more than once on the podcast you've mentioned how the teams were so
competitive that no one wanted to admit when they were cold
being too too cold puts you at a tactical disadvantage
in hindsight was that a failure to control your ego
so your ego doesn't control you i didn't ask this question out of idle curiosity
a lot of folks on active duty listen to the podcast and i'm concerned they might
put themselves their teammates and their mission in jeopardy because of
their egos won't let them admit they're too hot or too cold all
right so good question good point and there's
definitely a big difference between between being uncomfortably cold
right like on like you're just uncomfortably cold or
uncomfortably hot or uncomfortably thirsty or hungry or whatever
and being in an actual state where you're putting the mission
in jeopardy because you're too cold or or hot or thirsty whatever so
i just needed to say this in the teens you are 95 of the time
you are cold too cold too hot too wet too thirsty too miserable something
there's no time when you're in the field you put on a
hundred pounds worth of gear worth of gear you're uncomfortable
from the word go from the word go and you're cold you know you come in
over the beach you're in wet camis it doesn't matter
you come out with great technology and we got a dry suit of this we got a wet
suit that no you're you're miserable it's not you're
going to be cold you're going to be uncomfortable
you ride in a zodiac first you you ride in a
in a big rib which is like a 10 meter boat
and you have your zodiacs on that boat so you're in that boat you're getting
sprayed with water you're getting bounced up and down
you do that for three hours and then you launch your little boats into the water
well while you're doing that you fall in the
water you slip you get sprayed more you're covered in water
by the way the water's not warm and then you gotta
because you're gonna travel then 15 knots so you gotta you're facing a 15
knot headwind for another two hours in a zodiac and
then you're going to get in the water and swim
with me you're going to be cold that's just the way it is
and you can't complain about that so and you don't complain about it in the teams
you just keep your mouth shut that's what you do keep your mouth
shut now the big distinction here is this is
correct if you're going to get hypothermia
or you're going to get a heat stroke or you're going to go down from dehydration
then yeah you got to speak up and be you know you got to say hey guess what i
got an issue here i'm i'm starting my you know i'm
starting to get dizzy or i'm trying to get lightheaded or
whatever yeah if you cross the line to where it
goes from discomfort to actual problem then you definitely need to
speak up um and it does happen it happens a lot actually you know when we
when we do our land warfare training in the desert in the summer time it's
120 degree heat got you're going to take heat cash
please you know when i was running training we used to just have
pre-meditated heat casualty evacuation because we knew someone was going to go
down that's just the way it's going to happen
because you got 40 guys that are all turning and burning
and they're all running on three or four hours of sleep and
then they're going out in the field and they just got back from the field and
there's no time to rehydrate you know okay there's time but some guys
might forget to rehydrate and next thing you know you got a guy
going down so this stuff does happen and yeah you got to let your team know
what's going on i've the the closest call i had i was on a
long patrol training patrol in the ozark
mountains of arkansas it was summertime it was hot
we were planning to pump water meaning you bring a little water filtration
system into the field and you get to a stream and you can fill your canteens
and it's great and seems like you have water forever because there's streams
well we the way the patrol went we started off in pairs
and then we linked up with fire team and then you like up with squad then you
look up with a platoon well while we are in the squad link up
we for whatever reason the course that i was on i didn't hit water we had a
couple of streams that were supposed to be there
and they weren't because they're intermittent streams so sometimes
streams aren't running year round and the time of year it was the streams
weren't running so the first one i was like
okay i'll be okay got to the so you go up over a mountain come back down the
other side get to this where the stream is marked intermittent stream is marked
on a map guess what no stream so and then by that
time i was out of water so now coming that the next day i said
to myself you know if there's not water on this next stream
i'm gonna i'm gonna have issues and there wasn't water
the next day so yeah that's but i started to feel the dehydration
coming on me that's why i hate being thirsty i hate i always carry
as much water as i can you got to be paranoid about being
thirsty once you start going down from a dehydration it's really a bad situation
you went the whole day no it was two days
dang yeah and now i had water going in but i didn't refill i didn't have a ton
of water i should have had i should have had one i should add maybe
two more liters of water as a as a just in case but i didn't then
