Sears: [00:00:00] This is Radio Stockdale. Welcome to Radio Stockdale. I'm your host, Michael Sears at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership. I'm in conversation with Command Master Chief Britt Slabinski, United States Navy retired. He's a Navy SEAL and he's the recipient of the nation's highest award for heroism on the battlefield. The Congressional Medal of Honor. I'll let him tell his story. Master Chief, one of the things that I've heard you say before is something that's near and dear to both of us as Boy Scouts, as former Boy Scouts. It's that term, on your honor, I will do my best. Can you tell us how that played into your situation with you and your team back in 2002 with Operation Anaconda?

Slabinski: [00:00:56] Well, sir, I first I want to thank you for the opportunity to have this discussion with you on Radio Stockdale. What an amazing place for tribute to an amazing man who laid the groundwork for such great things for our nation, truly the cornerstone from which people make decisions with these days. I can't think of a better individual for the place to be named after to set its guiding principles by. So thanks for this opportunity to address the Mids. I think we, we all of us, you know, on my honor, I'll do my duty. Some of those that were in the scouting program listening to this will recognize as the opening line to the Boy Scout Oath and I was an Eagle Scout in that program at the age of 14. There's things that we learn in our youth that maybe we just not quite sure the real intent of it that are taught by our elders at the time. And it's real be applicable to our current situations. And that was one of them that, of course, it didn't really dawn on me until I needed to lean on that oath that promise that you make, again until I was in a difficult situation. That situation for me occurred in the night of March 3rd, 2002 in Afghanistan. At that point, I was a I was a troop chief of a group of SEALs that were in Afghanistan and tasked with the mission to put in an observation post on top of 11,000 foot peak during Operation Anaconda.

Slabinski: [00:02:16] At the top of the mountain was called Takur Ghar, which is a big mountain. We're supposed to support the conventional forces in the valley below. Of course, if we know that such a tall mountain, if it's important to me, it's important to you as well to so trying to reduce risk to my force. We came up with a plan to, we're going to put our team in another location and serve them out throughout the following day. And if conditions were right, we would occupy the mountain the following day. So we'd take a full twenty four to thirty six hours to fully develop that position I would be observing from. But you know in combat, things happen that are outside of our control. It's that Murphy’s law that we've talked about so often throughout history that things are going to happen and it affects your timeline and the battlefield is a very dynamic place. And what was true a minute ago, maybe false currently, was the case for us. Things change that pushed me outside of my timeline. So when I requested a shift to the to the fight and I wanted to do the thing the next day and it was denied and I was denied, I was told I needed to go to the top of the mountain immediately.

Slabinski: [00:03:23] So I went to the top of the mountain and as we thought, the enemy came after us with rocket-propelled grenades and bullets the size of your finger passes through the aircraft. In the midst of that chaos, the air crew did an amazing job saving all our lives, and we will shout out to my pilot now. Just an incredible pilot, incredible human being, did an amazing job saving all our lives today. You know, he lifts us off the top of the mountain. And then as the other explosions are going off. But a teammate of mine, started immediately by Ryan Roberts, was ejected out of the aircraft because we weren't tied in. We're getting ready to get off. So he falls out immediately. Now, I got a person out, but we're so heavily damaged from enemy fire that ended up crashing from that location. Of course, nobody has a ground force commander. The situation has changed greatly in the course of just a few minutes. So now I get an original mission. I've got Neil situation to deal with in a downed helicopter and right here now, immediately faced with some critical decisions coming out, you quite rapidly. So make the first decision that I'm going to take care of the downed helicopter crew in front of me and get them to a relatively safe place. Get their wounded treated, get get that situation sorted out. I'd like to say like we've heard that no plan survives first contact.

