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House with your hopes. Jack Murphy
and David Park. Hello, everybody,

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Welcome to episode two hundred and thirty
seven of The Team House. I'm Dave

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Park. Jack could not be here
tonight. UH. We welcome our guests

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UH former two para and twenty two
sas Operator Robin Horsfall. Uh. Robin,

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thanks for being with us tonight.
Great to be Dave, great to

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be here. Yeah, and we
know it's late, so we will we

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will try and turn and burn on
this and so you don't step until four

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am your time. So Robin,
you know, uh, so Robin.

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Amongst other books, you know,
the book that I read was Running Scared,

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which is about your childhood, about
your time and the para, uh,

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the sas, you know, a
lot of fascinating things. One of

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the things we always like to ask
our guests is about their origin story,

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and you cover quite a bit of
that in your book. Can you tell

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us a little bit about your childhood, exposure to the military and then what

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had eventually led you to the military. Yeah, the book's actually called Fighting

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Scared. I'm sorry. Yeah,
yeah, get your mistakes in early.

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That's the that's the idea. And
yeah, I was. I was born

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in nineteen fifty seven, twelve years
after the Second World War. My mother

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was seventeen years old when I was
born. My father was in prison,

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and I never had a father until
I was seven years old, when my

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Michael Jeffrey Horsfull married my mother and
adopted me and gave me his name.

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My stepfather had no experience of children
and at the age of seven. I

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had had no experience of fathers,
and his method of controlling me was and

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beat me into silence. And I
often write that he stole my voice.

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We took it away from me.
When you when you beat someone into silence,

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you take away their ability to negotiate, to laugh. It's very difficult

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for them, for them to make
friends. And so I had had a

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quite a difficult childhood from that personal
sense. But I found my escape with

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going out with my pals and disappearing
from home, going fishing, riding my

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bicycle, keeping away from the house, and trying to avoid school as well.

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When my parents' marriage started to fall
to pieces after about seven years,

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I was fourteen years old and I
was failing at school. But in nineteen

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seventy two, the school leaving age
in the UK was fifteen years of age,

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and at age of fourteen, I
walked into a military recruiting office and

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said I'd like to join the army
and they said how old are you?

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I told them they said, you're
too young, but to fill these forms

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in and we'll give you some tests
for next year. So I did the

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tests and I wanted to join the
Royal Army. Medical Corps. I wanted

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to be a medical technician, and
I ended up in the Parachute Regiment as

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what we called an infantry junior leader, training to be a non commissioned officer

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of the future. And I stayed
in that system for two years and three

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months, and before I was eighteen, I became a member of the Parachute

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Regiment. And what was that like
at the time, You're fifteen, sixteen

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years old and you're in the Parachute
Regiment, right, yep, yep.

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I was in the Infantry Junior Leaders
Battalion, but we all had our regimental

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badges the units we were going to
go to when we were seventeen and a

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half, and it was very much
a military college system. You continued your

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education, you were trained to be
soldiers. You were given adventure training,

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you were given leadership training, you
were given you got up at six o'clock

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every morning. You were busy until
ten o'clock at night. You had no

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time to actually feel sorry for yourself. You had to live with in twelve

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man rooms with a bunch of tough
lads from the backstreets of all the cities

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in Britain, and you learned to
live and cooperate with one another as a

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team, and gradually you were moved
up through the system and learned to take

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command and take control. So by
the time I was seventeen and a half,

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you know, I'm sure being an
American you've heard of Malcolm Gladwell,

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And Malcolm Gladwell wrote Tipping Point where
he says, you know, you do

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ten thousand hours of anything, you'll
you'll be an expert. But by the

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time I was seventeen and a half, I had three thousand hours of soldiering

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under my belt before I even joined
my unit. So it was a really

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really good foundation, and it gave
me mail mentors and role models and masculine

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guidance, some good, some bad. That prepared me well to be a

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to be a top infantry soldier.
And so at seventeen and a half,

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is your transfer to the actual forces? Is that? Is that upon like

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an age or is it like a
graduation from their secondary education? How does

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that work? Yeah, it's it's
both. It's you reached the age of

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seventeen seventeen and a half, I
was a little older, and you automatically

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pass out, you graduate, and
you you then go immediately to your to

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your chosen units. With mine was
the parachute Regiment, and you go through

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their preparation policies, you know,
So going to the parachute Regiment, you

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then go through the training process with
them again. But we were very well,

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very well prepared for that. We
were extraordinarily fit. We knew the

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weapons, we knew the techniques,
we could do that. We could do

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the instruction almost as well as the
instructors. The only step up was in

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the levels of aggression. Aggression was
encouraged because what goods a soldier if you

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won't fight, and your primary role
as an infantry money is to fight.

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If you can't fight, then you
waste your time. It doesn't matter how

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many wonderful skills you have. If
you won't fight, then you know you

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shouldn't be there. So you were
encouraged to fight amongst yourself as much as

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anything else and sort your problems out
and build that kind of unique camaraderie that

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comes between very very masculine and tough
men. But you have to you have

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to, you have to really take
your courage in your hands and step up

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to the plate and play the game. And of course there's the parachuting part

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as well, which that ages is
a real challenge. You know, you

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you are choosing to trust your equipment
and out of an aeroplane and trust that

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that equipment will save your life and
the first time as well as you will

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know as well as I do,
it's an extraordinarily feat of courage and there's

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a smile on your face for the
rest of the day. Having done it

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once, it's not too difficult to
carry on and do it again. Yeah,

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what now was the peers? Was
that a place that other people could

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go to, other men could go
to right after boot camp? Yeah,

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they could transfer there from other units
in the British Army, or they could

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they could join straight from civilian world. In my intake, we had just

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over fifty men, and forty eight
of them were former junior soldiers. There

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were only about five or six that
were from the civilian world. So and

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out of that, out of that
fifty four I think it was, forty

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seven actually passed and one of the
junior sold one of the junior soldiers.

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Two of the junior soldiers actually got
held back and one failed, so yeah,

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and two got held back through injuries
parachuting injuries. Was there a challenge

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with integration with these people who had
come from the civilian world that had no

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experience at all. No, I
don't think so. I think we were

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inclined to help them. They didn't
have as much experience as us. So

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you know, you just you just
play to your strengths. They would have

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had difference, they would have had
different strengths. You know, everybody in

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a team has a bad day,
and everybody in a team has a strength.

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And you know the strength might be
that you can carry more weight,

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but you can't drive a truck and
so on. You know, you can,

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you can, you can do astro
navigation. You were SMI guy,

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you what you know what people might
call a geek, but you have your

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value. The guy over there who's
a little bit tougher and harder than everybody

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else, that's his value. There's
a big, strong guy who can dig

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trenches faster than anybody else foxholes as
you call them. Everybody works together.

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And then at this point in time, what was the parih's mission in the

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world. What were they set up
and designed for? Well, you are

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a parachute paratrooper. I love the
piece in Band of Brothers where you've got

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the eighty second Airborn going into Bastone
in the Second World War and the infantry

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retreating that take the ammunition off them
and going off into the dark, and

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somebody shouts, you know, don't
go up there, you're going to be

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surrounded. And the repliers were paratroopers
were supposed to be surrounded. And that's

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a that's a that's a wonderful cool
americanism that I really really love to repeat.

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You are trained to go. A
job of a paratrooper is to drop

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behind enemy lines and hold the ground
until the infantry and the main army catch

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up with them, and to distruct
enemy enemy communications and forces behind their front

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lines. And you know it's so
we're supposed to be surrounded. Yes,

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we're also supposed to be the stormtroopers
of the British Armed Forces. You know,

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we believe we're young. We're usually
between the age of eighteen and twenty

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three. We believe we're immortal.
We believe that we can do anything in

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the world, and if we can't, then we end up dead and we

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carry on. We have a few
drinks for our friends and then we carry

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on. It's a crazy world with
a crazy sense of humor, especially the

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British sense of humor, but it
works. And what was going on in

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the world at this point in time, like what types of things were the

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British Army and military involved in now
predominantly at that time you're talking about the

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nineteen seventies. I went to the
Parachute Regiments as an adult soldier in nineteen

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seventy four and we were heavily committed
on the streets of Northern Ireland where we

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were patrolling and we were standing as
peacekeepers between two religious groups, the Protestants

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and the Catholics, who were trying
to murder one another, and things were

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escalating and we were sent there to
support the police and enable them to maintain

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law and order. As time developed, through bad politics, through the imposition

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of internment, which is trial imprisonment
without trial, then things broke down.

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The Catholic community regarded the soldier as
being on part of the opposition, and

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we ended up with a group called
the Provisional Ira who then started to kill

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soldiers as well as as well as
their religious opponents as well, and it

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became a long term war which lasted
thirty years. Can you tell us you

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know, Northern Ireland is something that's
sort of faded into history for people who

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are not interested in history, and
as you mentioned before the show, even

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some of the history that's out now
gets it wrong. Can you sort of

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give us the run up and why
this was going on in Northern Ireland.

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Well, the people of Ireland as
a whole, especially the Catholic population,

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fought a war of independence in the
early twentieth century and eventually that came to

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a negotiated peace where partition was agreed
between the North and the South. A

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small part of the north of North
of Ireland was allocated to remain part of

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the British state, the United Kingdom
under the under a Protestant majority, and

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then there was an open border,
and below the open border was established a

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Republic of Ireland or error, and
that republic still exists. So people who

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imagine that Ireland is was occupied by
British forces during the nineteen seventies and eighties

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have got it completely wrong. Northern
Ireland was part of the United Kingdom.

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It had a mixed population of Catholics
and Protestants who had political and religious enmity,

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and so nobody was occupying anything and
the troops were there initially to keep

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the peace and to prevent people.
They actually prevented successfully prevented a civil war

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in Northern Ireland. And as you
mentioned, and there were a number of

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different and fashions in the area at
that time. Correct. Yeah, the

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like all terrorist groups, as they
get bigger, they tend to break in,

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they tend to descree and break into
different factions. So we had I

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don't want to get the titles wrong, but we had the Official IRA,

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the Provisional IRA, and several other
breakoff groups from that that actually killed each

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other as much as they killed their
enemies at times. And then you had

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the Protestant groups predominantly led by the
the UDA, and those divisions sadly still

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exist. And although there's there's a
reduction, huge reduction violence in Northern Ireland,

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these problems still simmer beneath the surface
because it's very difficult when both political

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factions get their boat from that division
for them to actually come together. Because

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when people come together and the enmity
disappears, they're going to have to start

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talking about housing and economy and jobs
and more important things. But all the

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time they can keep people divided into
two groups, then they guaranteed their political

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power and their votes boy, we've
never seen that in the last ten years.

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So what so was it mostly because
not all of these groups we're targeting

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the British military, but some of
them were, especially on please tell yeah.

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Yeah, well, in the early
years, they were targeting the populations

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of the other religious group. So
the Catholics were attacking the Protestants. Protestants

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attacking the Catholics and or at least
the loyalists and nationalists. But it gets

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complicated when he started to use those
terms. So and they were they were

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killing huge numbers of people. They
were blowing up houses, blowing up pubs,

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blowing up schools with children in,
knocking down people's front doors, and

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machine gunning people in the hallways of
their houses. It was absolutely a criminal

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nightmare. And so the soldiers weren't
there to prevent that from happening. And

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the Catholics in the early years built
no go areas, they built barricades across

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their enclaves because they were a minority
group and they were actually really demanding civil

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rights and equality which was being denied
to them. You know, you had

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similar stories when you go back to
Martin Luther King Jr. And the issues

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that you had with racial discrimination in
America. Well, the Catholics in Northern

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Ireland were in some ways in the
same situation. They were denied votes,

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they would deny property, they would
denied jobs, and so they tended to

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be the poorest people in the society
as well. So they marched for civil

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rights, and they got attacked for
those marches. But things moved on from

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that and it became it became a
long term conflict where the soldiers were in

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the middle getting attacked by both sides, but predominantly from the provisional Ira,

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who killed an awful lot of soldiers
and killed an awful lot of policemen as

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well as and they never ever released
any prisoners. So if they caught us,

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they killed us, and they tortured
us first. And and as you

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guys there as peacekeepers, obviously,
as a human being, feelings get involved.

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And you know, if one of
your guys get swrolled up, captured,

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tortured, you're you're not likely to
look upon the people who did it,

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or people associated with them favorably.
Did so, did did any parts

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of the British military start looking at
this that they were the allies of the

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Protestants there, or that did they
get heavy handed, like how how did

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that work? In the early years, I think it was nineteen seventy one,

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an incident took place in Londonderry which
was nicknamed Bloody Sunday, where thirteen

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member thirteen Marches Catholic Marches were shot
by members of the Parachute Region. There's

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a lot of stories, that's been
a lot of investigations over thirty years,

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and my personal opinion, and it's
the opinion of many of my colleagues,

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is that a communist system was used
whereby the crowd was inflamed and marching,

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and from behind the crowd, certain
terrorists opened fire with a view to causing

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the military to open fire in return, and knowing that it was going to

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cause civilian deaths and then they could
blame the armed forces for those deaths.

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That's still under question. People will
disagree with that opinion. But one of

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the terrorist leaders, Martin McGinnis,
before he died, actually admitted that he

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was the first person to open fire
on that day, but nobody wants to

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talk about that particular fact and it's
on record, you know. So I've

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actually been involved with the Northern Ireland
Veterans movement and led it to the last

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00:20:45.720 --> 00:20:48.960
eight years and we have a new
legacy bill going through Parliament in Britain.

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And I've actually volunteered to be a
commissioner, a non executive commissioner on the

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Truth and Reconciliation Commission, because in
spite of my long term commitment there,

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I did five tours of Northern Ireland. I actually understand a lot of the

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history. I sympathize with the situations
of both sides, and the victims of

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it were mainly the civilian population and
the security forces in fighting scared. See,

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I got it right that time in
fighting scared. Your preface or your

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first chapter is basically first kill or
you know it's it's the first time.

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Yeah, first kill. Can you
tell us about that incident? Like you're

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was this your first firefighter of just
the first time that you were engaged closely

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with it with an enemy. It
wasn't the first fight fight I was in,

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but it was the first one.
It was a very good one to

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open the book with. Yes,
because it's a hook. It's a hookahok.

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But I was very careful with it
because I didn't want to identify the

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people concerned in that incident, the
victims in that incident, because that makes

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it a personal issue with people who
might still be alive to day. And

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although it's a political issue and a
military issue that took place a long long

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time ago, I did not wish
to identify exactly where it was and when

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it was. So there's a little
bit of misdirection in that story as well.

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Now when you talk about the victims, you're talking about the family that

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the terrorists killed prior to your engaging
these terrorists. Were you, guys,

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Was that just a routine patrol or
like blocking point for you guys, or

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did you know that this this event
that happened. No, it was it

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was a vehicle checkpoint. We were
out on a routine patrol and they just

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happened to come our way. And
by the time they came our way,

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we'd been alerted to the fact that
this particular vehicle with these gunmen in was

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heading in our direction, and you
know, they opened fire, We returned

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fire, and they died, and
that was it. Were incidents like those,

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you know, common for the Paris
there, for the peacekeepers there,

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where you have these vehicle checkpoints,
for vehicle control points, and armed you

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know, these armed terrorists come up
on the checkpoint. They weren't common because

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you know, the terrorists would have
people out on the ground identifying where you

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were. I mean, you set
up immediate VCPs and an immediate vehicle checkpoint,

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and then you'd move it and you'd
go and set it somewhere else.

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So you'd put them up very very
very quickly and removed them very very quickly,

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so A so that they didn't know
you would be there if they were

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trying to escape from committee a crime. And B so you didn't stay there

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too long. It became a target
toward them, so you know, But

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no, such incidents were quite rare, although in in my five tours three

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with the Parachute Regiment, I got
shot at three times, and I got

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and I laid on a bomb once, I laid on an improvised explosive device

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once, hopefully something I would never
have to do again, and I didn't.

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So you know, you did.
You didn't have regular daily combat,

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but you were a target every single
day when you went out of the barracks

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and patrol the streets. You were
waiting to be shot at right real quick

276
00:24:51.319 --> 00:24:52.480
rather And if you excuse me,
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it. Uh. Robin betthew thank
you so much for your patients. So

300
00:26:55.440 --> 00:27:02.000
what you know you mentioned the the
improvised explosive device. What were the types

301
00:27:02.200 --> 00:27:04.519
of because we know car bombs were
a big thing in Northern Ireland back then.

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00:27:04.920 --> 00:27:10.400
What were some of the other challenges
when it came to improvised explosive devices?

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And why did you lie down on
one? Ah? Well, I

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was on a patrol and we were
going into a bar with the other.

