The Ultimate Frag Order
Three orders that have changed the lives of generations of people...
Since the early 2000s when I started working with returning veterans I have been sending them this article I wrote inspired by a lesson my father taught me. Because those who received it always responded positively and talked about how it gave perspective to their service, I’ve decided to make it generally available. You need not be a veteran to find a benefit in it for your own life…
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,but what is woven into the lives of others.” – Pericles
Your life changes every moment. You both change the circumstances around you and are changed by them. It’s impossible to enter the geometry of the universe and not change it even in a very small way; whether you like it or not you exist; your presence matters. The fact that many people go through life as if they are asleep does not change the fact that you have the power to change the world. Veterans are especially aware of this power because of the intensity of war, yet they may still not fully grasp the extent to which their lives have affected others.
If you find yourself dozing behind the steering wheel of your life, there is good news. Your life can begin, any day. Anything can change a life that’s ready for change. It takes one moment; one event to serve as an alarm, to awaken you to the profound learning in everyday experience. If you are awake to the potential that change represents you can seize opportunities others are not aware of and adapt with any circumstances. You can live a life that the ancients referred to as worthy of human consideration; worthy of remembrance.
The great learnings that change your life and the lives of those you come in contact with are always there floating on the periphery, waiting for you to realize them. For my Dad, one of those everyday experiences came in the form of a frag order, or “frago,” short for fragmentary order. These are usually verbal orders of an ephemeral nature which are necessary to complete an action upon which a larger mission depends. In his case and my own, and now in yours, this apparently passing order from a specific situation will complete some action upon which a larger mission depends. The actions are those needed to cultivate and master yourself for the larger mission: a life noble enough to be considered fully human. He shared this order with me and I pass it along to you. It is what I have since called the Ultimate Frag Order.
Like most veterans of his generation my Dad kept most of his war-time experiences bottled up inside him, only spilling out infrequently and then in heavily edited versions. Only as I entered graduate school did Dad feel he could reveal more of the depth of these experiences to me. Although never spoken, my father knew of my interest in strategic intelligence, and my very favorable interview with the Central Intelligence Agency that had me waiting for a call from Langley (but that is another story). He knew my heart and now that he considered me a man, he thought I was ready to understand the lesson he had to teach.
Dad was drafted into the Army during the Korean War and was assigned to a SCARWAF (Special Category Army Reassigned With the Air Force) unit that constructed advanced airfields. In one harrowing incident his unit was told that they were to advance through enemy held territory about 15 miles and build an airstrip. His unit of engineers were lightly armed and loaded down with heavy equipment. Like many episodes in war, this was a classic case study in FUBAR. Someone had cut the orders but had forgotten to provide support or overwatch. They would be one massive bulls-eye, their only real weapons would be speed, courage, and their confidence in their comrades. Despite the obvious dangers in the mission, Dad said not one man griped or complained. Everyone knew the infantry was depending on close air support to accomplish their mission. Pilots would be sent on missions with orders to land on an air strip which did not as yet exist. When the alert order came down Dad’s NCO, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, gathered everyone together and explained the mission and gave this frag order: “Don’t count the cost. Don’t look back. Don’t stop.” Dad remembered the Sergeant adding, “I know you’re scared but stick to what I just told you; stick with each other; drive like hell and you’ll be okay.” These were tough orders but they were essential not only to the survival of the unit but to the success of the larger mission upon which many lives depended. The clarity and an uncompromising directness of this frag order transcends the time and circumstance in which it was issued and directs our mind to the one thing that leads a person to life changing performance in every aspect of his daily life.
Don’t Count the Cost.
Don’t count the cost, doesn’t mean don’t care. Just the opposite is true. Only the person fully aware of life’s demands is fully responsible, that is fully able to respond to do what is called for in a situation. “Don’t count the cost” means don’t let fear prevent you from doing what honor, justice and courage demand. Life is risk, it’s not designed to be “safe” or “comfortable,” and only those who shirk their response-abilities or are gullible fools believe otherwise. The path to greatness is full of risks. It’s often dark, lonely, and populated by only a few other similar robust souls. It is the risk of living that gives life value; risk provides you with choices, and opportunity to determine your character and your destiny. Risk is the price paid for the opportunity to move beyond the narrow confines of habit into being fully human. In this way life can be comforting; but never comfortable.
