Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today
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SB and I The Team House with Your Hopes. Jack Murphy and David Park.
Hey guys, welcome to episode two hundred and sixty three of the Team
House. I'm Jack Murphy. Here with Dave Park and our guest on tonight's
show is Phil Campion. Phil is a former SAS operator and now he runs
Forces Radio. Has a big project going on there that we'll talk about.
He's done like seventy episodes so far. You guys will want to check it
out. But Phil, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us
this evening. Fans reven pleasure to be absolutely man. And I was saying,
it's you know, you and I worked previously, so I mean,
it's great to reconnect with you. And the last time we saw each other
in person was actually when we were both coming out of Syria. We had
had a beer and Kurdistan. So but as you said, it feels like
it was a lifetime ago. It does, but you know what, bringing
it up again now makes it feel like it was yesterday in a strange way.
You know, I just just go back and have another couple of pints.
Yeah, Phil, I'll stir it off the you know asking you you
know, the question we asked most of our guests is about sort of what
their upbringing was like and how that kind of took them towards military service.
I was wonder if you could tell us. You know how you grew up
and what that that journey was like for you. Okay, So I was
I was born in London. The rumor, the rumor goes that the doctor
slapped me mother, like do you know what I mean? Let's I got
adopted straight from birth. So I went to a family that had been vetted
supposedly to bring me up. But that family failed as well, and they
were quite violent and the and the my adopted father was extremely violent. I
mean he was. He would literally punch my head in As as young as
I can remember, I can remember violence, and I can remember being hurt
and punched. And you know, so I learned some really sort of like
early on in life. I learned some quite harsh lessons. And I always
say to people now, one of the lessons I learned very early in life
was that if you can stay calm whilst whilst all this stuff's going on around
you. And I say this because he used to sit on top of my
chest and beat me, and if I thrashed and if I sort of like
fought back, he'd hit me even more. But if I went limp and
I remained calm, it was almost like he lost interest and he would stop
hitting me. And that that is actually we'll probably talk about a couple of
instants later on in my life. Well that has actually had to come into
play where I thought, right, hang, I'll calm down. Right now,
I can think, now, i can see, now, I can
hear. Now I'm in control. And the other thing I learned from that
was it was a tiny wind because it was like I was controlling the situation
against this great, big man, and I was thinking to myself, well,
you know, it's not the greatest win in the world, but it
is a win. And so one of the things I've tried to bring with
me throughout my whole life is to always look for a positive wed as a
negative. And if you can do that, your life will be a lot
happier. So, yeah, going back to where we were, my childhood
was pretty horrific. My adopted parents split up. My behavior at school was
atrocious, and that's probably not impacted too much by my parents. I was
just a naughty kid. I was a naughty kid. I couldn't concentrate.
I didn't like the school subjects. I didn't like being in school. I
would much rather be out playing soccer or climbing trees or fighting with somebody.
So my behavior was appalling. So eventually, eventually I ended up in a
children's home about the age of twelve years old, where they controlled my schooling
and they controlled this, that and the other. But it was there that
I got exposed to predatory pedophiles. And it took me a long time in
my life to talk about that, and I held it in for years and
years and years. It all came out a few years ago when I was
deciding to write another book. Anyway, I was, you know, I
was groomed by these people to the point that it became very uncomfortable. And
when I think back at it now, when I joined the army, and
I did join the Army almost from the children's home as soon as I could,
I had I couldn't join at sixteen because I had some violent crime which
which stopped me from joining. But as soon as I was eighteen, I
joined up and it was actually the first time of my life I actually felt
safe. Wow, And that it's a bit strange, but you know,
when I went through that camp gate, I realized that nobody, especially not
these these adults who've been sort of like wrecking my life on the outside.
They can't they can get me being on the camp, you know. I
mean they didn't have an ID card, they couldn't. They couldn't come on
that camp. And I did actually feel safe. I felt safe once I
joined the well as I joined the forces. So yeah, but yeah,
the question was about my childhood, Yeah it was. It wasn't a great
childhood. I've drawn so many positive lessons from being a child that I think
it probably gave me the foundation to deal with with a lot of the stuff
that I've dealt with in my life since, you know, dealing with hardship
to me as a child has teed me up to be able to deal with
hardship as an adult. As it were, it sounds like the British military
was absolutely a much needed escape for you from a really terrible upbringing. Yeah.
Absolutely, And I think it would have been that or it would have
been prison, because yeah, the road I was going down, I was
going to be violent, I was going to be loud, I was going
to be poorly behaved, and the army sort of like put a put a
cocoon around that as well. The Army is sort of like they didn't completely
stop my behavior because I still far quite a bit of trouble when I was
in the army, but it kept on the straight and now long enough that
I didn't get a serious criminal record for violent violent crime. Did you when
when did you start thinking about the military, And did you go to the
military because you wanted to be in the military because you thought the military,
you know, it would be cool? Or did you go to the military
only because it was like a way out? No? Right, So I
went on one of the one of the schools I went to, we had
like an army cadet thing going on at CCF. They call it a Good
Wilds Cadet Force. And I had a little bit of exposure to the military
there. And anyway, when I left the children's on I left early and
it was to be part of this scheme called the YTF, which YTS,
which was the Youth Training Scheme. It was a government thing whereby you had
to you had to work for your for your dole money basically so you could
join this thing. And I got a job as a skiing instructor. Ridiculous,
it was like unheard of. I've got a job as a skiing instructor
on a dry slope and as a maintenance man on the skis and teaching skiing.
So I was there for two years and I thought, no, no,
I've definitely got a job. And at the end of it I went
in to see the boss and he was an ex admiral from the Navy,
and he looked at me and he said, we really posh man, and
he's a yeah and they speak his own body or plans in life campion,
and I said, well are we working here? When I said this is
this is I've got a nice joint. No no, no, no,
no, no no, you won't be staying here. You've got no qualifications
or not what we're looking for years. But now it's time you need to
go and find something on your own feet. And I was I looked at
him as if to say, Jesus, I didn't expect that coming, and
he looked at me and it really hard, and he went, have you
ever thought about joining the army? Well, I've just fought right there,
that's where I'm going. I'll think about it right now. And I went,
yes, yes, of course I have, I said, and looking
back on it, when I've been in the CCF, that had been the
only time I'd ever been happy in school, and that was because it was
you know, once you had that green uniform on, you were all the
same. And I thought, no, no, I enjoyed that. So
I said to him yes, and he literally he picked the phone straight up
and phoned the careers office and was like, I've got a young man here.
He'll be coming down this afternoon. You need to test him and then
get him out from nder my feet as because I can cheers boss. Oh
yeah, that was it. That literally I went to the Queer's office.
There was a big old Guards bloke behind the thing and he's like, at
first I'd only ever heard of really the parachute regiment and this big guards when
he said, like, Sonny, he says, what do you want to
joining army? Said, yes, what do you want to do? I
said, I want to be a paratrooper? Said you want to be a
guards when he said you want to you want to drill and salute the queen
and I don't I want to do that. Anyway, they did all the
tests on me, and it's at the end of those tests they say what
you're what you're sort of like clever enough to be basically and mine set infantry,
infantry, infantry, infantry, and that was it. It was then
I said to them, I asked them, I said, what's the quickest
I can be in? And they said, well, if you join your
county regiment, which was the Royal Hampshire Regiment. He said, if you
join them, he said, we can literally have you at the traps and
through the door in about six weeks time. I was like, right now
side the parachute regiment, I'm going there. Do you know what I mean?
I'll have that, I'll have some of that. So I literally six
weeks later, I've done all the tests. I've been up to a place
called Sutton Coalfield. I'd have my teeth pulled, I'd be I'd have me
nuts in someone's hand, and they've done the coffin tickle and you know all
the medical stuff. And before you knew, I was on the bus and
I was I was going off from training, you know what I mean?
And I was tough to pieces with it. Did are you are you tall?
I'm asking because he mentioned the Queen's Guarden and I wonder if there's there's
a hate thing. Oh no, no, no, no, I'm sort
of I don't know five ft ten in the fact, but I suppose,
you know, I mean, I think he just he was a guardsman and
couldn't see anybody else be anything but a guardsman. He was barking. He
was like, oh gods mean, no, no, no, I don't
want to be that. Yeah, okay, I don't stand outside the Queen's
house. That's not fun for me. You know, it doesn't seem fun
at all. Yeah. I mean a lot of prestige, Yeah, a
lot of pre It's it's sort of like being an honor guard. Yeah,
yeah, I mean to be fair, right, and I'm not going to
knock the guards. But together guards do have an infantry side to their life.
You know, they have a parachute. They have a parachute patoon as
well, so they do some tremendous soldiering. But my only image of guardsmen
at that time was them in their red tunics with their great big hats on,
stood outside of the park castle with people looking. And I thought,
no, no, that's not a bit of me. That's not you know,
I want to be running around. I want to be poking people like
you. I do not want to be stood outside like that. I want
to be in the field, covered in the shooting at things and rolling about
and maybe having a fight with someone like that's what I wanted. Yeah,
so tell us about you know, your inducked into into the military and the
infantry life. So yeah, I went. I went to I went to
Depot Litchfield, which had like I think there was eight different infantry battalions.
That was the adult training station for them. I started basic training and I
loved it everything to do with it, whether's square bashing, the making your
bed, I just loved it. I just loved being pitching in getting involved.
And I'll say this to young people now. I was fit then because
I just spent two years skiing and I was, you know, I was
I don't know what you're measuring over there, but I was. I was
light, do you know what I mean. I was sort of like eighty
kilos wet through like do you know what I mean? And that was light
then for me, do you know what I mean? So I was absolutely
I loved it, and I was fit as a butcher's dog as well,
do you know what I mean? I could run all day. So you
know, you'd get some lads there when they said, right, we're going
out to do some fitness today. They'd be dreading it. I'd absolutely love
it. I'd be right, Yeah, come on, let's go get your
kids on. Give me a log if you like. I don't care.
I loved it. So yeah, training was put And the other thing was
I was learning something every day and something that I enjoyed and could see the
value of. Do you know what I mean? When they were teaching me
about weapons, I thought, well, if I need my weapon one day,
I better learn this lesson. So I implied myself. Whereas you know,
in school, as you taught me about maths, I'd be like,
where the bloody hell am I going to use this rubbish? You know what
I mean? I don't need to know that multiplication and now am I going
to use that? But here I could actually see I'm going to pick this
weapon up. I'm going to learn how to use I'm gonna learn how to
trip it down, I'm going to learn how to clean it, and I'm
gonna learn everything I can. I'm going to be the best I can with
that weapon because one day it might save my life. Yeah, you know
what I mean? There was purpose for what I was doing. Do you
know what I mean, and I enjoyed it. And I remember, even
in the early days, I remember someone saying to me, if you find
a job that you enjoy, you'll never ever go to work. And if
this for me wasn't work. I enjoyed it. It was fun. I
loved it. You know, we were doing we were doing calls up all
the time, and I loved it. So it took about six months,
I suppose, before you were trained and we'll get off going to get sent
and deployed out to your battalion as it was. And in that time,
you've done everything you needed to do. Your fitness was up. You know,
all your shooting tests have been passed, You've been on a few exercises,
and I remember, I've got best improved recruit because you haven't passed out
parade at the end, and I've got best improved recruit. And I remember
it was only about a year ago. Somebody turned around and me and they
said, you do know, the best improved recroup means you was an absolute
idiot when you turned out. I love it. I love that, Phil
Well, I want want to continue, but I got to do it.
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That's it. Go check them out, appreciate it felt If you're gonna jump
back in after that, amazing live read to your own story. Okay,
a little bit of a boner just thinking about it, right, yeah,
yeah, right, yeah, So jumping in, where were we were?
You graduate? You're passing out ceremony best improved recruit of the first improved the
crew. I've told you what that means now. And I went to my
unit and they were based in Tidworth, which is in the south of England.
It wasn't too far from where you know, family and friends were.
If I had family and friends, what didn't But most people in that you
and it did have family from around. It was a Royal Hampshire regiment,
so it was a county regiment and we were based sort of on the border
of Hampshire as it were, So most lads there came from portsmand Fall,
Southampton and had family down that way and it was in those days there wasn't
loads going on, but they'd just come back from a tour of Northern Ireland,
so they'd just done six months in a place called South Armah, and
so it was a funny time to join because they were all sort of like
they'd all been bashing through the fields and they had a couple of small incidents
against the IRA, so they'd all sort of like cut their teeth on their
first major operation. And then I turn up and it's like, oh,
yeah, he'll do that, he'll do that, he'll do that. You
know, it was like, yeah, it was. It was a rumbling
experience because you go from sort of being the top of the pile. You
know, when you pass out from the depot, your platoon is the best
platoon and then you know, and then all of a sudden bumped you at
the bottom of the part again, and it's quite wake up cool. And
I remember the first ever operation I did was an operation the fiber Goade went
on strike and we got called up to man these old fire engines and go
down the whales and these fire engines and these fire engines were horrendous. They
were like they would muster about ten fifteen miles an hour, and that was
downhill. Do you know what I mean, empty You know what I mean,
stick stick, ten blokes on it, fill it up with water to
do about five miles an hour, and that was it at bust. So
we went down there and I remember we didn't get called out at all.