305
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There were two patrols. One was
going into a bar to do some questioning

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and our patrol was to lay down
an open ground and cover them. It

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was dark. It was January nineteen
seventy seven, and I laid on the

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00:27:33.920 --> 00:27:37.359
ground. It was late in the
evening, about eleven o'clock at night,

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and I rested the magazine of my
rifle on the ground, and instead of

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resting on some grass, it scraped
on something metallic. So I pushed away

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some of the grass to see what
it was, and it was a galvanized

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00:27:49.559 --> 00:27:56.640
bucket with a taped on cardboard lid, buried half into the ground with the

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open side facing a post office wall
which was off to my left. And

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so I realized what it was immediately
and jumped up and ran around the corner

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and trolled. Told my patrol commander, and a couple of hours later we

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got the amunition technical officer to come
in and he took it to pieces and

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00:28:15.720 --> 00:28:19.240
there was twenty pounds of co op
explosive, two ounces of franjis and an

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00:28:19.240 --> 00:28:23.960
electric detonator and two hundred meters of
wire leading off into an area called the

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turf lodge, and they tried to
initiate it, but because of the cold

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00:28:30.319 --> 00:28:34.759
and icy weather, whatever the initiator
was, it didn't have enough power to

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set off the device, and so
it was a successful, a successfully disarmed

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00:28:41.079 --> 00:28:52.599
bomb, and I got congratulated for
my performance of running away. What were

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the other types of ads and how
would they use them? Because we think

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00:28:56.839 --> 00:29:03.680
a lot about ads now in Iraq
ens but these have been tools of terrorists

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00:29:03.720 --> 00:29:11.279
for a very long time. Yeah, I think the Provisional ira led the

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world in developing improvised explosive devices.
They got an awful lot of training from

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00:29:18.680 --> 00:29:29.640
the Soviet Union and from the Libyans
under Colonel Gadaffi, and they developed explosive

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00:29:29.680 --> 00:29:36.559
devices. Predominantly their favorites were with
cars, but they would they would use

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00:29:37.039 --> 00:29:44.680
sticky devices like napalm in small in
small devices put down little alleyways and pathways.

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They would put land mines in small
gaps between which you were taught not

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to go through. You always climb
over a fence rather than go through a

332
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gate. You were taught to keep
your eyes open for anything put suspicious.

333
00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:04.680
You never picked up what seemed to
be a lost piece of military equipment because

334
00:30:04.680 --> 00:30:11.279
the chances are it was booby trapped. Everything was potential booby trap. Everything

335
00:30:11.279 --> 00:30:15.359
outside of your barracks was a potential
booby trap. So you were constantly aware

336
00:30:15.400 --> 00:30:21.079
of that. But the biggest ones. You know, they would have supersized

337
00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:27.519
three tons of explosive in the back
of a large truck and blow the hell

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out of the inner cities, which
they used to do. It didn't.

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These things didn't just place and take
place in Northern Ireland. They took place

340
00:30:36.079 --> 00:30:40.880
all over the British mainland. In
They killed civilians in Glasgow, in Birmingham,

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00:30:40.920 --> 00:30:45.799
in London, in Manchester. They
even killed serving soldiers and their families

342
00:30:45.839 --> 00:30:52.559
in Germany. So this wasn't limited
to the conflict zone it was it was

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00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:57.880
all over the United Kingdom and anywhere
that British soldiers served. So I when

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I when I was with the Special
Forces, we used to work undercover in

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00:31:03.400 --> 00:31:10.960
northern civilian clothes, so identities were
secret because of the Irish threat, and

346
00:31:11.039 --> 00:31:17.039
our families at home were also targets
for terrorists as well, so we had

347
00:31:17.039 --> 00:31:22.279
to be extraordinarily careful about who knew
who we were in those days. And

348
00:31:22.440 --> 00:31:26.960
that mythology of putting a brick across
your eyes and nobody knowing who the hell

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00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:30.480
you were carries on today in spite
of the fact that that threat no longer

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exists, right right, So can
you give us a little sense of especially

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00:31:40.640 --> 00:31:45.160
again, we focus a lot on
the global war on terror here, but

352
00:31:47.160 --> 00:31:56.319
you're fighting in a civilian population that
already looks like you, they talk like

353
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you. They might have a different
religion, the Catholic or Pride cent but

354
00:32:01.240 --> 00:32:07.920
but at any given time in that
population center, you might come under fire

355
00:32:08.119 --> 00:32:14.559
from any location. You might get
hit from a bomb. Like, how

356
00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:23.519
how do you guys manage to exist
in that world without I don't know,

357
00:32:23.640 --> 00:32:29.039
without just getting very dark about things, you know, how do you manage

358
00:32:29.079 --> 00:32:35.200
to maintain humanity in that type of
world? Well? I think we were

359
00:32:35.279 --> 00:32:39.400
dehumanized by our training in many ways, but we were also extraordinarily well disciplined.

360
00:32:39.960 --> 00:32:45.759
So should should we anytime break the
law, then we were taken to

361
00:32:45.839 --> 00:32:50.640
task for it by the military police
and by our own leaders and commanders as

362
00:32:50.640 --> 00:32:57.079
well. So although we had to
be really really strong and determined to do

363
00:32:57.160 --> 00:33:00.440
our job well, we also had
to stick within the laws of the United

364
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Kingdom because we were in our own
country, sure, which that made it

365
00:33:06.119 --> 00:33:10.200
frustratingly hard at times, but it
also meant that we could hold the moral

366
00:33:10.279 --> 00:33:15.359
high ground rather than anywhere else.
And of course mistakes were made, and

367
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people are people, and some of
us did the wrong things at times,

368
00:33:20.240 --> 00:33:25.359
but it wasn't policy, and it
certainly wasn't the norm soldiers went out on

369
00:33:25.400 --> 00:33:30.440
the ground. They would go out
on two to four our patrols in four

370
00:33:30.519 --> 00:33:36.359
or five man groups. We would
patrol and we would monitor the area.

371
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We would stop and question people,
stop and question cars, and hopefully return

372
00:33:42.680 --> 00:33:45.200
back to our barracks for sometimes a
two hour sleep, and then get back

373
00:33:45.200 --> 00:33:50.559
out on the ground again. Some
of us would be on standby. It

374
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was a four month tour. You'd
come home and then six months later you'd

375
00:33:54.839 --> 00:34:00.559
go back and do another tour.
But my recollection of it that most of

376
00:34:00.599 --> 00:34:04.839
the time I loved it. I
enjoyed being a soldier. That's what I've

377
00:34:04.880 --> 00:34:07.000
been trained for some the age of
fifteen. Why wouldn't I want to be

378
00:34:07.119 --> 00:34:12.239
there with the toughest men, as
sons of bitches in the world who were

379
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:15.639
older than me were leading me.
I remember one particular night, one of

380
00:34:15.679 --> 00:34:22.440
my patrol commanders, my Isaacs,
a Welshman, we got shot at in

381
00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:28.159
the dark, and before I could
even react, he had run straight towards

382
00:34:28.239 --> 00:34:30.000
the sound of the firing, and
we just followed him. And that's the

383
00:34:30.079 --> 00:34:34.239
kind of leadership you had, and
it wasn't a case of old take cover,

384
00:34:34.320 --> 00:34:37.039
we're being shot at. He went
straight at them and they ran.

385
00:34:38.119 --> 00:34:45.400
We had another firefight across the I
think was the Anderson's Down Cemetery, and

386
00:34:45.480 --> 00:34:50.360
again the IRA opened from a block
of flats in the turf lodge and the

387
00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:55.800
guys just opened fire and did fire
a maneuver between the gravestones across the and

388
00:34:55.920 --> 00:35:02.360
the terrorists panicked and left the weapons
behind and legged it because they were so

389
00:35:02.480 --> 00:35:08.559
shocked by that response we had.
But after after a few years, the

390
00:35:08.639 --> 00:35:13.760
terrorists used to move out of areas
that we had been given as our patrol

391
00:35:13.840 --> 00:35:21.480
area and wait until we'd gone before
they came back. So's the what were

392
00:35:21.519 --> 00:35:25.039
the two parents. Were they there
on the unit in you know, doing

393
00:35:25.079 --> 00:35:30.360
those patrols or were there multiple units? No, No, there were At

394
00:35:30.400 --> 00:35:35.599
times there were thirty thousand soldiers in
the province. And you know, you're

395
00:35:35.639 --> 00:35:42.639
talking about a province that's not as
big as New York State. So we're

396
00:35:42.639 --> 00:35:50.719
the population of about five million people. So we had soldiers in every you

397
00:35:50.800 --> 00:35:57.079
had a company in, you had
a battalion in every area of Belfast and

398
00:35:57.159 --> 00:36:02.800
every area of London area and you
had other battalions in the countryside where which

399
00:36:02.880 --> 00:36:07.320
it used to be called Bandit country, where it was very, very dangerous

400
00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:09.559
to travel anywhere in a in a
motor vehicle. You either went by a

401
00:36:09.559 --> 00:36:14.400
helicopter or you walked, because a
second you got in a vehicle, the

402
00:36:14.480 --> 00:36:19.039
chances are you were going to get
blown to pieces. So it was it

403
00:36:19.199 --> 00:36:27.400
was. My last tour was in
across McGlen in South Elmark and patrolling the

404
00:36:27.400 --> 00:36:32.599
border between the Republic and the North
of Ireland, and which was called Bandit

405
00:36:32.639 --> 00:36:37.880
country. And again out with my
comrades, out on the ground doing real

406
00:36:37.960 --> 00:36:43.440
soldiering, patrolling, getting down in
defensive positions at night, trot getting up

407
00:36:43.440 --> 00:36:47.199
before first night, patrolling again,
stopping, making a making a brew,

408
00:36:47.320 --> 00:36:52.079
having a quick something to eat,
patrolling and looking for the enemy. And

409
00:36:53.119 --> 00:37:00.000
it was my job, and it
was a thrill. And i've I have,

410
00:37:01.559 --> 00:37:07.960
I have rose tinted memories of an
awful lot of it with great guys.

411
00:37:07.599 --> 00:37:12.679
Sure, so you did three tours, four months each, and then

412
00:37:13.159 --> 00:37:19.440
what brought the sas onto you like? What brought that into your review or

413
00:37:19.440 --> 00:37:24.079
when did you start considering that?
Well, I went to a lecture in

414
00:37:24.119 --> 00:37:28.840
the Depot the Parachute Regiment and older
shop when I was twenty years old and

415
00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:31.760
listened to members of the Special Air
Service give a lecture, and in that

416
00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:36.239
lecture they said, don't really bother
company until you're twenty five to twenty seven

417
00:37:36.280 --> 00:37:37.960
years old, because you know that's
the average as of the guys here.

418
00:37:39.760 --> 00:37:46.039
But my platoon was called the Vigilant
Platoon, which was a guided missile section,

419
00:37:46.599 --> 00:37:51.639
and we were like the wild bunch
of the Parachute Regiment, very independent,

420
00:37:52.519 --> 00:37:57.360
very lacks discipline, but very a
hell of a lot of soldiering.

421
00:37:58.199 --> 00:38:02.199
And they disband did us, because
the new missile milan was coming in,

422
00:38:02.320 --> 00:38:07.599
going to the anti tank platoons,
and so they didn't need our platoon anymore.

423
00:38:07.639 --> 00:38:08.880
So they said, look, you
can't go anywhere you like. And

424
00:38:08.920 --> 00:38:12.519
I said, that's great, I'll
go back to the second Battalion the Parachute

425
00:38:12.559 --> 00:38:15.639
Regiment, two PARA. And they
said that's fine. And then they changed

426
00:38:15.639 --> 00:38:22.400
their mind. And if you promise
something to somebody and you change your mind,

427
00:38:22.880 --> 00:38:24.840
you're an ass right. Right.
On the other hand, if you

428
00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.599
say if you say no to somebody
and change your mind, you're a hero,

429
00:38:30.039 --> 00:38:32.639
right. But they changed their minds, and I was deeply offended and

430
00:38:32.719 --> 00:38:36.719
upset about this because they were going
to put me in I've been a soldier

431
00:38:36.840 --> 00:38:39.400
three years now we're going to put
me back into a one par of rifle

432
00:38:39.440 --> 00:38:45.480
company where people younger than me were
going to be senior to me. And

433
00:38:45.599 --> 00:38:49.880
I wasn't going to tolerate this,
so I knew. I said, well,

434
00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:52.519
I know that's something you can't stop
me from doing, and just to

435
00:38:52.559 --> 00:38:57.159
cock a snooter authority, I went
to the battalion clerk and volunteered to go

436
00:38:57.199 --> 00:39:00.480
to the SAS and there were there's
a guy in the back of the office

437
00:39:00.480 --> 00:39:07.119
who would the Yorkshireman and Yorkshiman talk
like this, and he said, I

438
00:39:07.159 --> 00:39:10.280
don't know why you're doing that.
All the story said, you're far too

439
00:39:10.320 --> 00:39:14.679
young. You'll be back with your
tail between your legs, your wanker,

440
00:39:15.280 --> 00:39:22.440
and but I volunteered and he was
nearly right because the first time I tried

441
00:39:22.840 --> 00:39:27.880
tried essay A selection, I didn't
pass, but they kept me on because

442
00:39:27.880 --> 00:39:30.960
they thought I had potential. And
four months later I took it and passed.

443
00:39:30.519 --> 00:39:37.039
And it's nothing like the movies.
It's nothing like the TV nonsense that

444
00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:44.480
people see, say a selection last
a year. The first the first month

445
00:39:44.599 --> 00:39:49.320
is in the mountains of Wales,
where where the final week, the final

446
00:39:49.440 --> 00:39:55.000
five days is the equivalent of five
marathons over mountains in five days carrying weight

447
00:39:55.440 --> 00:40:00.119
alone, and the final marches forty
miles. Do that, you go on

448
00:40:00.880 --> 00:40:06.559
and you do continuation training, most
of it in the jungle. If you

449
00:40:06.639 --> 00:40:12.039
pass the jungle phase, you do
a combat survival instructors course the final week

450
00:40:12.079 --> 00:40:15.079
where you're chased by a battalion across
countries and you have to escape and get

451
00:40:15.079 --> 00:40:20.719
to targets. And then you if
you're not already a paratrooper, you'd do

452
00:40:20.760 --> 00:40:24.559
a parachute training and then you join
your squadron on probation and then in the

453
00:40:24.599 --> 00:40:28.599
next six months you have to learn
a personal skill and the troop skill.

454
00:40:28.719 --> 00:40:31.320
My personal skill was as a paramedic, so I got there in the end,

455
00:40:32.079 --> 00:40:37.639
and my troops skill was as a
mountaineer. And then at the end

456
00:40:37.679 --> 00:40:43.519
of twelve months, providing the guys
like you, you're you're you're actually qualified,

457
00:40:43.840 --> 00:40:46.159
and you're allowed to stay for another
two years before you're assessed again.

458
00:40:49.199 --> 00:40:52.760
That's intense. Can you tell us
a little bit about the first time you

459
00:40:52.840 --> 00:40:58.880
did it? And you know how
how you failed or why you think you

460
00:40:58.880 --> 00:41:02.960
may have failed. Yeah, I
was in the first month, and I

461
00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:07.199
was in the test week phase.
And I got to the four of the

462
00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:12.920
five the fourth of the five days, and it was wet. It was

463
00:41:13.719 --> 00:41:20.440
I was alone, and I had
these two massive, great ulcers on my

464
00:41:20.519 --> 00:41:24.519
back where my burg and my rucksack
frame had rubbed two big holes in the

465
00:41:24.519 --> 00:41:30.719
back, and they were bleeding down
the backs of my legs. And I

466
00:41:30.800 --> 00:41:34.920
started to think about the forty mileer
that was going to come the next day,

467
00:41:35.119 --> 00:41:38.880
and and I realized that I wasn't
ready, I wasn't up to it.

468
00:41:38.920 --> 00:41:43.960
And I returned to the previous checkpoint
and said, you know, I'm

469
00:41:44.280 --> 00:41:50.239
voluntarily withdrawing. And there was a
medic there who treated my back, and

470
00:41:50.840 --> 00:41:57.599
I prepared all my equipment to return
to return to my battalion. The following

471
00:41:57.599 --> 00:42:00.400
morning, I got called into the
office said, look, you know you're

472
00:42:00.480 --> 00:42:02.440
young. We think you've got potential. Would you like to stay This would

473
00:42:02.440 --> 00:42:07.360
have been September nineteen seventy eight.
Would you like to stay until January?

474
00:42:07.719 --> 00:42:12.280
You can help out with the guys
who are doing their continuation training, and

475
00:42:12.360 --> 00:42:17.440
you can prepare yourself better, and
in January I started the process again and

476
00:42:17.559 --> 00:42:23.960
that January nineteen seventy nine was one
of the coldest januaries in Britain for over

477
00:42:24.039 --> 00:42:30.760
fifty years. And of a fifty
six of us that started, eight of

478
00:42:30.840 --> 00:42:35.519
us actually passed and six of those
six of those eight were from the parachute

479
00:42:35.559 --> 00:42:39.519
regiment. Wow now, and we
had one person die on it as well.

