Navy SEALs Jonny Kim and Jocko Willink talk about August 2nd, 2006. Losing Teammates.

the only thing stronger than fear for self for us was fear of letting your platoon made down or fear of getting your friends killed that to me is the greatest fear of all and I agree with you when if you accept that you made that you may die you may not come home your friends may not come home it's not being complacent about it it's not being okay well it's out of my hands I'm like no you're gonna do your best you will not get complacent you will remain hard to kill you will be effective in your job but you understand the risks of the work you have ahead of you and you you accept those risks so you are free to be effective in your job so I would say that everybody I would say that we all kind of knew that the day would come and like you said I mean it wasn't it wasn't fatalistic it wasn't um complacency it was the realistic assessment of where we were at and I think everybody knew that the day would come and maybe if someone says they didn't it was only because they were you know able to convince themselves that to you know to keep a positive attitude and the day did come and we'd had a couple guys get wounded um a couple you know Cowie was wounded bad a lot of close calls innumerable countless close calls which in a way kind of make you feel like maybe we can pull this off but in the end it's it's um it's War M so what did that do to you August 2nd 2006. it's hard to articulate in words what that day did I talked a little bit in the beginning of how my father has shaped my actions to become the seal well I'd say the events that unfolded on August 2nd 2006 and days afterwards where we lost much better Warriors than I much braver and selfless that those were much more formative in shaping what I do and will do for the rest of my life you know we lost the actions of that day we lost two really good men um I don't even know where to start you know one of my good friends one of our good friends Ryan Jobe was hit in the face God I learned a lot that day I think we all I think we all did and um a piece of us stayed there that day died with us you know Ryan was was hit in the face um and I remember going single cracks are usually not good the crack you know in the crack when I say crack I mean um when you were on the giving end of a rifle you it's a much different sound than being on the receiving end of a rifle that of a bullet that's supersonic it makes a very distinctive crack and when you hear that and it's a single one it generally is not good and I remember that radio call coming out from Leif saying that Ryan had been hit and that I was needed um I remember going on the roof and seeing Ryan lying down in a pool of his blood and uh uh-huh there's these images in my head that just have so much human compassion in a crazy chaotic time and I remember life uh and Chris at his side and Leif was holding his hat holding his hand and just saying just hang on brother we just hang on man and uh I did the best I could to stabilize Ryan but Ryan's Ryan's a trooper I mean he's he was the best of us um even then not concerned about his own welfare and making sure that we were safe we were being State we were being safe and staying low um and we had Mark was there laying down some good covering fire to get Ryan out of that position and I um we called on our brothers from the Army um um to bring us the armor we needed to get out of there and I'm very grateful for that so I accompanied Ryan out of there and there's not much you can do as a medic in that type of situation I'm not keeping Ryan a lot I'm keeping his airway open stopping the bleeding and that's it he's keeping himself alive and the definitive care he needed was a surgeon he needed to get to an operating table stat and we talk about things to learn from that day failures I had one of my biggest failures from that day and it pains me to this day because Ryan didn't see it that way we stopped off at one of the aid stations I think at cop Falcon along the way which just to paint this room it was a concrete 20 feet by 20 feet room with no electricity no running water definitely not a place to get definitive care and it was being manned by an o4 army physician's assistant um who I think had the best of intentions but had other clouding human emotions that resulted in poor judgment one being ego which is perhaps the biggest poison of all in any thing we do and just to give you an idea of this I mean it was a war zone down there I mean just a few days prior to that we had been mortared in that area and a few army soldiers were hit by this mortar bad and we were pretty close in our in cop Falcon and I went over to try and help and some of these guys were pretty hypovolemic which is a word for saying they were low on blood volume because they were losing it and I was trying to get IV access on one of these guys and I had a hard time doing it eventually was able to get a jug a stick in in the neck but this uh the guy who was Manning it so far um was you know just giving me a hard time about it which it's fine I think we give each other a hard time we make fun of each other but I think I mean I took it hard myself because like man I really wanted to help these guys and I was failing and giving getting this line in getting an IV line in um and that was naive and just just I think insecure I was professionally embarrassed that I could not get this line in and so I know I was a little intimidated by this guy um so I had that painting of the situation with this relationship with this person and coming in I knew that coming into this aid station at cop Falcon was only going to hurt Ryan and I was yelling at the army guys and I mean E1 you know E2 drivers we were just doing what they were told I'm like we need to go to Camp ramadi right now to get to an or and they were telling me we need to stop by the state we have orders to stop off at this aid station and Ryan's on this cot and I mean there's no way to get definitive care you can't even be sterile in this area I mean it's just a concrete room with no electricity and he was trying to give a nasal Fair an MPA a nasopharyngeal Airway to Ryan