Choice is that uncomfortable gap created when you realize that human decision consists of irrevocable decisions based on inadequate information. Choice is the no-mans-land where character scouts life. The quality of your choice now, determines your continuing ability to choose; your freedom. “Mission success” – whether it’s the D-Day invasion, a night patrol, the enduring challenges of married life, investment decisions, or a child’s learning the joys of reading-- all must be made as if you knew in advance what the outcome would be. This is the tragedy of human life, but it is also the source of its nobility. You have to fill the gap with your courage, responsibilities, and integrity. You accept that you cannot know what will be the right decision so your choices are informed by what is best; by what is worthy of human consideration given the limits of your knowledge and the guidelines of your ethical code. Fortunate is the person who, early in life lays out a standard of conduct for himself and uncompromisingly abides by it. Such a standard becomes a compass for your life. By setting a direction for how you will fulfill your time, you begin to learn to perfect yourself and develop your responsibilities in everything you turn your hand to. You learn you must either choose your direction or allow other people or powers to choose it for you. Your choices inform your life and the lives of all those you come in contact with; you accept the challenge of life to not only choose, but to choose well. You understand that the most precious thing in the universe is time. That time cannot be spent or saved like money. Time can only be filled and if your direction is true and you seek that which is best, your life can change every moment; you fulfill time by the nobility of your presence and with that you change the lives of many others.
You cannot excel in the performance of anything by trying to do it on the cheap. Never in history has “try” been part of any warrior creed. “Try” is the logic of failure. It is the insidious belief that choice without commitment is good enough. That having done something you can turn to others for sympathy because you have “tried.” The reality is that good enough, rarely is. Thank God, Dad’s unit did not “try” to build an airstrip that night. Countless soldiers and pilots would be dead today had they settled for mere effort as a substitute for accomplishment. A simple thought experiment makes the point. Would you “try” to eat, breathe, or copulate? Trying to breathe is suffocation, “trying” to eat is starvation, and “trying” to copulate is at least a disappointment and at worst, the death of the species. There is only do; the purity of the act itself. Just to do a thing, is its purpose. Thinking and doing must become the same thing so that only the purity of the act fills the moment. At some point you have to dump the extra rations, burn the boats and head inland. March or die. Move out of Mom and Dad’s basement. No one says this is easy. Theodore Roosevelt, one of those robust souls who sought to fulfill his life with the excellence this life has to offer, said it best:
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; and who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Practice, training, and a commitment to doing what it takes to get the job done for yourself, your unit, family and country are the day to day costs that can become a drain if you constantly look back and dwell on what you imagine you gave up in exchange. Soldiers don’t sacrifice. They do not count costs because their commitments pay. They pay in freedom, character, courage and performance that meets or exceeds whatever circumstance they find themselves in no matter how rough the going gets. General Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, when asked about the risks he took over his career replied, “You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.” This was lived out by Johnny “Mike” Spann, a CIA operative killed during the riot of 538 Taliban prisoners at Qala-I-Jangi fortress, Kabul, Afghanistan. Spann covered the retreat of civilian and Northern Alliance fighters and was killed after emptying his rifle, his side arm and fighting hand to hand. In applying for the posting Spann had written:
“I am an action person that feels personally responsible for making any changes in the world that are in my power because if I don’t, no one else will.”
Spann would resent someone calling his actions a sacrifice because he knew exactly what he was paying for with his actions. Soldiers develop a different awareness of life because they know that the most committed, win. Their presence and actions, purchase what is essential for human existence.
Don’t Look Back.