480
00:42:40.119 --> 00:42:50.280
Really was that I can't remember.
I know you you got lashmaniasis,

481
00:42:50.440 --> 00:42:55.840
and that's something that did I think
that you know troops who undergo like tough

482
00:42:55.880 --> 00:43:00.920
training, like everybody's seen that happen
once or twice. Can you tell her?

483
00:43:01.199 --> 00:43:06.639
Did you get it that first time? I got it during my jungle

484
00:43:06.679 --> 00:43:09.159
training. On the second I went
on a selection that I passed, and

485
00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:15.840
that was in Belize and Central America, and leashmaniasis cutaneous leashmaniasis is quite common

486
00:43:15.519 --> 00:43:21.360
down there, and you get protozoan
carried by a sand fly and it creates

487
00:43:21.400 --> 00:43:25.199
an ulcer which eventually eventually heals up. But the leashmanias that I got,

488
00:43:25.280 --> 00:43:31.199
leashmaniasis that I got was brazilianis,
and brazilianis leashmaniasis is far more serious.

489
00:43:31.239 --> 00:43:37.880
It starts with the same ulcer,
but then it starts to metastasize across the

490
00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:42.800
body and then it'll go away and
then up to ten to twenty years later

491
00:43:43.039 --> 00:43:46.800
or re emerge and destroyal the mucous
membranes in your bodies in the same sort

492
00:43:46.840 --> 00:43:52.960
of symptoms of syphilis, and you'll
die. So there I was, and

493
00:43:52.199 --> 00:43:54.800
I didn't tell anybody. I thought, well, maybe I've got it,

494
00:43:54.840 --> 00:43:59.159
but I'm not going to tell anybody. I'm going to finish selection first.

495
00:43:59.679 --> 00:44:02.840
And I finished selection and then I
ended up in hospital for three months getting

496
00:44:04.159 --> 00:44:08.440
an antimonial drug which eventually cured it. Yeah, yeah, so that that's

497
00:44:08.440 --> 00:44:12.519
that's right, because it's it's sort
of a tropical disease, right, I'm

498
00:44:12.519 --> 00:44:19.199
trying to remember, h yeah,
yeah yeah. So your second time,

499
00:44:19.280 --> 00:44:22.000
so you you made it through the
forty miler, you did all that,

500
00:44:22.239 --> 00:44:24.800
and then what was the rest of
the training like, because I don't know

501
00:44:25.159 --> 00:44:29.840
if while you were in the Paris
you did like the jungle training and things

502
00:44:29.840 --> 00:44:32.559
like that, but what was the
training like that you went to compare to

503
00:44:32.599 --> 00:44:37.880
what you did while you're with the
Paris. Almost almost all of my training

504
00:44:37.880 --> 00:44:43.960
with the Parish Regiment was North European
training. Yeah, so a North European

505
00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:49.079
training is cold and wet, so
predominantly cold and wet. Cold and dry

506
00:44:49.159 --> 00:44:52.840
is easy. Cold and wet is
the hardest, you know, it really

507
00:44:52.960 --> 00:44:55.800
is. I mean you go,
you go, people go somebathing when it's

508
00:44:55.800 --> 00:45:00.320
twenty below. If there's no wind, you know, it's just this do

509
00:45:00.559 --> 00:45:04.199
and the snows on the ground.
It's glorious and they go ski and have

510
00:45:04.239 --> 00:45:07.480
a great time and get suntan.
But when it's cold and wet, that's

511
00:45:07.599 --> 00:45:10.679
danger weather. That's when you get
hypothermia. That's when you need to know

512
00:45:10.719 --> 00:45:15.320
how to live and survive in cold
weather. And though the walls of Northern

513
00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:17.840
Europe in the Second World War were
fought in that kind of environment, especially

514
00:45:17.880 --> 00:45:22.800
in the winter. So but when
I went to the sas and the first

515
00:45:22.800 --> 00:45:25.440
time I did jungle training, and
in the jungle, everything wants to eat

516
00:45:25.480 --> 00:45:30.440
you. Not the big things,
not the imagine things like the big snakes

517
00:45:30.440 --> 00:45:32.400
and the big cats, and you
know, it sits the little things.

518
00:45:32.480 --> 00:45:37.519
It's the mosquitoes and the leeches and
the ticks and the bugs and the bacteria

519
00:45:37.559 --> 00:45:43.000
and the fung guy that get between
your legs and give you, give you

520
00:45:43.199 --> 00:45:47.280
rashes and the trees that you chop
and the sap comes out and gets in

521
00:45:47.320 --> 00:45:51.639
your eyes and you can't see three
days, and you know it's it's all.

522
00:45:51.800 --> 00:45:54.840
And the ants, the ants get
into your into your hammock at night

523
00:45:54.920 --> 00:46:00.320
and they want to eat you two
because you're just a big smallless boredom or

524
00:46:00.360 --> 00:46:07.400
everything in the jungle. But again
it's pure soldier in and there was a

525
00:46:07.440 --> 00:46:09.480
great joy to it. That the
great tests were to carry the weight,

526
00:46:09.519 --> 00:46:14.239
to keep going, to navigate well, to do the signals, to do

527
00:46:14.360 --> 00:46:16.199
your share of the work, to
go and fetch water in the morning,

528
00:46:16.639 --> 00:46:22.559
to do your drills properly, to
move fifteen minutes, stop for ten,

529
00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:27.280
move for fifteen minutes, stop for
ten, circle back on yourself before it

530
00:46:27.360 --> 00:46:31.800
got dark, put your hammocks up
and move before first light. To prevent

531
00:46:31.840 --> 00:46:36.239
your enemy from tracking you and prevent
and you know, and to learn your

532
00:46:36.280 --> 00:46:39.440
skills, and to learn your bugout
skills because your small patrols, so if

533
00:46:39.480 --> 00:46:43.559
you do hit an enemy, it's
laid down a lot of fire and get

534
00:46:43.599 --> 00:46:45.920
the hell out of there. Because
your brain roll main roll in the jungle

535
00:46:46.000 --> 00:46:51.559
is reconnaissance, and your secondary role
is to go back and bring in larger

536
00:46:51.599 --> 00:46:55.840
forces to do camp attacks. Yeah. Yeah. And as a soldier,

537
00:46:55.880 --> 00:47:00.760
because you mentioned, like when you
were in Northern Ireland that you know you're

538
00:47:00.760 --> 00:47:04.440
a soldier, you're doing what you
loved. Was this more of that for

539
00:47:04.480 --> 00:47:07.559
you? Yeah? Absolutely. As
soon as I was out of camp,

540
00:47:07.599 --> 00:47:13.639
as soon as I was in the
trees or in the field or out on

541
00:47:13.679 --> 00:47:16.360
the ground carrying a weapon with my
friends, I mean that was soldiering.

542
00:47:17.000 --> 00:47:22.960
I wasn't a great fan of being
in barracks, marching up and down and

543
00:47:23.039 --> 00:47:28.119
polishing boots, although I did my
fair share of that as a boy soldier,

544
00:47:28.119 --> 00:47:30.760
it was something I tried to avoid
when I became an adult soldiery,

545
00:47:32.159 --> 00:47:37.760
and so unfortunately I was a paratrooper
and we minimized that to the nth degree.

546
00:47:39.519 --> 00:47:45.000
I loved being a soldier. I
hated the bullshit. Yeah. Yeah.

547
00:47:45.480 --> 00:47:52.000
So one thing we I didn't ask
you when you were in the Paris

548
00:47:52.159 --> 00:47:57.559
what type of weapon weapon systems did
you guys use? Typically? Yeah,

549
00:47:57.639 --> 00:48:02.679
I main weapon was the self loading
rifle, the Belgian FN So it had

550
00:48:02.679 --> 00:48:08.039
a twenty round magazine seven point six
two ammunition, and it gave you section

551
00:48:08.119 --> 00:48:14.280
firepower up to six hundred meters with
a general purpose machine gun in the light

552
00:48:14.400 --> 00:48:17.280
role, which was also seven to
six two, so you could engage the

553
00:48:17.360 --> 00:48:22.519
enemy at six six to eight hundred
meters as a section, and that was

554
00:48:22.559 --> 00:48:28.639
a very powerful unit. Your anti
tank weapons were the sixty six millimeter light

555
00:48:28.679 --> 00:48:36.440
anti tank weapon and the Carl Gustav
eighty four millimeter which tended to put sixty

556
00:48:36.440 --> 00:48:42.719
six in a section and the eighty
four as a as a platoon weapon.

557
00:48:43.400 --> 00:48:47.920
And then also you had two inch
mortars. I moved into support company,

558
00:48:47.960 --> 00:48:52.800
so I ended up which the Americans
called weapons company, and I ended up

559
00:48:52.880 --> 00:48:59.880
using eighty one millimeter mortars as my
main weapon until I went off to the

560
00:49:00.199 --> 00:49:04.039
until I went off to the Vigilant
Patoon and thank guided missiles, and so

561
00:49:04.119 --> 00:49:07.559
I was very very active. I
was moving from I joined my battalion,

562
00:49:07.920 --> 00:49:13.199
I got on the shooting team.
I joined a battalion in Northern Ireland.

563
00:49:13.199 --> 00:49:15.880
I came back, got back on
the shooting team, joined a battalion again,

564
00:49:15.280 --> 00:49:21.400
back on the schoot, back on
to the more To Patoon, and

565
00:49:21.440 --> 00:49:25.199
then transferred to the Vigilant Pattoon.
When my mother died, she was only

566
00:49:25.239 --> 00:49:30.400
thirty seven years old. She died
a breast cancer. She'd got divorced by

567
00:49:30.400 --> 00:49:35.559
that time, so the army had
become my soul, my parents. I

568
00:49:35.679 --> 00:49:39.880
was essentially an army orphan. There's
a piece in the old film with Richard

569
00:49:39.920 --> 00:49:45.519
Gere, an officer and a gentleman, where the top sergeant kicks his ass

570
00:49:45.599 --> 00:49:47.400
on the fight arena and he says, why didn't you go home? And

571
00:49:47.400 --> 00:49:50.679
he says, well, I haven't
got anywhere to go. This is you

572
00:49:50.760 --> 00:49:52.679
know, this is it, And
the army was it for me. It

573
00:49:52.760 --> 00:49:55.840
was my home. It was my
mum and dad, it was everything.

574
00:49:55.880 --> 00:50:00.039
I had no home to go to
outside of that. By the time I

575
00:50:00.079 --> 00:50:07.159
was nineteen, Yeah, so I
was. I was a pretty mean young

576
00:50:07.199 --> 00:50:13.800
man. I would have killed any
of my country's enemies given the right circumstances,

577
00:50:13.960 --> 00:50:19.119
and I loved being a soldier.
But I was quite a bitter young

578
00:50:19.159 --> 00:50:24.039
man as well. So the lack
of a father figure, a lack of

579
00:50:24.079 --> 00:50:29.280
a role model, had made it
very, very difficult for me to laugh

580
00:50:29.320 --> 00:50:32.599
at myself. And if a young
man is not capable of laughing at himself,

581
00:50:34.000 --> 00:50:37.960
then he's vulnerable to an awful lot
of abuse. So I very much

582
00:50:37.960 --> 00:50:44.519
a loner as well. Until I
met my wife. Yeah. The reason

583
00:50:44.519 --> 00:50:46.159
I asked you about your rappers because
I know one of the things you mentioned

584
00:50:46.199 --> 00:50:52.480
in your book was how your love
for the MP five when you got ty.

585
00:50:53.320 --> 00:50:59.119
Yeah, the MP five is the
is still forty years later, the

586
00:50:59.239 --> 00:51:05.599
best low velocity submachine gun in the
world. It's an amazing piece of German

587
00:51:05.639 --> 00:51:10.440
technology. You know, it's got
a closed face blowback system, so it's

588
00:51:10.440 --> 00:51:17.039
got very little deviation. When you're
firing the weapon on automatic, you can

589
00:51:17.119 --> 00:51:22.159
you can put three rounds into a
one inch circle from five meters away,

590
00:51:22.400 --> 00:51:24.760
which means, you know, you
can you can take a man out with

591
00:51:24.840 --> 00:51:31.599
three headshots with a quick burst with
great deal of accuracy. It's and it's

592
00:51:31.639 --> 00:51:38.199
still the favored weapon for building assault
now with slot teams and special forces groups

593
00:51:38.239 --> 00:51:45.199
around the world. Yeah, so
with the with the sas, like,

594
00:51:45.360 --> 00:51:50.239
what what were some of the different
because you did the jungle training and you

595
00:51:50.239 --> 00:51:53.119
know you did, but there are
also a counter terrorist unit and counter terrorism

596
00:51:53.239 --> 00:51:59.480
had become you know a thing,
right with all of the airline hijack not

597
00:51:59.599 --> 00:52:02.440
just in Northern Ireland, but we
had all the airline hijackings. You know,

598
00:52:02.480 --> 00:52:07.920
there were a number of things going
on in the world what was that

599
00:52:07.039 --> 00:52:12.639
portion of sort of like the SAS
training for you, like, well,

600
00:52:12.639 --> 00:52:16.679
what really what really established the Pagoda
Team, the counter terrorist team in the

601
00:52:16.760 --> 00:52:22.800
Special Air Service was the nineteen seventy
two Olympics where the Israeli athletes were murdered

602
00:52:22.800 --> 00:52:28.960
by the PLO and the police had
tried to rescue and it had gone completely

603
00:52:29.000 --> 00:52:32.480
wrong and lots of lots of people
had got killed. The athletes had got

604
00:52:32.559 --> 00:52:40.400
killed. So the British invested in
the SAS preparing for such an incident in

605
00:52:40.440 --> 00:52:47.480
the future, and it started off
in its infancy with submachine guns we've taped

606
00:52:47.519 --> 00:52:52.119
on right angle torches, and gradually
developed as the money came in. The

607
00:52:52.119 --> 00:52:59.239
investment took place until by the time
I got into the regiment in ninth I'd

608
00:52:59.280 --> 00:53:04.679
got into Regiment seventy eight. But
in nineteen seventy nine it was my squadron's

609
00:53:04.760 --> 00:53:08.519
turn to be the counter terrorist team, so it wasn't a selected team that

610
00:53:08.679 --> 00:53:14.920
was set aside. Each of the
four Saber squadrons did a six months tour

611
00:53:14.960 --> 00:53:20.440
on the counter terrorist team and it
was ours our turn in spring of nineteen

612
00:53:20.480 --> 00:53:24.760
eighty and only six weeks after we
took over the team we had our incident,

613
00:53:24.840 --> 00:53:29.639
the famous incident that made the Sas
famous around the world, at the

614
00:53:29.639 --> 00:53:34.440
Iranian embassy in London on May the
fifth, nineteen eighty right where we rescued

615
00:53:34.480 --> 00:53:37.679
where we rescued nineteen hostages, right, And you know, you mentioned the

616
00:53:37.679 --> 00:53:45.239
Pagoda team. And what's interesting is
that the America the Iranian Hossas crisis for

617
00:53:45.320 --> 00:53:52.199
America in Iran was seventy nine.
So the world knew this was something that

618
00:53:52.239 --> 00:53:55.840
could happen. I believe in your
book you even mentioned it wasn't Margaret Thatcher

619
00:53:55.840 --> 00:54:00.280
who said, I can't imagine would
be like we had people in an embassy,

620
00:54:00.800 --> 00:54:05.079
Well it was actually it was actually
nineteen eighty two. It was only

621
00:54:05.199 --> 00:54:10.239
ten days before we carried out our
mission. And so you know, the

622
00:54:10.280 --> 00:54:16.800
world's morale in terms of our counter
terrorism was on a real low. You

623
00:54:16.840 --> 00:54:22.519
know, this huge mission that had
been put together by US special forces had

624
00:54:22.559 --> 00:54:27.599
been so large that you know,
things that things hadn't gone well, and

625
00:54:29.480 --> 00:54:32.239
certain errors had caused the deaths of
their own people, and of course the

626
00:54:32.239 --> 00:54:42.119
Iranians paraded those brave people's bodies on
public television, and so it was it

627
00:54:42.199 --> 00:54:46.079
was highly embarrassing for the world,
and then only ten days later we had

628
00:54:46.079 --> 00:54:52.119
our opportunity to deal with our terrorist
incidents, and we had a much much

629
00:54:52.159 --> 00:54:57.239
smaller team. Because something I do
want to say is Special Forces is partly

630
00:54:57.320 --> 00:55:01.519
special because it's small. The first
should stand for small, because as soon

631
00:55:01.559 --> 00:55:07.519
as Special Forces get big, it
becomes just another unit, just another battalion,

632
00:55:07.800 --> 00:55:12.280
because you can't have that many special
people, so small is special.