We didn't get We just saw like that every time we went to get called
out, the fire would go to miraculously beat us there and put the fire
out. So this one time we got called out and it was to a
horse that was on the mudflats in this little bay that they had, and
there was someone the phone up, so there's a horse in the mudflag can
we get? Can we get down there and get this horse? So we
all jump on the back of this fire engine. As two of us go
down there, we got overtaken by push bikes on the way down there,
like it was completely embarrassing. And we got there and I think all you
can see after this horse was its two nostrils that were still poking out the
water, but they were still moving slightly, and there's all these people going
go and get the horse, and we're like, what we supposed to do
with that? You know, we dragged the rope out, but by the
time we got the rope to the horse it had gone. It was there's
no horse there anymore. But it's completely gone under. So we're like,
right, we'll sack that. We went back to the old We went back
to the firrns and we're like that right, there's no horse, lads,
right, let's go. So we went back to finging. Anyway, I
tell you that story, not because you know it's any other reason. About
a month later we had this We had this parade through the streets of Winchester
and it was called a freedom parade and you get handled the freedom of the
town of Winchester. And Princess Diana was coming to this parade. All right,
So we've done this parade in uh in Hampshire. We've marched up and
down, and afterwards she said, look, I'd like to meet some of
the soldiers. So we've all been asked into the town hall and we stood
there and you're supposed to be at there, and the CEO brings her around
and if she stops you have to talk to her. So she stops by
me and oh, yeah, i'm private camp and hello, marm how are
you. Oh, tell us about your firefighting experience down in down in Wales,
She says, So I'll recount the story of the horse. I mean,
you can see the CEO stood behind him. He's boiling, his heads
gone red. The r s M stood there, he's steaming off as well.
They're living that. I've told her this story is. But anyway,
when I get back to camp, okay, I'll get CAMPO get up here.
So I get called in and I have to go to the guard and
yeah, I got, I got. But the CEO says to me,
he says, why did you tell her that story? I said, well,
what story? That said? The only story I had to stand there
and lives and a woman that was great. Yeah, we put out fire
as their front center. I said, well we didn't. I said,
we didn't do anything of the thought. I said, we went to rescue
a horse. We didn't even get that right. Yeah, And I didn't
like it, but there you go. That was that horse's name? Was
it? That horse's name wasn't Arttacks by any chance, was it? Yeah?
Read yeah, So that was it. So that was my first ever
operation in the army. That was all like, that was my and I
came back and I actually felt quite shuffed about that because at least I've been
out the door on something like right. And then it was about six months
later, I think we got deployed over to Northern Ireland for the first time
and I did a two year tour of Londonderry. So yeah, that was
where I really now you had to switch on. This wasn't you know.
This wasn't rolling about the hoses and putting fires out. This was this was
this was proper. This was like, you know, there was people over
there wanted you dead and were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to try and
help you get there, like you know what I mean. So yeah,
that was That was my first real operational experience with Northern Island. Well,
well, can you tell us what year that was and sort of like what
this situation was like, you know, politically or from your point of view
militarily, Okay, so listen, I'm gonna be honest with you, right.
I never massively it was nineteen eighty nine. By the way, I
never massively got into the politics of it, purely because I thought you needed
to take a balance perspective from both sides to understand what was going on.
So I read loads of books before I went out. There are loads of
books on both sides of how this fing had manifested itself and why there was
so much trouble out there, And in a nutshell, the thing had been
going on for years and years and years. You know. The English had
been over to Ireland. They've been you know, they've done some They've done
some poor things down in the South. I'm going to tell you right.
So it wasn't all as it might seem. So basically I understood when I
went out there on both sides of the of the of the argument, how
things worked. Like do you know what I mean? Now, I'm not
ever going to condone terrorism, because it's wrong and it is wrong, But
there was terrorists on both sides of the wire over there, and both of
them, from my perspective, would be treated with the same contempt. I
had no time for either of them, Like do you know what I mean,
There's there's no there's no beating around the bush for that, do you
know what I mean? But the same reason that you know the same thing,
if you supported either of these terrorist groups, well then I'm afraid I
lump you in on the same category, do you know what I mean?
So if you it's basically Protestant or nationalist. You know, if you if
you decided that you were going to back a Protestant terrorist organization, well I
don't want to know about you, the same as I don't want to know
about anybody who wants to back a Catholic organization terrorist organization either, do you
know what I mean? So? Yeah, I pretty I had a balance,
a pretty balanced understanding of what was going on out there, to the
point that I actually openly have said before that if I had been a young
man growing up on some of these estate so I might have leaned one way
or the other, do you know what I mean? I can't say that
I wouldn't have got involved in terrorism myself, because you know, when you
get pressed into a corner sometimes it is the only way. So, you
know, as wrong as it is, I've never got everything right in my
life, do you know what I mean? And I think if you'd have
come into my house in a state where I lived as a kid, and
you'd have you know, you'd have been sort of like an unwanted presence,
and you know, there'd have been enough peer group pressure from the rest of
the councilor state to get involved. I would have got involved, you know
what I mean, because that's that's almost a natural thing to do, isn't
it. So yeah, I probably didn't think the way is a lot of
soldiers do. Which was you know, obviously you know one sided. You
know, we're this side, you all that side? No, no,
no, no, no, no no. I tried to pick out every
level of the argument, and like I said, I have no time for
anybody who wants to try and settle arguments or scores by using means of terrorism.
I've got no time for it, do you know what I mean?
You can all have the red carpet treatment for me as far as I'm concerned,
you know what I mean. And I'm better off. This planet's better
off without you, to be honest, you know what I mean. Yeah,
And what was your you know, personal experience like over there patrolling or
doing essentially counterinsurgency work, right, Yeah, So we spent a lot of
time, a lot of time in the first couple of years I was there.
I was a in an normal rifle company, and we spent a lot
of time patrolling, reacting to incidents. There wasn't loads and loads of incidents.
I mean, in the time I was there, in two years,
I probably got blown up once and it was in the vicinity of a shooting
maybe twice, do you know what I mean? But I never actually got
shot at. So you know, it's not like you're back in the Afghanistans
where it's kinetic, it's full on, it's fighting all the time. I
mean, the IRA once said a very a very true thing to say.
They said, you know, the British soldiers have got to be have got
to be lucky all the time. We've only got to be lucky once,
do you know what I mean? And that was very true, you know
that was I think it was Martin McGinnis said that, and it was true.
You know, you had to you had to pound those streets, you
had to patrol them, you know, for long periods of time, all
around the clock, every day of the year, and you had to you
had to mind what you did, you know what I mean, Because if
you set patterns, if you presented yourself as a target, or if somebody
thought they could take you on, they would take you on, do you
know what I mean. So you had to you had to, you had
to write, you had to ride it the whole time you were there,
do you know what I mean? So I'm probably sure and you would never
notice figures on this for a fact, But you know, the way that
we did things and and the and the way that we switched on probably saved
our lives more than we will ever understand, you know what I mean.
So, I mean two years is a pretty long pump too. I mean,
so by the time you're out of there at ninety rotations, so you
did I mean you did six six I think you did something like six weeks
on guard, which was absolutely monotonous. It was brain crushing. It was
like you were in those towers, you were looking out, you were doing
rotations of four on, four off. So you do about six weeks of
that, and then you do what was called a water side tour, which
was like a patrolling tour but of a of a softer area, and then
you'd go into a city tour for six weeks, so they were sort of
like sitting and then you have you'd have about four or five weeks off,
so they were sort of like six week cycles. And the reason you only
got four or five weeks off because either end of that time off you did
a bit of train into top ups in case there was skill fade and all
that sort of stuff. So it was, yeah, it was. It
was full on. It was two years, and that two years went by
boom, you know what I mean, It was gone. It was it
was quick, and like I say, you spent a lot of time having
to switch on when you know they did. They were difficult times. And
I'd say when when something did happen, you could end up on the ground
for you know, forty eight hours without coming in, you know, and
that would be that would be tough. You know. I used to be
absolutely hanging out out there, do you know what I mean? It was
it was our work. And at the same time, I mean, you
are cutting your teeth. You're getting a lot of experience as a soldier,
presumably making what corporal and then sergeant No, right, so Jesus got I
probably made lance corporal body. End of that fact, I don't even think
I made lance corporal body under that tour. I probably onto my carda to
get the lance corporal, but didn't get my lance corbold. I don't think
by the end of that tour Now I wasn't getting promoted anytime soon, because
every time they gave me more than five minutes off, I wouldn't had a
fight in the pubb or something like that. I was an absolute nightmare.
I couldn't keep myself out of trouble for more than five minutes. I mean,
I did twenty one days in the Nick over there for a fight,
I'd add in a bar in Auburn Island itself. Do you know what I
mean? I've got twenty one days being a good friend of mine, Hammy,
who's actually he's actually involved with this with me. Now he's keeping friends.
You'll never amount to nothing. They said, that's what I said,
you know, oh yeah, yeah, we got twenty one days. And
I remember they locked it up with twenty one days. But locking locking up
in the military Nick, they tried to make an example of us, so
they gave us. They gave us like loads of fitness to do. We'd
pull this fire cart around the camp and we were always on display being beasted
like. I mean, I loved that. I was like, yeah,
I'm fine, I'm happy with that. I mean, I was fit as
a butcher's doglan. I really was proper fit so none of that bothered me
whatsoever. Do you know what I mean, I'll say, right, yeah,
just just keep it coming fellas, do you know what I mean?
I'm all right with that. Twenty one days in Nick, I'll come out.
I'll come out even fit them. What I went in, I thought
it was great. So what was what was the next step for you after
Northern Ireland back to the UK? I literally in the time I was in
so you did you did the odd exercise overseas? I mean we did Kenya.
That was quite good fun. We did Denmark, but we didn't really
do anything other than if you weren't in Northern Ireland, you were getting ready
to go to Northern Ireland. It was really was like that, you know,
it's you know, in the first ten years I was in the military,
I spent five of them in Northern Ireland, at least probably six,
So it was like it was just it was Northern Ireland all the time.
And I say, you did the odd overseas exercise Kenya, Kenya springs to
mind. That was I mean that it was fun, but you only did
you only did six or eight weeks out there, do you know what I
mean? It was Yeah, it was, it was, It wasn't.
It probably wasn't the best time to be there because because of this Northern Ireland
thing going on all the time. Do you know what I mean? If
you were lucky, you might get to Bosniar, you might get you know,
later on in sort of like that. Ten years I was in the
Green Army, but it wasn't. It wasn't the Iraq and Afghanistan era.
And even now, I mean, they're running around all over the world,
aren't they, do you know what I mean? But it's yeah, it
wasn't that when I was in it was it was Northern Ireland, or it
was Northern Ireland, really, do you know what I mean? And that
was one of the reasons I decided to go Special Forces, because you know,
in my time Golf War one, you know, I was in Northern
Ireland. During Golf War one, I sat watching all these all these all
these people going to war, and I sat, I sat in Northern Ireland
with me with me fun uppy obvious. Do you know what I mean?
I'm not. I don't want to I want to go to war, you
know. And then I read all the books that came out after Gold War
One, you know Andy mcnoun's Bravo to zero, Chris Ryan's the one that
got away, And I'm thinking out, I mean, these people are doing
some proper work here, yeah, And I'm still you know, I did
some decent jobs in Norburne Island. I did a couple of long aired jobs
over there where we used to hide in bushes and take photos and all that
sort of stuff. But it still wasn't the Special Forces. It wasn't.
It wasn't you know, doing what these other guys were doing, which was
you know, actually getting involved, getting your hands done. And I wuldn't
getting out and putting a few people flat pack and a few people like do
you know what I mean? So go ahead. So I just I wanted
to ask because nineteen eighty nine, like it's it's late. It's laid into
the troubles, right, It's it's been going on for decades now. And
you know, so you had like the IRA and the what UVF and uyah
and who and all of them, But then you also had like these loyal
to loyalist groups. It's a UVF loyalist, so you've got the okay,
yeah, depends. There was loads and them on the other side as well,
do you know what I mean? Yeah, and then you also had
like the like anarchists, like you know, just people coming in to stir
shit up. I guess how like what was your rule? What was when
you went over there? You know? I think that the image, at
least in American minds, if we're not really well read on that on that
era, it's like, Okay, you're going over there to stop the ra
but are you are you basically trying to keep peace amongst them all? Was?
It was very much a peacekeeping thing. There was no you weren't going
over there to go after the IRA. You were going over there to keep
two communities at bay and from each other's throats basically. And don't forget when
they first went out there, when they very very first went out there there
what was called the honeymoon period, where the Catholic community absolutely way welcomed the
troops because you know, they were keeping they were keeping the other side at
babe, you know, and they were actually sort of like, right,
let something's going to get done. Well, nothing did get done, and
things turned sour and it came the other way. So, yeah, it
was very much a peacekeeping thing. It was very much, you know,
patrolling the streets, trying to avoid normal folks from getting sucked into something that
they didn't want to be sucked into it. I'll tell you for now.
You know, if you walked around those estates, you would probably find you
know, say, for instance, some of the women might might spit at
you or you know, call you a name or something like that. But
they would have to do that because if they were seen doing anything else once
you weren't there, somebody'd be pulling her air, setting her on fire,
beating her up, do you know what I mean? So that you knew,
you knew what the score was deep down, you knew who the gumbags
were, you knew where they lived. You just weren't allowed to do anything
about them unless you caught the red hand. And that was always a difficult
bit for us, catching the red handed. But you know, when they
went back I did chuckle because when they went back to all these historical cases
and they've tried to do people who've shot people and all that sort of stuff,
and they said, well, you know, we're going to arrest all
these people for historical crimes. In essence, you could arrest me for attempted
murder because I did try me hard this I just never got nobody. So
Phil, tell us about uh, you know, you mentioned how special Forces
came into your mind. Talk to us about like when you made that decision
to go to selection and how that all came about. Okay, so right,
it is a bit of a story. Is everything is with me?
