Jocko Willink

Well, what had just happened in Somalia a year prior, it was Blackhawk down.

It was like, yeah, they were not willing to take that risk.

We did the same thing.

There was a couple missions we got spun up for in Somalia and had our gear loaded, had 40 mic mic.

I remember loading out 40 mic mic for the first time for real and being like, oh yeah, we're going.

And we didn't go.

So that was probably the first time that I felt that level of frustration of,

You know, why aren't they sending us?

Like, we can help.

And that's the way it was, you know?

Definitely a letdown.

That was it.

You know, we went on deployment.

I think we spent some ridiculous amount of time, because they call them gator squares, which is when you're just going around in a circle off the coast.

We did gator squares off the coast of Rwanda, or off the coast of, not off the coast of Rwanda, but off the coast of Kenya.

for several months, and then we did gator squares off the coast of Somalia for another period of time, and then we went up into the Persian Gulf because at some point, I think it was this platoon, there was something going on, like Saddam had pushed troops, moved troops, there was something going on, so we went up and did gator squares in the Persian Gulf for a while.

So I think we were at sea, like,

174 days out of 180, or something totally insane like that.

Yeah, just riding that ship, lifting all day, shooting off the fantail.

Again, did we have fun while we were doing it?