not gonna happen i was i was we were down there by the rocks and i'd done the uh i've done the roll in the surf the roll and this in the uh and the soft dry sand we used to call them sugar cookies because now here i am uh i'm coated in water and uh and and white sparkling sand from the coronado silver strand and i'm doing what's called the duck walk so you're you're squatting down and you've got your hand full hands folded behind your head and i will admit that i was not doing the duck walk without with any uh degree of alacrity shall we say was i feeling sorry for myself you bet your ass and instructor moy comes up to me and he you know like i say i'm squatting down with my hands behind my head you know trying to squat waddle walk whatever towards the uh towards the ocean and moy is roaring at me says what the hell are you giving it there instant richards and i looked up at him and i said would you call would you believe a sick duck and and i watched i watched chief moy have to turn around his shoulders are shaking but i was not i was not quitting and and and there's that there's that something that uh all these psychiatrists psychologists whatever they are they haven't quite been able to figure out what it is again i keep going back to the goal setting go back today's training young men young men not only have to train in order to be able to pass the uh past the pft uh you know if if they uh if they if they only do the run in 12 and a half minutes they ain't gonna make it through buds and that's for a couple of reasons it's not only because of the physical ability per se to do the run but it's what i look at as the ability to recover because when you get to buds if you haven't been doing this for years and years you know if you haven't been running if you haven't been swimming you haven't gotten if you haven't been doing that for years you are going to break down when you get the buds so you have to really have built up your ability to recover okay i didn't do a lot of swimming and i didn't do a lot of running in preparation for buds but i was lifting weights at that time at pretty close to a damn pro level and i was doing it 12 and a half 13 months a year uh that's what i that's what i lived to do i was when i got the buds i could do pt all day long if i only had to do push-ups with my own body weight that was a whole lot of doing repping out with 315 pounds ah well gotta do a few push-ups oh that's okay i i i i'm joking about that but push-ups didn't bother me and to uh to uh to the uh to the olympic swimmer we had in our class you know fred was probably on vacation during those swims and he probably fell asleep on the six mile swim out at the you know san clemente island but that gave fred a chance to recover when when i was doing pt you know the pt circle in the morning okay i knew that i unless unless some instructor got really innovative i probably wasn't going to have too much trouble with this and so if you've got something like the swim or you're an incredible runner and you can keep up with those instructors you know through the soft sand runs and not only is it not difficult for you physically but because it's not difficult for you physically it's an emotional break you know there's a certain amount of mental stress or mental strength that you don't have to use during that particular evolution so if you're in really good shape that takes a strain a stress factor out of a particular event run swim uh you know whatever whatever it might be but even with that ability uh you know we had a we had a high school or a junior college uh miler who did a damn mile in something like four minutes and 10 or 15 seconds you know you clocked me with a damn calendar this this this guy quit you know uh but you know you you take off the cute little nylon running shorts and you put on the the cami pants and uh the boots and all of a sudden it's a different kind of running but all that said there has to be that mind that mindset there and in addition to that that physical capability there's got to be that mindset what it is i i don't know every once in a while you run into a guy i have a uh a classmate of mine i'm not going to mention his name because somebody's still on active duty but uh years ago one of his sons was expressing uh interest in the in the teams and that particular individual did did not get get to the teams uh he didn't get to uh to training for whatever reason it was but we had gone down and we had spent some time with my classmate and as i'm driving back with uh with jackie i said to jack he said sweetheart schmuckatelli is going to be the the member of that family that makes it through there's just that feeling i got from that kid and yes he did and every once in a while yeah you get that but but not often it was it was his demeanor it was his presence uh it was his uh his confidence not cocky but but but his confidence you can't always see that uh and and i was probably lucky in that uh in in that judgment uh but uh he uh he made it uh yeah proud of him uh but to your point uh jocko i i don't know what the it factor is and i look at the the confidence in the and the goal setting and the and the ability to recover to get you through uh as you as you heard i like to think if an individual's got a uh got a specialty where he can uh you know take a break uh uh that that that will be very helpful to him but uh there's just there's some missing link there that uh that i don't i don't know exactly what it is and it's just so hard to put your finger on did you notice anything from from when you went through in 1969 1970 and and then you fast forward what 20 something years was there anything that you said oh they got soft over here they got weak over here this is easier or this is harder i'm gonna say it got harder and uh so i take over as the ceo of the uh of the center and uh one of the things that i did was i i looked at uh this the schedules for the uh each of the different phases uh and i i also looked at you know all the schedules for the advanced training because one of the things i wanted to do is i wanted to go out and and observe uh you know observe the class observe the instructors i went and i spent time out at san clemente island when i was the uh the commanding officer uh yeah i went to uh to wherever there was uh wherever there was training uh so i take over as a skipper and i'm looking at the the training schedules now when i went through training i do not recall a training day that started before zero 700. we had to be on the line at zero 700. and i was after breakfast so we didn't you know form up uh but training started at zero 700. and uh i uh got to training and i'm looking at the i'm looking at the schedule the zero four hundred zero four hundred zero four hundred zero five when i went through it was early and this particular thing that uh jumped out of me was a zero five thirty or zero five fifty or a zero five fifteen four mile time run and i'm saying what the hell is this [ __ ] [Laughter] you know i was saying that too i was doing them so uh whether it was the first phase of the second phase you know they came up to me and i said you know what are we doing here well that's the uh that's the uh the only uh only low tide and that guy is one of the luckiest guys in naval special warfare because my question was how [ __ ] stupid do i look [Laughter] one high tide in the morning one low tide in the morning one high in the afternoon one low in the afternoon and uh that that is not cast in stone because there are a certain number of days in the year uh where you only have uh you know a combination of three tides you know you know you'll get two highs i said do not even think about opening your mouth to say anything else about the tides but to my point they were they they were now doing uh four mile time runs and maybe an old course or uh another session before breakfast and uh like i say we we didn't do that now when we uh when we were out at san clemente island there was no schedule was 24 hours a day yeah uh but uh uh other otherwise uh you know of course there were there were night swims uh you know of course when you get uh it wasn't like uh you know seven to five every day yeah you you might have uh uh you know at night uh you know night navigation or we'd uh we'd go up to different places for uh orienteering and so on and again you you throw the clock out the window just because of uh because of what you're doing but uh basically uh when we were at the strand it was a uh it was a seven to five or seven to five thirty or again you talk about night dives and so on of course you're you're working until uh you know 10 11 midnight whatever it might be so uh so it it has changed they they are putting uh at least uh 12 or 15 pounds into a 10 pound bag i mean they are really they're they're using every every every minute of the day so if somebody asks me is training hard at the day you bet your ass it is and the gut the kids are in better shape they're all they're all in better shape so like if you're running with your boat crew you're you're running with guys that are able to run faster so you better better be able to run faster they're just all in better shape i was over there a couple years ago and one of my buddies was now a civilian working there and we were having