633
00:55:12.880 --> 00:55:16.960
But we had our incident, and
in spite of things going wrong in the

634
00:55:17.039 --> 00:55:22.519
initial phase, we were well trained
enough to put them right and we ended

635
00:55:22.599 --> 00:55:29.679
up with nineteen hostages rescued, five
terrorists killed, and one captured in seven

636
00:55:29.719 --> 00:55:34.119
minutes. You can, for the
people who might not be familiar with this

637
00:55:34.239 --> 00:55:37.960
event, can you walk us through
sort of how it went down, where

638
00:55:38.000 --> 00:55:42.840
it was and then your involvement,
because you you guys, if I remember

639
00:55:42.880 --> 00:55:49.000
right, you guys are just rotated
on PAGO to team not too like like

640
00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:52.360
you said, like a month after
you broke in, right, that's right,

641
00:55:52.400 --> 00:55:55.000
only a few weeks before. Yeah, much much to the chagrin of

642
00:55:55.079 --> 00:56:00.320
G Squadron, who we took over
from, because you know, everybody that

643
00:56:00.360 --> 00:56:07.559
they had been us on the thirtieth
of April six or Abistani terrorists took over

644
00:56:07.599 --> 00:56:12.239
the Iranian embassy in London, captured
twenty four people on the inside, including

645
00:56:12.280 --> 00:56:16.679
three British journalists and a chauffeur British
chauffeur as well, and the embassy start

646
00:56:17.440 --> 00:56:22.920
and they made demands for their story
to get onto television and to the release

647
00:56:23.039 --> 00:56:34.519
of their people in Iran who had
been imprisoned by the Ayatollah Hormone. They

648
00:56:34.559 --> 00:56:38.199
made demands and we were in Hereford
at the time, which was one hundred

649
00:56:38.239 --> 00:56:44.039
and twenty five miles from London,
and on the first night we deployed and

650
00:56:44.119 --> 00:56:49.920
got to twenty five miles outside London
and where we waited the permission to go

651
00:56:49.960 --> 00:56:54.320
into London. We did not get
that permission, so we moved into central

652
00:56:54.360 --> 00:56:59.599
London to a military barracks called Regent's
Park Barracks, and we parked up there

653
00:56:59.599 --> 00:57:02.440
for the day, and on the
second night we got permission to move into

654
00:57:02.480 --> 00:57:07.000
the building next door to where the
hostages were taken, which was the Royal

655
00:57:07.000 --> 00:57:14.840
College of General Practitioners, And in
a big yellow pantechnicum truck, we sneaked

656
00:57:14.920 --> 00:57:17.920
over a wall at one o'clock in
the morning, taking all our kit equipment.

657
00:57:19.480 --> 00:57:23.119
We got into the building next door
without being seen by anybody, and

658
00:57:24.519 --> 00:57:29.119
we prepared for an immediate action.
And the immediate action is that it all

659
00:57:29.159 --> 00:57:32.239
goes wrong. Now they start killing
people, everybody. Each group's got an

660
00:57:32.239 --> 00:57:35.840
air of responsibility. You go in
there and do the best you can,

661
00:57:37.000 --> 00:57:39.920
and then you start to prepare a
deliberate action. So over the next four

662
00:57:40.039 --> 00:57:45.719
days, our commanders prepared a deliberate
action. We got plans, we got

663
00:57:45.760 --> 00:57:50.320
photographs, we got identities, we
got we found out where armored doors,

664
00:57:50.400 --> 00:57:53.760
windows, where the hostages were held, what they looked like, what the

665
00:57:53.800 --> 00:58:00.880
situation was. Then the ghost hostage
negotiators established a link with them and managed

666
00:58:00.920 --> 00:58:05.760
to negotiate the release over three days
of three of the hostages, so you're

667
00:58:05.800 --> 00:58:14.039
left with finally left with twenty and
on the fifth day, Mustafa Kharkouti was

668
00:58:14.079 --> 00:58:19.760
also released by the terrorists a gesture
of good will after their demands being put

669
00:58:19.760 --> 00:58:27.199
onto the British Broadcasting Corporation Services on
television, and it looked like it was

670
00:58:27.280 --> 00:58:32.480
going to resolve itself. But on
the sixth day, Feisal, who was

671
00:58:32.880 --> 00:58:39.679
pretty much the hard man of the
terrorist group, took the Chegade affair.

672
00:58:40.119 --> 00:58:45.639
A man called Lavazzani downstairs and executed
him by putting two shots in the back

673
00:58:45.679 --> 00:58:50.360
of his head, and a few
hours later they threw the body at the

674
00:58:50.360 --> 00:58:57.679
front door, at which time Margaret
Thatcher gave permission via her Home Secretary to

675
00:58:59.039 --> 00:59:04.039
give the military permission to mount an
assault. By that time, our deliberate

676
00:59:04.039 --> 00:59:07.760
action had been prepared. There were
forty eight of us that assaulted the building.

677
00:59:07.760 --> 00:59:13.280
There were five floors and fifty five
rooms. Each group of eight had

678
00:59:13.320 --> 00:59:17.280
been given a floor, and the
cunning plan was for us to sneak up

679
00:59:17.599 --> 00:59:22.000
to the building, to plant our
charges which were going to take out the

680
00:59:22.039 --> 00:59:28.280
windows and doors, initiate them all
at exactly the same time, and to

681
00:59:29.559 --> 00:59:35.519
clear the building. And while one
of the guys was abseiling down the back

682
00:59:35.559 --> 00:59:37.079
of the buildings from the roof,
his foot went through the window, and

683
00:59:37.119 --> 00:59:42.599
this was heard by the lead terrors, Salim, and he told the negotiator

684
00:59:42.639 --> 00:59:46.039
that there had been a suspicious noise
and he was going to investigate. The

685
00:59:46.119 --> 00:59:52.159
commander gave the command to go early, and so on the front of the

686
00:59:52.199 --> 00:59:57.400
building where the famous television footage that
people can find on YouTube you see John

687
00:59:57.480 --> 01:00:01.079
Mcalid's leap across the balcony, slammed
the charge on the window and leap back

688
01:00:01.119 --> 01:00:05.039
in. He's only about four feet
away from it when it's initiated, and

689
01:00:05.079 --> 01:00:08.159
takes the window out. That wasn't
supposed to be the game plan. On

690
01:00:08.199 --> 01:00:15.400
the back door where I was,
our explosives man had had time to lay

691
01:00:15.440 --> 01:00:20.840
the charges, So Big Bob Curry
comes in with a eight pound sledgehammer and

692
01:00:20.880 --> 01:00:23.920
takes the doors out with the sledge
hammer and ino our guys up above me.

693
01:00:24.039 --> 01:00:31.079
I'm looking up and the guy who's
stuck on the rope, he's got

694
01:00:31.119 --> 01:00:36.920
his absale glove caught in his v
rim and so he's jammed just above the

695
01:00:36.960 --> 01:00:40.360
windows. The guys have gone down
past him, they've gone through the windows.

696
01:00:40.920 --> 01:00:47.400
They've thrown in their flashbangs, their
pyrotechnics, and the curtains have caught

697
01:00:47.480 --> 01:00:52.519
fire. So the curtains are now
burning the guys hanging above the window,

698
01:00:52.840 --> 01:00:58.199
and he's turning into a barbecue and
he's screaming, and on top of that,

699
01:00:58.760 --> 01:01:02.760
he's got the pressels which on his
radio pressed as well, so nobody

700
01:01:02.800 --> 01:01:07.599
can communicate. And the squadron commander
must have been thinking, oh my god,

701
01:01:07.639 --> 01:01:12.639
this is the coffin of my career, and all all we can here

702
01:01:13.000 --> 01:01:15.440
is Tom hanging on the rope,
and he's screaming because he's getting burned,

703
01:01:16.400 --> 01:01:21.599
and so it looks like an absolute
disaster. The guys on the roof are

704
01:01:21.599 --> 01:01:25.119
trying to cut the rope while it's
under tension, but he's kicking himself away

705
01:01:25.159 --> 01:01:29.159
from the flames, and if they
cut it on the outswing, he's going

706
01:01:29.199 --> 01:01:30.679
to drop thirty feet on the concrete. So they've got to get him.

707
01:01:30.800 --> 01:01:35.320
They've got to get the rope to
part. On the in swing, Tommy

708
01:01:35.360 --> 01:01:38.559
Palmer has gone through the window below
him, and his head's caught fire from

709
01:01:38.599 --> 01:01:43.639
the flames and the curtain. So
he comes out the window, takes off

710
01:01:43.639 --> 01:01:46.400
his gas masks, throws it away, puts the flames out, and goes

711
01:01:46.599 --> 01:01:52.639
back into the window and kills two
terrorists. The guy's on the roof cut

712
01:01:52.679 --> 01:01:58.199
down Tom. He comes down onto
the balcony. Meanwhile, as he comes

713
01:01:58.239 --> 01:02:02.440
down onto the balcony, the IDEO
system becomes clear. The squadron commander,

714
01:02:02.559 --> 01:02:07.880
thinking that something all hell's let loose
and it's all gone wrong, says go

715
01:02:07.039 --> 01:02:10.400
in. So me and my partner
go into the building from the back door.

716
01:02:12.280 --> 01:02:15.119
But it's all looking pretty good.
When we get inside the lobby on

717
01:02:15.159 --> 01:02:19.679
the ground floor, there's a chain
of men up the stairs. There's gunfire,

718
01:02:19.719 --> 01:02:22.599
there's noise, there's gas. But
the policeman that had been held hostage

719
01:02:22.599 --> 01:02:27.000
for the whole week travel lock comes
clear at the bottom of the stairs first

720
01:02:27.039 --> 01:02:29.840
and I pass him out to pass
him out of the door to the next

721
01:02:29.840 --> 01:02:32.239
guy. Then the hostage has come
down and we're passing them down. We're

722
01:02:32.280 --> 01:02:35.519
keeping them scared. Do as you
told, do as you told, get

723
01:02:35.519 --> 01:02:37.760
down, said Bland says. And
we pass them hand to hand. Out

724
01:02:37.840 --> 01:02:42.320
they go out, they go out, they go and amongst those is hidden

725
01:02:42.400 --> 01:02:45.599
one of the terrorists. And then
in the last group coming down the stairs,

726
01:02:45.360 --> 01:02:52.119
there's a commotion up on the stairway
and a sudden movement and somebody shouts

727
01:02:52.199 --> 01:03:00.880
he's a terrorists blisters and he's holding
a hand grenade in his hand, and

728
01:03:00.320 --> 01:03:07.519
there's one man standing about twelve twenty
four inches from him, and he fires

729
01:03:07.559 --> 01:03:10.000
twenty four rounds into him, and
I am about five meters away, and

730
01:03:10.000 --> 01:03:14.920
I fire a burst of three rounds
and the guy crumples to the floor and

731
01:03:15.039 --> 01:03:19.239
the pin still and the grenade and
out they go out, they go out

732
01:03:19.280 --> 01:03:23.840
they go the buildings on fire.
There are five terroriststead there's one outside hidden

733
01:03:23.880 --> 01:03:28.800
amongst the hostages, and seven minutes
from the go, go go, the

734
01:03:28.840 --> 01:03:35.679
building is clear and on fire and
the job is done. Wow. It's

735
01:03:35.719 --> 01:03:44.239
amazing that even with the challenges that
were there, they're just you're like,

736
01:03:44.280 --> 01:03:52.039
the team's professionalism and and you know, prior training still led to a successful

737
01:03:52.039 --> 01:03:55.679
mission outcome. Yeah, it was
just like an exercise. We'd practiced for

738
01:03:55.719 --> 01:04:00.199
this. We hadn't only practiced for
this, we practiced for the vehicles moving,

739
01:04:00.320 --> 01:04:05.639
for aircraft, for boats alongside the
harbor, for SIPs at sea,

740
01:04:05.960 --> 01:04:14.039
and for buildings of course, and
so these things had happened on exercise.

741
01:04:14.800 --> 01:04:18.480
These things had gone wrong on exercise
because we haven't had people burned so badly,

742
01:04:18.559 --> 01:04:21.719
but you know things that things had
gone wrong, and you buy that

743
01:04:21.840 --> 01:04:27.360
training and buy the quality of the
man and the selection process, you end

744
01:04:27.400 --> 01:04:31.280
up with people that can think clearly
under pressure. Harping back to Malcolm Ladwell

745
01:04:31.320 --> 01:04:36.480
again in Bling or Tipping Point,
he says, why do police officers make

746
01:04:36.519 --> 01:04:42.920
mistakes with weapons under pressure? It's
because they're not of supremely good fitness.

747
01:04:43.320 --> 01:04:48.480
They're usually got too many donuts in
them. They they're not used to dealing

748
01:04:48.480 --> 01:04:53.960
with firefights on a regular basis.
They're not used to training under fit,

749
01:04:54.039 --> 01:04:58.159
with fear and on the edge of
danger. And so their heartbeat goes over

750
01:04:58.199 --> 01:05:01.079
one hundred forty five beats a minute. And when your heartbeat goes over one

751
01:05:01.159 --> 01:05:06.360
hundred and forty five beats per minute, you cannot make minor cognitive decisions,

752
01:05:06.880 --> 01:05:11.880
so you make big mistakes. You
don't see what's in front of your eyes

753
01:05:11.920 --> 01:05:17.280
anymore. Yeah, And so high
fitness, really tough, really edgy training

754
01:05:17.679 --> 01:05:21.960
and lots of it, and a
selection of the right people is vital.

755
01:05:23.360 --> 01:05:29.039
Yeah. And you're the gentleman who
was cooking while on the repel line.

756
01:05:29.880 --> 01:05:33.119
Did he get down before we was
well done? Yeah? He got he

757
01:05:33.280 --> 01:05:35.920
they cut him down, He hit
the balcony and he went in and did

758
01:05:35.960 --> 01:05:41.400
his task and he went to hospital
afterwards with some second degree burns to his

759
01:05:41.519 --> 01:05:45.960
legs. Yeah, but he completed
his mission, big fijiarman called Tom Morrel.

760
01:05:45.320 --> 01:05:54.199
Yeah, And so that was that
was the show, right, That

761
01:05:54.280 --> 01:06:00.639
was what every hostage rescue team or
every counter terrorist team dreams of. And

762
01:06:00.920 --> 01:06:05.519
meanwhile, G Squadron is off,
you know, gnashing their teeth. What

763
01:06:05.559 --> 01:06:11.360
was that like for you guys back
at the unit, Well, I mean

764
01:06:11.400 --> 01:06:15.119
we the government wanted to take us
out and parade us in front of the

765
01:06:15.119 --> 01:06:16.679
press, and we said, no, we don't do that, and we

766
01:06:16.719 --> 01:06:20.280
got back into our big yellow truck
with all our equipment and we disappeared,

767
01:06:20.280 --> 01:06:25.199
and we became the most famous anonymous
people for the next twenty five years.

768
01:06:26.719 --> 01:06:30.320
Our wives and girlfriends were hugging themselves
with league because they knew it was us,

769
01:06:30.400 --> 01:06:34.519
and they can't tell anybody. We
went back to barracks. The regiment

770
01:06:34.639 --> 01:06:41.199
was enormously proud of everybody, even
those guys that missed the boat on that

771
01:06:41.280 --> 01:06:45.199
particular occasion. They would have their
day in the future. And yeah,

772
01:06:45.239 --> 01:06:48.559
there was an enormous amount of pride. But we had to get ready.

773
01:06:48.599 --> 01:06:51.760
They could have been another one the
next day. So our equipment as soon

774
01:06:51.760 --> 01:06:55.840
as we got back, had to
be prepared and to be restored. The

775
01:06:55.920 --> 01:06:59.719
ammunition had to be refilled, everything
had to be cleaned and put back in

776
01:06:59.800 --> 01:07:03.639
the vehicles ready to go again.
And it looked as though we were going

777
01:07:03.679 --> 01:07:10.519
to have another incident. Only a
couple of months later, when the Libyan

778
01:07:10.559 --> 01:07:15.440
embassy in London opened fire from a
window and killed a police officer in London.

779
01:07:15.480 --> 01:07:17.679
It looked like we were going to
have to do something again, but

780
01:07:18.719 --> 01:07:25.159
it didn't work out that way.
But we became this mythological preacher, you

781
01:07:25.159 --> 01:07:28.480
know, the guys that could leap
over tall buildings with a single bound or

782
01:07:28.480 --> 01:07:30.880
a bulletproof. We were good at
what we did. We were good at

783
01:07:30.920 --> 01:07:35.039
what we did. I think one
of the next things you mentioned in your

784
01:07:35.039 --> 01:07:41.079
book was Operation Marcado. Can you
give us some background on that and then

785
01:07:41.280 --> 01:07:44.679
sort of how that went down for
you guys. Yeah, Well, the

786
01:07:45.679 --> 01:07:55.000
nineteen eighty two, the then president
of Argentina, General Leopoldo Galtieri, needed

787
01:07:55.000 --> 01:08:01.440
a distraction to take is population's eyes
from hyper inflation. The fact that he

788
01:08:01.519 --> 01:08:08.199
was murdering thousands and thousands of opponents
the Argentinian people called them to disappeared.