Dad told me that later he traveled back over a chasm that his unit had crossed that night. They were moving so fast and in pitch blackness that he was unaware of the feature at the time. “All you could see was the ass end of the vehicle ahead and for security sake you didn’t want it to get too far away from you.” The chasm was crossed by a rickety bridge. It was the most obvious place to get hit. Although he made it across that night, the bridge was later blown by the enemy. Many U.S. soldiers died. In traveling back over the repaired bridge, he said you could see men and equipment scattered over the bottom of the chasm like small toys. “I was glad it wasn’t me. Then I felt bad because I felt that way. Later I realized you can’t look back like that. You could spend your whole life wondering why and it won’t matter. I didn’t even know what the war was about then, other than getting through each day alive. I remember turning and asking, ‘Sarge, why them and not us?’ He said, ‘See those stripes Barr? I’m a sergeant, not God. They died because they were here and you weren’t. It’s that simple.’ Son, I learned from looking down from that bridge that all that matters is what you are now and how you are going to make the most of that.”
Fortunate is the person who can say he has no regrets. I work all the time with people who constantly feel trapped by thoughts like, “I should have treated (person’s name) better.” “I wish I’d made a better decision.” “I was really screwed up then.” “I can’t believe I was that stupid.” “I wish I had known better.” “I was afraid.” Soldiers are preeminent students of the past because their lives and the lives of countless others depend upon their being better in every aspect of life. Being better in one part of life is not enough. Soldiers have learned from history that the only way they survive; that the human race survives as humans is by always seeking out that which is best. It is essential for human survival that excellence be contagious and exponential. It needs to express itself in every part and performance of a warriors’ life. In essence, a soldier is always, “on duty.”
At the same time the soldier does not dwell on the errors of the past. You need to be able to respond and that means you need to carry the right luggage instead of past baggage. Time filled with one thing cannot be returned, the results cannot be altered. Leave it. Let. It. Go In training I often say, “If you don’t like what’s happening…TURN! Do something different!” If you do not like the quality of what your life is yielding you can alter the outcome by how you fill your time from this moment onward. Constantly reliving errors or regrets only leads to more of the same. No amount of regret will change the past and no amount of anxiety will prepare you for the future. What people have done and what they want, too often confuses them about who they are and what they can do.
Don’t Stop.
Mario Andretti, the famous Indy Class champion said, “If everything is under control, you’re going too slow.” Living life fully means not stopping. It means giving up on “control” in the juvenile sense that you can manipulate the world to serve your purposes. The world is rarely so accommodating. The soldier knows that the only thing he can control when the situation gets rough is his own responses. To live full out you cannot stop. By stopping, I mean doubting your ability to adapt and be the most successful organism you can be in a circumstance. Doubt creeps in when you lose faith. Faith is simply the belief in the sufficiency of the moment. Everything you need in order to adapt is right here in the present if you are aware enough. You do not get what you want; you get what you have. Any person’s survival/success depends on seizing upon what is best. It may not be what is optimal, but it must be the best that can be achieved at that time. You do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Not stopping does not mean you always succeed even when you win. Sometimes avoiding catastrophe is the only responsible adaptation you can make. George Washington found this out at Valley Forge and the Marine Corps at the Chosin Reservoir. It may mean taking a loss to prevent a bigger loss. It requires having the courage to take the first hit and the commitment to keep going. If you stop, you enable your inabilities. Fear loves doubt. Fear feeds off your lack of confidence and births anxiety, anger, regret, and envy. Fear is a choice that is 100% dependent upon you for its existence. Fear will obstruct your ability to change; your ability to see and seize the available advantages that are discernible to the clear mind.
Mobility of mind and body in a situation are essential to finding the responsibilities you need to adapt with the unfolding potentials of change. You have to be able to keep on rolling. Movement of mind and body are essential to learning and adaptation. In combat the soldier knows that movement is life. In my studies of human adaptability, I have found that success is rarely the result of being the richest, fastest, strongest or even the smartest. These are all good qualities to have in your corner, but what trumps them all is the willingness, ability, and speed with which you to respond with change. You cannot adapt intelligently if you are working from fixed notions about what you want or wish change to be. Circumstances do not fit into your plans, but through responsible planning you can adapt intelligently and use the propensity of change to your best advantage. What I call surfing the power curve of change.