the same conversation and we were standing out by the first phase office and he you know there's a hundred helmets lined up and and he said you know he goes look at these hundred whatever it was 122 helmets he goes every one of these guys i'm telling you was a stud and they're gone it's like this program is hard i said yeah roger that it's a heartbreaking program it is and and as he said every one of those 120 guys was a stud and and it goes to that that missing factor in there what is that you know what is it that caused you to put up with all that crap you know why did you do that some some of it is you know uh just person here perseverance you know bullheadedness and so on but there's there's some other factor in there yeah we wanted to uh you know wanted to do something for uh for our country uh we wanted to do the best job that we could we want to do and as a result we selected what we thought was the uh the hardest i didn't realize that when i did that you know you know 50 years ago that wasn't that it it wasn't known that way uh but i i i knew that it was going to be hard and i selected it anyway in today's day environment uh every one of these kids knows it's going to be a ball buster it's going to be hard uh and and yet they yet they select that there's there's a missing factor why those young americans decide to do that i can't i can't put my finger on all that and there's that missing factor about what it is that enables these individuals to put up with what is arguably the most difficult training you know in in the military in the world did you think you were going to become an admiral never [Laughter] at that what number seal admiral were you number five so had been there had been four prior to you how'd that go down how that how'd that how did you hear about that about the fact that uh about all the above i guess well i mean you must have been thinking hey all right i'm gonna get done with this tour i'll be a captain i'm gonna retire because well i uh jocko i i i will not ever claim to have been the sharpest tool in the shed but it was probably one of the hardest working [ __ ] in the in the building uh i took one particular job uh you know from a friend of mine and i remember him saying yeah your first couple of weeks three weeks you know you might be here til 5 5 30 6 o'clock or something like that but after that you can get it down you'll be out of here at 4 30 every day well i never left at 4 30 in the entire two years that i had the job uh and uh it was like i said i worked as hard as i could in whatever job it was and the other thing that i will say is i think you really have to be who you are somewhere around 7 24. uh when i was selected to flag officer uh admiral lemoine chuck lemoine was the navy seal on the board there were a number of guys a year or two senior to me um that i had a high expectation that you know tom dicker harry was going to be uh uh you know selected during that period of time but that was my uh you know basically my first time up uh you have to have uh completed your uh major command tour uh you know to uh to be eligible and then you got you got three looks but uh so anyway chuck was on the on the board and i had worked for uh for admiral lemoyne uh when uh he was a group one commander and as i said you have to be who you are 7 24. well when i was working for chuck uh i was the uh i was the first relatively senior officer uh in the building uh uh in in the day uh you know i usually beat the chief of staff in i usually beat the uh uh beat the commodore in all the time uh because you know our job was to prepare the uh prepare the environment before he showed up uh and so anyway uh there was a there was an individual in the organization who was who was up for captain and didn't get selected and uh because i was there and it was out here on the west coast uh you remember margaret indeed margaret the detailer uh great great lady she uh she did she did well by me uh more than one occasion but um me too anyway uh margaret uh margaret called out uh asking for the chief of staff he wasn't there how about the commodore he's not there he said well here's the deal you know so and so didn't uh the uh the 06 list is uh is coming out and uh you know you know schmuckatelli is not on it and we wanted to give lemoyne the chance to uh uh to prep them before uh before everybody else saw that and uh so that he'd be prepared for any bad news so uh admiral lemoyne gets uh again captain at the time um gets in uh 10 or 15 minutes before the uh morning uh you know meeting at eight o'clock and by uh by a habit or custom uh he didn't like to be interrupted before the uh before the meeting he uh he wanted to prepare himself as well so i bang on the door and barge on in and i said excuse me captain uh you need to hear this uh and uh so i shared the uh shared the news and uh left the office so uh it was it was my job to uh to herd the cats and get everybody into the uh to the briefing room in the morning and uh there are a few of us standing in the in the hallway smoking and joking as you usually do uh yeah getting ready to go in and sit uh sit in a meeting that uh you know be 60 minutes of your life that you'll never regain so we uh we're smoking and joking and uh captain one comes down the passageway and uh he uh he made a uh observation as i guess i can imagine what you're talking about uh and uh my take on that was he thought i might have shared the situation with the guy who did not get selected uh and i i turned to the attorney cabinet no cabin where uh that's that's that's not on the agenda it's not uh anything that i felt that uh was uh in my purview to share with anybody and it's things like that when you're dealing with you know junior officers and senior officers that that leave an impression i think i i think i left that impression on on captain lemoine so when uh several years later he's uh he's on the on the flag board uh he had some personal experience with uh who i was and what my values were and so that's that's kind of how how that that works i believe uh you got to work hard uh you gotta you gotta do well you can't do some you know some some stupid things but uh i have to tell you that i just wanted to do as good a job as i could and take care of all the people working for me that i could uh and uh and and i think it paid off uh people like uh alma worthington and uh yeah i'm a lemoyne uh i'm sure that the two of them uh had a had a conversation about uh you know who was gonna who's gonna get selected so yeah and i mean at that time there just wasn't that many seal admirals so no uh you had uh no there there absolutely weren't uh and uh i guess not worthy to probably smith i think worthington was retired by then but uh uh you know uh you i mean you just gotta be who you are 724 and you know working harder than everybody else helps being there uh when it counts i said that i might have said that there was a short list when i raised my hand to uh go to el salvador uh they only needed one line on the list uh there were you know there were no other volunteers at that point in time uh and and and the leadership of the community uh you know recognizes those things and the last the last place tom richards wanted to go after being ceo seal team one was the naval sea systems command and sit at a desk and and do procurement and research and development i couldn't even spell it if it hadn't been for tommy hawkins the community would have been in deep kimchi oh boy so you end up going taking over what we call naval special warfare command which means you're in charge of all the seals all the special boat units all in charge of basic seal training advanced filter you're in charge of everything and that was that that had to be a pretty a pretty climactic moment for you to take command oh jocko uh that was uh that was an incredible opportunity uh and and an incredible honor to uh uh to be selected to uh to have that job uh to lead a community like naval special warfare uh not everybody who gets selected the flag gets the opportunity for that job uh and uh i i am thankful to the leadership of our community you know again abel lemoine uh for uh for giving me admiral moin and admiral smith for giving me that uh that opportunity uh and uh those were some of my uh most most rewarding years no we were still in our if you will early years with special operations command we were still in our early years of uh somewhat of a divorce from the navy if you will because uh you know my uh i had uh had two two people i uh reported to you know one was a uh a joint service commander army navy air force or marine uh down there in tampa and uh the other was a a code up on the uh the op nav staff you know ultimately of course to the cno but uh the uh the money was there's there's something called the golden rule he what's got the gold rules and uh the uh the the money at that time was from socom uh and uh that's where you know the vast majority of my uh my attention went but uh going back to the uh to the opportunities uh there were so many things uh so many things going on in the uh in the world uh uh and and specifically within our community uh there was a uh captain by the name of uh todd visey he was not a captain at the time but todd was uh stationed down at uh navy military personnel