Slabinski: [00:04:37] Well, it's certainly true in this regard, and I just wanted to default to do what is the right thing to do here. The right thing, of course, is to to get this aircrew to safety, and that's what teams did. So now I'm on my second helicopter of the evening and trying to put my now put all my attention that I possibly can towards my teammate, Neil. And I had a small glimmer of information coming across the radio. And as you can imagine, the radio that's absolutely clogged with radio traffic so very difficult for me to communicate with anyone at the higher, higher levels of command. But I hear this little piece of information that Neil is alive. You said as my proof of life that he is alive. So now my decision point comes when I can go with the force that I have now that doesn't have the right equipment for what we need. And just about every form of logistics that is required to do an operation of this we don't have or we're in very short supply. Or I can wait over three hours for a quick reaction force, which is about 40 Army rangers is on the way, but they're three hours away. So the decision really comes down to if I go now at a high risk to the force, make a rescue attempt which would get Neil hopefully alive or wait, the three hours of which would certainly be a recovery of his remains.

Slabinski: [00:05:58] It would be a sure thing that I would own the mountain and own that space. The trade off would be I'm it would be a recovery. So in the role, you know, everyone coming out of the the academy is going to be a war fighter. The day they leave their day that are commissioned, they’re war fighters in the nation that promise that they made to the nations to protect the homeland and defend her ideals or people, protect and defend their their commands? Its not a light decision. I didn't take that lightly at all. I made a promise to Neil that I'm going to protect him and get him home. And I think everyone in uniform, as you well know, having served, we make that promise to each other regardless of, we have fun with the esprit de corps stuff. But at the end of the day, we all make promises to each other that we're going to go do the right thing and protect our country and get get each other at home. It's not a light promise that we made, but how do you make how you possibly make an impossible decision when the weight hits you? And of course, that's, becomes the pinnacle question of leadership at those moments that you already make those decisions.

Slabinski: [00:07:04] That's what we do is leaders make decisions when decisions are hard to come by. And as I'm processing all the all this information from what I turn, I anatomy of a decision, they are quite complex scenarios. This one thought kept coming back to me in my mind. Eventually, I started listening to it, and it was the repetitive nature of the on my honor to do my best to do my duty. The opening line to the Boy Scout oath that which I learned back when I was a youth. Here it is serving me in back of my mind about the third time I listen to it. I made the decision. I have not yet done my duty to my teammates, so we're made an immediate attempt to go back and get in. You know, it's just funny the things that we that we lean on, that we make decisions, the things that form the backbone of our convictions. At that time, it was the boy scout oath. Much like you have the SEAL ethos now, the Navy ethos, all the different creeds of the militaries have come to look at all those as they're just a tool for you to make those decisions with, you know, is very thankful, thankful to have it because it's just such an absolute lonely place when you have to make those things and you've got to have something to lean on. It was a Boy Scout that day.

Sears: [00:08:15] Master Chief, this is an incredible story. Tell me this. What does love have to do with it?

Slabinski: [00:08:21] Oh, well, it's love being a great song by Tina Turner, which I recommend all the Mids go out and listen to it. But the more serious note love. Love is the core of all the emotions, love, of course, is the most extreme, the most critical, and the one that we all should probably pay the most attention to. The end of the day when we're focused on just the military piece that's at the core of the promises that we made to each other to support and defend the Constitution, our ideals, our people, particularly in our military culture. It's the love, the love for our people, for each other that empowers us to do some absolutely incredible superhuman feats all for each other. So it's absolutely critical.

Sears: [00:09:03] You know, you've got the expertise of your training, you've got the determination, you've got the support. But but that love really is something in your toolkit that really supercharges you.

Slabinski: [00:09:14] It is, and it's something that you don't know when you're going through all this stuff. When you're sharing hardships with someone like they do in the military, you slowly build in that trust. You slowly build in those bonds. So all of those, all those drills that you go through, those shared hardships those shared crucible moments. It's all working on that human emotion and building it. It really, really helps drive you to to to accomplish those superhuman things, as I said, for each other and for your mission. So you don't normally associate love with military activities, but it's certainly there.