So I've seen the Special Forces. They had company on a trip we did
to Kenya, so they've been to the jungle with us and they ran there,
the two of them there ran a small school and that was when I
first saw them cutting about different weapons, different gear, and I thought,
yeah, that's a that's a bit of meter is. And then we saw
them in Northern Ireland. So the job I was doing was called cop close
Observation batoons and they were trained by used to have a couple of sas guys
on the course training you to do that. And they were really good guys
and you can see they knew what they were doing and they you know,
they they had all the gear, they had long hair, they just you
know, they just reeked of being professional. And you looked at them and
you thought, I want to be like that, do you know? What
I mean. Anyway, I did Peak Company. I've done my command of
course, and I did PEA Company, which is the Parachute Regiment's course.
And I went behind my commanding officers back and I asked the brigade commander if
I could join Free Para, who were based in Dover. Now that's sort
of like unheard of, you don't I'm supposed to ask my platoon sergeant Loans,
do you know what I mean? And I've gone completely above everybody in
my unit and gone to the brigade commander, a guy called Johnny Holmes,
Brigadier Johnny Holmes. Well. I picked up the phone to Johnny when I
was on duty one day and I said, Johnny, can I go to
the Well? I didn't say, Johnny. I said, Sir, it's
Lance Corporal Champion here from the from the second Battalion, the Princess of Wales's
Royal Regiment, and I'd like to join the Parachute Regiment. And he's sort
of like he got he said what I went. He went, last corporal,
last corps. Who was it the Champion? I don't want to do
Yes, yes, yes, yes, I can sort that out with and
he hung up and about two seconds later, as I'm walking back to the
guard room, I can hear Campion, Champion, Champion, Kere Campion.
I've got it's the RSM. He's the brigade Commander's got off the phone to
me. He must have gone, I'm cheeky. Its just thhrowed me up.
I funded up last he stuck it down at the door on Ara.
Sam Campion's causing trouble with the brigade commander. I'm in the ship now,
I'm proper in the ship. I'll get come back. They are as Sam
yelling at me. The Adjudant's yelling at me, and they go, right,
you've got to go in and see the CEO, and I'll go in
to see the commanding office. And he starts yelling at me, and I
just I did something I've never done before. I just lost it a little
bit with rank and I told him to f off. I was like,
no, not having an f off. I'm doing I'm doing that. That's
what I want to do. And he stood there and he looked at me
and he went Lance, Corporal Camps, you have just reached your ceiling.
In an afternoon, you'll be going no further in your career here, so
I suggest you go somewhere else. Anyway, At this point there was a
guy called Major Henry Egan, and Major hen Reagan was the regiment's to ic.
He's screaming campion, getting here, getting in. Now I knew he
was a half decent blokey dump pea company, had his wings, nice geezer,
and I get see and he shuts the door behind me and he goes.
He goes camp he and he goes, you've really messed up. At
this time he goes. He goes, You've probably got two options. I
said, what today, then, sir, he says, well, he
says, civilian, civilian street. He said you could get out, he
said, because you're not going to get any grace around here anymore. He
said you could try a special Forces selection, he said, And I think
you'd be suited to special Forces selection. He says, yeah, fit.
You know you obviously like you know, you're not scared of a bit of
work. He says, I ever go at that. Come out of there
all right, went down, spoke to my platoon sergeant, put my paperwork
in. Can I do special Forces selection? He sort of like laughed at
me, because no one had ever seen me in that light before really,
So he's gone yet, all right or whatever, put the paperworking, and
that's gone to the boss. That's gone to the co CEO said no,
I'm not letting him go. I'm like, why not? He said,
what I wanted to do. I wanted to do two years in Northern Ireland.
There's one of my cop platoon commands for patrol commanders, so we went
to Northern Ireland. Sure enough, I was a cop patrol commander. Halfway
through that there was a ceasefire and I got the message from the commanding officer,
if you can get yourself ready, you can go on the next selection.
And that was when I got let go, and I did. I
did get on the next selection, like you know, so yeah, but
it was People always choke. People always say to me, what was the
hardest part of selection? And it's very tongue in cheek, but I always
say getting on it was the hardest part. I mean, because once I
was on it again, I loved it. Like you know what I mean,
It's extremely hard. It's a tough course and I'm sure we'll talk about
it in a minute, but actually getting on it took me nearly two years
deciding I wanted to go. I got messed about all over the place people
you know, this, that and the other, and before I know,
you know, it took a long time getting on it. Why was there
a specific reason you called your brigade commander instead of going like up your chain
of command, Like did you think they would turn you down? Or did
you just kind of huh? Right? So I knew that Johnny Holmes loved
the parachute Regiment because we were in the Airborne Brigade and we weren't an airborne
battalion. So bearing in mind, I just met him on a course he'd
come to see as he knew who I was, I thought, I'll try
me luck. I thought he loves the parachute Regiment that much. If he
thinks I'm sort of like one of the transfer across, he might just go
for it, you know what I mean? How wrong could I have been?
Like he must have just looked down his photos if to go. I
can't believe this lunatic you know in the American military would say a good initiative,
poor judgment, right right, absolutely, yeah, yah yah, yeah,
So yeah, there's been plenty of that in my life. I can
tell you that, you know, right, right, So so you get
that, you get the selection. You said you actually kind of enjoyed it
like it was soldiering stuff. Yeah, well I'll say that. So the
first four weeks of selection is known as the hills phase, and that is
extremely arduous. It's on the hills. Every day, your pack gets progressively
larger, the distances get longer, and before you know it, you're on
what's called test week, and it's a it's a tough week. And by
then you've probably got no skin left on your heels, you'll have ownails missing,
You'll you have lost a bit of weight. You'll be feeling it by
the end, you know what I mean. So it's a tough That first
four weeks is tough, and they don't care if you fail. They they
in fact, they actually encourage you to fail, do you know what I
mean? They don't want That's called aptitude, and it's aptitude to see if
you're good enough to go to the jungle and if you've got the sort of
material that will keep you going in the jungle. Do you know what I
mean? Because it's going to get tougher in the jungle and so aptitude is
designed. They don't even know your name by the end of aptitude. Really,
they just want to They just want to know how many how many bonds
they've got on the coach going to the airport to take to brune That's it.
They're not interested in other than that, you know what I mean,
They really don't care. So I obviously you made it through that portion.
And then you guys go under your jungle fares. That's right. Yet,
so you got you move on. You go back to Hereford for a couple
of weeks, which is to learn a few bits and pieces, so you've
not got to learn it all under the canopy. It's also to give your
body a chance to recuperate a little bit from the hills. So you know,
I spent any spare time I had, I've spent stuff in pizzas into
my face and eating, do you know what I mean, Because I'd lost
so much weight, I was emaciated. So yeah, I just basically ate
and monched and trained again. And like I say, by the end of
up two weeks we deployed over the Bruneye and then you sort of like you
have another couple of weeks there where you're climatize to the heat because it's proper
hot over in Brunei. And then you go under the canopy and then you
start your jungle training proper and it's about six weeks. It's probably split into
two phases, the first phases where you learn all the stuff, the second
phases where they test that you've taken it in. So it's I always say
about it, it's monkey, see, monkey do, and if monkey stops
doing, monkey goes home. And that's it. That's what selection is.
Do you know what I mean. It's tough, it's hard. The jungle
is an environment where it rains relentlessly two or three times a day. You're
gonna get wet, You're gonna get sticky, you're gonna get tired. If
you fought the hills in Wales were bad, but the hills in the jungle
are ten times worse. They're steeper, they're longer, they're harder. You've
got a canopy that restricts your sight, your movement. You've got creepy crawlies
that want your dead. You've got bushes and sticky out things out of the
floor that want your dead. The staff probably want your dead. In truth,
as well, you know what I mean. So everything wants to dead
to the jungle. You've got the sword of damacles which hangs over your head
for the whole time. You can be sacked at any point and you don't
know when people are watching it. So you you you'll get found out in
the jungle if you if you try and bluffet, if you try and sort
of like cut corners, if you do something you shouldn't be doing, you
will get caught in the jungle and you will get found out and you will
get sent off the course. So with that in mind, you are under
the You are under the hammer from the time you go in there to the
time you get out. There's no relentless. It's relentless. It's it's it's
it's slog, it's hard work, it's graph But on the plus side of
things, you're now using proper gear. You now got all the tools to
do the job. You're being taught cool stuff, you be doing cool things.
You're doing what you're set out to do in your military career. You're
learning everything you need to know to become one of these people that you've seen
kicking around and you think, right, I want to be like these people,
do you know what I mean? And that's that's a real factor in
it for me, because you know, you can think yourself, if I
failed this course, I'm going back to where I was. If I passed
this course, I'm going to be one of them, you know what I
mean? And I wanted to be one of them. And so you know
the fact that I also enjoyed what I was doing over over wrote the It's
sort of like canceled out the hardship. Yeah, you're worrying how to do
special operations? Yeah, so you know, Yes, it's hard, and
it's going to get harder when you get out of there and do it for
real because you know there's going to be an enemy on top of that.
It is going to want your dad properly, do you know what I mean?
So you know, I just I just thoroughly enjoyed the jungle. You
know, we learned, We learned everything we needed to know, We were
shown everything properly, We rehearsed everything, we practiced everything. The final exercise
was tough. It was it was hard, it was it was unrelenting,
but it was brilliant, it really was. And I remember when I finished
finally finished in the jungle. You know, we got picked up on a
on a little sort of belheuey helicopter, sat on the skids. The low
master passed me a can of beer and he's and I remember sitting there thinking,
well, I've done me best. It's hard a pass will fail from
now, but you know, at least I've made it this far. I
was. I was really proper tough for myself, like, do you know
what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I mean it is a big accomplishment.
And and see how you like feel proud of yourself after getting that far.
And so what was the next phase after jungle training? Okay, so
you go back, you do a bit of heavy weapons training. You learn
some of the bigger weapons, you know, the fifty cows, and probably
some of the gear that you haven't touched before. Have a look at some
of the vehicles and that that you might be using. Do a bit of
training on those. That's really another sort of like to recoup your body a
bit, because by the time you come out of the jungle again, like
when you came out of the trees, I had thorns coming out of my
hands for weeks afterwards, you know what I mean? It starts off with
a little pimple, then you squeeze and then sort of like a half inch
fawn comes out of your finger and your ass. It's just horrendous in it,
do you know what I mean? So there was a bit of recovery
time there. We then you don't go on your seer training. Now,
the seer training I can't really talk too much about because that's obviously one of
the things that is, you know, you could potentially be giving stuff away
on. But the seer training I really enjoyed that. You started off he
did some survival training, so you had all sorts of stuff going on,
learning about the principles of survival, fire, water, shelter, all that
sort of stuff, all the good stuff, navigation, all the bits and
pieces. I really enjoyed that. And then you had a few people came
in. We had some fighter pilot, John Nickel came in. He'd been
behind enemy lines and taken down when his when his when his airframe came out
of sky. So he talked to us about conduct after capture and all that
sort of stuff. So we had some really cool visitors in. Uh we
met them, we spoke to them, and then you get taken from there
and you basically you end up you end up going on the run and you
know, you get captured eventually and you get in harrogated for thirty six hours
something like that, and then that's you know, you come to the end
of that phase, and again it's a parce will fail at the end of
that. So, yeah, I can't go into the pacifics of that.
But yeah, again it's tough. It's tough, and a lot of guys
psychologically gave up on that point. They just had enough. Just I'm not
doing this anymore, do you know what I mean? I remember two or
three guys just sat there going, no, I've had enough. I can't
do this. And my attitude was the whole time I was there, I
thought to myselves, Yeah, this is tough, but it's not real.
It's not real. You might be interrogating, you might be doing all sorts
of stuff to me, but at the end of the day, you're not
going to make me pregnant and you're not going to kill me. So actually,
with those two things out of the equosure, I don't care, you
know what I mean, I can take the rest. I've seen it.
I've had it in the kid zones. Mate, don't worry about that,
you know what I mean. I don't care. There's nothing you can do
to me. You can have me naked. I don't care, do you
know what I mean? Crack on, do your worst. And so what
comes after after Syra? Do you start doing like the counter terrorism portion?
No? You do you you do your jumps course, so if you haven't
done you, I was already jumped trained on the round parachutes. And then
you do a thing called a twenty two foot steerable, which is another round
parachute. I'll tell you a story about that in a second. And then
you do your squares. You do your squares, so you don't do hayho,
but you do that. You do the hop and pop squares, you
do the ones that open as you come out of the static lines. Ye.
So, but I remember, so you got you got a week off
if you've done your if you've done your round parachute, so I obviously took
that week off. You've got an extra weekend off if you'd done the twenty
two foot steerables. Now I thought to myself, well, look it's a
round shoot. How difference can it be? So when they come around.