command after i believe that was after they had uh it was after they had shifted down to uh to memphis and what todd did was he carried the water for our efforts to create the swic community uh you know when i uh when i took over as ceo of special boat unit 13 we had fleet sailors coming to drive these small boats the engines the uh you know quote main propulsion engines of a uh 65 foot mark iii patrol boat where a detroit v detroit diesel 8v 71 ti uh i think uh and uh it was a long time ago but that engine was usually if they saw it on a ship that might be an auxiliary diesel generator not the main propulsion engine they might not have ever seen it so you get a an engine from the fleet who's never seen your engine uh you get a gunner's mate from his fleet who's looking for the five-inch gun uh you get a uh you get a communications or electronics technician who's looking for uh you know cic it ain't there uh and oh by the way uh you need to learn about the m60 the prick 77. um yeah you you name it that they've never seen before in their life so we get these guys for two or three years they learn a lot about naval special warfare then boom they're gone i took over as uh ceo of the center and uh we had continuing conversations with the then current ceos of the special boat units they were called units then not teams and they decided that they wanted the center to host a uh a training program for their uh for their fleet guys coming in we were still losing them after three years but they wanted to instead of having to learn all this uh on the job let's let's put it together and teach them about this special warfare stuff that they're now in the middle of so we started out the first class with a three and a half week class and when we laid it out as a three and a half week class they were concerned that that was too much time uh you know to have these guys away from the team now of course because they're away from the team that means that they had a boat or two that was not manned so understand that they finished up with the class the skippers were so charged that the next class was a five-week class that they they decide and that all grew so i go from co special unit 13 with the problem trying to solve part of it as the as a commanding officer of the center and now when i get to the uh to be the commander of naval special warfare i was able to convince the navy to create the swick nec and uh that was just uh yeah that was just i think a a great accomplishment for the community and i have to look at folks like todd veazey and congratulate them and thank them for their work and there was a uh there was a boat guy master chief uh kelly webb uh unfortunately kelly has since passed uh but kelly was a uh was a big prime mover in that as well and i will also say that uh at one point in time when i was looking for the uh for the next uh you know command uh or the force master chief for naval special warfare it came down to kelly in a uh and a trident winner so those are the last two guys standing uh but he was uh he was quite a guy so the establishment of the uh the swick swift community was something that was uh uh just uh just outstanding and it's now it's a rate and everything and guys go in that's their career they can go and have their whole career in special special boat team and one of the you know it it's i remember having a get-together i i i talked to as many folks as i could on each coast and uh i remember you know saying to folks i said guys you know this is this is this is hard for me because so much of my time is going to be directed upward you know whether it's you know budget personnel matters that that i'm going to have to work with so calm in the in the navy uh when i walked in and took command at uh at naval special warfare there was a relatively new building that didn't come close to accommodating the staff at naval special warfare command when i walked in uh six eight ten maybe use twenty trailers surrounding the building you know and i don't want to offend anybody but i i referred to naval special warfare command's facility as trailer park trash and uh you know here we are this you know you know sitting right next to the uh uh to those uh those gorgeous multi-million dollar condominiums they're looking down on a trailer park i'm sure they love that so the first budget cycle that i went into with uh with the uh four star commander down there in the in tampa and and i you know stood up and i pounded the table and i said look at this building you guys got you know look at the addition you're putting on i said yeah i walked in and i've got i've got my people working in trailers in trailers and uh long story short because it's the way things work we got that much we got an accelerated military construction program that you know clearly wasn't done by the time i uh i left command but that was that became one of the top priorities for the socom socom milcon budget to uh to get us some buildings and i'll go one step further uh you know this afternoon i'm getting a chance to go down and uh and and view uh uh the new uh new facilities for uh for seal team one that whole naval special warfare complex down there is billions of dollars more importantly that says that that billion-dollar figure was high enough on the priority list to get funded that says that socom and the united states navy and the department of defense recognized the commitment required to retain the capability that naval special warfare provides to our military readiness they understand that and they're funding it it's not just a bunch of new buildings it says so much more than that yeah that that is so impressive what's down there what they built for and it's all the all the west coast seal team down there it's it's absolutely phenomenal it's like i mean i remember when i got to seal team one and checked in it was very underwhelming i mean we we kind of i guess our building i don't know what year that building was built where seal team one was but it was maybe 10 years old maybe 15 years old something i'll tell you when it was built because it was it was turned over to me as the ceo of seal team one in 1986 so the building was five or six years old i guess when i got there in 1991 and i mean all it was was pretty much like a little office building had some had some lockers in it but it was it was underwhelming you know the gym where i worked out with you was just you know is this a normal gym looked like somebody threw together whatever random equipment um i think we had we had two squat racks i mean it was just kind of hodgepodge and you didn't expect that you know it was the whole and the whole thing kind of felt hodgepodge i guess is what i'm saying you go now now check out that facility you're gonna be it's like a it's like the james bond movie you know the james bond movie where they're training commandos somewhere and they open up a door and there's people rappelling down there's pools and all this shooting ranges that's what it's like it's it's it's phenomenal that that the nation has made that a priority to to put these guys in the right spot a few years ago i had the chance to go up to uh go up to alaska and uh we've got a training facility up there in alaska and i was stunned to see the improvements that have been made to that uh to that training facility uh to include a god it must be a 50 or 60 foot climbing wall in there just uh just absolutely amazing and again those those improvements you know not only speak to the readiness but also speak to the recognition of the uh of the leadership of our of our military with the importance of the special operations community and it's just such a great way to support those those guys you know the last thing i did before i retired was run the training on the west coast for guys getting ready to deploy and just there's nothing more important than making sure that guys are ready to go do that job absolutely uh you know speaking of your trip down to seal team one uh you're doing that this afternoon we're probably a little over three hours right now what did you do what'd you do once you retired uh i got the uh i got the chance to work for a uh a boat company uh up in up in new hampshire and i i work for a uh a gentleman who's uh you know probably uh uh probably not much shy of uh you know a uh uh a genius uh we uh uh we developed a boat uh called the uh uh called the ghost and uh you know greg sankoff is the gentleman's name uh and so many innovative things that he put into this uh and i'm you know navy's just not uh just not ready for that craft perhaps yet and of course there's a few other challenges to get it in to fit and be interoperable with uh with uh the systems that we have available today but uh that was a that was a fun experience i had the chance to take what i had learned as the uh as a naval special warfare program officer at nav c uh and and of course knowing what i knew about the the requirements of of naval special warfare and you know what some of the things they could do that was a that was a a real fun job and i and i also worked for a uh for an alaskan native company uh alaskan native companies uh are uh minority owned and uh and operated by alaskan natives uh we have uh we have other uh you know small business uh set aside uh you know there's uh uh