which is a little remember the trumpet nose he put in the keeps an airway secure but you never ever give an MPA to folks listening to this who have any kind of medical background you would never give an MBA to someone with suspected facial with suspected maxillary fractures which is what Ryan certainly had after being shot through the left cheek right or around the left orbit and I was top of my lungs arguing with this guy this is not what he needed like you should not do that we needed to get to camper Modi and there was a certain power differential right I mean that was E5 21 22 year old kid and I had this o4 who was telling me how things should be done and Ryan's there um hearing all this and I like a lot of army regulations and I'm not trying to give any disrespect to the Army but that the two drivers who drove me there were like you need to clear and save your weapon and you know if you remember there's always a barrel outside of every building the clear and safe head and I understand because there's a lot of accidental discharges that happen in the military but for Team guys I think that's like like clearing your having to point your weapon in a barrel to clear and safe it is not really you don't need to do that we can just clear and safe in a safe direction right just be responsible have um accountability for muscle awareness and what you're doing as like and I was trying to fight this fight with this with this PA and um the other army soldiers are trying to like you need to clean you need to go outside right now and clear this weapon so frustrated I left clear my weapon and came back and the PA had inserted the NPA into Ryan and Ryan was coughing up blood and bad and I saw the look on this PA space that he I think he recognized that this was outside his scope of abilities and that he was in over his head and may have hurt Ryan and from there my request to get to Camp ramani was immediately fulfilled and we got back in and load Ryan and got Ryan to Camp ramadi to the appropriate level of care to awaiting surgeons and doctors to take care of Ryan but to me that's one of my biggest failures because I let Ryan down and what pains me is that in the Years afterwards he always thanked me that I stood up for him and uh Ryan I don't know why you're thanking me I failed you I could have done something more I could have could have stood up for my friend a little bit more I could have um I don't know what I could have done but I could have done something Ryan deserves better and who knows what this did I mean Ryan was blind as you know afterwards but he says I was the last person he saw he wishes I was a little prettier Ryan likely became blind secondary to infection swelling trauma um but maybe that was the final straw that made him blind and eventually led to him getting all the surgeries which eventually took his life as you know he had multiple surgeries and one of his surgeries um he was unfortunately taken from us um I don't know but I made a promise after that that regardless of my rank of Where I Stood of what kind of power differential I was if I saw something wrong like that and I knew someone would get hurt that I would stand up and speak and not let something like that ever happen again we see things happen all the time that we know aren't right you know a lot of you sometimes you just know deep down that that's not right and you choose your battles I think it's important to choose what battles you stand up for but there are some battles that you should never ever Stand Down from and I swore I would never make that mistake again and then find a very relevant today I mean we accept the risks of our occupation for the greater good of what it does for society our country our species and it's relevant in space exploration in NASA at what I've been honored and privileged to take a part of and we accept the risks of what we are trying to do for the general good of what it brings back to humanity but I think having that experience to know it's worth cashing in that currency that reputation you've built up to speak up on something is up when something's messed up it's one of the I feel like we could talk about that day for the rest of the I think we can talk about August for the rest of the day about all the other things and that's just the first chapter of what happened that day as you know we lost Mark Lee on that day those a lot of what I do today I made a promise to not just those two not just to Mark and Ryan but I could I could list the long list of names of people we've lost since then that we that the void created by those Warriors that would certainly have done good for this world that I O that we owe it to them to be a positive Mark in this world and that can take many forms for me that was why I wanted to be a physician it didn't really matter that it was medicine and it was just natural for me because that's what I was involved in to take that level of service to a higher calling but taking like trying to become an astronaut is completely consistent with my promise to leave a positive impact in this world and that's how I honor the brothers we lost and I will never stop until the day I die trying to fill in that void because it's a boy that can never be filled in thank you I was um walking out of the Tactical operations center on our little base on that day and I remember I I walked out and um I looked over to my right I walked out the door and I looked over to my right um and I saw you and you were on your knees you were fairly covered in blood and you were washing the blood washing the blood out of Ryan's helmet and and I realized [Music] um that this was going to take a very personal toll on everybody and and I didn't know what to say um there was no training no one had been killed in Iraq before seals we never talked about we never talked about we talked about hey if a guy gets wounded if guy gets killed here's what we're gonna do in the next six minutes here's how we're gonna get a guy extracted here's the casualty evacuation here's the protocol that we're going to go through here's the medical procedures we're going to do to try and save his life these are all the things we're going to do in