I went, yeah, I've done the twenty two foot steerable. On the
Monday morning, they says, right, go down to go down to the
Brise Norton and your shoots were on the floor. These twenty two foot steerable
shoots were on the floor and we were gonna do what we're gonna do a
water jump. We were jumping in the water off Brown to the island and
I remember getting down there thinking, oh, I didn't think it was gonna
get tested on this, like you know what I mean, and think it
can't be that hard. So I've got down I've seen the shoot on the
floor and I'm like, what is that? It was totally different than anything
I've ever seen before the class that went on. So I'm thinking of myself,
how am I going to get away with this because it's going to be
so obvious. I've never jumped this before and they're going to realize I just
took the weekend off and so I'm looking at this thing and I think the
brains my brain went, I'll tell you what lie. So I've looked at
the loading and I've got mate, I said at the weekend, I said
my shoulder, I said you wouldn't do me a favorite we put that shoot
on, would you? Oh? Of course I will son, he says,
So he picks he puts it on for me. So now that's that's
part of the battle done. I put at least I've got it on.
So that's at least I've got it on. I'm there, I'm in the
line. I ends up number two in the stack, so I think,
well, I've got one bloke in front of me. I'll just watch what
he does and then i'll pubb you what he does. I picked myself right.
So as he gets into the sky, I'm expecting the side doors to
open because we're on rounds. The back door comes down, so I'm thinking
I've never jumped out the back. We've got no clue what is going on.
So I think, right, I can't say anything to anybody. All
my mates know what I've done. All the blokes stood around me, going,
you twat, now you've been caught out. Yeah. They're laughing at
me, and they go, you're idiot. You know what I mean.
I'm going, Oh, I'm going I don't know what to do. I'm
looking at me making to go, tell me, what have I got to
do, and he's looking at me and go, mate, you want the
red light guns on? Shuffled out at the back of the plane, and
I think, right, I've got one guy in front of me to see
what he does, and I'm just going to copy what he does. So
he jumps out in his lovely sort of like position and I try to emulate
it. But I really pushed myself into Instead of sort of up flopping into
the slip stream, I pushed myself into it. I end up spinning around.
I go all over the place. When I look up in the sky,
right, I feel my parachute tug a little bit right, and I
look up and it's got a hole in it, right, And I'm like
no, no, So I start screaming on thats got hold of it.
We don't only jump from four hundermeters because it was a wet drop and they
don't give you a reserve. And I'm looking I'm screaming now. I didn't
realize that these twenty two steerables have all the holes in him, because that's
how you steer the bloody things? Does that mean? Right? Right?
Screaming at the shoot, thinking I'm going to die, the guys are waiting
for us in boats at the bottom of his parachute jump instructures, thinking there's
one that lied. I hit the water. I managed to slow it down.
So you're supposed to turn them in the wind, but I don't know
how to do that obviously. So I've hit the water doing a tremendous speed.
I've bound, I've come through my shoe. I've landed in the middle
of my shoot. The thing's sinking. I've got my knife out. I'm
cutting it to ribbons to get out of it. Like you know what I
mean? What imeem. It's like looking at at me and goes you haven't
got a clue what you're doing. I went, I I went. I
just didn't listen properly. I'm sorry. I didn't listen properly, and I
got away with it. Yeah, I've got a way of it. You're
a fucking wild man, Phil. So he done the squares. Of course,
after that time, done past parachuting, put the bed from it.
Then you did two weeks counter terrorism where you put all the black gear on,
dangle off ropes, underhad helicopters, jumped through windows ki. Yeah,
all that sort of stuff, all the gear, all the club all the
stuff you've seen on the Iranian embassy. You know this is now Now you're
in dreamtown, like now you go after that, you get bad. So
I remember you no big ceremony. There was what probably ten of us left
at the end of it from three hundred and fifty odd and were in the
regimental theater and the CEO comes in, and I remember he gave us this
speech about going. Some of you have only just passed this by the skin
of your teeth, so don't think that you're any good here, and don't
fix yourself. That's me, That's definitely mean, that's definitely me. He's
going anyway, he says, And he walked past us. He literally at
our berries in a pile in his hand and he literally like through it you
flicked at you like a frisbee and walked out, And I remember thinking to
himself, Yeah, that was worth it. They don't have a ceremony where
you guys doned the brat and everything and no, no, he tells you.
He tells you how close to failure you've been, and gives you a
massive speech about your nothing around here until you've cut your teeth properly, and
how he goes and it's like you you are full on back down to earth
with an absolute splash. Right. I remember I hadn't had time, we
had none of us had shaped our berries, so I didn't want to put
it on the head because it looked like a helipad, like you know what
I mean, And so we sort of like sloped off back to the block.
I actually ran back over and put my mom on the head because it
looks so poor. So I literally I ran a fuck behind the block and
ran down the back of the block and went into the block through the backway
so I didn't have to get seen by anybodyho about me bury on and then
obviously went and shaped it up before we had done its parade. But yeah,
yeah, it was a completely no ceremony, literally, not even a
well done, not even a well done you know. I think they gave
you the five minute thing. You had to sign a thing to say that
you were now going to subscribe to the Regimental Association charity and all that sort
of stuff and buy your raffle tickets every year, and then you literally you
literally were sort of told yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're lucky.
You're lucky to still be here. Right now, cracking on you idiots,
you know what I mean, You've got you've got to go and start
earning and living now. I mean, that was it, and that was
it, And I went to the squadron at a time where we were going
straight onto the counter terrorism team, so I literally sort of like went straight
into Black Kit and they were just starting their training for the handover. So
I went straight to the squadron and we were training to take over the counter
terrorism team. And that's like that that that mission kind of like rotates between
the squadrons, right. Yeah, I'm not sure what they do now,
because obviously things have changed there, especially with the amount of work that's been
going on on all the stuff that they do now, which of course I'm
not privy to, but in those days, you were you were like a
standby squadron, a counter terrorism squadron, and a training and reserve type squadron
thing was, and that you'll rotated around these things. I kind of yeah,
you're rotated round and so you all got a fair sort of like shout
to each one. So you spent sort of like six months to a year
on each one, and the handovers were all overlapped, so that you could
get your training and then all that. So yeah, it was you were
always busy. And if you weren't, if you weren't on an operation,
or if you weren't training, you were sent away to do various courses.
You know, your bodyguarding course. I've got spent sent to Spain to learn
Spanish, and yeah, it's just yeah, it's just one thing after another
there. So you were extremely busy, do you know what I mean.
And we were in and out of Bosniar all the time. You know,
it was a few bits and pieces beginning to start elsewhere in the world.
So yeah, we were quite busy. And you know, yeah, so
you know, Sierra Leone was going on, and you know, obviously I've
spoke openly about doing a large ostage rescue job there, which was probably the
pinnacle of what I did at the time I was in Hereford. So yeah,
it was. It was an interesting time to be there. Not probably
as kinetic as what guys had it for the for the years after I left,
but certainly, you know, we got our hands dirty and we went
out the door plenty enough to well I'll ask you about all of that for
sure, Phil, But what was it like as a as a young buck.
You know, this is before you were a big Phil. You were
a like skinny Phil. Back back in those days, there was nothing big
about me, appartly showing up showing up at your squadron meeting, your you
know, team sergeant or troop sergeant. I mean, what what was that?
What was that experience? Like? I remember I went to what you
call the interest room and there were loads of guys and they just looked they
all looked older to me, and I was like, wow, this is
like there's like there's like old men here, you know what I mean.
I'm like, this is and I remember my troops I won't say his name
because he probably wouldn't thank me for it. When my troops South sergeant had
basically been in the golf Gulf War one, he'd done a little bit,
and he's just sort of like, right, what's your name? Blah blah
blah. We went back, we sat down, he read us sort of
like not the Riot Act, but he said, you know, this is
what's expected of your you know, expected to pray at all times. You
know you've got to do this, You've got to do that, you know,
make sure you read your orders, make sure you carry your page when
you're on a page, all that sort of stuff, and then it was
very much just fitting in with the course timing. So we were straight onto
a course and you know, the rest of the lads were good. There
was a couple of sort of like older lads there. I remember there's one
in particularly going. I won't say his name, but he was a bit
older and he looked down on the young lads, do you know what I
mean. So you had to you had to you almost have to prove yourself
a little bit to him, let alone haven't passed selection. So there was
a little bit of that, but not too much. Most most guys in
the squadron, it was very relaxed. It was very handshaky, very you
know, welcome to the squadron. Let's get on with this, Let's get
it done, you know what I mean. Because to be fair, you've
put a lot of effort into selection, so you know, you've earned your
right to be there. You've now got the you know, just got to
fit in and get on with it, like you know what I mean,
did you uh, you know, did you go back to your old unit
after you passed selection to dancing ye or something. Yeah, I did a
I ran a jungle school or a bush school for them in Botswana, which
was quite funny. That's another story altogether. But the very first time I
went back I found out because I had to go back to get my kit.
They had a load of kit of mine and I had to give them
a load of kit of theirs back and all that sort of stuff. And
I remember there was a guy there was a sart made. It was an
absolute bully and he had been running a sweepstake on what they had a failed
selection? Do you know what I mean? Anybody hadn't failed selection. I
was going back and I had to go and see him, and I remember
walking in to see him when he sort of stood up and went well done,
and I was like, well done for what? And I didn't call
him sir. And he went to say, you can call me sir if
you like, and I was like, look at him as if to go,
no, I'm not going to call you sir either, So is your
move? So he got the right hump. He went, oh your gears
over there, I want cheers, mate, and I walked off and deliberately
being rude to him because I hated him, right, so I went over
and got me again. And I shouldn't have done it, really was.
It was against the ethos. Really it was a bit. It was a
bit a bit much, but I didn't like the bloke, he didn't like
me, and I thought, I'm going to put it over you. So
anyway, I remember, I remember walking out of his office and there was
a there was a female clerk in the office and she laughed, and I
remember he absolutely tore a strip off of her so where he couldn't have a
go at me, he had to go. And I actually found her later
on and I apologized to her because she basically got the wroth of of me
being a twap to that oak, you know, I mean, so yeah,
but uh yeah, I mean, my my genuine friends were really tough
for me. And actually the commanding officer wrote me a handwritten note letter sent
to my house saying, you know, we might not have always seen eye
to eye, but he respected what I'd done. And you know, actually
he was one of the ones that thought that I would pass if I went,
and he didn't want to lose me. So I've got a really nice
letter of the command and that was a stand up thing. Yeah, do
you know what? Right, he left he left the military a lot a
lot longer after me. He left as a major general or something. So
he actually left as a general and I found out he was leaving, and
I sent him a I sent him a handwritten letter back to basically say to
him, you know, we might not have seen eye to eye, but
actually, you know, i'd have been stood up with the rest of them
and march at camp, do you know what I mean? And I'd have
thrown a salute up because you actually weren't a bad boss, you know what
I mean. So yeah, yeah, the thing was reciprocated. But yeah,
he was stand up for doing that because he could have just been like
the others and written yeah he didn't know. So yeah, that was nice.
So so let's hear about like getting upper or in the unit. You
said you were going back and forth to the Balkans. Yeah, so we
did quite a few things over in the Balkans, and it was I mean,
I can't go into the details and specifics of a lot of this again
because a lot of it's not in the public domain, but basically we were
going after they're looking, looking and arresting and that these persons wanted and dieted
for piflicks. We used to call wanted and dieted for war crimes, so
war criminals. So that was a that was a job that I thought was
a really cool job like that, I mean, because we were going over
there. Guys were doing the surveillance, they were teeing these things up,
and we were literally going over there. Well you might you might spend a
few days under cover, like you know what I mean, but then you'd
break cover. You you snatch these people in an amazing array of different and
I wish I could tell you all the different ways we did it, but
we did some amazing stuff there. So we would grabbing these fellas and we
would take them to to to a drop off. The Americans had pick them
up and they'd be taken off to the Hague and you know, they stand
trial for for whatever it was they'd done. And some of these people have
done some heenus stuff, you know, they you know, they were guilty
of some really a trust some real atrosities. So we were ye know,
I was glad to be helping clean the place up load, you know what
I mean. I thought it was a really worthwhile good tasking, do you
know what I mean? So you know, they might not be in the
longest, they might not have always you know, a couple of them ended
up in guns fire as being shot and that sort of stuff. But nine
times out of ten we were at swift and we just have them out wherever
they were and gone before they even realized what was going on, like you
know what I mean. So, yeah, it was cool, it was
good, and it was good we had. What else did we have?
We had that I can talk about the stance that plane that came from Afghanistan
that time I was on that job. That was quite a funny job,
that was. Although it was resolved peacefully, it was you know, we
went we went through the whole thing with it, you know what I mean,
as if you know, for all intents and purposes, if they had
if it had gone noisey, we would have we would have actually you know,
got amongst that and absolutely beaaten them to pieces. Like you know,
I mean, well, what what was that incident? What happened? Right?
So basically asylum seekers jumped on a plane from Afghanistan hijacked it. There's
two of two of three of the sort of like main guys acted as the
hijackers. They flew it. I think they flew it to Russia. Originally
Russia didn't want it, so they flew it to Germany. Germany didn't want
it, so they fueled it up in the UK so we'll have it.
So it flew over to the UK, landed at Stanstad Airport and basically negotiations
went on to get to get their hostages out because you know, we believe
there was hostages on there. It turns out they're all asylum seekers. But
it sat on the pan for quite a few days. You know, we
went out, we did wrekis on it. We had to refuel it,
not refuel it, but we had to. We had to. We had
to put the food out for them and all that sort of stuff. Had
the snipers to play. It was a good little job, it was all
right. It was. It gave us a good insight into the counter terrorism
role for real, Like you know what I mean. It was like,
you know, you've done plenty of exercises, but this was now, this
was real. This was there was a plane, it had terrorists on it
and it had hostages in the BA. Do you know what I mean?