are there uh also uh uh set asides for the uh you know black uh hispanic community uh i i'm not sure but in in any american indians uh so they had special uh contractual uh advantages if you will uh and what i saw uh whether it was for the uh alaskan natives native americans uh these folks would take those advantages and do a good job whatever it was it was uh uh requested or required and in the in the contracting world defense the defense department contracting world there is a requirement for major contractors to have a percentage of minority contracts one of the neatest things that i saw about this company uh and and and the company's name is uh elutic and a fognac is the apparent company but the the programs that they had for the development of their uh of their tribal members were were absolutely amazing uh carl who ran the computer uh side of uh of things was uh absolutely amazing uh he uh he was a uh he's a native who you know went to school on scholarship programs you know you know college masters and so on and uh he just had such a impressive computer system for the for the entire company and i say that because i've never worked anywhere else it was anywheres near as good if you hear this one carl you owe me a beer uh but uh just and carl was one and there uh there were a couple of a couple of young ladies in the uh in the in the company uh who were uh uh just you know uh a pleasure to work with uh when you saw uh that they were if you will a product of the system and and and it proved what a good job that they were doing uh you know they whether it was a college or a vocational technical training uh they had all kinds of programs set up for uh for their folks it wasn't you know you know uh you know five or ten thousand bucks every uh every uh six months or a year or whatever it was they had all these great programs set up and and uh they uh they would take those uh take those funds uh and take the profits and build a fund and so on i was i was pretty impressed with uh with how they did it and and i only say this much about it is because of you know some of the uh bad press that some of uh uh that people have given it and how uh how it was non-competitive etc you know there was a lot of competition among those those alaskan native uh you know companies uh uh and uh and they and they they did a damn good job uh so it's quite an impressive program and again an opportunity to learn uh you know so much about uh the alaskan natives it's just uh uh great opportunity their base uh is on kodiak island where our training facility is uh their their corporate headquarters their real business offices are in anchorage so i get to start meeting a number of the you know the natives you know all the board members were uh were were natives and many of them had spent a lot of time on kodiak where we have our training facility and then they learned that i'm a retired seal and they tell me about the time those god damn seals you know walked across these uh uh uh uh you know special uh you know sacred uh you know burial grounds or areas that were set aside and they weren't supposed to be but i believe those fences uh fences are mended not not due to anything that i did but there are a couple of uh a couple of folks who have whatever uh acreage they have on either a fog neck or uh kodiak and and they allow the the seals to as they're conducting some of their missions up there uh to use some of that property to touch base and use the staging points and that kind of thing so uh it was really fun for me to see that relationship a couple of years ago when i went up to uh to alaska where were you when september 11th happened i was uh i was driving in my truck i was working for saic at the time and i was coming up from uh from virginia beach headed to uh headed to dc and uh my wife was uh my wife was uh up uh you know working uh in uh indeed in uh vienna with uh with a friend of hers and uh so i'm in my truck and i hear this and i called jackie i said get a tank of gas and when you can get out of there get out of there uh when i heard it and by time i had a chance to get older it was too late so i was headed on into saic and i knew that whatever had been uh uh you know i forget exactly what i was going up there for but i knew that that was out the window and i said to myself i was i think i was about fredericksburg when i heard it i said well if i keep coming north i'm not going to be home for a long time and i just just knew that and uh they took uh a few of us with military experience and we set up a uh a talk and we set up uh you know started setting up phone trees trying to find uh find out who was where and how everybody was and so it was uh it was quite a quite an interesting experience from that side of things and then what did it look like to you as you watched the the seal teams start to engage in the in the war on terror so uh shortly after that my wife and i are sitting at home watching a news show and they're showing something about the northern alliance doing this and their thing and they showed two big open back trucks we'd call them a four by four or rather a six buy or something like that and uh i looked at the uh i looked at the video and i said to jackie said sweetheart that truck is filled with afghans that truck is our guys well how can you tell i say i can tell by the way they sit i can tell by their posture and i can tell by the way they hold their weapons look at the differences so and i knew i knew right then it was going to be you know quite a uh quite a deal uh because of the work i was doing with uh saic i had the opportunity to sit in on a briefing that was uh given by the chief of naval operations at the time and he had been with the president just a few days before and as he uh recounted his uh experience with the uh with the president you could have heard a pin drop in the room given the the commitment uh and the will to fix that and i guess what are you up to right now you retired yet for real uh i'm i'm retired for real uh before i leave i'll give you a business card that says leadership management and motivation but uh uh uh i work with a few kids every once in a while who've got a desire to go to buds uh but uh yeah jackie and i are supporting a uh a wildlife museum in in virginia beach and uh other than that we're uh we're pretty much uh pretty much retired but uh anybody wants a an old fart with an opinion uh you know give me a call well like i said i know you got another appointment this afternoon uh going to check out the teams uh probably a good place to wrap up echo you got any questions yes all right here we go we still lifting weights or what well given the uh seven plus decades i've been on the face of the earth uh the uh yeah you know few and uh few and far between i've uh i've actually uh just in the last five or six weeks uh started to uh to to go back in the gym uh but uh it's something i'll never stop uh and and the reason for it is you know at uh at 74 years of age i don't have to hire somebody to cut my lawn i can still go out there i can do it uh you know i don't have to i have to hire somebody to move those boxes around the house i don't have to hire somebody to move that dresser uh you know i can i can still do that and that's that's not only speaking to my physical well-being it's speaking to my medical well-being and she's my mental well-being just be able to do that yeah you've got a gym at your house uh i've got a few hundred pounds so here you go when i went down to el salvador i went unaccompanied for a year and uh with that i was able to send a thousand pounds or 1100 pounds of personal gear 700 pounds of weightlifting equipment i had i had squat racks a bench and at least 500 pounds of pounds of weights in my own room in my own my own building uh when i uh there was a the guy i uh i relieved was assassinated uh but they actually had a goals in el salvador so i said well i'll give that a shot and so i i went to goals a few times and i'm dead lifting five and a half or whatever and uh not drawing any attention to yourself yeah you're right stupid with a capital s and uh i ended up getting i found out from a certain intelligence agency that uh my nickname in the gym was el grua which stands for the crane uh and and uh next thing i i hear the colonel i mentioned before calls me into the office and he said we got a report that uh there's some folks taking notice of your attendance of goals i said ah [ __ ] and so that was the last time i went to goals oh man but well look we we got a bunch of stories out of you today uh like i said i know you got to go um you got any closing thoughts you want to say uh i had a great 30 years a lot of good guys and i'll tell you one one important closing thought when i took over in 96 we were still deploying seal platoons the same way same way i walked out the door in 1970 26 years a lot of things changed in those 26 years uh captain pete tonys and stan damn it both guys had been group commanders on the east coast had come in and had pitched a uh pitched a uh recommended change of how to do business uh and we were calling it the squadron deployment so what i did at that point in time is i sat down with uh uh with admiral smith who was still uh still on active duty uh and uh admiral eric olsen and a couple of other folks