I was training a 21 year old in jujutsu. He was in great physical shape. After we were done he turned to me and said, “Man, you’re kinda scary.” I asked why he thought that. “You’re not even breathing hard out there.” I responded, “I’ve been where you’ve been although my body may not look it now. Physical strength comes and goes, but there’s no end to shugyo -- cultivating the inner strength of self-mastery.” I told him a story about a young man I knew. At 15 his doctor told him he had epilepsy and that he would have to spend the rest of his life being very very quiet. He should go on Social Security Disability because in a few years his thinking would become…unreliable. That young man instead trained his mind and body. He started speculating in the financial markets at age 18, before he even owned a car. He took up various martial skills, earned his undergraduate, and then obtained a two year Master’s degree, in only two semesters. He became a career ronin, developing his abilities in diverse areas to teach everything from economics to how to kill a man with a Bic pen. He sold everything from yaks to yachts. He taught close quarter combat to law enforcement and the military, became a consulting interviewer, private intelligence operative, investor, military historian, author and husband.. He traveled all over the world. He obtained several black belts, became an advanced scuba diver, and crossed the Himalayas twice in twelve days when he was forty years old. All because he refused to stop. “Is this guy a student here?” asked the student looking around. I responded, “Yes…It’s me.”
A warrior characteristic of soldiers is that they have a deep well of self-discipline upon which to draw that he has acquired through practicing excellence whatever he does every day. There is a habit to choosing what is best; to seeking that which is noble. Everything a soldier turns his hand to, or avoids because it is unworthy, is an opportunity to perfect himself in some small way. Nothing is done mindlessly. He wastes himself on nothing. Instead, he lives each moment the way Mario Andretti drives; he places attention on every detail, he puts the pedal to the floor, pushes the needle all the way over into the red zone and raises sparks off the guardrails!
The greater meaning of this frag order—Don’t count the cost, Don’t look back, Don’t stop---is one thing. The one thing is this: Live each moment, well. The soldier knows his presence matters. His life changes every moment. For that reason you intensely practice in a way that awakens you to every part of life. Whatever you do, just to do it well should be your purpose. Anything worth doing right is worth overdoing to excellence. No dreaming, no trying, no rigid plans, no feel good “positive thinking” approaches, but simply doing the everyday…well. This is the reason boot camps orientation is focused on the perfect execution of the apparently mundane. By perfecting yourself in the performance of small things you build a foundation for future performance and greater responsibilities. You are always asking yourself, “Is this the best direction? Is this the best use of my time?” You know life is a gift of tremendous brevity so you are always on the hunt for what is best; you seek to fulfill your time, and in so doing use your presence to define the circumstances in which you find yourself. Your decisions become directions; your directions fulfill time and the way you fulfill your time creates the presence needed to use unfolding change. This is how the warrior defines the moment. You create value in every circumstance by defining it with who you are. For you, everyone you meet is a teacher, every experience is a lesson, and every day is a test of who you are.
Living each moment well is not a one time response but a rigorous practice of the everyday that continually develops your responsibilities and adapt with change in high stress conditions of life. Operators have asked me, “Why bother? I’ll never reach that level.” Just because your every moment is not the purist expression of living well does not mean the attempt lacks value. A prisoner does not reject time out of his cell because it does not give him complete freedom. He takes the opportunity to prove he is worthy of greater liberty. So it is with your own life. Persistently pursue that which will perfect you in all facets of life. You are in competition with the most relentless adversary you will ever face; yourself.
If a warrior’s life is to be what the ancient Greeks called historic, that is, saying great words and doing great deeds then his everyday attention must be turned to the one thing; to living each moment; well. The three orders awaken you to an awareness of this one vital point. You cannot control the world, but you can change the world through your presence, by cultivating and mastering yourself you can unleash life- changing experiences for yourself and others for generations to come. This is the objective of the Ultimate Frag Order.