And it was that on our patch with us working it, do you know
what I mean? So yeah, but that sort of thing. It was
good like you and it was one of those deals where you know, like
Operation Nimrode like you were probably like jucked up, ready to go. Oh
mate, mate, I was. I was so I couldn't sleep. I
was wired up. This is on, And I had a really good job.
So I was going to be basically placing the charge over the front door,
and I've managed to wangle it to say, look, let me go
in at least second, so you've got because I was the method of entry
specialists on that job. So basically there was two of us there. There
was me and another lad, and we teed it up so that basically we
got into that plane proper early. So if the cockpit was like we could
we've been the ones that did the cockpit door as well. So yeah,
we were proper jacked up. I'm like, yeah, this is happening,
this is on, Like on Juan, I don't thinking to myself. I'd
even gone out and done one of the food drops and one of the terrorists
had come down the stairs and taken the food box off me. So I've
been face to face with a terrorist, you know, with a gun in
his hand for the first time in life, and I'm there face to face
giving him his food, and I'm looking at him in the eye, going
do it, well, have it, because I'm going to be on that
plane quicker than you can get down and aren't going to drop you like a
like a bad abbit's under you know what I mean. And we're coming on.
Yeah. It was a great little job, that was. And it's
just it never it never ended in the way that we'd planned. But you
know, they walked off and and you know, the the you know,
the the authorities will be happy that nobody got killed, but actually there was.
There was quite a few on there deserve to be killed as far as
I was concerned. Yeah, there is a negotiated end to that. Yeah,
it was a negotiated And they had a guy. This was funny.
So they saw what I did, a mock execution, and they threw this
guy off the back of the the steps used to come to the bottom of
stars and so they threw this keyser down the stairs and he hit the floor
and just sort of like the thing was, if he was dead, we
were going on and that was it. We were going on. So we
were stood too. They said this was happening, that was oppening. Boom,
next minute, doors open out. He comes. As we're mounting the
wagons to get ready to go. One of the snipers turned and said the
body on the thing sat up, so he wasn't dead. So they rushed
out a wagon. They picked up this guy, and their plan had always
been to get off the plane. They never thought that anybody was going to
come on that plane and do anything underwards them. They just thought they'd turn
up and eventually they got off the plane. So that was their plan.
And they literally they put this guy in the land in the police land rover.
They brought him background and the whole squadron were there. They had all
the vehicles lined up, all the ladders, all the guys were in black
kit, all gunned up, all ready to go. It's an impressive site,
it really is, you know what I mean. So he comes around
the corner of this little Afghan fella sat in the front of the vehicle and
he sees the squadron and thinks, geez, what is going on here.
He's like, oh my god, they're going to jump on there and kill
everybody. So he's screaming, can I have a phone? Phones up the
plane? You better get off there because he's going to kick your heads in
lunch, you know what I mean. And that was enough to get him
off. He phones up and says, look, there's a serious there's a
serious is around there, and they are coming on, do you know what
I mean? They're not bothered. And so next minute there's sort of like
a call and a bit of a kerfuffle and it's sort of like, can
we get off down? So the negotiators gave him a phone as like a
psychological tactic. Yeah, that's right, I got on phone him up,
tell him what you're just saying. And if he must have had his family
on that plane, and he's thinking, yeah, there's a lot of them.
It's not going to be a single body left at the time, this
lot. Any any I mean, any other like particular incidents that kind of
like I'll ask you about seatrale leone, but before that, I mean anything
that kind of like jumps out to your to mind. Not really not that,
not no, not no. Just like they say, the Bosnian stuff,
we can't really go too far deep into because there's nothing out there about
it, really, and the you know, the stance set stuff is I
only really talk about that because the TV covered it all. Anyway, do
you know what happened there? Really? Do you know what I mean?
There was a couple of funny little stories actually, so on that one in
particular, we had a we had we had a we had a guy and
he hadn't been all a batted onto anything, in particular for the for the
prelims when we're when we're all getting ready. So I was, I was
building charges, and I've been out on a couple of the food drops and
this guy hadn't done anything. So he's itching to do something. And I
remember I was sating outside the boss's office, and I hear the boss talking
about the fact that this plane's been on the pan for nearly six days.
It's been in the sky for free, and the ship tank needs needs empty.
And so I'm not, hang on, I listen to what's going on
here. So they've said, well, look, they can't send anybody from
from the airlines out there because it's too dangerous. So they're gonna have to
train one of our guys up and he's gonna have to get on this like
this machine thing that is going to have to go out and suck, suck
the crap out of this. I suddenly thought about this lad, that they'll
have a job. So I'm like, all right, all right, there's
a job going. He comes running. Of course, he comes running.
He goes, right, good, Dan, you go, you're gonna learn
how to use He clicks straight away that he's going to be empty and the
ship out of this thing. He's not happy, but anyway, he learns
how to do it. He goes and practices on a out of other planes,
and then he drives the squadron stand too, so we can see him
on the television screens. All right, we're stood to in case it all
goes wrong, we've got to go and rescue him. The snipers are all
watching him, and he's proud. He's got a job now. So he's
going out there on his own with with the with the with the ship reaper,
right, and he's going to go and empty. He's going to complain,
right, So he drives that. He gets this bang and he's he's
looking about to make sure we're all watching him, and he couples his fing
up onto the bot with a plane and he steps back and he hits his
button and you see it going here the old pipes go boom, boom,
bom bomb like this, and then all of a sudden he put bomb and
half of it comes off and ship goes and he's covered from head to towing
ship. He comes back in, he looks like he looks like a melted
bar of chocolate when he comes in. And that's going to go do because
he stinks. He proper stink, anyway, I think, I mean,
I'm not sure what I think. They might have almost set him home,
because yeah, you have about a million jobs after that as well. Yeah,
yeah, I mean you must have had hepatitis A through z out the
whole suite, you know what I mean. I been engaged as well.
Yeah, you know that that brings to mind. So that was quite funny,
and I do know the fellow now he still smells a bit like that,
but he's all right. So tell us about when cil leone first comes
up on your units, you know, periphery, like this is something that
might be going down, and how that strust to come about for you.
Okay, So we were out in Africa on an exercise and it was we
were a phase in the exercise where we were doing a bit of a venture
training and it wasn't like your normal adventure training. It was like adventure training.
So I was a mountain trooper, which meant my insertion skills based around
the mountain. So we were going to go and climb Mount Kenya. We
were going to go and do the two points Batty and a Neli and we
were going to go and try and do them both. And we had a
bit of time and boat troop were down doing some stuff down in on and
then mobility troop were driving about in the desert and air troop were jumping out
of plane. So but it was all being done without any weapons. It
was all being done very sort of like just casually but just building your skills
up basically. So well, we were just about to deploy and every every
night at about six o'clock eighteen hundred you have to phone in and just do
a quick cons skin and just make sure. We phoned in and they said
what you need to get yourself back to camp. So we're like, oh
gosh, you just give us a clue what's going on because it was a
long way for us. It was even further for boat troop and so it's
just it was so anyway, they say, no, no, no,
look, there's a bit of a thing going on in West Africa. You're
going to have to come in. Trust us, you're gonna have to come
in. So we drove back in. It took us about eight hours I
think to get back and when we got there, we were greeted by the
start major who said, look, there is a there is the hossages had
been taken in West Africa. They give us a bit of a background on
it and said look and go and sit in your kit for now. And
I remember we were sitting on a kiting and boat Troop would drive back all
the way from Ambassad up to a place called the Nuki. It was a
long old drive. It was probably a sixteen hour drive. And at about
three o'clock in the morning, we all got woken up and told that basically
they've been involved in a road traffic accident and two of the guys were dead.
So they were dead. So we sawt like this thing had already cost
us two lives because two of ours we're on the side of the road and
we're like, h So now the focus for us really changed. Let's get
packed up, let's get these let's repatriate these bodies, Let's give them the
send off that they deserve. Let's get around the families, and let's make
sure that this one's sorted, you know, before we even start thinking about
anything in West Africa, because actually, right now, I don't give a
shit about West Africa, do you know what I mean? I couldn't care
less. It's about the two guys. So you know, we went back.
I remember the two bodies went back on British Airways flight. There were
six of us went on that flight with them, and we got back to
the UK. They obviously lifted off. They were taken to a morgue in
Hereford and the rest of the squadron flew back. Squadron, were you noted?
Back in the area. We had the funeral and at the funeral,
the start major said, right, no one's to drink this afternoon at the
funeral. And that's sas funerals are quite known for being quite heavy drinking affairs.
Guys used to really, you know, drink all afternoon, and you
know that that's the way they were. So to be asked not to drink
was a bit of a sort of like that's yeah, that's okay, whatever,
do you know what I mean, You've got to do what you're told.
So we went to the funeral, the family and all that sort of
stuff out there, and we have the funeral and we're in the we're in
the science mess afterwards, and nobody's drinking, and about six o'clock, about
tea time ish, incomes the R seven says, right, all serving the
all blades, all that's what they used to call us blades, all blades,
need to get into the ante room now, I need to give you
a quick breathe of what's going on. And we went into the ante room
and said, right, you are deploying. You are going to West Africa,
and if anyone's going to sort this out, if it does come to
that, then you're going to be the troops are going to use. So
actually we were quite glad about that because in our own minds, you know,
this had already cost us dearly in our squadron. So this this rightly
so was our squadron's job to go and sort this one out, you know
what I mean, Not not so much revenge, although at the time when
I was a young aad. I'm gonna be honest, I saw that as
revenge. I thought, right, if I get on a few of you
are certainly will do do you know what I mean, Because it's like you
want to make that loss mean something. Yeah, I want to, Yeah,
absolutely, you know I want to not even you know, one of
them was a really good friend of mine, and I wanted to avenge that
friend. Don't mean I really did. I genuinely did want to go in
there and avenge my friend, you know, I mean because I thought,
you know, that's an absolute waste of a good man for for for you
doing something that you shouldn't be doing, you know what I mean. So
I thought, right, that's this is this is ours, rightfully. So
so we went. We deployed down to Dakha. We sort of like grouped
in Dakar. Six of us went on the advanced party again. I was
lucky enough to be on that. So we went to Dakha. We then
deployed down at ser lyone and we were we were lifted onto the back of
it. So straight out of the plane, we went onto the back of
these rucks that reversed right up to the plane, so it didn't look look
more like a ration run than the troop deployment, because normally the troops would
get out and walked to the walk to the terminal, but we didn't.
We got straight onto the back of lorries which then drove out at the airport
a different gate and went down the walls. So they took us out of
camp and from there on him we were deployed and we started gaining information and
all that sort of stuff, and you know, it was intelligence led and
there was you know, there was some good intelligence coming out of the village
where they'd been taken to. There was proof of life's going on where one
of the guys managed to hand over a message. So we were pretty at
our fingers on the pulse. We knew that we had we didn't have limitless
time on this because if they did get wind of a rescue attempt, you
know, a they might move somewhere else and then it's a search and rescuers
supposed to just a rescue, but worse than that, they might just they
might just decide to kill them who were who were the hostages? Like,
how did that? How did this scenario come about? Yeah, let's let's
let's yeah, let's ree wind slightly on this one, and so the hostages
were from a unit called the Royal Irish. They were out there on a
peacekeeping tour. And basically there was a road which used to run out of
Freetown and used to go round a big area. They used to call it
the Horseshoe. And there were some checkpoints on this road, and I think
the Jordanians were on there and the Nigerians had a checkpoint, and they were
different countries un on these checkpoints. And inside of this great, big,
vast area there were the remnants of a group called the West Side Boys,
who were the remnants of the rebel group that had taken over or opposed the
government. They then sort of like swapped sides and been trained by the English
to go by the British to go up against to go up against the remainder
of the rebels, but then some of them had crossed didn't know where to
go after that, so they sort of formed their own little group called the
West Side Boys. And they didn't want to answer to the government because they'd
probably done too much. And they couldn't answer to the rebels or go and
join them because they'd fought against them. So they were pretty much contained in
this one area and the deal wells really leave them alone and they'll leave you
alone. Really, that's what it was. That's how I read the situation
anyway. And monitoring the roads to make sure that these people didn't come out
and start causing trouble in the local villagers. There was various checkpoints that you
had to go through, and the Royal Irish's job was basically to just man
go and have a look at these checkpoints and make sure they were doing their
job properly. That's how I understood it. So I don't allow to say
I wasn't on the tour, but that's how I understood it. I might
I might have been slightly wrong, but that's how I understood it. This
one patrol decided, or the officer on this patrol decided that he would go
down towards this village called Macbenny, which was well withinside the Horseshoe, which
was known to be occupied by the West Side Boys. The wives and wherefores
of him doing that still to this day aren't really known why he did it,
but he did do it. He took the troops down a track and
as they drove down the track. They were obviously seen coming, and they
blocked the track off, and as they tried to turn around, they blocked
him in from the back as well, and then eleven of them plus there
their interpreter, a guy called Moosa, were all taking hostage there and then
literally taken off the trucks. There was a bit of a stand too.