and i said guys this is what i think we want to do uh you may not be aware but in the uh 8485 time frame we had tried something like that with style with seal team one and it didn't work won't go into those details but i sat down with admiral smith admiral olsen because i knew i knew eric was going to be following well maybe it didn't by that point in time but my goal was to make sure eric was going to be the next flag officer anyhow good judgment on my part by the way better better work by eric uh but i sat down with those guys i said guys this is what i this is what i think we should do now i don't know exactly what it's going to look like but so what i did is i i went after talking to those guys i went back and we set up a uh set up a working group on the on the war com staff and the senior guy in the working group was probably a commander and i said guys the last thing i ever want to hear is the admiral said or the admiral wants other than the fact that i want to figure out how to make this work i think we i think we need to change how we're doing business we had oh fours down to e6s on that uh on that working group to figure out how to make it work and uh we uh we didn't get it we didn't get it fielded by the time i uh by the time i left uh command uh but we had the uh we had the core of of what we were looking at we were already already looking at uh you know different uh team deployments and how we were going to change that all so we'd have one team uh with uh boat guys intelligence support logistics support that kind of thing uh deploying forward and uh as i as i stopped and looked today uh it looks a whole lot different than uh than what what walked out the door finally under eric olsen but i am i am so proud of stan and pete uh of uh bringing that to me and uh us us taking that and laying the groundwork because this is now uh this is now 22 going on 23 years after we started working on that and here naval special warfare with you know lipstick on the uh on the pig in a certain number of places but it's it's still the same pig uh and uh or it's the uh probably it's probably a borehog by now uh but it's uh it's it's what we uh it's what we started framing at that point in time as the as a way for naval special warfare uh to do business and uh and again i'm proud of that working group proud of pete and stan uh and uh the other guys agreeing because i didn't like i said i didn't want to start going down this road if somebody was gonna you know throw out you know dozens of man years of work and planning to uh to toss it out so that was uh that in in in combination with uh the uh the swic nec uh where the the two things that uh that i figured were probably the uh you know best accomplishments that uh uh that i that i ever had let me add one more thing you talked earlier about uh working with the uh the physical therapist and so on uh you need to uh to go back and thank uh uh i believe it was pete tony's uh who who started that uh you know bringing in those uh those physical therapists uh to work with the uh with the with the team guys uh but there's you know it's it's it's interesting for me to hear your comments on how important those kinds of things are work to you in your career and i think you know way to go there pete you know those guys were those guys were doing some uh some good things so but those are the uh those are the two biggest things that uh that i'm probably proudest of uh that that and uh and petty officer uh bacchus coming up to me at seal team one that's outstanding and and that transition that you started that you initiated uh that got pushed to you i guess up through the chain of command to to redo the way we were deploying i mean the the way the deployments went eventually once the war started we would have been just kind of worthless you know being a random platoon out there by yourself you just you just don't have the value that you need to bring to the battlefield and and what we were able to do as giant squadrons with all the augmentees with all the logistical support that's what we needed and and look didn't mean we lost our ability to be nimble because we could still take a platoon from that squadron and kick them out to some random out station you could have a five or six man element i had i had little elements sitting in tiny spots out on their own and but we were able to do that because of that that squadron idea came to fruition and otherwise we wouldn't have been able to been functional one other thing contributed to the success of that squadron uh when you first came in the teams where uh were platoons still deploying on em fibs yep i did two amphib deployments myself and so i did one my first deployment was to guam and then i did back-to-back art platoons out here in san diego six months on the ship well being able to take the platoons off the arg was another key part of that and i can remember going to cincus nav eur four-star admiral saying this is what i want to do and this is how i want to do it and uh that is when the amphibs try to do advanced force ops that means you got to get those amphibious ships within a few miles of the coast you're not doing anything advanced force uh and one of the terms that they wanna that they use is doing in stride amphibious operations so they can just drive up to the beach and do their thing but if you have to stop and let the seals do their thing yeah you're sitting there with a uh with a bull's eye on you so i had to be somewhat tactful with circus navier uh yeah because no no leaders ever want to give up their assets they don't want to give them up nope they they did not uh and so i explained to him how a submarine and explained to him uh you know jim was a uh jim was a you know commanding officer of a nuclear aircraft carrier probably not much i have to explain to him but as as i laid it out to him i said you know we you know we have these uh theater special operations commands and these forces allocated to them they're not only navy special warfare they're army and air force assets that are available to you there and you can get there by submarine you can get there by c-130 you can get rubber ducks there are no c-130s on the mfibs that i've that i've seen uh et cetera et cetera and he said well well who's gonna who's gonna pay for that uh you know the uh i said we are naval special warfare and u.s special operations command he said sold and uh that's that's how we uh that's that's the third biggest thing that i feel that uh that i can uh yeah hang my hat on in in my career uh you know getting getting people to finally understand if you want to do something in stride for the mfibs you're probably going to launch that uh that reconnaissance from somewhere else as it should be yeah well outstanding outstanding stuff uh i'm the open invite anytime you come back if you listen this and there's other things you want to talk about that you missed uh scratch them down on a piece of paper this this place is yours uh it's been an honor to sit down and talk with you um you know obviously thanks for everything that you did for the country for the teams for the navy um and thanks for putting some faith in a e4 that came to your office wanting to request and you you legitimately changed the trajectory of my life and and that's how i ended up here so it's been an honor and thank you thank you jocko and i don't know if you knew it but uh for the first two or three years that they had that semen the admiral program and i guess you were in like the second year naval special warfare you and the other boys who went in there uh you guys were the top four candidates each year we're just trying to hold up the line good job thanks sir appreciate it all right the hulk has departed the area of operations the it's just freaking crazy to sit here kind of like it was crazy with with mike durant yeah when i was watching him on tv after he'd been captured in somalia and i was watching him in 1993 as a young seal new guy and now we're sitting here talking to him think of how crazy this is here i am talking to admiral richards who literally wrote the recommendation for me to become a seal officer in 19 what was that 30 years ago 25 years ago something like this yeah and he's legendary seal from seal team one where i'm from he was the commanding officer of seal team one right before i showed up he was he was the commanding officer of buzz by the way when i graduated and here he is just right there debriefing i'll tell you what's awesome and i was talking to him about this a little bit i was telling him that when mike thornton came on the podcast and i had i forget when mike thornton actually retired but we overlapped in time you know i was in for a while while he was in not very long because he retired probably somewhere around when i came in i don't know but but there was overlap time there was time he was in the teams he was a seal team one guy he was a medal of honor recipient legendary legendary like you need to put music behind that when i say it on the like in post so so mike thornton but as much as i knew who mike thornton was i had met him you know i had met him multiple times i had also met him when mikey monsoor when when his parents were given mikey's medal of honor at the white house like mike thornton was there we we talked we