Sears: [00:09:46] And let me ask you this and that that is the courage, convictions and compassion story. Can you touch on each of those things, especially on courage? You know what it took. You had some time to think about this and go back in. Can you touch on your definition of courage?

Slabinski: [00:10:03] Making that decision in a relatively safe location? I had a lot of time to think through all the consequences of this and the ramifications of decisions. You know, at the end of the day, it does come down. It is a courageous moment. You know, for me, I wasn't really thinking about being courageous. And I think it was more I was scared for my teammates, scared for the lives of my teammates that were standing behind me, waiting on me to make a decision. But it is. It does take a courageous moment just to look at a situation and say, Lookit, this is the right thing for me to do right now. This is something that just I have to get this done. And it could absolutely cost us the person. And more importantly, my teammates could cost us everything to go to it, but it is absolutely imperative that it gets done right now. Courage. As you alluded a little bit, it's a C three plus. It's I call it a C three plus. And that's the courage, courage, conviction, compassion. Plus pieces to be a contributor to your situation.

Sears: [00:11:05] You know, you're talking a little bit about courage, the courage of your convictions. I mean, how do you develop courage and does that does that come directly from your convictions?

Slabinski: [00:11:15] There is a there's a good book out there that I can't remember the author of it, but he talks in that courage is the one trait that's going to guarantee all the others. And if you put some thought into it, that's true. Without it, none of your other character traits are going to have any weight to them because they just end up being facades. So courage has a couple layers to it. You know that the physical courage piece, I think we readily identify with that. But the other layers there, there's an intellectual courage, the courage to go up against the standard quote standard thought process. There's a social courage. There's an emotional courage. There's the moral and ethical courage courage piece, which was taught pretty heavily here at the academy. So many, many layers to it, but without the core root of courage to guarantee any of those, it's all just going to be small talk. And then there's your convictions, convictions in its simplest form of the things that you believe in, the things that you will and will not do in this life, whether it be the same ethos or Boy Scout Oath. Whatever those convictions in the midst, it's hopefully they come from the academy with some. But the academy will further develop their convictions and the convictions are what they're going to base their decisions from that point. That's why it's so important to sort out what your convictions are, because in the very fluid and dynamic battle space where we're hopefully none of them find themselves, but they will certainly be in challenging positions in the future. Their orders won't cover every aspect of where their missions may take them, and they're going to have to the conviction, have the convictions to apply their situations, to do what is right each time. That's where your convictions are just so absolutely important and courage to guarantee them.

Sears: [00:12:56] We talk about a lot of gray and what we do is naval officers. But convictions almost have to be black and white. You have to take a stand someplace.

Slabinski: [00:13:04] They do. I mean, they're not convictions if there's a gray area, that's either right or wrong. It's just one way or another. If you find yourself being fickle about your convictions, you know they’re not really convictions, are they?

Sears: [00:13:17] So does compassion lead us back to Tina Turner?

Slabinski: [00:13:20] Ha ha I think it does. So the compassion piece is there's three levels to that. And then what we're doing here, leading people. There's there's an art and a science to all of this stuff. So this goes into the art form of leadership. And that's the human piece of this. And we can't forget to be a human when you when you're in these leadership roles because you're asking people to do some absolutely difficult things and the compassion, first rule of compassion is compassion for your teammates, those in your charge and certainly those people above you, will make mistakes as they work through things. As long as those mistakes aren't character based, you can't hold people accountable that we need to work through them and learn from them and make sure those things don't happen again, but have compassion for it. The second rule of compassion there would be compassion for yourself. This can be a hard one to really put in practice, but you yourself, as as a leader and as a human, you're going to make mistakes. If you dwell on them, if you live there, it will impact any and all of your future decisions going forward. It will cloud your decision making. So you can't you can't dwell there and you got to learn to forgive yourself and you certainly learn from them, learn from your mistake, put some insurances in place to make sure it doesn't happen again, but move out. Don't, don't go there. The third rule of this is compassion towards your opponent. United States Navy is really good at knocking the heck out of any of its their opponents, should they so choose us to use that kinetic option. But if when we do, we have to be there to say, Look, enough's enough and we're going to help you get back up on your feet very quickly, as we say, managed to switch on quickly from a kinetic mindset to humanitarian, again, all in the vein of making the situation right. This is a human thing. Don't forget to be human as we're going about our actions in carrying out our mission.