The guys caught their weapons, and actually, to be fair, the young
lads on that patrol went straight to their weapons, and the officer on the
patrol who'd made the mistake by going down there, called them off and said,
no, no, no, drop your weapons. And I do believe,
as hard as that would have been for any soldier to drop his weapon,
that was probably, in the light of hindsight now the best thing he
did, because yeah, they would have probably taken a few with them,
but there was that many rebels down there. Everybody would have ended up there
and none of them would have come home at all. That I'm absolutely sure
of that, do you know what I mean? So, yeah, anyway,
they end up in the village, they go straight over there, and
then the rest of it is I was being deployed. Luckily there was two
There was two guys from the regiment actually in Sierra Leone doing something else,
and one of them just happened to be a hostage negotiator, I believe,
and he went to the negotiations team and started asking for proof of life and
for these people to start doing and throwing and sending negotiations up and running from
literally a few hours after they'd been taken. So what was that decision point
where they decided that negotiations are not going to work, We're going to have
to send the boys in to take care of this. I think the decision
for us to go was made pretty early on. The actual decision for us
to go live on this took a few days to get to that, you
know. I think the incident happened on the twenty fifth. They were taken
on the twenty fifth of the twenty fifth of what's before September. Sorry,
I don't even know what months, whatever it was before September. They were
taken on the tenth of September and was when the operation actually went in.
So you know, you're talking best part of two weeks for this thing to
pan out and actually get to that stage where it went noisy. So a
fair old time and in that time, you know, we did everything we
could. There was two observation teams were deployed to look at both sides of
the river. Parachute Regiment joined us for the first time because we realized there
was that many people there we were going to need back up if it all
went wrong on the other side of the river while we were fighting on the
other side. So yeah, there was a lot of decisions made and a
lot of stuff done for the first time which hadn't been done before. So
it was quite in terms of operation, it was quite a groundbreaking operation.
And you guys were you said you flew into the car and Senegal, but
then you were based out of Freetown when the op happened. No, we
we flew into Freetown into Lungi Airport. We then drove from Lungi Airport out
into a place called Waterloo. There was a chemical walk jungle like an fob
jungle type place. It was all a tented camp basically, right, right,
So tell us about like kind of like the planning for this operation and
get ready to like that that launch point. Right, So yeah, I
mean we did not we we acted on every last piece of intelligence we could
get our hands on. So you know, we obviously had some stage throughout
there. They let I think they let five of the soldiers go. They
got thoroughly debriefed. We had the observation teams went in. After about four
or five days there, the observation teams went in, so they were they
had eyes on the village. They could tell us things I build up of
troops, routines, all that sort of stuff we had permanently. We were
asking to see proof of life, so we would see the condition of people
coming in out. So every last thing we could get we got, you
know what I mean. We had the guys. The guys gave them a
sat phone you know that was obviously being used all the time to talk to
them. You know, they were asking for all sorts of crazy stuff,
helicopters and you know your normal West African will have twenty million and some rough
diamonds and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever,
do you know what I mean? So you know, they were spinning
this game the whole time of keeping it going. But you know, ultimately
we were trying to make a plan to get in there and get this sorted.
Now that the free plans we came up with. We were asked for
free plans, and the first plan was to take boats all the way up
the river from Freetown up to the rock all Creek all the way up to
the village and do a dawn raid. Now, when they deployed the teams
that went up there to do the observation stuff, they had all sorts of
trouble with these things, and we just thought, right, we're now going
to try and take the best part of one hundred and fifty people up there
in boats. We'll get heard coming, and then again, you know,
they could possibly execute these people before we get there, and we just turn
up to a village with some dead bodies in it. That's no good.
So that was written off pretty early. We then decided that we might be
able to walk all the way, but it was dense jungle. You can't
walk in dense jungle at night. It's not going to happen, you know
what I mean. So it'd be day moves again. The chances are not
being seen or heard or something going wrong, and then the village known about
you again and you're turning up to a part of their bodies that wasn't on
And then somebody came up with this idea that we'd just take two helicopters and
we'd fly in someone you know, a team would rope into the building straight
away, the rest of us would get down and fight the rest of the
village. Worlders was going on, and it was like it was like,
right, okay, that is the only option we've got that is feasible,
and that would probably work if it works. And so that's where the nickname
came Operation Certain Death, because it was like, this is absolutely crazy.
We're going to take two of the largest helicopters in the world, We're gonna
fly them into an enemy stronghold which is out numbering ers, and we're gonna
we're gonna we're gonna rope down out of one, we're going to try and
land the other one, and we're going to fight out from the middle as
opposed from fighting from the outside in. So it was like if you would
have presented that plan on a promotion course, you'd have been sent home and
probably demoted rather than promoted like you was incredible. It was just like this
is mad, this is absolute madness. And I remember when we had the
final set of orders, I'm still thinking to myself, they ain't gonna let
us do that. How are they gonna let us do that? This is
like, this is crazy, This is like, this is madness. We're
gonna lose at least a helicopter here, do you know what I mean?
And it was like no, no, no, you are going, you
are going, you are going. And you know, those helicopters had to
return and pick up the parachute regiment and then deliver them on the other side
in case there was a follow up. I mean that in some respects,
if we'd have been beaten on the other side, they'd have got Mullard as
well, So you could have then lost four helicopters full of blokes, you
know what I mean. Insane. So we're thinking ourselves, well, let's
have the orders and let's see what it is. And I remember we had
the orders and some of the older blokes were a bit more experienced actually went
to bed, and I'm thinking myself, no, no, no, I'm
wide eyed on bushy tailed. I was in the cookhouse. I was eating
thinking right, you know, there was a breakfast at three o'clock in the
morning. I thought it'd be ashamed if I didn't fill myself up, do
you know what I mean? So I literally had a great big scoff full
English breakfast, bacon, sausages, the whole lot. You do, i't
mean. And then we're ready to get on the choppers and we fly out
over over Freetown and we fly out to sea because what we got to do
is make sure that the guys are on the ground are going to give us
the nod to say right, it's it's it's dark that dark enough that you're
not going to get seen coming in, but light enough that you can actually
do something when you get here. Because in those days, we didn't have
all these nods and all this stuff that they're wearing now, we didn't have
none of that. It was like, you know, you mark one eyeball
and that was it, you know what I mean. So you know,
make sure that when you did finally get there, you could you know,
it wasn't too light that they were shooting at the helicopters from the off,
and so it was it was very finely balanced. And I remember we went
into a holding pattern outside of Freetown and it was pretty crazy. It was
like a figure of eight type thing and we're going round and round and around,
and then the load. He starts yelling at people, we're off,
we're off, We've got, we got, we're going, We're going.
And then on the ear pieces comes zero OLF for eye of control stand while
we're off. I remember the helicopters dropped out of the sky. I've left
after breakfast up there. I waspect there's a sill a cup of sausages floating
about somewhere. We dropped out the sky. We went down, you know,
sort of like a few meters from the sea, and we literally went
tearing off up the creek towards target. And this was it we were I
remember yelling at me, mate, come on with geeing each other up.
And then I remember we get sort of like two minutes out, and we
get the two minutes from the loading two minutes, and then we get thirty
seconds and then the red light comes on and before you know it, as
we're turning the last corner, the mini guns are going. You can see
now out of the window the stuff going on already, and it's like,
as the back of the helicopter came down, we're straight out, we're straight
into it. There's rounds going everywhere. We're engaging from behind. We're we're
actually end up facing the wrong way. We have to do this bizarre move
where once we've dealt with what's behind us, we have to turn around and
end up fighting across the village. Meanwhile, the team, and I mean,
I'm not in the scheme of things. I'm probably number eight on the
wirecutters. I'm nothing, but I'm in one of the teams that's fighting in
the village. Other end of the village. You've got the teams coming down
the ropes. They were securing the hostages. They've they've got the hostages.
They're moving out, they're fanning out, they're fighting out. The whole thing
was going off like Chinese New Year. To be honest, it was.
It was exciting. It was a it was a full on job, like
you know what I mean. It sounds like you guys, you know,
accomplished security, you know, seizing the element of surprise, getting them them.
I think that's what it was, all right. So here's here's something
I'll tell you this. Right, So, the night before there was a
negotiation team went down there to speak to the West Side boys and they said,
look, can you come up and you know, is there anything you
really want, and they said, can we have two boat engines? So
we had two boat engines because of the older we've done the drop. So
he just give them the boat engines. We're getting back tomorrow. Did they
give these two boat engines? And then some brightness park come out with the
idea, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll give them about fifty cases
of local beer as well. So we give them a load of beer as
if to say, look, thank you very much, you can have the
beer as well. We wish you know, we wish you no hard.
But they would have gone home, they would have drunk that beer and then
got bang on the old drugs and they'd have had a wild night. So
by the time we're coming there, they've all got hangover. Is that that's
all like getting a knock on the door to get out of bed and fight
and they're like, oh my god, oh god, hang too late.
Sorry that was pretty slick. Yeah, yeah, so that was it.
So that was you know that that paid a big part of the element of
surprise. And to be fair, those two teams that we had on the
ground, they were proper they'd been there for a long time hiding in the
bushes, you know what I mean, in an enemy camp, hiding in
the bushes, And they crawled onto the edge of that on the day and
as people were getting out of bed and the helicopters were coming, and they
were already smacking people all over the place, do you know what I mean?
So that's that's he won a conspicuous gallantry cross and he that as well.
Do you know he proper aren't that cross? So yeah, yeah,
there was some there was some proper soldiering going on there. I mean,
yeah, wow, man, So secured the hostages and from there, what
was it? What was the extraction like? So yeah, so we went
into like a reork and I was on the reorg. I was carrying a
little minimei, so I've got me bypond. So I ended up sorts like
they've said to me, right, you take from twelve through ten or whatever.
And I'm facing out in this direction, and I remember there's a few
things on fire and bits and pieces, and I thought myself, I'll have
a of tea now, do you know what I mean? The old start
major come around and he's kicked the back of my foot. He goes,
you can have a brew if you want. And I had this thing where
I was sort of like laid in the depression in the floor and I could
make it. I had the gun in my shoulder, hear, and I'm
holding on like that, and i can see in front of me, and
I'm sorting over the other end. I've got me. I've got me sort
of like vest On. I'll get me water bottle out, I'll get me
mug out, I'll get the I get the stove out, like the stove
with me, like I put the mug on it. Fill the mug,
put the water away, stick everything away. The water's boiling away nicely.
And then you know those sash as you get the free and ones. I've
tipped that in and I'm stirring it away, and before you know, I've
got a lovely cup of tea. So I put everything away, and I've
sat there with me a cup of tea beyond me gun and I'm drinking away.
And he may kicks my foot. He's taking he's taking sort of eleven
through nine because we're overlapping, and he's he's kicked me on the foot,
and I look around and I'm like, funck, if make your own tea
like, do you know what? And he's like no, no, no.
Then he starts he starts pointing his fun nown like that, frantically going
like that. So as I look up where we've gone completely silent in the
village while people are cutting around doing their bits and pieces, he's basically the
enemy have decided, what's left of the enemy have decided. Well they've gone,
so I don't they're coming back into the village. There's there's there's a
few of them coming up, you know what I mean. So on the
guys next to me lead, we've literally sort of like waited for them to
get within proper range that we're not going to miss, and we've opened up
on them, and we've given them, we've proper sent them back into the
village, like sent them back out into the bushes. You know, there's
there's a lot of gunfire going on now because everyone's seen what's going on,
and you know, there's a bit more exchanging. Anyway, I've done all
this left handed. I've not put me a cup of tea down once.
So I've actually been holding a cup of tea while I'm fighting, and I'm
about spilling me tea. And I was never going to say anything about this
at all. But they made a TV program on Channel five and one of
the lads Colin. I can say Colin's name because he was on that program.
Colin told them about Colin told the TV people about it. I was
never gonna say nothing because it was a bit sort of like I shouldn't have
been having a cup of tea anyway, to be honest, Although why not,
I don't know, because I knew we were there, do you know
what I mean? But yeah, to still carry on in the fight and
not drop any not spilling it, I was quite proud of that, to
be honest, but I shouldn't have been doing it. There you go.
Yeah, it's it's it's a true testament to the cultural difference differences between our
militaries because for for US forces, it would have just been a tin of
Copenhagen and a big fatty in the lip, you know, a couple of
tea. For me, I even had a little finger poker. It was
proper. It was one lump or two free in one sash age that would
have been one tho. So it's it's like the creamer, the cream and
the tea. They had a tea powder and that sugar in the same things.
It was. It tasted like tea. I'll tell you what, after
having a bit of a punch up, it was better than nothing. I'm
going to tell you that, you know what I mean, had some Do
you mind telling us a little bit and you know, speak to this to
your level of comfort obviously, but yeah, you're what kind of weapons systems
were you guys on and obviously like we all see the m P fives for
like the c QV or the old school for for more of these village clearing
ups or things like this. I did you guys in my day. The
guys I had a minim which was you know, it was a short it
was an airborne minim, so I had the folding stock and a short barrel.
So it was it was more than maneuverable in the village. The guys
at m faurs just m falls, just just just short w M fours with
normal bags on them. And you know some some would have the undersling to
freeze on them. You'd have you know, all manner of grenades, dune
grenades, smoke gredades, you know the full sweet there was sixty six is
you know, they'll pull out stick sixty sixes were being launched in there.
