This is Jocco podcast number 15 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening. I looked around at the men. I was the only one looking around. All the other heads were bowed down. All of them.

Praying. These men were going into battle. Real battle. We could literally hear machine gun fire in the distance where the battle would take place. These men had suffered an incredible number of casualties.

They had every reason to pray. I was with Charlie Company. From one of the most hallowed units in the US military, the first in the 506, the band of brothers made famous by their unbelievable performance in World War II, which was documented in the book, Band of Brothers, which became an HBO mini-series of the same name.

The first of the 506 in Ramadi held the line on that tradition of glory and service and courage.

There's nothing I can say that will do justice to the admiration and the respect that I had for the first of the 506, and that all of us seals had for the first of the 506.

The seals that I sent to work directly with the 506, they became adopted by the 506. Red curi. That's one of the nicknames for the 506.

The seals that were directly there working with them absolutely loved the 506. The 506 represented everything good I can imagine in a military team or any team.

Professional and disciplined and motivated and creative. The leadership in the battalion was absolutely outstanding.

The battalion commander, he was the very essence of leadership. He was calm and direct and friendly and open-minded and respectful and respected.

And his staff and the company commanders and the senior NCOs, they had this unified thread between them, this bond, this connection.

And it was that tradition and that sense of purpose and that standard of excellence and professionalism. It's hard to describe.

But it was absolutely there. And it was as real as the sand and the bullets and the guns.

And so there I was and this was early in my deployment to Ramadi with TASQ, Unibruzr. And I was about to go out into the Malab district with Charlie Company.

And their company commander was just an outstanding guy.

And I knew that this unit and this company and this battalion, I knew was something special and I knew that that term, the band of brothers, I knew that that's what they truly were.

And I know it's a book and it's a HBO series but where does it come from? Now most people have heard that simple quote.

We view, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother. And I knew what that quote was.

I knew where it came from. I was an English major in college and I knew that that was Shakespeare and I knew that that was Henry V.

And I knew how powerful that quote was. Now when you start talking about Shakespeare and you start talking about Henry V, there's all kinds of different directions you can go.

Because you can go back and you can look at what Henry V was like in real life. And if he was like the leader that Shakespeare made him into in the play and you could talk about Shakespeare himself and the rumors and the myths and the legends that circulate his life and his legacy.

Because there's all kinds of questions about Shakespeare. I mean, did he actually write all of his plays? Was he more than one person? Was he a soldier at some point? How did he know all this stuff about the military and what it was like to be a soldier?

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