789
01:08:08.239 --> 01:08:13.400
So he decided to invade the Falkland
Islands, which were a British protector in

790
01:08:13.440 --> 01:08:18.600
the South Atlantic. And he thought
that it would be very much similar to

791
01:08:19.439 --> 01:08:24.840
Putin's idea moving into Ukraine, that
he would just walk in and nobody would

792
01:08:24.840 --> 01:08:29.720
do anything about it. But unfortunately
he didn't. They didn't really take the

793
01:08:29.760 --> 01:08:36.039
personality of Margaret Thatcher into consideration and
we deployed the British Armed Forces, Navy,

794
01:08:36.079 --> 01:08:42.880
Air Force and it would see the
infantry down to the Falkland Islands to

795
01:08:42.920 --> 01:08:47.359
recover the islands, an eight thousand
mile journey, and the task of my

796
01:08:47.560 --> 01:08:56.960
squadron was to fly into Argentina Operation
Mikado and land on the runway and destroyed

797
01:08:57.000 --> 01:09:01.359
the superete on our jets, the
French superet Our jets which were firing Exercet

798
01:09:01.399 --> 01:09:08.279
missiles which had sank three of our
capital's ships. And there was no return

799
01:09:08.399 --> 01:09:11.680
journey, so it was our mission
to go in there, destroy the jets

800
01:09:11.680 --> 01:09:15.640
and get killed or captured. I
had a wife who was by that time

801
01:09:15.680 --> 01:09:23.600
eight months pregnant, and I left
home to carry out the mission, knowing

802
01:09:23.640 --> 01:09:29.880
what the mission was, but she
obviously couldn't and left home thinking that I

803
01:09:29.920 --> 01:09:36.239
wouldn't see my sunborn. And the
good fortune in the story was that we

804
01:09:36.319 --> 01:09:42.920
got as far as Ascension Island.
Halfway there and Ronald Reagan put pressure on

805
01:09:43.039 --> 01:09:48.199
Margaret Thatcher not to extend the war
onto the mainland because the war on the

806
01:09:48.239 --> 01:09:54.439
Falkland Islands was going so well.
The Paris Marines Guards, the air Force

807
01:09:54.479 --> 01:10:00.279
and the Navy were covering the island. They'd lost a lot of troops very

808
01:10:00.279 --> 01:10:04.520
short space of time. They'd lost
the helicopters sunk in the Atlantic Conveyor.

809
01:10:04.960 --> 01:10:10.680
Conveyor. The Argentinian Air Force had
been very, very effective, but the

810
01:10:10.720 --> 01:10:14.760
pressure was put on not to extend
it onto the mainland. So we waited,

811
01:10:14.800 --> 01:10:17.760
we stood by, we waited,
we stood by, and finally we

812
01:10:17.760 --> 01:10:24.399
were flown down and we parachuted into
the sea. And now I'm kidding now,

813
01:10:24.479 --> 01:10:29.800
guys, thirty members of B Squadron, the famous the famous squadron that

814
01:10:29.920 --> 01:10:32.960
raided the Iragnan embassy land in the
Falklands. And four days later the enemy

815
01:10:33.039 --> 01:10:41.880
surrendered. And so I got home
to see my son when he was ten

816
01:10:41.960 --> 01:10:45.159
days old, and we went back
on the counter terrorists team again just after

817
01:10:46.279 --> 01:10:49.600
I thought I was going to get
back to UK and get arrest, but

818
01:10:49.760 --> 01:10:53.560
I got back to the UK and
before we took over the team, I

819
01:10:53.600 --> 01:10:58.439
was sent on a rawmerin sniper course
for the next twelve weeks. So that

820
01:10:58.520 --> 01:11:02.840
was my rest period. Horsefull.
You never do anything in the Falkland's will

821
01:11:02.880 --> 01:11:06.079
get down to Lympston and do the
raw marine sniper course. You lazy bars

822
01:11:09.319 --> 01:11:13.039
and so, so what was that
like for you? The Royal Marine Sniper

823
01:11:13.079 --> 01:11:18.920
Course, Oh awesome. The raw
Marines have run a sniper course since the

824
01:11:18.960 --> 01:11:26.439
First World War and they have two
grades of pass. One is to pass

825
01:11:26.479 --> 01:11:30.520
the sniper, which means you get
over sixty five percent on every task,

826
01:11:30.119 --> 01:11:34.159
and the second is Sniper Marksman,
which means you get over eighty percent on

827
01:11:34.399 --> 01:11:41.399
every task. And I got sniper
Marksman. I was one of two guys

828
01:11:41.399 --> 01:11:47.840
they got sniper marksman course. And
it's the epitome of infantry field craft.

829
01:11:48.359 --> 01:11:51.760
Because people in the press they mixed
up being a sniper would be in a

830
01:11:51.760 --> 01:11:56.520
marksman. A marksman is somebody who's
marksman. Somebody was a good shot.

831
01:11:57.119 --> 01:11:59.600
Okay, he can sit up in
a window and he can shoot in his

832
01:11:59.680 --> 01:12:03.680
good show. But a sniper is
somebody who's greater field craft. He can

833
01:12:03.800 --> 01:12:09.640
judge distance, he's an expert camouflage
and concealment. He can stalk his enemy's

834
01:12:09.640 --> 01:12:15.960
an expert map reading. He can
do air photography, and he's also very

835
01:12:15.039 --> 01:12:20.560
highly trained observer. He can bring
in artillery fire, he can bring in

836
01:12:20.640 --> 01:12:26.920
mortify, he can be naval gunfire. He's an expert of communications, and

837
01:12:27.359 --> 01:12:32.479
so you know, there's so many
skills packed into that one tiny individual that

838
01:12:32.520 --> 01:12:39.439
are all infantry skills but home to
an extraordinarily high level. And yeah,

839
01:12:39.439 --> 01:12:43.640
it was a marvelous course and working
with the raw Marines was a real thrill

840
01:12:43.760 --> 01:12:47.680
for me. Although there are always
been the rivals to the powers, they're

841
01:12:47.760 --> 01:12:53.560
like powers, but they're a little
bit more mature. Well, I mean,

842
01:12:53.760 --> 01:12:58.439
and you know from our viewers and
listeners who don't know, like the

843
01:12:58.479 --> 01:13:00.199
idea of the gilly suit. Gilly
is a British word. I think it's

844
01:13:00.239 --> 01:13:04.520
a Scottish word, right, or
it's an English word. It's a Scottish

845
01:13:04.520 --> 01:13:09.680
word. It comes from It comes
from the guys that used to hunt the

846
01:13:09.720 --> 01:13:14.479
deer in the in the Scottish Islands, and so a Gillie suit was something

847
01:13:14.600 --> 01:13:18.119
they designed to where so that the
deer didn't see them when they were culling

848
01:13:18.159 --> 01:13:25.039
the herd. Yeah. So I
mean there's there's a long heritage of like

849
01:13:25.119 --> 01:13:30.000
a lot of the sniper heritage comes
from from the British. Yeah, yeah,

850
01:13:30.039 --> 01:13:33.359
I think I think it does.
It comes from predominantly the First World

851
01:13:33.399 --> 01:13:40.119
War where you had this four year
war where trench warfare where snipers came into

852
01:13:40.159 --> 01:13:44.439
their own, but it was only
the Royal Marines in the British Army that

853
01:13:44.760 --> 01:13:50.279
kept the process going during peacetime and
they've always made and by keeping that going

854
01:13:50.439 --> 01:13:58.600
for probably an over a hundred years
now, their standards are extraordinary and they

855
01:13:58.720 --> 01:14:03.560
really are very very good at what
they do. Yeah, and then you

856
01:14:03.680 --> 01:14:08.039
went to another school that was a
bit of a detriment to your career,

857
01:14:08.119 --> 01:14:13.520
Right, what was it the course
that was there? Where? Where was

858
01:14:13.560 --> 01:14:15.560
it that you were like blamed for, like losing the weapons and stuff like

859
01:14:15.640 --> 01:14:19.199
that. Oh, yeah, we
went to we went to we went to

860
01:14:19.199 --> 01:14:27.560
do an exercise with Delta Force in
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and my

861
01:14:27.760 --> 01:14:31.239
patrol was put out on the ground
without very very good instruction about what the

862
01:14:31.239 --> 01:14:35.279
exercise program was. We didn't know
we had live enemy on the ground.

863
01:14:35.800 --> 01:14:42.359
We didn't know that there were about
two thousand rangers out there looking for us

864
01:14:42.680 --> 01:14:45.159
who knew that we were out on
the ground. And so we got bumped

865
01:14:45.680 --> 01:14:51.439
and I was And we also didn't
know that the training area in Alabama,

866
01:14:53.000 --> 01:15:00.000
in yeah, Alabama, down near
Alabama was was completely devoid of civili So

867
01:15:00.079 --> 01:15:05.199
I was I was marking out some
areas for black Hawk helicopters and measuring the

868
01:15:05.239 --> 01:15:10.920
ground in civilian clothing, believing there
were civilians out there. And as soon

869
01:15:10.920 --> 01:15:15.399
as I got seen, I got
I got chased by the by the rangers,

870
01:15:15.439 --> 01:15:23.279
by the enemy exercised forces. And
I had left my equipment with my

871
01:15:23.439 --> 01:15:27.680
partner who had to abandon it and
run, and in that equipment was my

872
01:15:28.039 --> 01:15:32.920
submachine gun. So I went escape
and evasion, and they didn't catch me

873
01:15:33.000 --> 01:15:36.399
for six days, and I got
picked up at the end of the exercise

874
01:15:36.439 --> 01:15:44.359
at the rendezvous point, by which
time two individuals in my squadron who were

875
01:15:44.439 --> 01:15:48.479
senior to me and didn't like me, had made it their sole purpose in

876
01:15:48.520 --> 01:15:54.560
life to get me kicked out of
the SAS, and they tried to say

877
01:15:54.600 --> 01:15:57.319
that the men didn't like me.
I said, okay, let's have a

878
01:15:57.319 --> 01:16:00.840
buddy reggaeting, go and ask the
guys, so that on deaf ears.

879
01:16:00.720 --> 01:16:04.800
They then said that I'd lost my
weapon, and I said, well,

880
01:16:04.840 --> 01:16:10.119
okay, you know I didn't lose
my weapon. I've told you the story,

881
01:16:11.079 --> 01:16:14.239
but I knew the writing was on
the wall and that they were going

882
01:16:14.239 --> 01:16:17.479
to essentially a British term, stitched
me up and get me sent back to

883
01:16:17.479 --> 01:16:23.239
the Paris on the grounds that these
two individuals, my sergeant major and troops

884
01:16:23.279 --> 01:16:29.199
staff sergeant, had a very poor
opinion of me. So I thought,

885
01:16:29.199 --> 01:16:31.319
I'm going to take control of this
situation. I'm not going to be the

886
01:16:31.399 --> 01:16:36.000
guy who gets beaten down. And
that's my tail between my legs. And

887
01:16:36.079 --> 01:16:41.920
I went on colonel's orders and the
colonel said, why did you break every

888
01:16:41.960 --> 01:16:45.279
standard operational procedure in the book?
I said I didn't, and my major

889
01:16:45.359 --> 01:16:49.279
said, well, no, that
wasn't Horseful, sir, that was the

890
01:16:49.359 --> 01:16:53.279
other patrol. And then he said
to me, well, you haven't done

891
01:16:53.279 --> 01:16:57.199
anything wrong this time, Horsefully said, but you've been walking on a razor

892
01:16:57.239 --> 01:17:00.199
blade for a long time and I
have no alternative but to send you back

893
01:17:00.199 --> 01:17:03.439
to the parachute regiment. You don't
have to be a lawyer to realize he's

894
01:17:03.520 --> 01:17:05.920
just said, you haven't done anything
wrong, but I'm going to punish you.

895
01:17:06.800 --> 01:17:09.520
So I said, that's all right, sir. I said, I

896
01:17:09.560 --> 01:17:14.039
put my papers and purchase my discharge
from the army yesterday. He said,

897
01:17:14.039 --> 01:17:15.760
don't do that. He said,
the wind blows cold on the outside.

898
01:17:16.319 --> 01:17:18.600
I said, they don't blow two
f in warm into here, does it

899
01:17:19.520 --> 01:17:23.239
and I was out of the Army
in two weeks. I was gone.

900
01:17:23.680 --> 01:17:26.439
That was me, twenty seven years
old, twelve years in the army.

901
01:17:26.680 --> 01:17:30.600
It was my life. I was
an Army orphan. But I was done

902
01:17:30.640 --> 01:17:34.399
with it and I moved on.
Didn't They try to stitch up some of

903
01:17:34.439 --> 01:17:40.680
the other guys that were with you
though, too. Yeah, the Tom

904
01:17:40.760 --> 01:17:44.439
McDonald got sent back to the Parachute
Regiment he was in the same patrol.

905
01:17:45.800 --> 01:17:49.880
The captain in charge, David Stewart, he got sent back to the Good

906
01:17:49.920 --> 01:17:57.119
Cameron Highlanders, and the other patrol
member got demoted and fined in spite of

907
01:17:57.159 --> 01:18:01.119
the fact that they've done absolutely nothing
wrong. It was it was a setup.

908
01:18:01.159 --> 01:18:04.680
It turned out. Years later I
found one of the sergeants who was

909
01:18:04.760 --> 01:18:11.000
teaching me to fly helicopters, Pete. He said that he was warned not

910
01:18:11.079 --> 01:18:15.960
to go on that patrol because something
was going to happen, so we would

911
01:18:15.960 --> 01:18:20.359
set up. We've been set up
by our colleagues and for personal reasons.

912
01:18:21.000 --> 01:18:26.880
And yeah, it was a bad
thing. I was bitter about it,

913
01:18:26.920 --> 01:18:30.239
but I moved on and put it
behind me, and that didn't let it

914
01:18:30.279 --> 01:18:32.880
get me down. Yeah, I
mean, but with so many guys shot

915
01:18:33.039 --> 01:18:39.359
like because I if I remember right, it's been a minute since I've read

916
01:18:39.359 --> 01:18:42.800
it, but if I remember right, like they were trying to like just

917
01:18:43.039 --> 01:18:45.800
clear out some of the ranks or
these guys or it was a personal thing

918
01:18:46.039 --> 01:18:50.439
for these guys. There was there
was a change during that period in the

919
01:18:50.520 --> 01:18:56.640
British Armed Forces where if you didn't
achieve a certain rank by a certain after

920
01:18:56.680 --> 01:19:00.840
a certain number of years, then
you were discharged. The Special Air Service

921
01:19:00.920 --> 01:19:05.279
had a large number of people who
didn't want to be promoted, and they

922
01:19:05.319 --> 01:19:10.880
weren't. They weren't qualified for promotion, and they suddenly promoted them up the

923
01:19:10.960 --> 01:19:15.760
ranks and people coming in afterwards were
actually more highly qualified and more capable than

924
01:19:15.800 --> 01:19:21.479
they were, and they these old
boys felt threatened by these more qualified young

925
01:19:21.560 --> 01:19:27.680
boys, and it instead of saying, look how amazing my guys are,

926
01:19:28.079 --> 01:19:31.720
they tried to put them down.
And that created that created a very very

927
01:19:31.720 --> 01:19:36.439
difficult situation. Out of my troop, which was nine troop, over a

928
01:19:36.640 --> 01:19:44.279
two year period, fifty percent of
the troop either voluntarily left or were forced

929
01:19:44.319 --> 01:19:48.760
to leave by these old boys.
So it was a sad time. Was

930
01:19:49.079 --> 01:19:51.880
it was difficult. A lot of
them. We went off, and we

931
01:19:51.960 --> 01:20:00.279
became bodyguards, we became security experts, became consultants, and life moved gone.

932
01:20:00.319 --> 01:20:03.840
I became a bodyguard to the Alphayette
family in London, a mercenary in

933
01:20:03.880 --> 01:20:10.800
Sri Lanka, a mercenary in Mozambique, and then finally the bodyguard to Rafite

934
01:20:10.800 --> 01:20:15.439
Career, who became the Prime Minister
of Lebanon during the war there until fin

935
01:20:15.560 --> 01:20:19.760
No. I did that before I
went to Mozambique. But after Mozambiat my

936
01:20:19.800 --> 01:20:21.920
wife put her a foot down and
said, you do that again. I'm

937
01:20:21.920 --> 01:20:27.000
not going to be here when you
come home. And so I stopped.