Yeah, we were. We went heavy handed because you know, we we
we knew we were likely to be outnumbered, but b you know, we
didn't know if this thing was going to go on for a while. We
could have ended up having the you know, clearing one village and then getting
attacked by another, do you know what I mean? So you could have
ended up fighting. So you know, I took a lot of ammunition on
that job. I took probably probably six bags of minime, a full complement
of magazines. I had my pistol with me, which had a full compliment
of magazines. I had a sixty six, I had a few good aides.
You know. I didn't have no room for no warm kid. I
mean how I got the cup of tea and there was a miracle, you
know what I mean. So we went sort like we went. We went
ammunition heavy as opposed to because we knew if we did get stuck overnight,
they could always overfly and drop us a load of stuff if we needed it,
like you know what I mean. So the priority was to be on
the ground with enough ammunition to fight for as long as it took. Do
you know what I mean. So, yeah, that's what we did.
What kind of pistols for you, guysis and at that time the six the
six, Yeah, so I guess you prefer them to the glocks, to
be honest, but you know, they ran with the glocks in the end,
as the army ran with the blocks. I think I think they might
still he used the sig. I don't know. I'm not there anymore so,
but the sig was nice, A nice pistol to stig. It felt.
Yeah, it was easy to use, it was safe, it was
it was a great piece of kit. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.
Now did you guys you know, obviously you know this this is a large
operation for a small unit, and you know, I don't know, if
you're partnering with the pairs, did you guys also carry on occasion like squad
weapons or did you relay more on like the pairs? Yeah, yeah,
yeah, we took it. We took a mortar boast bass playing with his
so at the very end, I memb all of the last things we did.
We mortared like three sixty round the place, just to just to try
and to tell anybody else coming at the village. I mean that mortar guy
must have he must have killed more people than COVID because he just moreted everywhere
he went, you know what I mean. He was just what was out
for about an hour and I'm doing thing ding ding ding? How he was
going? He sent loads out. Yeah, so yeah, so we had
Yeah, we could call on anything. I mean we you know, if
you needed if you needed fifty cow, you get fifty cal. If you
needed a grenade frower, you'd get a grenade brow. If you needed you
know, something bigger, if you needed a javelin, if you needed a
land it was in my day, if you needed something big, you'd get
something big. It wasn't, you know. And if you need it,
if there was something out there that you wanted, you'd get trained up on
it. You go and get it, like you know what I mean.
So you know, if you needed a sam or or whatever, you know
what I mean, you get it. So it wasn't there was no restrictions
on that sort of stuff. If it warranted it, it would be got
and you'd use it and you learn how to use it. If you didn't
know how to use it, you know. In yeah, so Phil,
let's say here, what was the rest of your career, like in the
SAS and the army, right, So that was pretty much. That was
sort like me Swanton song remem The next thing I did after that was an
exercise somewhere where we did a whole diage and I just I fell out of
love with it a little bit because that was such an intense operation and at
that time, I mean that was two thousand obviously, you know, two
thousand and one. In September, things changed. But after that operation,
in particular, that was September, that was a year before the Twin Towers
fell. I just two things happened. A friend of mine, a friend
of mine, got killed, a very good friend of mine. He was
actually in the village with me. I he was killed in a way.
I don't know what to harp on about this because it might upset people that
still known, but you know, he was killed in a road traffic accident
and it was completely unnecessary, and it really really upset me. You know,
I can get I can deal with. You know, we lost Brad
in the village, you know, he died fighting. When they recovered his
weapon, there was an empty tour free smoking shell and half a magazine.
He went out doing the job. He went out through was fighting, he
was a worried The man was an absolute legend. You know, me have
a mate died in the center console of a car by someone who was driving
it too fast to shouldn't have been driving it, how he was driving it.
It just it really messed me up a little bit. It hurt me.
It hurt me, and I took to the drink and then, you
know, I probably punched a few too many people and got a few too
many rows, and I started falling out with the authorities a little bit on
camp, and you know, it got to the stage where a start major
you know, it wasn't going to stand up for me anymore. And he
offered me, you know, he said, look you can you can go
back to your unit, or you know, you can get out, or
he said there's not many options here for you at the moment. So I
said, well, I'll just get out, and I bit me bullet.
I said, look, I'll pay me way out. I'll get out this
week if I can, and I'll put my paperwork in And I paid me
money and I got out, and that that was me, really, And
I remember on my final interview, the seur at the time was away in
the two ic didn't know really the full picture of what was going on,
and he said, did I fancy going to the Reserve Battalion for the Reserve
Regiment for a call off period? And I just said no, point blank.
I didn't want to do that. I said no because at the time,
you know, you were you, you really were. And it sounds
a bit corny, and it's in that film who goes yeah, uresas or
nothing. That's all I wanted to be. And if I couldn't be that,
and I didn't want to be anything else, do you know what I
mean? And I didn't want to be a reservist. I didn't want to
do anything else. I just wanted to get out, and I got out.
I got out on the first of September two thousand and one, and
on the ninth I was driving down to where I was living and I heard
on the radio what happened, And I'm like, oh, jeesusitch, you
know what I mean? And I couldn't even go straight back in because I'd
made my way out. Those were the rms. I think you couldn't just
go straight back in. So I'm thinking to myself, right, what am
I going to do? Like you know what I mean? So you know,
my first port call was to make a few phone calls them before I
knew I was in Afghanistan myself anyway, working on the on the city contracting
circuit. So yeah, flash the bang time turn around time for me.
I run out of money. I run out of money, and I went
down to the I went down to the job center to get a loan.
I had no money coming in to toll. There was no work for me
in the UK, and I remember I had to fill a form out for
this money and I had to get a job interview. They had no job
interviews for me, and the only thing I was quit. Remember I hain't
no qualifications at school, none of the stuff I did in the military had
any qualifications that were relevant to cities. And they told me I had to
go for a job interviews as like a traffic marshal for schools, a lollipop
man, we called them. That was going to be my life. I'm
like, I can't have this, and so I'm going to be really sort
of like nine to eleven. Although it didn't do the world of favor,
actually at that time done me a massive favor because it meant that there was
somewhere I could go, go and find some work. And that's really awful.
It's at that bad, and I realized that. But you know,
when you're pushed against when your back's pushed against the wall, you've got to
earn your money where you can do, you know what I mean. So
you know, for me, it was a no brainer right to get out
there. And I actually wanted to go out there because you know, I
believed strongly I was sickened by what I saw in America. I wanted to
go and do something against it. I knew I couldn't probably join up straight
away again, so I thought, right, the best thing I can do
is get myself out there as a contractor and actually start trying to do some
good and aid the people that are in a fighting positions, you know what
I mean. So that my mind was made up. I was going and
that was it simple. Tell us about the contractors circuit then, what that
was like going back and forth to Afghanistan in those early years, Well,
when I first started it and it wasn't really an entity. There's been a
few sort of like mercenary type jobs in and out of Africa where guys had
gone and sort of tipped over Angola and places like that, and the circuit
as it was, you know, there was bodyguarding jobs. There was you
know, there was a few Arabs being looked after and a few Arabs families.
There was a big job in America, the Aga Khan used to get
looked after. You had, you know, various people being looked after.
But the circuits, as I knew it, and as you know, it
hadn't really taken off. We were sort of like pioneering. So I literally
turned up in Afghanistan on a training job and a CP job for a for
a European embassy, the European Commission's embassy who didn't have the capability of a
CP team and couldn't get one because everybody else was deployed. So it soon
became clear that there was going to be loads of work for people if they
could get out there. And so in the very early days, the money
was terrific. The jobs were secure because they wasn't the man power of the
field of jobs, and so in the very early days it was great.
We were in a massive coin we were traveling in and out, we were
doing heavy rotation. So we were doing sort of like we were doing,
you know, six to nine months on and then you know, a few
weeks off and then coming back in again. But you Americans are used to
that anyway. You know, you work long old shifts, didn't you.
But we were doing some long old shifts, and then it was great.
I finally enjoyed it. I was you know, I was making good money.
I was living like a rock star and leave because I had plenty of
money in my pocket, and I'd never had money in me pocket when I
was serving. I always owed this or owed that, or had spent it
or borrowed it. Though now I was earning. I was earning proper dollar
and I was going home and living like a rock star. I was like,
yeah, this is great, you know what I mean? Did it
that ever hit like sort of like a dead end for you where you start
feeling like I can't live this life anymore, because I mean I have talked
to a lot of guys that there's like a culture around contracting and it catches
up with guys, it does, Yeah, and it caught up with me
when I got too sort of like far into the rock star starts on light
the work was getting less, people were getting out of the military, the
prices were getting pushed down. You weren't earning the money you were in the
day. The jobs in some respects were getting more dangerous, which I didn't
mind, but you know, you just weren't making the money anymore. And
it was like you would come out and you know, I was still earning
good money, and I started drinking far too much, and you know,
I started I probably had a few mental health things going on and what have
you, and I medicated myself with beer and became a bit of a menace,
and I, you know, I got in a bit of trouble.
I ended up on an attempted nerder charge and actually reminded in a prison in
England. So yeah, I it did have an impact with me, and
it just it was it was it was a product of not knowing how to
handle that sort of money, living a lifestyle whereby you were permanently in the
glad to be a live club when you weren't in country, and but knowing
you had to go back, so you didn't really I didn't really give a
shit how about at home, because I was like, well, when I
go back, it might be my last trip anyway, because I'm taking some
insane risks. I remember. I remember someone asking me once i'd phoned up
where I phoned up my missus and said to her, look, I'm going
to be in such and such a town. And my mate went to me,
what you're telling your missus for? You know? And I said,
let mate, I'm telling my missus. She's the only one who cares.
I said, do you think anyone's going to care if you go missing?
I said, she's the only one who's going to put the shout out if
I go, if I if I don't come back tonight. You know what
I mean, that's the only one who cares. Because no one did.
Contractors, did they? They didn't you know you were out there. The
whole thing really was, Yeah, people viewed you as you're making the money,
you're taking the chance. If it goes wrong with that's your problem,
do you know what I mean. I don't have an issue with that.
I understood that, But I think there's plenty of those people that went out
there that didn't understand that, do you know what I'm saying? So it
was, yeah, it was like I say, I just I had a
few issues myself, and I you know, one of my issues actually,
if I think about it, was I desperately wanted to sign back up again
and you know, do the soldiering stuff onto line by now, and I
realized that, you know, this is what I was good for at the
moment, you know what I mean. So I just had to stick at
what I was doing. And you know, I did end up coming away
from Iraq in Afghanistan and going to places like Gaza and the West Bank,
and you know, I ended up in West Africa doing a load of stuff
there, and then of course the anti Pyrusy stuff kicked off, so I
did absolutely bundles of that as well. So yeah, it was, yeah,
it was you ended up just chasing the dollar, you know what I
mean. It was like it was. Some of it was fun, some
of it was good while it laughed at it, but some of it was
absolutely terrible. Some of it was just completely die. Working with people you
didn't really want to work with, taking what jobs, Which jobs did you
like, which did you not like? You know, I did. I
did some really good stuff in Gaza on a training team, uh, teaching
the Palestinian Guard and then subsequently moving you know when they when they got moved
on. We we we did a job in there looking after a power station.
That was that was really good. That was active, that was we
got a bit connectic a couple of times on that. I quite enjoyed West
Africa. I love doing the gold mines, you know, traveling up and
down, moving from site to site, moving people about, evacuating people,
all that sort of stuff. That was fun. Uh So there were some
good jobs to be had. The anti piracy could be could be all right,
you know, but again it was long hours at sea, you know.
Sometimes you could be three or four months at see. I never I
never saw a pirate from from started. I used to come back with a
lovely suntown, do you know what I mean, boots on, you know
what I mean. But other than that, I mean it was rubbish.
And so, you know, the jobs I didn't like were I ended up
on an oil rig once in a in Iraq, and I was like the
security guy for the oil rig. But then I have people from the oil
company who were also doing the same sort of thing as me, coming and
checking on me, and I'm like, well, why are you checking on
me? Yeah, It's just it was awful and it was long, boring
hours with the Yeah, I was there on my own. I was on
an Iraqi oil field on my own, on a rig with just the rakis.
You know, it was horrendous. I did some great jobs in Sadan.
I went down to south of Sadan. That was fun. That was
great again. You know, you're interacting with the locals. It was hearts
and minds. You were building up public confidence and all that sort of stuff.
Brilliant using all the skills I'd learned in SF employing them, you know,
loads of loads of scope for doing things my wage, you know what
I mean. Brilliant. But yeah, so I was lucky and I did
make some good money and I had a bit of fun as well, you
know what I mean. But like I say, eventually things at home started
being impacted by what I was doing, and then I did end up in
trouble. So you know it was going to happen one day, do you
know what I mean? So as it happened, it all, you know,
it got proved. There was nothing to be answered for. But to
be fair, I've done plenty wrong, you know I mean, so I'll
probably deserve my little stink remarks you know what I mean. I'm not going
to moan about it. What was like the transition process like for you,
because it sounds like you didn't you didn't really transition out of the military.
