Dad on Jocko — Ep. 196 “Make Peace or Die”

Last year, Jocko Willink featured a conversation with my father and an early draft of Make Peace or Die on episode 196 of his podcast.

Dad describes the experience in the epilogue :

In the summer of 2019, I sat down with retired Navy SEAL and bestselling author Jocko Willink, as a guest on his podcast. He read from my manuscript and we talked about my life and about war. A chilling moment was when he read the line about the time I asked my father when the memories of war will fade.

I said that they don’t fade.

Jocko replied, “No, they don’t.”

Jocko Willink with Charles U. Daly who led a Marine rifle platoon in the Korean War and went on to work as an aide in JFK’s West Wing.

I spent a long time preparing for the podcast to avoid rambling or choking up, which I did anyway. Nothing could have prepared me for the response from his listeners. The podcast was accessed over fifty thousand times on YouTube. Hundreds of comments came in from all over the world. Listeners emailed, they Tweeted. The deputy chief of our local police department, where Jocko’s Extreme Ownership is required reading, came to my door one day to shake my hand and give me a mug with the department crest on it. I was astonished by how many young people are interested in the history of the Korean War. They haven’t forgotten. One listener, a Korean Marine, thanked me for saving his country.

Another listener wrote…