938
01:20:27.119 --> 01:20:31.439
Because she is the second pillar in
my life that gives me stability, without

939
01:20:31.479 --> 01:20:35.720
any doubt at all. Without her, I'd be absolutely nothing. So,

940
01:20:36.239 --> 01:20:40.079
Robin, we've we've been at it
almost an hour and a half. I'm

941
01:20:40.119 --> 01:20:45.079
happy to ask you about your time
as a mercenary. We would love to

942
01:20:45.119 --> 01:20:46.800
hear about it. I'm going to
leave it up to you whether you want

943
01:20:46.800 --> 01:20:51.119
to do it now, if you're
happy to talk about that time, because

944
01:20:51.159 --> 01:20:57.000
I know it's it's what is it
one thirty there now? Yeah, it's

945
01:20:57.000 --> 01:21:00.319
one twenty one, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm buzz in, you

946
01:21:00.319 --> 01:21:02.840
know, Okay, keep going if
you want to realize how quickly the time

947
01:21:02.880 --> 01:21:05.640
I've gone. I just wanted to
leave it up to you because I know

948
01:21:05.720 --> 01:21:14.079
it's really late there. So I'm
old. So you moved into bodyguarding?

949
01:21:14.119 --> 01:21:17.119
How long initially? Like? How
long were you was that first stint as

950
01:21:17.119 --> 01:21:21.439
a bodyguard for you? Yeah?
I did it for fifteen months in London,

951
01:21:23.000 --> 01:21:27.039
and you know it was it was
okay, it was very very good

952
01:21:27.039 --> 01:21:30.680
money, very good time off.
But it wasn't It wasn't exciting. I

953
01:21:30.720 --> 01:21:35.720
mean, the biggest enemy of any
bodyguard is complacency, and you spend lots

954
01:21:35.720 --> 01:21:40.920
and lots of time just waiting for
your client and doing absolutely nothing. It's

955
01:21:40.920 --> 01:21:45.279
a very good place to get fat
and no. After fifteen months, I

956
01:21:45.319 --> 01:21:49.239
was simply bored, and so I
volunteered to take a job in Sri Lanka

957
01:21:49.680 --> 01:21:54.039
as part of the single these forces
fighting the Tamil tigers in the north.

958
01:21:54.800 --> 01:21:59.000
But realized after a very short time
that I was on the wrong side and

959
01:21:59.119 --> 01:22:02.920
a side was taking place in an
north a Sri Lanka. I was powerless

960
01:22:02.960 --> 01:22:06.000
to do anything about it other than
resigned. So I resigned and came home.

961
01:22:06.560 --> 01:22:11.239
But I was missing my wife and
kids too much. Anyway, I

962
01:22:11.319 --> 01:22:16.439
had two children by this time,
son and a daughter, So yeah,

963
01:22:16.439 --> 01:22:23.319
I came home and struggled through a
few little bits and pieces of work,

964
01:22:24.079 --> 01:22:28.119
bodyguarding here, security work there,
set up my own little door company with

965
01:22:28.239 --> 01:22:35.479
Dorman, and struggled through. My
wife worked long hours and we managed to

966
01:22:35.520 --> 01:22:40.880
pay the mortgage and feed the kids
and keep it going. And then the

967
01:22:41.760 --> 01:22:46.119
job of all jobs, working with
Raffi career. He came along, which

968
01:22:46.239 --> 01:22:49.760
was a man with a genuine threat
against his life. He was envoy with

969
01:22:49.920 --> 01:22:55.640
King five. He was making his
run to become the prime Minister of Lebanon.

970
01:22:56.039 --> 01:23:00.680
There was a war on in Lebanon, in Beirut especially, Babylon was

971
01:23:00.760 --> 01:23:03.479
burning in Beirut at that time,
and Damascus was a safe place to be.

972
01:23:04.520 --> 01:23:09.479
And we traveled around the world doing
diplomatic security, getting the release of

973
01:23:09.520 --> 01:23:15.520
French hostages from the Azballah, meeting
people like George Schultz in Washington, DC,

974
01:23:15.760 --> 01:23:21.960
and Jacques Sharak in Paris and the
King in Rhead and Jedda. And

975
01:23:25.239 --> 01:23:31.520
I learned to speak French at that
time because Lebanese Arabic is very similar to

976
01:23:31.600 --> 01:23:36.000
Scottish English. It's very very it's
Arabic, but not as we know it.

977
01:23:36.119 --> 01:23:41.680
Jim learning French, learning French,
I learned French. I learned to

978
01:23:41.720 --> 01:23:47.039
speak at French in Saudi Arabia.
I learned to speak Arabic in England.

979
01:23:47.159 --> 01:23:53.359
I learned to speak Portuguese in Mozambique. And the only country I've ever worked

980
01:23:53.399 --> 01:23:56.960
and learned a language and lived in
was I learned to speak Czech in the

981
01:23:56.960 --> 01:24:00.920
Czech Republic. So it was nice
to be actually being a country where they

982
01:24:00.960 --> 01:24:05.520
spoke the language I was learning.
But yeah, it was He was a

983
01:24:05.520 --> 01:24:09.920
good man. He was a moderate
and I really really liked him. That

984
01:24:10.399 --> 01:24:15.159
Heather got ill in pregnancy with our
third child, Oliver, and so I

985
01:24:15.199 --> 01:24:18.520
had to retire from that and go
to England. And I was the bodyguard

986
01:24:18.560 --> 01:24:24.439
for an American for six months,
a man called Albert Dunlap, who was

987
01:24:24.479 --> 01:24:29.720
called the Chainsaw, and he was
a man who used to mount aggressive tacos

988
01:24:29.760 --> 01:24:34.119
of the companies, fire all the
nonprofitable staff, and sell off the profits.

989
01:24:34.159 --> 01:24:38.920
And he was brought to England to
take over a British American tobacco and

990
01:24:38.960 --> 01:24:43.760
I was his chauffeur bodyguard, and
after four weeks I wanted to kill him.

991
01:24:43.760 --> 01:24:48.359
Myself that wicked. It was that
wicked and that evil. I hated

992
01:24:48.439 --> 01:24:54.600
him with a venom. Yeah,
yeah, I imagine that in order to

993
01:24:54.640 --> 01:24:57.359
it, he was probably very profitable
of it. In order to do that,

994
01:24:57.479 --> 01:25:02.000
he probably didn't have the strong uh
moral compass that the way we would

995
01:25:02.039 --> 01:25:06.600
think of it, he had no
ethics at all. Yeah, he had.

996
01:25:06.800 --> 01:25:13.760
He was. He was amoral and
immoral. He was the most selfish

997
01:25:13.840 --> 01:25:17.159
individual I have ever met in my
entire life. And his wife matched him

998
01:25:17.279 --> 01:25:27.239
very very closely. Yeah. How
was it challenging for you having been you

999
01:25:27.279 --> 01:25:30.800
know, a para in Northern Ireland, having and and sas because you did

1000
01:25:30.920 --> 01:25:35.359
you went to Northern Ireland with the
sas two correct three? Two twice?

1001
01:25:35.399 --> 01:25:43.840
Yeah or twice, and then having
been on the hostage rescue all these things,

1002
01:25:43.960 --> 01:25:47.520
and then you are a bodyguard,
which for people don't know, it's

1003
01:25:47.560 --> 01:25:53.079
not like the Kevin Costumer movie.
People often don't treat their bodyguards well you

1004
01:25:53.119 --> 01:25:59.960
know some what you know what I
mean that that that apart from apart from

1005
01:26:00.119 --> 01:26:03.880
done that, I never had a
problem with my principles. I was always

1006
01:26:03.880 --> 01:26:10.239
treated with a great deal of politeness
and respect. So, but you're right,

1007
01:26:10.279 --> 01:26:13.960
it's never like the movies, but
the Kevin Costner film The Bodyguard Is

1008
01:26:13.960 --> 01:26:17.439
is based on the mistakes that Costner
makes. I mean, but the most

1009
01:26:17.439 --> 01:26:24.159
realistic thing is that when Whitney Whitney
Houston, Whitney Houston. Yeah, he

1010
01:26:24.279 --> 01:26:27.640
says, my guard, you don't
look like a body garret, you know.

1011
01:26:27.720 --> 01:26:30.800
And that's so true because they expected
it to be this big, two

1012
01:26:30.880 --> 01:26:38.239
hundred pound guy who's, you know, a mountain of muscle and flesh.

1013
01:26:38.800 --> 01:26:43.079
But that's not what a bodyguard actually
is. The bodyguard's a gray man who

1014
01:26:43.159 --> 01:26:45.800
stands very close to the client and
his job is to run away with the

1015
01:26:45.840 --> 01:26:49.800
client if anything happens, and then
you have you have the cordings. It's

1016
01:26:49.840 --> 01:26:54.119
not his job to draw a weapon
and shoot people. It's his job to

1017
01:26:54.159 --> 01:26:58.359
get that client. One of the
most wonderful pieces of bodyguarding drills I've ever

1018
01:26:58.399 --> 01:27:01.840
seen was when Reagan was shot and
within two seconds he's in the back of

1019
01:27:01.840 --> 01:27:04.520
that vehicle and although he's got a
hold of him, he's on his way

1020
01:27:04.560 --> 01:27:09.000
to hospital and in seconds, you
know, those guys moved him and they

1021
01:27:09.000 --> 01:27:13.640
were spot on, and they had
their drills down. American Secret Service are

1022
01:27:13.800 --> 01:27:17.079
really really good at that. In
the close protection groups. So they're very,

1023
01:27:17.199 --> 01:27:23.319
very good. So that's that's a
great piece of video to a film

1024
01:27:23.399 --> 01:27:27.720
to go back and watch if you
want to see real expert bodyguards. You

1025
01:27:27.760 --> 01:27:31.279
know, this man who's just there, he's invisible and all of a sudden

1026
01:27:31.279 --> 01:27:33.880
breagans in the back of a vehicle
and he's on his way to hospital,

1027
01:27:33.960 --> 01:27:40.760
shell dressing on his wounds. Fantastic
work, you know, can we But

1028
01:27:40.960 --> 01:27:45.039
but was there? So were you
satisfied as the body god did? Aside

1029
01:27:45.079 --> 01:27:54.319
from the chainsaw? What was it
meaningful work for you? Yeah? It

1030
01:27:54.399 --> 01:27:57.760
was. It was meaningful work.
As I say, the only reason I

1031
01:27:57.880 --> 01:28:04.720
stopped with with her Eerie was because
it was extraordinarily luxurious life. I could

1032
01:28:04.800 --> 01:28:09.000
keep fit, I got good time
off, and I got excellent money,

1033
01:28:09.239 --> 01:28:13.199
and I was treated very well.
Was the just simply the fact that my

1034
01:28:13.239 --> 01:28:18.680
wife was ill in pregnancy and I
had to go home. So outside of

1035
01:28:18.720 --> 01:28:26.600
that it was cool. But once
once she'd had Oliver and she was well

1036
01:28:26.600 --> 01:28:30.359
again, I had to find a
new future. And my future ended up

1037
01:28:30.399 --> 01:28:35.640
being a martial arts teacher in southwest
London, and I took over a small

1038
01:28:35.680 --> 01:28:41.880
class of three children and eventually developed
it into over a thousand kids in southwest

1039
01:28:41.920 --> 01:28:45.840
London. That was about fifty adults. Yeah, but about fifty adults with

1040
01:28:45.000 --> 01:28:49.039
about nine hundred and fifty kids from
the age of four upwards. Yeah.

1041
01:28:49.079 --> 01:28:56.000
Did you find that fulfilling? I
found that immensely fulfilling. I took the

1042
01:28:56.000 --> 01:29:01.640
bad experiences of my childhood and developed
children into becoming strong, confident young people

1043
01:29:02.039 --> 01:29:10.479
who are highly disciplined and happy within
themselves. Because I think that a person

1044
01:29:10.640 --> 01:29:15.840
who's disciplined and strong and confident will
be a kind adult. The most vicious

1045
01:29:15.840 --> 01:29:20.560
and unkind people are the people who
lack confidence. It's always the coward in

1046
01:29:20.560 --> 01:29:26.399
the group that it is the most
vicious of all. And I was preparing

1047
01:29:26.399 --> 01:29:29.720
them to be adults and training them
to be adults. And not only did

1048
01:29:29.720 --> 01:29:32.680
I teach them martial arts, I
taught them to teach martial arts right from

1049
01:29:32.720 --> 01:29:41.000
square one. So an awful lot
of my My son Alex took over London

1050
01:29:41.039 --> 01:29:45.239
Karate when I broke my neck when
he was twenty seven, and now he

1051
01:29:45.319 --> 01:29:49.039
teaches the children of the children that
I used to teach. That's a wonderful

1052
01:29:49.079 --> 01:29:57.600
thing. That's fantastic. How did
you find parenthood given that you know your

1053
01:29:57.720 --> 01:30:00.159
challenges with a father figure, would
you when you young, you know,

1054
01:30:00.279 --> 01:30:06.840
with an abusive father figure, with
you know, bully being bullied in school?

1055
01:30:08.399 --> 01:30:14.800
Like, how did you adapt to
parenthood? I I always loved parent

1056
01:30:14.880 --> 01:30:21.119
I've loved it. I am Heather, my wife. She got pregnant while

1057
01:30:21.119 --> 01:30:27.239
we were on honeymoon with Alex.
We couldn't wait for him to arrive.

1058
01:30:28.880 --> 01:30:32.840
We had she already had two baby
girls when I met her, and then

1059
01:30:32.880 --> 01:30:36.079
we had three more, Alex,
Charlotte and Oliver, and so we had

1060
01:30:36.119 --> 01:30:45.920
five and it's it's it's been the
most important, our family, my wife,

1061
01:30:45.920 --> 01:30:57.279
my children. Sorry, guys,
we have a bit of a hiccup

1062
01:30:57.319 --> 01:31:04.079
here. Yeah, we'll give it
a give it a just a couple of

1063
01:31:04.119 --> 01:31:12.960
seconds. Oh yeah, Hey,
everybody, please join our patreon uh Patreon

1064
01:31:13.039 --> 01:31:20.399
slash team house. You get exclusive
content and also ad free audio and you

1065
01:31:20.520 --> 01:31:24.720
help us. You help us keep
you help keep us in the drink huh

1066
01:31:25.439 --> 01:31:31.039
and video and also uh like subscribe
to channel and check out our friend at

1067
01:31:31.079 --> 01:31:36.439
invader girl art dot com. Up, Okay, we lost some Uh We're

1068
01:31:36.439 --> 01:31:41.560
gonna go ahead, and I think
uh, oh is your back? Yeah,

1069
01:31:41.600 --> 01:31:44.319
I'm back, all right, we
got your back. Excellent, excellent.

1070
01:31:45.000 --> 01:31:49.199
Sorry, I think we had a
delay on your end that But anyway,

1071
01:31:49.239 --> 01:31:56.439
you were talking about having your children, and yeah, yeah, yeah,

1072
01:31:56.199 --> 01:32:00.520
my wife and my kids. Uh
the most important thing. I always

1073
01:32:00.520 --> 01:32:04.000
struggled when I was young, especially
to make friends, and so me and

1074
01:32:04.039 --> 01:32:12.840
have there made three and my kids. Every time I got home, Daddy

1075
01:32:12.920 --> 01:32:15.079
come home, Daddy would go out, Daddy would take the camping. We

1076
01:32:15.119 --> 01:32:18.520
would go out the mountains, we
would go swimming. I talked swim,

1077
01:32:18.560 --> 01:32:23.000
I talking to play. I took
them to do all the things. I

1078
01:32:23.039 --> 01:32:27.720
took them to sports. I just
loved being dad, and I still love

1079
01:32:27.800 --> 01:32:30.720
being dad now. Mind you,
I've got two daughters now that are grandmothers.

1080
01:32:31.279 --> 01:32:36.520
That's a peculiar thing. The oldest
two are our grandmothers, and so

1081
01:32:36.640 --> 01:32:43.159
I'm a great grandfather. I got
six great grandchildren. And but I just

1082
01:32:43.359 --> 01:32:48.399
loved being a parent. One of
the things I struggle with now I'm sixty

1083
01:32:48.479 --> 01:32:51.760
six. One of the things I
struggle with now is that I don't have

1084
01:32:53.560 --> 01:32:57.199
children in my life anymore. My
great grandkids come every now and then to

1085
01:32:57.319 --> 01:33:00.319
visit, but I don't have enough
time. And when I was teaching martial

1086
01:33:00.399 --> 01:33:04.880
arts, I was working with kids
four hours a day, every day,

1087
01:33:05.560 --> 01:33:13.000
and that's an absolute joy. I've
been to the local school here, I've

1088
01:33:13.039 --> 01:33:17.079
taught poetry to children in the local
school. That's been a great a great

1089
01:33:17.119 --> 01:33:25.640
deal of fun, but so teachings
of vocation that I genuinely love. You

1090
01:33:25.720 --> 01:33:31.880
know. So everything aside all the
adventures, all the guns and bombs and

1091
01:33:31.920 --> 01:33:36.960
explosions and stuff like that, but
there's nothing more important than your family.