hung out we drank beers like i know him and i had never gotten any kind of a debrief about the the operation where he ended up receiving the medal of honor until he came on the podcast and gave us up to our full detailed debrief on why he received the medal of honor so it's the same thing here like i had known that admiral richards was you know a badass vietnam guy that's you know that's just there's a whole category when you're a new guy and the teams in the 90s there's just like a whole there's a whole group yeah and it's just like oh yeah a nom guy and you're not in that group or even close to it because now it's 1991 when i'm checking in vietnam's been over for a long time but that that that's the that's the group and you don't know too much about him you don't understand you couldn't debrief like the debrief that he went through today how awesome is that it's it's just hey here's exactly what happened here's what was going on here's what i said here's the words that came out of my mouth here's the here's what the other individual here's where the helicopter just hearing these details and understanding them it's just so i'm so lucky to be sitting here yeah this though the whole time these thoughts flash in my head like okay imagine if you're like a you know a vc guy or you know nba guy and you for whatever reason get face to face with this [ __ ] right here let's say i don't know you guys lost all your weapons whatever and now you got to go hand to hand you're surrendering till the death you're surrendering with this like the most hard the most hardened the most hardened nva like just warrior he's surrendering he's just like hey i'm done bro forget the wrestling kid who got body slammed in a concussion forget that guy bro this guy is going down yeah you're going down like you can tell and you could you know he threw his numbers out right i mean he's throwing out his numbers oh yeah but you can just tell too some people are strong yeah like they're just genetically freaking strong and by the way when you're 14 years old after your freshman year and you weigh 140 pounds and the 170 pound wrestling coach comes out and can't hold you down and you're not that good of a wrestler yeah but you're just doing it on pure power you're one of those dudes you are just a strong jacked dude it's not even just jack it's like the genetic that that dense just strong freaking muscle yeah and he's just made of that just made it at 100 checking in the buds at 145 by the way oh sorry 245 i got a little confused there because i checked in the buds at 174 like a little baby like a little baby and it wasn't like i was a skinny guy you know i wasn't skinny but our damn sure wasn't 245 pounds deadlifting over five benching over four i mean come on yeah then if you're a random vietcong fighter that you've been raised in the fields and eating rice and you weigh he was just saying after the podcast he's like yeah you know the average vietnamese fighter was he's i think he said five five 135 yeah that's the average fighter that's literally the size of my wife yeah and so we are talking about just that what what the hulk it's like the moon it's like being the actual hulk he grabs a hold of you and starts shaking your head around yeah so you know that's enjoy i remember the story so if you're saying like oh when you're in the weight room yeah you know the the hulk comes in yeah you know and you'll turn it down yeah i'm a new guy man yeah you know that's interesting plus the other thing that's interesting is i thought you know who is this old guy right and in my mind he was a hundred years old because he was a nom you know and um you know how old he was i did the math he was he was like 43 or 44. he was six or seven years younger than i am right now and and i'm in there thinking i like in my mind i think this guy doesn't know what rock and roll music is you know and it's just so ignorant it's so ignorant meanwhile he's about he was just telling you he's like a bouncer at this bar hucking people on their head he's the freaking bruiser dude i wanted i should have talked to him about that yeah you know i have a bouncing background yeah maybe we could have shared you guys have like that big kinship yeah i'm sure his uh his time as a bouncer might might have been more robust than mine probably yeah and well that's you know when you when you ask him about lifting and still lifting like such a key component of life is just to keep exercising yeah because i mean what do you say he was 74 years old yes yeah yeah i mean he rolled in here to date with no i mean you just until totally perfect health yeah and you know shook my hand you know you the the handshake is kind of a little subliminal warning of just what could happen you know he's kind of like look you might think you're tough they're young jocko but uh you know you know you want to play yeah and i didn't and i was doing the math when he told me the year he was born during the break and i i was surprised i thought i thought maybe like oh yeah maybe 60 something you know because just you know you can just tell guys like just yeah energy you know and their energy yeah so but my estimate was way off so yeah man and that and that was his thing too like obviously like he was saying like yeah running wasn't my jam or whatever it was just straight up lifting yeah not literally nothing else really i mean unless i missed something he was just shacky steel yeah and plus wrestling yeah wrestling for sure this is you know a good skill to have it's kind of the jam when when the judo navy ju all navy judo champion comes running out of a hooch on a training off and you got a double leg uh good stuff uh well hey thanks everybody for listening and we appreciate you hanging out if you if there's look you won't probably want a jack steal after you listen to hulk i know i'm kind of feeling like i want to go dead lift something right now yes me too yeah probably going to need some supplementation you might as well get some yep get get a little bit of that jackal fuel dragonfield.com that's the clean one it's a big deal it is a big deal so we got energy drinks yeah let's go jocko go uh we got some protein tastes good and clean and it's clean protein no sugar that's called milk yep all that stuff you can get at jackoful.com the the if you want to get the drinks you can get them at wawa you can also get all the stuff at vitamin shop we're in the process of going into so many more stores right now it's awesome i'll keep you posted on that on where you can go to your local neighborhood and get your get your jocko fuel together so that's good and you might have seen recently we started talking about the hunting hunting apparel we did a little live last night a little live was it live instagram streaming live sure yeah so we did that yesterday what was the uh was the takeaway on that sorry to say i didn't catch it you know but what was it i guess you're gonna have to go back and review your tapes yeah all right that's why that's why i shared it or whatever i understand fully that's why i shared it obviously the the players on there campaigns yep who else roberts kip folks so where we started a company origin hunt and we're going to be making american-made hunting gear kip folks has a massive amount of experience he was one of the original guys at under armour yeah and so he has done all kinds of product development and one of the main guys that they sponsored well actually the longest guy sponsored at under armour was cam haynes and cam haynes is obviously a legendary uh bowhunter so they had a relationship and yeah things there was an opportunity cam was going through whatever he was going through at under armour so we had an opportunity to form a company together all of us and it's funny i saw somebody wrote like oh oh i'm glad to see cam's whatever the first ambassador for origin hunt and the fact is no he's not an ambassador of origin hunt he's a founding a founding owner of origin hunt so it's a totally cool thing for for us to be a part of and and and listen i know it seems a little bit crazy i i know you might think i'm a little bit like oh you're going a little whatever right when i say to you that hey we're in an economic war and people go oh yeah yeah they get it but here's the thing it's like it's like one of those things that's not in front of your face so you don't worry about it yeah right yeah it's like oh there's something wrong with our with our sewer pipe under the house yeah and you're like okay but as long as it doesn't stink you're not you're not calling the plumber right it's like the check engine like yeah it's like the check engine light but it kind of flickers on and it goes off it goes on it goes off and it flickers on it goes off i'm telling you i'm the check engine light right now for the world and i'm telling you right now the check engine light is on it should be on and you need to get in the game because that's what's going that's what's happening we're in an economic war with china and the more we blow it off and act like it's no big deal and keep driving the car keep flushing the toilet down the sewer pipe we're gonna look up and that thing's gonna burst and it's gonna be [ __ ] everywhere so and your car's gonna break down so let's not do that this is american-made