you gotta carry that yeah yeah because you gotta carry it now you're heavier
now you're sweating more so there's a little balance you got to figure out
yeah yeah but yeah can it be a problem
yes i have seen it become a problem where guys ego's too big they don't want
to admit it for sure so yes this is a good warning
don't let your ego get you in real trouble because that's going to hurt
your platoon even more so don't let that happen don't let your
ego prevent you from telling the truth about what's happening
and this happens in this can happen in the business world too
where oh you know what oh i don't really know how to operate this piece of
equipment but i'm not going to say anything i'm just going to try and do it
well that's how someone gets hurt so again that's an ego problem
when you have an issue when you know you can't do something or you've never done
something before step up and and raise your hand now of
course you should have done the research you should you know you
should have figured some stuff out on your own
but if you fail to do that don't dig the hole deeper yeah
raise your hand say what the problem was there you go good question
yeah makes sense because that especially the thirst thing
like the dehydration thing yeah you don't want to be the guy
saying oh i'm thirsty but here's the thing i think nowadays though
like teams and coaches here's the thing in football okay so pop warner football
they'd be like yeah no water you know we have a water break you drink water at
the water break otherwise you're practicing you know
kind of thing it's like a toughing you up thing
but man that can jam your health up yeah but let's face it i mean
it would be pretty rare if you gave people the if you're
doing a practice what how long does a practice last two hours two hours
okay bro you can make it two hours if you're properly hydrated now if a
person's not properly hydrated going into the practice sure that can
that can be a problem but if someone is properly hydrated going into the
situation it should not be a problem and i'll tell
you what if you are in the military and you're going in the field
man pre-hydrate like that used to save me so much
from carrying so much water just drink so much water now i'll tell you where
the problem comes in you're in a helicopter ride for an hour
and a half and you gotta piss so bad it's awful but
you know what bring a little bring a little plastic bottle with you
so you can piss through the bottle that's way less of an issue i think
like finding a place to drink versus for sure it's weird
but yeah if you pre-hydrate properly no matter how hard you're working you can
go like 12 hours without any water yeah which is pretty legit
yeah for for you you know kind of an average seal
mission 12 hours get you plenty of time yeah yeah but kid i mean
i'm talking pop warning here so you know
but here's the weird thing like when you went to high school
college they'd have water right there right there on the sideline
and they'd you know they're really aware of hey you need good you need water
drink more water well i think that was also the time
yeah that's the actually the point the era the yeah right
like when we were kids no one ever ever one single time in my whole from the
time i was zero until i was 18. yeah no one ever said to me hey
make sure you drink water yeah never never heard anyone say that
yeah it was like oh you're thirsty drink a coke what you know yeah that's just
the way it was you know so that changed for you in that
time period yeah when i got to when i got to seal training when i got
to buds that's when they were saying oh you got
to stay hydrated yeah i thought it was kind of a joke i
thought they were kidding at first yeah like what are you talking about hi do
you mean drink water what do you what do you mean why would you call it something
else hydrated yeah well you're thirstier like it's
like this well you should because you can go down
from like heat okay there's like for there's heat uh exhaustion heat
stroke heat exhaustion there's all kinds of heat injuries you
can get yeah and you get heat stroke right you can straight up die
oh yeah so that's not you know it's not a matter of like oh yeah tough it out
but you can't tough it out you're shutting down
kind of thing yeah that's for sure so you know that is important for the heat
thing and i guess that is and that's go you
know going back to this question that is probably why we would see heat
casualties in training because guys do not want to
say anything they're like man i'm not going to say anything
yeah i'm not going to get an idea and then you look even worse
because that's what happens you get stuck with an iv now you're laying in
the field everyone else by the way continues on doing
another 10 kilometer hump to a target and you're sitting there laid up in the
ambulance like a little baby no one wants that but pre-if you
pre-hydrate properly you won't be in that situation
yeah but if you are gonna get that situation you need to say something
yeah we're talking about your health life
yeah essentially and more importantly we're talking about the mission
yeah yeah i'm still thinking about the pot warner situation but yeah man i dig
it and you are correct i can't help but
agree with you 100 percent