Sears: [00:15:14] And that plus thing you were talking about.

Slabinski: [00:15:17] Yeah. The plus piece is, you know I say, a contributor, in we all we all have in our life. Opposite of this, of course, opposite of plus is a negative and negative as a consumer. So when you're looking at a consumer person, we all all in our life have met someone or know or someone that just just takes from us, whether it be financially, whether it be emotionally. Just take a piece of your life away from you that you're just never going to get back. They'd be that person that you see coming down the hallway at work or at school or even a relative. And you just look at them and you're like, No, I'm not going to spend 10 seconds of my life with you. I'm never going to get back because I get nothing out of it. It's always be given to you. The contributor piece of this is everywhere you go. You've got to strive to be a contributor to always give give of yourself to the organization, to the idea, to the person. And the funny thing about that, when you're giving a lot of times, you get more out of it yourself of what you're giving of your time. We all have that person as well. We know when you have a really bad day, there's a person when you look, I just got to pick up the phone or I just need 30 seconds of my friend’s time, or my family member’s time, whoever that person might be, that person that's just going to give me that, that bone popping hug at the end of the day that says, Look, it's all going to be OK. Get back up on your feet and let's keep going. I think we all have, we all know those contributors that are out there, but it's quite the most important thing I can tell you about. All of that is they just be a contributor wherever you're going. Usually, the situation will end up OK.

Sears: [00:16:52] I've got one one last question for you. I'm speaking to a sailor who wears the Congressional Medal of Honor, and I've heard you say, in the past, that there's a burden in wearing that medal of honor. What do you mean by that?

Slabinski: [00:17:06] So when I found out I was going to receive the medal, my initial response was, ookit, don't do this to me. I said, Look, this is there are so many great people all around me, the people that followed me, to the people that gave their lives, that they lost seven, seven brave Americans that day. So with just as many wounded so many people gave themselves on that day, all in the name of love and fulfilling their convictions. And when you really think of that thing in context, it's just an uncomfortable place for me. I really believe in the DNA of so many others is embedded in the metal. So in the medal, medal came, it was like, OK, this is an uncomfortable place to be, but I have to tell everyone's story. Everyone that was there and it was important for me, for all my teammates that were able to attend, everyone that was on the hill that day, that they were there in the room to share that moment with them, to say, Look, this is for all of us. This is everything that we did that day together for each other, fulfilling our promises at the expense of our tomorrows to keep those promises. So it was important for me to tell their stories every time I put the medal on. To see my names on it just absolutely doesn't lie. There are so many other people that they give to us that get us to the positions that we're at today, the people that train us or our loved ones. There's a piece of everyone that's ever served in our in this medal. But I think all the all the recipients will tell you the same thing. It's just an uncomfortable place for them to be the recipient of those accolades of a medal. You know, you don't want it, but will certainly wear it in their name and tell those stories.

Sears: [00:18:48] Command Master Chief Britt Slabinski. I appreciate and I'm honored to be able to talk to you about your story and how you've gotten to where you are. Hopefully, the Brigade of Midshipmen especially can learn from these lessons, especially. Thanks for joining us on Radio Stockdale.

Slabinski: [00:19:04] Well, thank you so much, sir. It's been a privilege.

Sears: [00:19:12] You've been listening to Radio Stockdale, a series of podcasts produced by the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the United States Naval Academy. You can hear more podcasts at StockdaleCenter.com/podcasts.