562: The Deadly Cost of Bad Leadership. Lessons From Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. With Bing West

This is Johnko Podcast number five sixty two with Echo Charles and me, Johnko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening When a platoon left the wire to patrol, it entered an alien world. Death lurked in the dirt, in the hooches, in the patties, in the bush. Every step was a gamble. Sometimes you couldn't avoid death.

You're either unlucky or outgunned. But sometimes your own fatigue blows up in your face. After several baking hours with no contact, we were passing a hamlet when wham. Two quick dull explosions followed by a cloud of black smoke. Three marines were writhing in the dirt, clutching their legs. The corpsmen rushed up to tie rubber tourniquets to staunch the squirting blood. Staff Sergeant William Cunningham grabbed a handset and called for a Medivac hilo. In frustration he yelled at the wounded I told you to stay in the tracks, I told you, I told you.

From the Hamlet rounds were snapping over our heads. We hunkered down behind a dry paddy dike as hard as concrete. Bullets were paying off the sides. of the two Amtrak. One VC light machine gun and a half dozen rifles were shooting from the hamlet and from a trench line leading to a distant knoll. The Medivac hilo circling above couldn't land until the platoon snuffed out the incoming fire.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (144 minutes, 25,562 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.