Jocko Willink

So I got very lucky that I was a comms guy, and I had volunteered to be a comms guy.

And the reason I had volunteered to be a comms guy was my third day at SEAL Team 1, I had quarterdeck watch back when we used to stand watches, and the officer of the deck, which was another SEAL, said, hey, new guy.

I was like, hey, sir.

And he said, if you want to be on every mission, be a comms guy, because...

No matter what the mission is, you will get to go because if you know how to work comms.

And the next morning when we woke up, I went up to the comm shack and I said, hey, I want to be a comms guy.

Which again, no one had ever volunteered to be a comms guy.

So I volunteered to be a comms guy.

And then I was a primary comms guy in my first platoon.

And now I was the primary comms guy in my second platoon.

And then probably one of the most influential things of my life happened in my second platoon.

So...

There was actually a couple pretty pivotal moments.

The first one was, we had an assistant platoon commander in my second platoon.

His name was Alton Lee Grizzard.

And he was an absolute freaking stud.

He was the quarterback at the Naval Academy.

He was record setting, like he broke Roger Staubach's records at the Naval Academy.

He was complete charismatic guy, fun, nice, charismatic, the whole nine yards.

And I was really good friends with him, really good friends with him.