stuff originusa.com this is american-made stuff it's the everything about it is american-made so get in the game that's what we're doing we're making work where we're making jiu jitsu gear we're making hunting gear guess what guess what i need in my life jiu jitsu gear hunting gear workwear if um and i'm not joking by the way with this uh so i saw a i don't know if it was a sample or just one of the the pants right for hunting so that looks like something i would wear i don't go hunting yeah as of yet okay yeah and i don't know if i am or not but as of right now i am desire to have i am currently not hunting about that yeah yeah yeah it's one of those things for sure but when i say it's one of those things it's one of those things yes so i don't know am i going to get there yes maybe maybe not anyway the question is what if i just wear them anyway is that posing i mean tech i'm not i'm not doing it i wouldn't be wearing these hunting pants to make like i'm a hunter one of the things one of my philosophies of life is you you want to have multiple purposes for everything that you have so even like delta jeans they're cool to wear if you want to go to a restaurant with your wife they're also cool if you have to just go do squats in or you do yard work in right that's the kind of flexibility you have you want to make things that have multi-purpose capabilities so the the clothing that we're making for origin hunt will be multi-purpose and if you're in an urban scenario where things are unfolding and you just happen to be rolling deep echo charles style with a pair of camis sure no one's going to give you a second look other than the gold man those things look legit okay good yeah so i think you're good i'm clearing you hot okay so even if there's no scenario unfolding the only thing that you would have to use caution in in my opinion with originusa.com is if you didn't train jiu jitsu at all but you thought the geese looked cool and you just went out and got one and you were wearing it down to the club that makes sense to me i wouldn't do that okay that would be posing okay yes but if you happen to if you happen to reach in the freaking cupboard and you pulled out a pair of freaking camo origin pants then you were like hey this is what i'm wearing i think we're good wait but the camel because hunting camo is different than reggae like right now i'm literally wearing camel pants as in while we're wearing camo shorts right and we're not fighting in the jungle right now we're not or not could be we're ready if we need to maybe later yeah either way you know no one's gonna be like oh er like thinking that i'm actually trying to act like i'm actually doing xyz in the jungle no one is mistaking you for a commando exactly right it's like no one's mistaking you for for a jungle warrior right correct yes so do i am i extended that same sort of courtesy or latitude i'm telling you you're good and because of the materials that we're using to make this stuff you're going to want to where you're going to be this will become the standard kind of i think there's many people all over america just we're going to the grocery store in origin hunt camo that's what i was calling it's going to be a thing that's what i was planning on yeah because and i'm only i didn't even feel them i saw a picture of them and i know i know good pants when i see them mm-hmm like with a cupcake you got that you've got that gut instinct that's always been good you know well you know some people got it some people got that special talent so yeah originusa.com hey if you want to get some cool of the kind what would you say like the things we you and i have said on the podcast yeah you get some jacquard store.com stuff like t-shirt yeah okay well you know of course i always say how to represent on the path and the reason why i always say it like that yeah is because that's the best way to say it okay it's not the best way to say it no no no tell me what you do no no no no no apparently it's not i don't know apparently it is because you say so okay all right well in my opinion should i leave now current you want me to go because i don't want to see i don't want to get in the way of your freaking awesome it feels the most accurate how about that okay okay in one of his moves today okay all right no no that's good that's good um either way if you want to represent while you're on the path when i'm on the path and i wear this shirt i am currently representing i'm in the in in the middle of representing while on the path okay i'm saying right now you're in the middle of over explaining something no no no in the spirit of accuracy and consistency and thoroughness throwing this yeah i'm explaining that's how cool so it's better it's a benefit either way jacostore.com that's where you can get this stuff good apparel good apparel fits good looks good yup just subscribe to the podcast check out jockowunderground.com that's where we're we got an alternative site in case we need it you know the deal if you want to support us there we're putting out an extra podcast for you some extra information it's eight dollars and eighteen cents a month if you can't afford it look if you can't afford it you can email assistance underground dot at jocko underground.com also check your situation check your situation because if you if eight dollars and 18 cents a month if that's putting a negative impact on your zone then check it out you need to do some assessment of where you're at because that's not where you want to be so go back and start listing the podcast at one we're gonna go through all kinds of things they're gonna help get you to a point where you're like eight dollars and eighteen cents a month to provide freedom to the world we're in that's my recommendation there uh youtube channel we got a youtube channel subscribe to that subscribe to the us origin usa youtube channel flip side canvas dakota meyer scott i was gonna bring up something about dakota today oh you know what's gonna bring up dakota but i just didn't was when admiral richards was talking about first responders dude dakota is a first responder right now yeah like not not like oh he does like uh training for them no no i'm saying right now he's a first responder dakota meyer is currently right now probably out fighting a fire helping somebody medically in a car accident but he man he it's it's a freaking insane hard job and i'll give you an example and i i don't want to i'll give you a i'll paraphrase a conversation i had with dakota the other day they pull up to it they pull up to a site that they they pull up to a call it's a suicide it's a young it's a teenage child who has committed suicide by hanging themselves and i think dakota said something like you know like as we're pulling up and i'm starting to get out of the vehicle like the person i'm with whoever he's with is more experienced person and they're like hey grab the bolt cutters and he was like okay and he grabs the bolt cutters because that person knew that they were gonna have to cut them down and that was like the easiest way so yeah all the first responders out there man um we appreciate what you're doing and the that's dakota meyer and this dakota meyer who is not only a u.s marine not only a medal of honor recipient not only a freaking awesome guy but he's also currently at this time a firefighter emt paramedic dude that sends me pictures at one o'clock in the morning of him responding to a car accident a house fire a freaking medical emergency so god bless that guy and go check out flipsidecampus.com buy some cool stuff to hang on your wall which is what it is i forgot to tell you that that's what you know what it doesn't really matter if if i was like hey he's selling cottage cheese and and and freaking uh clay bowls i'd be like cool go buy some cottage i want some cottage cheese down some clay bowls that's what we're doing dakota flipside canvas.com hey i read a bunch of books check those out uh ashland front leadership consultancy if you need help inside your organization go to ashlandfront.com we got some live events coming up you know we got coming up we got the battlefield ef battlefield and we take and we go and walk historical battlefields we do gettysburg we do little bighorn so go and check that out we just go site by sight we walk where the where the leaders walked where the troops walked we we discussed their decisions the good decisions the bad decisions it's that's a smaller group right yeah it's like 25 30 people oh yeah so and it's two days and you know we like have dinner and hang out have lunch all those things so hey look if you want to go there and you also want to ask about hey here's a leadership challenge i'm facing here's what i'm doing with my company that's cool too and those answers that we give will many times be given with the overlay of hey here's a historical battle here's what this general did in this particular case here's what this colonel did over here here's what this this freaking war chief did over here so if you want to come and check any of that stuff out go to echelonfront.com look for events we also have an online training academy called the academy extremeownership.com look you got to go to the gym if you want to stay in shape if you want to improve if you want to learn guitar