1092
01:33:38.239 --> 01:33:44.039
And I think the toughest job any
real man can actually achieve is to hold

1093
01:33:44.079 --> 01:33:49.520
a family together, to be responsible
for your wife and kids for their entire

1094
01:33:49.560 --> 01:33:56.319
lives. That's what I really think. You you mentioned, you know,

1095
01:33:56.399 --> 01:34:02.760
you mentioned that your mom and Jaffar, Jeff Right, Jeff Horse far they

1096
01:34:02.800 --> 01:34:09.439
split up, and but you still
attended his funeral, And then it was

1097
01:34:10.119 --> 01:34:15.720
that there was a closure for you
in that. Yeah. Yeah. Over

1098
01:34:15.760 --> 01:34:19.439
the years, over the years,
as I had my kids, you know,

1099
01:34:19.479 --> 01:34:24.560
and he had a new wife and
further children with his new wife,

1100
01:34:25.840 --> 01:34:29.359
we gradually became, you know,
friends, and we used to visit and

1101
01:34:29.399 --> 01:34:33.560
talk and get by, but we
never really confronted any of the issues of

1102
01:34:33.600 --> 01:34:40.279
me as a child. But when
he was dying of cancer, my wife

1103
01:34:40.279 --> 01:34:45.039
and I and my brother and sister
in law. We went and we nursed

1104
01:34:45.119 --> 01:34:47.600
him in the last weeks of his
life, and we looked after him until

1105
01:34:47.600 --> 01:34:53.319
he passed over. And when he
had passed over, I sat alone with

1106
01:34:53.399 --> 01:34:58.960
him in his bedroom and I said
to his courts, why were you such

1107
01:34:59.000 --> 01:35:02.159
a bastard too me when I was
a kid? And I swear a voice

1108
01:35:02.199 --> 01:35:05.439
came into my head, not a
voice that you heard, but the answer

1109
01:35:05.479 --> 01:35:10.439
came into my head, which was
I was only doing the best I could,

1110
01:35:10.479 --> 01:35:14.840
the only way I knew how.
And that's that was a revelation.

1111
01:35:14.960 --> 01:35:17.920
That was an epiphany moment. It
was it was like my demons had been

1112
01:35:17.960 --> 01:35:23.159
exercised, and I understood that,
you know, nobody trains you to be

1113
01:35:23.199 --> 01:35:28.439
a parent. Nobody shows you except
your own parents or maybe your big brothers

1114
01:35:28.439 --> 01:35:30.880
and sisters if they've got kids.
And if you've had a bad example,

1115
01:35:30.960 --> 01:35:34.800
you don't have anything else to go
on. And he was an only child.

1116
01:35:35.560 --> 01:35:39.239
He was brought up in the Second
World War. He worked in a

1117
01:35:39.239 --> 01:35:44.640
factory, a tough leads man,
and he'd been a soldier most of his

1118
01:35:44.760 --> 01:35:49.319
life. And you know, he
was a heart. He was a hard,

1119
01:35:49.399 --> 01:35:53.800
tough guy, but beneath it,
there was a softness that I never

1120
01:35:53.840 --> 01:35:59.319
saw as a child, and so
I understood. I understood at that moment

1121
01:35:59.359 --> 01:36:04.359
why he was how he was,
and I made a conscious choice when I

1122
01:36:04.399 --> 01:36:12.079
married Heather never to be like he
was towards my children. I can count

1123
01:36:13.000 --> 01:36:16.600
I know exactly how many times I
smacked my sons, and that was each

1124
01:36:16.640 --> 01:36:23.600
of them twice. And I never
ever smacked my daughters. And even then,

1125
01:36:23.680 --> 01:36:26.600
I looking back, I'm not so
sure that that was even required,

1126
01:36:26.640 --> 01:36:30.640
but I did. It was part
of the course in them days. In

1127
01:36:30.680 --> 01:36:34.359
fact, it was well below part. I've got great kids, I still

1128
01:36:34.399 --> 01:36:42.079
adore them, and I've got great
relationships with them too. So something did

1129
01:36:42.199 --> 01:36:45.239
we did? We did an awful
lot of things, right, Yeah?

1130
01:36:45.720 --> 01:36:48.720
Yeah, Where do you think because
you say that you know, people learned

1131
01:36:48.760 --> 01:36:53.840
how to parent from their parents,
and I you know, so where do

1132
01:36:53.920 --> 01:36:58.680
you think you learned how to be
that father for you? Are there specific

1133
01:36:59.079 --> 01:37:02.640
men in the middle terry that you
can think of? No, I learned

1134
01:37:02.640 --> 01:37:10.479
how to be a parent from my
wife. She she took this lone wolf,

1135
01:37:11.439 --> 01:37:17.520
this tough, mean, isolated individual, and saw right through the facade.

1136
01:37:18.000 --> 01:37:20.680
He got into the cage with the
lone wolf and tickled his ears,

1137
01:37:20.720 --> 01:37:30.800
you know, and she taught me
how to She gave me back my humanity.

1138
01:37:30.520 --> 01:37:34.359
She taught me how to trust my
feelings again, to trust other people.

1139
01:37:35.279 --> 01:37:40.479
She taught me how to bathe Alex, to change his nappies, to

1140
01:37:41.359 --> 01:37:45.159
carry him in the harness on my
chest, to enjoy being a parent.

1141
01:37:45.239 --> 01:37:50.880
She put love into my life that
hadn't been there before. And you know,

1142
01:37:51.560 --> 01:38:00.319
it gave me a worthwhile existence.
It gave me everything that was really

1143
01:38:00.399 --> 01:38:05.880
missing from this empty shell and it
filled it up. And she was extraordinarily

1144
01:38:06.800 --> 01:38:15.239
important in teaching me how to be
a human being. That's fantastic. You

1145
01:38:15.319 --> 01:38:19.560
know, we didn't really even talk
about your time with the sas in Northern

1146
01:38:19.560 --> 01:38:25.239
Ireland, so I'm just gonna ask
a general question to curb the curiosity of

1147
01:38:25.279 --> 01:38:30.399
people, But how did your your
time with the ESAs. How did that

1148
01:38:30.520 --> 01:38:35.079
different than when you were a para
in Northern Ireland. Well, from my

1149
01:38:35.119 --> 01:38:40.079
perspective, it wasn't quite as much
fun because you know, when you were

1150
01:38:40.159 --> 01:38:45.560
a soldier in the hard areas of
the cities, you were constantly on guard,

1151
01:38:46.079 --> 01:38:53.840
working with working in public view in
uniform. When I was working undercover,

1152
01:38:54.880 --> 01:39:00.960
you were working with for with specific
information. You were targeting terrorists in

1153
01:39:01.000 --> 01:39:09.840
certain areas. You spent an awful
lot of time in observation posts. You

1154
01:39:09.760 --> 01:39:15.439
you were you were following people in
vehicles. You were in inner city areas

1155
01:39:16.439 --> 01:39:21.159
with long hair and donkey jackets,
looking like one of the locals trying to

1156
01:39:21.319 --> 01:39:28.399
blend in. So it was a
very, very different job, and I

1157
01:39:28.439 --> 01:39:33.399
don't think I enjoyed it as much
as I did. The constant pressure of

1158
01:39:33.439 --> 01:39:38.720
being on patrol four hours on,
two hours off, four hours off,

1159
01:39:38.760 --> 01:39:42.399
two hours on. You know,
it was it was nowhere near as intense,

1160
01:39:42.680 --> 01:39:45.439
and to be perfectly honest, it
wasn't wasn't anywhere near as dangerous signment

1161
01:39:47.239 --> 01:39:54.680
fascinating. So I'm gonna get to
some of their questions, DJ seed,

1162
01:39:54.760 --> 01:39:59.840
thank you very much. What sets
the two too apart from regular essay?

1163
01:40:00.479 --> 01:40:08.279
Is it mission sets skills or mission
set skill set or both? I'm not

1164
01:40:08.399 --> 01:40:14.199
quite sure I understand the question,
but I think that what sets the Special

1165
01:40:14.239 --> 01:40:19.039
Forces soldier apart from other soldiers is
the selection of the man and the intense

1166
01:40:19.159 --> 01:40:27.439
quality of the training. Thanks again, did you Seed? U did the

1167
01:40:27.560 --> 01:40:31.760
sas used to rob Banks and still
Hardware aka Paul jobs are great Britain Or

1168
01:40:31.880 --> 01:40:36.960
is that just movie stuff. Yeah, I think that's just movie stiff.

1169
01:40:42.000 --> 01:40:45.560
Joe's guys, you thank you for
march. Was the fourteen Intelligence Company DEBT

1170
01:40:45.640 --> 01:40:50.479
designed as sport sas operations abroad?
Or were they only focused on Northern Ireland?

1171
01:40:53.159 --> 01:40:57.920
Yeah, fourteen IN was only focused
in was developed for Northern Ireland under

1172
01:40:57.920 --> 01:41:00.640
cover work in Northern Ireland. They
would trained by US, but they were

1173
01:41:00.680 --> 01:41:08.319
an independent special unit that worked within
the Catholic community and infiltrated the IRA and

1174
01:41:08.359 --> 01:41:12.920
they were extraordinarily good at their job. But yeah, only for Northern Ireland

1175
01:41:13.840 --> 01:41:17.000
at that time. Mac and Tyre
thank you for the very geniush nation.

1176
01:41:21.760 --> 01:41:25.840
Okay, so this might be a
sense of question. I don't know,

1177
01:41:26.000 --> 01:41:29.840
do you think any mc nab wide
and made up most of the events depicton

1178
01:41:29.920 --> 01:41:33.680
Brother to Zrael, Mike Kiwi,
Colburn, Arthur a Soldier five and Malcolm

1179
01:41:33.680 --> 01:41:41.399
Graham McAllen wrote about this mission and
said book. Mcnad also said named and

1180
01:41:41.439 --> 01:41:46.960
criticized the dead members. Yeah,
there's a littleful lot to talk about in

1181
01:41:46.960 --> 01:41:50.159
that and I think it would take
a long time. If you want to

1182
01:41:50.479 --> 01:41:55.680
know the truth of the mission,
I think you should read Mike Asher's book

1183
01:41:55.680 --> 01:42:01.039
called The Real Bravo to Zero.
But I don't want to run down an

1184
01:42:01.079 --> 01:42:04.960
old colleague on our public forum.
It wouldn't be kind or fair of me.

1185
01:42:06.880 --> 01:42:12.520
Uh McIntyre, thank you very much. Did you ever meet tack Aka

1186
01:42:12.880 --> 01:42:18.960
Lomo former sas Fijian operator of Sudron
Yemen. Yeah, I knew Tachi was

1187
01:42:19.000 --> 01:42:24.359
in the squadron with me and I
know him. I know him very well.

1188
01:42:24.439 --> 01:42:29.239
Yeah, Cameron Spence or Chris Jordi
Ryan if so? What were they

1189
01:42:29.279 --> 01:42:35.760
like? I don't know, I
am. I don't know him personally.

1190
01:42:35.840 --> 01:42:40.680
I have I've spoken to him a
couple of times on telephone. He wasn't

1191
01:42:40.880 --> 01:42:45.520
in my squadron with me, and
so we're not. I don't I don't

1192
01:42:45.640 --> 01:42:47.840
know. I don't know very much
about him. Okay, Mac and Tyre,

1193
01:42:47.920 --> 01:42:51.880
thank you again. Why was there
a war going on in Mozambique at

1194
01:42:51.880 --> 01:42:56.680
the time. Who was in charge
of the Mozambique government at the time and

1195
01:42:56.680 --> 01:43:00.920
who were they fighting? Well?
We were we were fight Arqua Forces,

1196
01:43:00.960 --> 01:43:09.720
which was the Army of Mozambique under
under the Frelimo government. The Russians had

1197
01:43:09.800 --> 01:43:17.399
pulled out of the country, leaving
an awful lot of gaps between the South

1198
01:43:17.439 --> 01:43:25.560
Africans who had been fighting the African
National Congress and launching operations from Mozambique into

1199
01:43:25.560 --> 01:43:30.880
South Africa, and they had a
specially trained group called Renamo, and Renamo

1200
01:43:31.039 --> 01:43:41.520
were Mozambique and Portuguese mulattos who were
part of South African Special Forces for want

1201
01:43:41.560 --> 01:43:47.720
of better words, and they were
denied a place of refuge by South Africa,

1202
01:43:48.119 --> 01:43:53.359
and of course they were enemies in
Mozambique, so they started living off

1203
01:43:53.359 --> 01:43:59.720
the land and raiding the villages and
towns for food, for women, for

1204
01:44:00.920 --> 01:44:05.880
for control, very much like local
warlords. And the French were trying to

1205
01:44:05.920 --> 01:44:11.920
build a railway from Maputu up to
Malawi and it was getting raided and bombed

1206
01:44:11.920 --> 01:44:16.920
and blown up, and so we
were taken there to be officers in the

1207
01:44:18.439 --> 01:44:26.520
fark forces and we ended up becoming
company commanders and leading a lot of operations

1208
01:44:26.560 --> 01:44:30.079
there. It was a pure infantry
war. We had no air cover,

1209
01:44:31.039 --> 01:44:36.920
very few infantry support weapons like heavy
artillery. We did have Katusha rockets,

1210
01:44:38.479 --> 01:44:44.520
but essentially it was an infantry war
against infantry and it was a vicious war

1211
01:44:44.680 --> 01:44:48.920
with an awful lot of civilian deaths
and the food for my troops used to

1212
01:44:48.960 --> 01:44:54.079
get stolen on the way to the
front lines, so the troops were on

1213
01:44:54.119 --> 01:44:57.880
half Russians, and if we got
a cold night, I would probably lose

1214
01:44:57.920 --> 01:45:02.720
one or two men dead during the
night from malaria because their rations were so

1215
01:45:02.920 --> 01:45:09.319
low and they didn't have enough resistance
without the food to defeat the malaria.

1216
01:45:09.520 --> 01:45:17.119
So it was a very very difficult
place to be. Wonderful soldiers, wonderful

1217
01:45:17.159 --> 01:45:24.960
people. Michael, thank you very
much. In your view, why didn't

1218
01:45:25.000 --> 01:45:31.439
Britain adopt an official policy of institute
torture Northern Ireland? Thanks. I don't

1219
01:45:31.479 --> 01:45:41.720
think there's ever been a policy of
institutes institutional torture approved of by any government.

1220
01:45:43.039 --> 01:45:48.239
I know that in certain rare circumstances
soldiers have taken it upon themselves to

1221
01:45:48.479 --> 01:45:57.239
behave badly with prisoners. I think
you might find that in the USA the

1222
01:45:57.439 --> 01:46:05.199
situation that occurred at one TIMEAMO would
be an exception to that. And you

1223
01:46:05.239 --> 01:46:11.199
know those questions are going to come
out in the long term future again and

1224
01:46:11.319 --> 01:46:16.439
be investigated, I'm sure. But
in Britain, I think we've always tried

1225
01:46:16.479 --> 01:46:23.600
to hold the moral high ground and
if there are incidences they were they were

1226
01:46:23.680 --> 01:46:30.680
not approved of by the government and
they were mistakes and criminal mistakes to that

1227
01:46:30.760 --> 01:46:35.159
as well. Danny, thank you
very much. Is there a specific reason

1228
01:46:36.079 --> 01:46:43.640
rather than chose the Army over the
Royal Marines. I didn't get offered the

1229
01:46:44.079 --> 01:46:47.239
I didn't even think about the raw
Marines. I didn't know enough about them.

1230
01:46:47.279 --> 01:46:50.720
I didn't live in an area where
the raw Marines were prevalent. But

1231
01:46:50.800 --> 01:46:56.600
my home was only three miles from
Aldershot, which was the home of the

1232
01:46:56.600 --> 01:47:02.399
British Shereborn Forces. So I went
to the Parachute Regiment's depot to do my

1233
01:47:02.520 --> 01:47:09.079
medical So, yeah, the Army
was local to me. It never occurred

1234
01:47:09.119 --> 01:47:14.119
to me. And and your your
father, your dad Jeff, he had

1235
01:47:14.239 --> 01:47:17.239
ended up as a para too,
right, that's right. He was a

1236
01:47:17.359 --> 01:47:23.720
member of the Royal Corps of Transport, which had a special detachment which is

1237
01:47:23.760 --> 01:47:30.319
attached to sixteen Para Brigade. So
they were the drivers the parachute the airborne

1238
01:47:30.399 --> 01:47:36.560
drivers attached to the brigade. MacIntyre, so the rusties question comes from mac.

1239
01:47:36.840 --> 01:47:41.279
Thank you very much for all your
sponsorship mcder We really appreciate it.

1240
01:47:42.399 --> 01:47:47.359
What's your favorite episode of Blackadder?
Oh god, I love Blackadder. There's

1241
01:47:47.399 --> 01:47:55.960
so many, Oh goodness me.
I think the I think the one that

1242
01:47:56.079 --> 01:48:00.600
really sticks in everybody's mind is the
final one where they go over the top

1243
01:48:00.640 --> 01:48:04.600
in the First World War, and
you know, that's very, very poignant

1244
01:48:04.640 --> 01:48:10.359
and moving because you've got this amazing
comedy and it's finished with such a poignant

1245
01:48:10.399 --> 01:48:14.880
and sad moment. I think that's
the one I remember the best. But

1246
01:48:14.920 --> 01:48:19.399
there are so many of them.
I couldn't identify an individual one that was

1247
01:48:19.520 --> 01:48:25.960
particularly outstanding in terms of comedy.
It's just marvelous stuff. The one that

1248
01:48:25.960 --> 01:48:29.319
always sticks out from me, and
it actually kind of I thought of it

1249
01:48:29.319 --> 01:48:33.199
when you're talking about the suicide mission. Is the suicide unit where they are

1250
01:48:33.279 --> 01:48:40.359
just step out the window, yeah, or where he's trying to bug out.

