This is Jocko Podcast number 484 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Wilink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

All day, murderous bursts of machine gun fire hammered our position, shattering windows and impacting interior walls, each round with the violence and kinetic energy of a sledgehammer wielded at full force.

Some of the incoming rounds were armor piercing and punched through the thick concrete

of the low wall surrounding the rooftop.

All of our element of seals, EOD bomb technicians, and Iraqi soldiers could do under such

accurate enemy fire was hit the deck and try not to get our head shot off.

Rounds snapped inches above us,

and shards of glass and concrete fragments rain down everywhere.

Damn, some of those bastards can shoot, yelled a seal operator,

pressed as close to the floor as humanly possible.

We couldn't help but laugh at our predicament.

RPG7 rockets followed in rapid sequence of three or four, exploding with tremendous

concussion against the exterior walls.

Hunkered down inside the building, we were separated from the bone-jarring explosion and deadly

shrapnel by a foot or so of concrete.

One errant RPG rocket missed its mark and sailed high over the building, trailing across

the hazy, cloudless Iraqi summer sky like a bottle rocket on an American Fourth of July. But if just

one of those rockets impacted a window, it meant red-hot fragments of jagged metal ripping through

just about every man in the room. Despite the onslaught, we held our position in the large four-story apartment building.

When the fury of the attack subsided, our SEAL snipers returned fire with devastating effect.

As armed enemy fighters maneuvered through the streets to attack,

...