you got to practice if you want to learn a language like spanish because you're going to el salvador because the person that you're replacing just got assassinated there and you're the only person that rogers up to go do it and you gotta learn spanish you gotta go practice it you gotta get taught it leadership's the same way and it doesn't happen overnight you got to learn it you got to study it so we have the academy extremeownership.com and listen guess what leadership is leadership is life whatever you're doing in your life you have to set goals you have to figure out what tasks you need to complete you need to prioritize and execute how you're going to make something happen how you're going to get that house bought how are you going to pick up a new job how are you going to go rebuild this relationship with someone that you hurt like those are all things that we do those are all leadership things they might not sound like it leadership is life so extreme ownership.com yeah it's about leadership but don't think to yourself well you know i'm not really in a leadership position so i guess it's not for me you're in a leadership position you are in a leadership position if you're the if you're the most junior person working at wendy's if you're the the grill guy at wendy's which was my job by the way when i was younger if you're the that guy you're you're you're flipping burgers at wendy's which i did you're in a leadership position and you can build relationships with the people there and you can start to figure out how things work and you can get promoted you can move up you can buy your own store that's what happens by the way when you're the most junior person if you become a leader if you think like a leader that's what you can do with your life and it just doesn't apply to work you want to build a relationship with another person that you're in a leadership position i this might sound uh cold but guess what you have a wife or you have a husband you're in a leadership position the way you interact with them the techniques that i use when i'm talking to you echo charles as my work compadre are the same techniques that i use when i'm talking to my wife when i'm talking to my kids they're it's human interaction yeah so if you need help with that which by the way we all do because you're not born with it you're not born look can you be a born leader in yeah yes you can can you be kind of charismatic yes you can the best leaders still make mistakes they still have room to improve and people that maybe don't aren't blessed with that natural leadership gift guess what you got room to improve too there was a there was guys totally sleeping in my mind right now where um admiral tom richards was saying he didn't ever raise his voice like he never heard him raise his voice but everyone listened to him al huey yes okay so it's like okay so consider that phenomenon like in life where where essentially you're you have this crazy and when you think about it's crazy this ability to navigate through all kinds of different personalities and they all get on board with the program get on board like basically you know how to make everyone do what they want to do for themselves or the group or whatever even and a lot of times that's the part that i think maybe kind of goes over my head even where it's like it's not just what i'm trying to make the whole group do sometimes it's just one person in fact most of the time it's just one other person in many different situations or whatever but it's like yeah it's your brother your wife your friend or whatever yeah and you can navigate no matter the personality you can navigate and control the scenario for everyone you know for everyone's interest that's like a superpower and you know what else is interesting is as you go through life the more you understand these concepts you see them everywhere you seem and the reason i s what made me think of that is when you said you know wife this you mentioned wife you mentioned like peers you're mentioning all people that you're close to that that you interact with yeah when you go and walk into a restaurant that you've never been in before and you interact with the hostess yeah that person that's gonna get you a table there's a leadership situation happening directly directly hidden not the kind of like oh if you really like it it's really happening it's right there and you might get you might get like put oh yeah yes come have a seat over here sir and you get put by the kitchen and there's noise coming out there may be some background uh smells that you're not particularly fond of that can happen right there and you can also get point put in the window seat overlooking the ocean that is a leadership scenario yeah and if you know how to interact with other human beings you're going to end up by the window you're going to end up overlooking the ocean not with the racket from the kitchen coming out you see what i'm saying yes so go to extreme ownership.com let's get you over at with the ocean view at the restaurant let's get you in that situation where you're not having to raise your voice like al huey and people are doing what you want them to do because they want to do it because they understand what it is we're trying to do as a team go to extremeownership.com and also if you want to help service members active and retired if you want to help people that have served in the military that need help mark lee's mom mama lee she's got an incredible charity organization she helps people so much so much if you want to help her help people you want to help her help veterans you want to help her help gold star families go to americasmightywarriors.org so you can either volunteer or donate or help out somehow also check out heroesandhorses.com what's up with what's up with micah micah fink just i don't know what he's doing right now at this moment but he's probably wrestling a grizzly bear shooing a horse or like capturing uh or maybe he's sitting in a sweat lodge hallucinating about like uh what does he hallucinate about about calves traffic light traffic lights no that was me so there you go just an awesome program check that out and if you need more of us well you know where we are again do i want you to go and just sign up for the algorithm and put a put a a freaking carabiner around your your heart and hook it into the algorithm and have it ripped out no i don't want you to do that i don't want you to do that but if you want to be if you want to know what we're doing check it out but don't let the check it out turn into carabiner around your heart that's what i'm saying watch out for that that's the social media platforms that are out there they got carabiners they're giving them away they they want you to take that carabiner they want you to put they're like and for some reason you think it's cool you're like oh look at this shiny character like you give a little yeah look give a little kid a mousetrap that's rigged to blow they're gonna pick it up and get rocked by it they think they were doing the right thing curiosity so watch out for that man the gram the facebook the twitter echoes that equal charles i am out john williams and thanks once again to admiral thomas richards for coming by for sharing his experiences we by the way unfortunately as soon as we hit stop and we started talking he's like told me 14 more freaking awesome stories about his experiences about nam about what they were doing what they're wearing so we'll get him back on again but thanks for coming on thanks for your service admiral and and once again thanks for for taking care of me as a young young seal trying to do better and thanks for setting a great example for the young seals on how to be badass frogmen and to the rest of the military folks out there thank you for your service in protecting freedom and our way of life around the world well what did admiral richards keep saying 7 24 365 days a year you're out there you're out there so thank you and thanks to our police and law enforcement all the firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service all the first responders you guys are just out there putting it on the line every day so we appreciate what you do as well and everyone else out there listen i'm a little at risk for saying this because i talk about things like the indirect approach and i say you should think through your situations and i say you should make iterative decisions about what you're doing so you're taking small steps to move in the right direction i say those things all the time because that's what i want you to do 99.9 percent of the times that's what i want you to do but occasionally on the rare occasion when things get bad you have to do what admiral tom richards told his wounded machine gunner to do in a rice paddy in vietnam and that is shut up and return fire that's all i've got until next time this is echo and jocko out

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 347,479

Keywords: jocko willink, podcast, discipline, defcor, fredom, leadership, extreme ownership, author, navy seal, usa, military, echelon front, dichotomy of leadership, jiu jitsu, bjj, mma, jocko, victory, echo charles, flixpoint

Id: LtBPYO3euHA

Length: 256min 37sec (15397 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022