1251
01:48:40.399 --> 01:48:44.760
He's trying to pretend he's mad.
He's got two chopsticks stuck up his

1252
01:48:44.840 --> 01:48:46.399
nose, you know, and he's
pretending to be mad. You know,

1253
01:48:46.439 --> 01:48:51.439
it's crazy. And I just love
the fact that The World War One is

1254
01:48:51.479 --> 01:48:58.560
the best series for me, and
where the captain the brigadiers aid is called

1255
01:48:58.680 --> 01:49:02.399
Darling. It's Captain Darling, come
in here with you, Darling, you

1256
01:49:02.439 --> 01:49:06.000
know, and Peter Stephen Fry as
the general. You know, it just

1257
01:49:06.640 --> 01:49:11.880
they're just wonderful, wonderfully written characters. I just adore them. I still

1258
01:49:11.880 --> 01:49:16.119
watch them now Sometimes I hope that
that was a Blackadder that I mentioned.

1259
01:49:16.119 --> 01:49:18.840
Maybe it was money Part. I
think it was Blackadder. Anyway, mac

1260
01:49:20.039 --> 01:49:25.640
Rusty Furman, why did he say
negative things about you to the regimental sergeant

1261
01:49:25.720 --> 01:49:32.920
major? Why did he have a
beef with you? Uh? I don't

1262
01:49:32.960 --> 01:49:36.760
know, I really genuinely don't know. Maybe it's just I'm so good looking.

1263
01:49:39.000 --> 01:49:44.039
It happens, you know, it
happens while the SAS. While with

1264
01:49:44.079 --> 01:49:46.119
the SAS, did you ever train
with your Australian, Kiwi, South African

1265
01:49:46.119 --> 01:49:50.439
and sas? And what did you
think of Delta Force? Yeah, I

1266
01:49:50.560 --> 01:49:56.159
trained with all of the above.
I thought they were all great, genuinely,

1267
01:49:56.319 --> 01:50:00.720
because if I didn't, I would
say so Delta they were. They

1268
01:50:00.760 --> 01:50:04.279
were wonderful. I mean what I
loved about Delta in the nineteen eighties was

1269
01:50:04.359 --> 01:50:09.720
the sniper weapons. That they had
the money and the equipment, and they

1270
01:50:09.720 --> 01:50:14.840
could hand fill their own match filled
ammunition, and they had silenced, high

1271
01:50:14.880 --> 01:50:18.439
velocity, well suppressed high velocity weapons. So it was I was like a

1272
01:50:18.520 --> 01:50:23.800
kid in a candy store playing with
those guys. But they are very different

1273
01:50:23.840 --> 01:50:28.920
sense of humor to us, because
the British soldier tends to be quite flippant

1274
01:50:29.000 --> 01:50:33.079
about an awful lot of things,
and the American Special Forces guy tends to

1275
01:50:33.079 --> 01:50:38.840
be very, very firm and set
in his ways and very very professional at

1276
01:50:38.840 --> 01:50:44.800
all times. And so in moments
of relaxation would we would fool around with

1277
01:50:45.560 --> 01:50:49.399
water pistols and do crazy things,
and so by the time we got to

1278
01:50:49.399 --> 01:50:54.239
do an exercise together, they would
think that maybe we weren't very professional.

1279
01:50:55.079 --> 01:51:00.640
And on one occasion working with them, they were playing the terrorists with hostages

1280
01:51:00.680 --> 01:51:08.119
in a vehicle which was a short
minivan, you know, with a sort

1281
01:51:08.159 --> 01:51:12.680
of twelve seat of van, and
they came down this road around the bend

1282
01:51:12.680 --> 01:51:16.399
and we blew the front wheels off
and emptied to vehicle in four seconds.

1283
01:51:17.439 --> 01:51:20.520
And so you know, we went
from being these crazy guys who can't take

1284
01:51:20.560 --> 01:51:26.439
anything seriously suddenly to do with the
job, and we could flip from being

1285
01:51:26.680 --> 01:51:32.359
crazy, flippant, rather ridiculous individuals
to be professionals in a moment. They

1286
01:51:32.479 --> 01:51:38.960
tended to be extraordinarily serious about their
work all the time, and good for

1287
01:51:38.960 --> 01:51:41.560
them for that as well. You
know, there was no right and wrong

1288
01:51:41.600 --> 01:51:48.159
in there was just a difference betweens. If a pea, any battalion got

1289
01:51:48.279 --> 01:51:51.880
into a fate with a Royal marine, who would win or would they just

1290
01:51:53.079 --> 01:51:57.560
challenge each other to a drinking contest? Yeah? I think there's an old

1291
01:51:57.640 --> 01:52:00.720
Chinese saying when two tigers meet,
they easily turn and walk the other way.

1292
01:52:01.239 --> 01:52:06.359
And yeah, you yeah, you'd
probably there's not to choose between two

1293
01:52:06.680 --> 01:52:14.399
whoever, whoever, whoever was most
sober would win, right right? And

1294
01:52:14.439 --> 01:52:17.920
then did you ever meet Peter mcleis, But I think you mentioned Peter was

1295
01:52:17.920 --> 01:52:24.079
the one who jumped during No,
there's a John McLeish, Oh, John

1296
01:52:24.119 --> 01:52:30.520
mcle apologize, and there's Peter macaleys
right right, Peter. Yeah, there's

1297
01:52:30.560 --> 01:52:35.880
two different individuals, Peter mcleis and
John McLeish and Peter mcaleish and John McAleese

1298
01:52:36.439 --> 01:52:43.079
and Peter. Yeah, he's he's
been a colleague and a friend over many

1299
01:52:43.119 --> 01:52:46.000
years. I haven't send him for
a long time, but extraordinary soldier,

1300
01:52:46.079 --> 01:52:54.079
extraordinary soldier. And then a couple
from our patron and sorry to keep you

1301
01:52:57.520 --> 01:53:01.760
so you the wolf and sheep's clothing
like you May mentioned the terrorists that escape

1302
01:53:01.800 --> 01:53:10.039
with the hostages during the embassy rescue. How is he identified? Were there

1303
01:53:10.159 --> 01:53:14.079
sas on the ground sorting them or
how is that? How is that wolf

1304
01:53:14.119 --> 01:53:19.800
and sheep's clothing identified? He was? Everybody got got taken outside. All

1305
01:53:19.840 --> 01:53:25.640
the hostages got taken outside and handcuffed
and put on floor for their own protection,

1306
01:53:25.760 --> 01:53:30.359
for our protection, safety and control. And sim Harris, who was

1307
01:53:30.399 --> 01:53:34.479
the BBC journalist who was rescued at
the time, was laid on the floor

1308
01:53:34.520 --> 01:53:38.720
handcuffed and he was looking at this
guy on the floor opposite and saying he's

1309
01:53:38.760 --> 01:53:45.039
a terrorist, He's a terrorist,
And myself and my colleague Tony we picked

1310
01:53:45.079 --> 01:53:48.880
him up and separated him from the
group that was fousy in a jat and

1311
01:53:48.960 --> 01:53:53.319
he did twenty eight years in prison
for his crime for being part of that

1312
01:53:53.359 --> 01:54:00.000
group. The aeron Mike, I'm
sure, answered, but did you train

1313
01:54:00.039 --> 01:54:03.119
in the States, and we mentioned
that you did. If so, were

1314
01:54:03.119 --> 01:54:08.119
there outside of like the issues that
you had, did you learn any valuable

1315
01:54:08.199 --> 01:54:14.960
lessons training in the States with the
Rangers and Delta Force and whatnot. I

1316
01:54:15.000 --> 01:54:17.600
don't think. I think a lot
of the time we went there to add

1317
01:54:17.640 --> 01:54:23.560
our experience to theirs. It was. It was cross training. I can't

1318
01:54:23.600 --> 01:54:31.880
remember anything particularly relevant to standard soldiering
that I learned. Ye I did.

1319
01:54:32.000 --> 01:54:39.600
I did enjoy myself a great deal
some of the most welcoming and generous people

1320
01:54:39.960 --> 01:54:44.560
that I've ever encountered anywhere in the
world. I do remember learning about how

1321
01:54:44.640 --> 01:54:49.720
to how to make my own ammunition
from the from the sniper group at Delta,

1322
01:54:49.840 --> 01:54:54.479
you know, that was something I'd
never known about, and how to

1323
01:54:55.319 --> 01:55:01.119
weigh and fill cartridges to make them
more accurate. And so I did learn

1324
01:55:01.199 --> 01:55:05.159
a lot about a lot about ammunition. Yeah, I think more than anything

1325
01:55:05.199 --> 01:55:09.239
else. Yeah. Yeah. I
mean if you come to the US,

1326
01:55:09.279 --> 01:55:12.640
so you don't learn about firearms,
why did you come to the US?

1327
01:55:13.479 --> 01:55:16.000
Yeah? Yeah, more guns than
any other country in the well combined.

1328
01:55:16.399 --> 01:55:21.439
Yes, Adam, What did you
think about the whole Bravo to Zero debacle?

1329
01:55:21.560 --> 01:55:28.840
It seemed poorly planned. Yeah.
Again, I'll refer you to my

1330
01:55:28.960 --> 01:55:32.079
last reply. I think to read
read read my Cash's book, The Real

1331
01:55:32.079 --> 01:55:39.279
Barado to Zero. I don't like
to go onto a public forum and being

1332
01:55:39.399 --> 01:55:43.840
negative about my colleagues from the past. Would it wouldn't be fair of me?

1333
01:55:44.039 --> 01:55:49.439
Yeah? And can you talk about
Operation Kimono. I don't know about

1334
01:55:49.479 --> 01:55:57.560
Operation Kimono. It was obviously after
my time and Bill Gage, Thanks Bill,

1335
01:55:57.600 --> 01:56:01.279
We love you man. Bill as
a former guest, can Robin talk

1336
01:56:01.319 --> 01:56:05.359
about the history of SAS selection,
How did the long rocking and the beacons

1337
01:56:05.359 --> 01:56:11.840
get started? The price That process
has had a major influence on Special Operations

1338
01:56:11.920 --> 01:56:15.640
selections, you know, especially here
in the US. And he's just curious

1339
01:56:15.640 --> 01:56:21.520
about how that got started. Yeah, I think the SAS tended to be

1340
01:56:21.640 --> 01:56:30.840
a a bit of a bandit group
down in Herefordshire, left over from the

1341
01:56:30.880 --> 01:56:33.439
Second World War. At the end
of the Second World War, the Special

1342
01:56:33.479 --> 01:56:41.800
Air Service was disbanded and a small
group of reservists called Territorials kept it going

1343
01:56:41.840 --> 01:56:45.880
as the Artist Rifles in London to
a small group of people wearing that same

1344
01:56:45.920 --> 01:56:55.600
cap badge. Then the Malayan Emergency
started with Communist rebels taken over British the

1345
01:56:55.600 --> 01:57:01.079
British colonies in Malaya, and the
Artist Rifles were asked to go there and

1346
01:57:01.239 --> 01:57:09.359
form a unit called the Malayan Scouts. The Malayan Scouts then were renamed to

1347
01:57:10.600 --> 01:57:17.000
the second two to SAS and they
formed a squadron and it got bigger,

1348
01:57:17.079 --> 01:57:23.680
and then they formed AMB Squadron and
it was returned to England after they didn't

1349
01:57:23.720 --> 01:57:27.159
return to England. After that they
went to Borneo and then they went from

1350
01:57:27.199 --> 01:57:32.000
Borneo to Aiden and they became a
regular, regular established regiment in the British

1351
01:57:32.079 --> 01:57:40.079
Army again. Their main jobs were
patrolling and reconstance and in jungle environments,

1352
01:57:40.079 --> 01:57:45.600
but they worked undercover for the first
time in Aiden. And then they returned

1353
01:57:45.640 --> 01:57:51.399
to England. They got given a
barracks in Herefordshire and they grew. They

1354
01:57:51.439 --> 01:58:01.439
absorbed C Squadron people from when Rhodesia
became Zimbabwe. They they absorbed G Squadron

1355
01:58:01.520 --> 01:58:10.439
which was the Guards Squadron which came
from the Guard's Independent Parachute Company which was

1356
01:58:10.479 --> 01:58:14.840
part of sixteen Para Brigade, and
then D Squadron was formed to ended up

1357
01:58:14.880 --> 01:58:17.960
with four squadrons, four Sabor squadrons, a total of about two hundred and

1358
01:58:18.000 --> 01:58:24.880
fifty Badge soldiers and it's never a
really increased from that over that time.

1359
01:58:25.279 --> 01:58:30.760
The selection process developed over the years
and was formalized in the early seventies and

1360
01:58:31.560 --> 01:58:39.439
became this one year program and became
a qualification with extra pay. Up to

1361
01:58:39.520 --> 01:58:43.720
that time, it was people could
just go down to Hereford and volunteer and

1362
01:58:44.239 --> 01:58:46.199
if the guys liked them, they
could join, And a lot of them

1363
01:58:46.239 --> 01:58:50.079
went did a tour there and then
went back to their old units and said,

1364
01:58:50.119 --> 01:58:54.159
well, I've done that, it
was fun. Now want my promotion

1365
01:58:54.279 --> 01:59:00.439
and to go back to my standard
career. So I think that is pretty

1366
01:59:00.479 --> 01:59:05.720
much the story. And the problem
that special forces in the UK have now

1367
01:59:05.840 --> 01:59:10.760
is that the British military has gone
down. From when I joined her,

1368
01:59:11.079 --> 01:59:15.279
there was one hundred and seventy five
thousand regular soldiers in the British Army and

1369
01:59:15.359 --> 01:59:19.760
now there's only sixty eight thousand,
and so you're trying to maintain that same

1370
01:59:19.840 --> 01:59:26.199
number of special forces from a seed
pool that is less than half the size,

1371
01:59:26.560 --> 01:59:30.800
and that makes it very very difficult. Yeah, and one last question

1372
01:59:30.840 --> 01:59:35.119
and we'll let you go from ACTA. Also, thank you. Did you

1373
01:59:35.159 --> 01:59:42.880
ever speak to Peter Ratcliffe? No, Peter was in a different squadron to

1374
01:59:42.960 --> 01:59:45.960
me. He became the Regimental Sergeant
major of the SAS after I left,

1375
01:59:46.439 --> 01:59:51.199
so I never knew him and I've
never spoken to him. So that's pretty

1376
01:59:51.239 --> 01:59:58.000
much that story. Robin, thank
you so much for spending a friday with

1377
01:59:58.119 --> 02:00:02.159
us, especially considering how late it
is for you. Well, guys,

1378
02:00:02.199 --> 02:00:06.159
if you want to know more about
me, go to Robin Horsall dot com.

1379
02:00:06.239 --> 02:00:10.680
You can get my books, and
if you don't want to get a

1380
02:00:10.760 --> 02:00:14.520
signed one, you can go to
Amazon and you put my name into Amazon

1381
02:00:14.560 --> 02:00:17.319
dot com and all my books.
I've got how many books. I've got

1382
02:00:17.399 --> 02:00:20.560
five books on Amazon. I've got
a new one coming out next week,

1383
02:00:20.800 --> 02:00:26.680
which is called Slavin Ukraine Who Dares
Shares, which is an observational diary about

1384
02:00:26.680 --> 02:00:30.000
the Ukraine War. That's uh,
it's down in the link, or it's

1385
02:00:30.039 --> 02:00:34.560
down in the description in the YouTube
channel. For those of you who are

1386
02:00:34.600 --> 02:00:42.239
listening, it's Robin Horsefall H O
R S F A L L dot com.

1387
02:00:42.279 --> 02:00:46.439
And you definitely want the signed editions, so go to his website,

1388
02:00:47.399 --> 02:00:53.199
check them out and buy all of
his books. Thanks day. We deeply

1389
02:00:53.239 --> 02:00:59.960
appreciate Thank you, Rabin, we
appreciate you. Next Friday. Next Friday,

1390
02:01:00.039 --> 02:01:02.439
we have somebody from the SBS who
was in the gwat Era actually on

1391
02:01:02.560 --> 02:01:06.439
so it's like a British two weeks, it's a UK two weeks. I

1392
02:01:06.439 --> 02:01:15.279
feel like I need some crumpets and
tea. There you go. Thank you,

1393
02:01:15.359 --> 02:01:18.079
Robin. We deeply appreciate it.
Thank you everybody, have a great night.