the 15 minutes from when someone gets hurt and I had been in the sealed teams for 16 years at that point 15 years and not one time ever in any training scenario did we ever talk about okay now what do we do now there's a little protocol around hey here's the casualty um the casualty officer that's going to go here's the protocol that we follow for notification the family all that stuff all the mechanics of it existed and we we did what we were supposed to do we followed that protocol but the protocol for how do I look at a 21 year old kid that's cleaning the blood out of one of his friends helmets there's no protocol for that and what I mean what I had to do was because I was still the guy in charge um and I had to try and figure out what to do there was no one to ask no one asked there's no there's no person to say hey what do I do now and you know what what I defaulted to which I actually told you guys in the clear three days later two days later when I finally could uh assemble a sentence was go back to work was that this is what we came to do we still have a mission we still have soldiers and marines that are out there risking their lives that we absolutely provide Safety and Security for we can deliver those guys home to their families and that's that's what we need to do and that's you know that's what we did you know sometimes words there are no right words for situations like that but I think just being there with the people you love at your side is the most important thing to be doing to go back out and work and do the job you came there to do that you signed up to do and it's not for I don't mean to be disrespectful with with these words but it's not for country or service it's for the person sitting next to you for standing next to you for your brother and your sister you do it because you love that person because at least to me and in my experience the folks who joined to be seals who did it because they wanted to serve their country that was the greatest reason they were there wasn't a bigger intrinsic reason like doing it for the person next to you for the Brotherhood for yourself they didn't seem to make it through and I'm not sure if I would die for my country but I would and I will die from my brother and sister without a doubt and that's just a taste of War we lost two people that day there are platoons companies who have lost half most of their unit you think of you see the numbers from World War II or from Vietnam it's astounding we I'm and I'm not trying to belittle the sacrifices our service members have done in this war but I'm just trying to put it in context that we had a whole generation of people we asked them to continue fighting despite the heavy losses and casualties they suffered on a daily basis that trumped any number we had in the post-9 11 Wars and they did it so being there with your brothers and sisters and continuing that fight that is the best remedy for a situation like that foreign obviously the the other you know I mean it's real obvious I guess when you look back but again this is something that um a lot of times we weren't prepared for in the modern SEAL Teams you know when I when I was raised in the seal teams in the 90s we were preparing for one Mission if we were lucky we'd do one mission and that mindset kind of got into our heads where you're you know you just didn't think about how you would continue on and yet I mean we stood down for like two days and then it was like okay get your gear back on and it's time to go even in that same day after Ryan which hit we said get your stuff on get your gear back on reload get back out there and I mean it it pains me to this day that I wasn't there for that assault because I was with Ryan and I'm glad that I was by Ryan's side but I meant I wasn't there for Mark when he was shot and killed the next time I saw him was in the morgue giving hit giving a final kiss to his forehead I didn't mean to interrupt well yeah you're exactly right and and so Ryan wounded and I mean severely wounded um and then yeah you're right it wasn't even a day it was a matter of an hour maybe before Leif called me up and said hey this is what's going on and then yeah once Mark was gone then it was a couple days and then okay and again the the the the the strange thing or I guess the thing to contemplate a little bit deeper is you know if you're going on to Guadalcanal like you're gonna fight and you're not gonna have time to think about what just happened whereas hey the way it was for us it was like okay well now you're gonna stand down for two days You're Gonna think about everything you're gonna you're gonna package up your your Bros gear and send it home that's what's going to happen you're gonna you're gonna be thinking about that and then you're going to get in the same Vehicles you're going to roll out and and that's what as you said that's what you do for your brothers that's what you do you keep doing your job you know I was thinking about that too when you're talking about shooting and you were talking about look you you know what you do you know how you get through that part of the course you follow the procedures you do your job you check your body position you front side Focus how do you complete the stocks you you figure you figure out what the Dead Space is you follow the protocol that's what you do that's that's what you do that's how you move forward you do what you're supposed to do and of course it wasn't over either um because because then you know in September we lost Mikey as well so close to being home going home and a million different excuses that you could make to not go out and do your job

Channel: United States of America

Views: 1,007,019

Keywords: jocko willink, kevin lacz, jonny kim, leif babin, seth stone, mike sarraille, jp dinnell, andrew paul, task unit bruiser, ramadi, the last punisher, american sniper, extreme ownership, battle, war, seals, navy seals, special operations, iraq war, nasa, astronaut, hoo yah, frogmen, chris kyle, sniper, tough, only easy day, long live the brotherhood, alpha males, tony eafrati

Id: inX2pRALbGA

Length: 31min 28sec (1888 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021