You pretty much jumped right into contracting. But then when that when you kind
of reached the end of your rope there, what was it like kind of
like becoming a proper civilian? Right Horrendously, I still don't class myself as
a proper civilion now. I just I'm a Metroan. I just I just
the first I got exposed to it really was in the media industry because when
I when I came out of when I came out of Winchester Prison, I
literally had nowhere to go. All my licenses have been revoked. So I
couldn't work on the security service circuit everybody knew, because it's only a small
circuit, you know, I couldn't get any work. I'd written my book
Born Fearless, it had done quite well, but I ended up in a
position where I was I know where to live, and so basically what I
done was I phoned a friend of mine, Tom. In fact, Tom
was on one of our podcasts of week. Tom Blakey. He lent me
a caravan. I took this caravan to London and I put it on a
building site and I used to be security for the building site. And during
the day I used to fill skips up and sweep the floor. And my
cousin used to pay me fifty pounds a day. I used to give twenty
five pounds of my missus and the other twenty five pan I used to use
to feed myself. And what I did was, I've got a couple of
copies of my book, and I went down to the local sort of like
thrift shop, the charity shop, the second hand shop, and I bought
myself a suit. And whenever I had a couple of hours spare, I
used to go into London and I would go walking around all these bars where
I knew that there was TV producers drinking and all that sort of stuff.
And as soon as I heard them say something about Iraq or Afghanistan, oh
oh, I've been there. Oh, And I've got a book what We're
looking forward? You know what I mean. And before I knew it,
we had those incidents in the UK, didn't we with the bombings on the
bridge and all that sort of stuff, and I became like the main voice
on Sky TV. I was on there all the time. You couldn't more
than k Burley, do you know what I mean? Every time something happened,
it was like Phil, get yourself on, tell it. I'll be
like. I was like, oh here I am again. I'd turn up
on scene. I'd be sort of like, right, give me that,
Mike, I'll tell you what's going on. In I was making a bit
of a name for myself, so you know, I was working with some
of the Sky News in particular. To be fair, there were some people
there who just were out for themselves. There was no team playing in them,
you know. And when I eventually left Sky it wasn't They behaved awfully
towards me, do you know what I mean? And bear in the mind,
you know, when I made that documentary in Syria, I took some
insane risks to get them some of the better. I remember you telling me
like they're sending me back in because they want to punch up for the documentary.
I went out of Cinder and I made sure they got everything they needed
and some do you know what I mean? And then they were pretty awful
the way they put me on a debating program, which was political. I
don't know nothing about policies. I just call a square a square, like,
do you know what I mean? So yeah, I didn't do any
favors, so I like. But it was the media world, and that
was the first time I've been surrounded by purely civilians. So everywhere I went,
you know, apart from that documentary actually where the cameraman was an ex
marine and the security guy was SBS great guys, everyone else was cilly and
not just sivy. They just were unreliable. Can pat you on the back,
but stick a knife in it at the same time, just and I
suddenly began to realize that, you know, no one's on your side out
there, no one actually cares, you know what I mean. And you
say the people you know used to be in the essays, they look at
you to go, yes, so what who cares? I don't don't you
understand, you know what I mean? They begin to understand, they don't
want to understand, you know what I mean. They understand their own life
and they do their own things, you know what I mean. That's not
everybody. That would be unfair of me to say that that's everybody. But
I saw a lot of it, and I suddenly realized I was in a
world where I'm going to have to do something about absolutely everything because nobody's ever
going to spoon feed me. They're not going to do it, do you
know what I mean, It's not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah.
And they would tee you up to fail, do you know. They they
sort like they put me on a TV program which they almost put me across
as being being a bit of a bigot. And I'm not. I'm not
bigoted to talk, you know what I mean. In fact, I'm far
from that. I'm I like to think I'm very central and straight with what
I do, do you know what I mean? And they teed me up
as being sort like almost ultra right wing. I'm like, I'm not like
that, Like you're you're a caricature. Yeah, yeah, exactly, you
know, and that was, you know, I found that a bit upset,
and to be honest, and you know, it did follow me around
a little bit, you know. Luckily, you know, when I started
doing stuff with people like Bear Grills, who's a very good friend of mine,
you know what I mean, people saw through that and you know,
I started to get a lot more work in that, But there was a
stage where people were sort of like labeling with me, He's just a FuG,
right, I have been a FuG, but I'm not. You know,
that's not the way I am. You pay me to be a once,
don't forget that. And it was a different kind of fuck, right.
It was like it was a rabble rouser. Not I'd have a fight
in a pub, you know what I mean. And I've been, I've
been, you know, but I would not go and bully someone in the
pub. I won't go and pick on a fight with someone. If you
look at me funny in the pub and you come and and you come in
front of me wanting trouble, I'm more than happy to give it to you.
That's how I was in the days, you know what I mean.
Yeah, And that's happen, and I'm not particularly proud of that. It's
just the way I want do mean. I was highly strung, you know,
And that's the way things panned out sometimes, you know what I mean,
And I don't think. Yeah, there's probably loads of soldiers like that
that, loads of soldiers will be like that in the future as well.
Do you know what I mean, if you train somebody, if you repeatedly
put them you know, take some aggression and all the rest of it.
Eventually when they've had a drink and the chips are down, if you push
them in the wrong way, they're gonna push you back, and they're going
to push you back as odd as they want, you know what I mean.
And that's that's that's yeah. Yeah, you know it's interesting that you
you say, how they set you up and how is every better person for
themselves. Because we interviewed Tanto, Chris Peranto from Benghazi a while, you
know, a couple of years ago, and he talked about when he came
out, he was trying to speak as truth and like the right wing media
latched onto him and he thought he thought they were like doing him a favor,
but then they started they just they just started trying to use him.
You know. It's it's not like there's a left and right media. It's
just there. They're all trying to make money and they're going to use you
however they can, of course. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, so
you know people did from the right, they'd put clips of me up some
of the stuff that I said, and it probably might have fitted their agenda,
but it wasn't said derogatory against the others. It was said because I
see, I can't help saying what I mean. I probably said lots of
other things that people probably wouldn't expect me to say. You know, I
would stand up for people's rights, I'd stand up for people's religions, I
would stand up for the way people are. I don't anybody from being anything
other than a human being. And that's the way I am, you know
what I mean. So, and I think the military teaches you that,
you know, I don't look at I look at someone as a soldier.
I don't look at so I don't care if you're black, white, yellow,
pink, brown, green, if you what what what way you swing
in the bedroom, or what religion you are. I couldn't care. Rather
a good soldier, a bad soldier, or you're not a soldier, you
know what I mean. So that's you know, I've got no bias at
all against anybody, right, Yeah, So how did it? How did
you deal with that when when you started realizing you know, at first,
you think I'm you know, I'm a veter owned a first force veteran.
I have something to say, these people seem interested in it. Then as
time goes on, you realize that this is a very like you know,
dog eat dog world, Like how did you kind of remedy that in your
mind? Well, it's upsetting. It's upsetting at first you look at it
and you think you've used me. There, you've used me there. So
my rule of thumb now, as I do things, I want to do.
So I did things maybe that weren't even paid, but I wanted to
do. So, you know, I became the I became an ambassador for
various different things. I started doing stuff that promoted things in a good light.
I started doing things that you know, made me feel happy as opposed
to just chasing the dollar and going on your program because you want me to
say this, that or the other. And that's how this radio station was
born, you know, because you know, we were stopped with Scott and
Johnny and you know, we sat around the table and we decided we wanted
to do something ourselves. And you know, at the time, I don't
want to have me hand out and be asking everybody for work all the time.
I'll find my own work, Thank you very much. And you know
when it's when it's ours and we do what we we can say what we
want, do you know what I mean? And then you'll find out who
the real who the real fill is because you'll see the real feel because you're
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna put myself on my own channel and and
and try and bend what I'm saying. Am I I'm gonna I'm gonna put
myself on my own channel as me and tell you what I want to say.
Do you know what I'm saying? So tell tell us about Force Radio,
like how that came about and what it is, what you guys are
doing so Force Radio. Yeah, so lockdown happens. Not a lot going
on, was there. And towards the end of Lockdown, I was an
ambassador for a T shirt company called Force Wear that do really well. That
they're they're really good. They do forces skewed t shirts. They've got a
great range, over five hundred designs. Check them out on forcewar dot com.
Right. So there there are a great bunch of you guys and they're
veteran owned and veteran run and they make some really cool stuff. And the
guy that run that a guy called Scott. You know, I've been I've
reached out to him and they made me an ambassador, and so I used
to do a had a fair few bits with them, and I used to
do a bit of a live feed and a few bits and pieces and some
advertising and where they're gear and all that sort of stuff. And we just
got talking me Johnny and Johnny's work works with them as well, works for
Scott's done a lot done, been with Scott for years. And I think
it was Scott was moaning about having his adverts turned off on Facebook, and
one of us, and I can't remember if it was Johnny on me,
he turned around and said something to the effect of, well, why don't
we make our own station and then we can advertise what the what the hell
we want when we want, and nobody can turn us off. And that
was Is that pretty fair? Johnny's looking at me pretty much how it was
born, do you know what I mean? And then after that, you
know, Scott being Scott and Johnny and Johnny and the like a couple of
rats up a drain pipe. They don't let anything go. And we didn't
know nothing about this industry whatsoever. So We're like thinking, it's either going
to be extremely difficult or it's going to be extremely hard. And we've worked
extremely hard and we've made it look extremely easy. And I think, you
know, we've done a great job of what we've done. And I don't,
you know, I don't like to blow our trumpet, but I think
we've done an absolutely outstanding job of what we've done. We've we've built something
worth having. Our radio station is superb, you know, we got we've
got lots of listening all over the world, funny enough, loads of listeners
in America. Force Radio. It's it's a thing of beauty. That's how
I describe it. A thing. What is it that you guys do?
I mean you said you're like seventy something episodes in I mean, what what?
What is? What is the mission? Once we set the radio station
up and the radio station plays plays over over three channels online daily. So
we've got a twenty four hour radio station, all right, So you can
listen to Force Radio twenty four hours a day online, okay. And we've
got three different stations on that. We've got a sort of generic music one,
we've got an anthems one, and we've got a dance music one,
so and they run concurrently together all the time. So that's twenty four to
seven Force Radio is running. And then we looked at it and thought,
right, we need to do a little bit more than this, because the
radio station isn't just going to be the only thing we could possibly get out
of this. So we decided we start podcasting. We came up with a
debrief podcast which is mine and I've interviewed loads of really cool people, Billy
Billingham, lots of SF guests we've had. We've just had Mandy who was
a was a fire pilot. Super What a story she has, do you
know what I mean? What a woman that woman is, you know what
I mean, she's really really great. So we've been we've been blessed,
We've had some really good and so now we're about sort of like we're just
about we're just about creating cool content, keeping the radio station going, and
who knows, if we could expand in and maybe doing other things, you
know, perhaps making a documentary one day or something like that, then let's
see where it goes, you know what I mean. But for now,
you know, we're gonna we're gonna try and build something that's absolutely worth having
a community based type radio station for people who are like minded and get on
with each other and all that sort of stuff, you know. Money.
So that's what we want. And uh that's a Force Radio dot for radio
Force Radio Live not live. Yeah. Yeah, that's fantastic. I mean,
like you're going all out, like not only with the podcast, but
you've got mute. I'm gonna have to I think if you met if you
met Scott, who met Johnny if and I've said, this is my first
book, so I'm going to paraphrase a little bit from my first book.
If you're going to be a bear beer grizzly Yeah, you know what I
mean. If you if somebody gives your backside to kick, make sure you
put your biggest boots on and kick it as hard as you can do.
I mean, so we are in the process of kicking the media backside.
Was that was that cannonball run or that if You're going to be a bear
beer grizzly bear. I'm not sure, but I did I paraphrase because I
used it in one of my books. Yeah, I don't know. It
might be kind I might have robbed it indvertently. From somebody else. Now
I'm trying to remember anyway, it doesn't matter. So on your just out
of curiosity, no no, no, no, now on your dance channel,
or we talked about ed M or we talked about disco, like what
kind of tunes are we going to hear? You can do you garage you?
Yeah, everything you describe that attle bit more, I'm in it.
Awesome if you want to, you want to, You want to have your
lights bouncing around the room and move your hands funny and yeah, be my
friend, that's where you need to be. And actually, we've got some
really cool DJs working for us. We've got a guy called Danny Rampling who
was an IB for DJ in the day. He is proper, he is
Google Danny Rampling. You will not be disappointed. And he's our Saturday night
act. We've got g Gettison who does put the show together for us on
a on a Friday night. He's up and coming. He's a Danny Rampling
in the making. We got a girl called so Dunk and amazing girl.
So we've got some We've got some really good talent. And again, you
know, we're recruiting from from a force's background where we can do. So,
you know, Danny was ten power Gee gettis what was he? He's
gonna kill me now if I get it wrong. But anyway, yeah,
ge getnis, all survey members, all our proud careers and all doing something
completely different doing it well. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah. So check
out Force Radio dot live and uh there will be a link down in the
description. And also shout out to our friends at Casa Carabello Cigars. Check
them out at Cassocarabeo dot com. Awesome cigar company, Phil Any final thoughts,
anything else you want to get out there. We really appreciate you sharing
your story with us. Man, I've look, it's been real fun being
on the show that if you are watching this, give us a follow on
Instagram. Go on, you might just find it a bit of fun.
I'll try to be fairly relaxed on my social media channels, you know,
I mean to have a bit of fun, bit of motivation. Everything's positive
on my media channels. So say, give us a follow on here as
well, and hopefully maybe one day I'll get myself over to you or you'll
get yourself over to me. We you know, we can press some flesh
drink some beer and have another good laugh and put another episode together for someone
like a great time. Where can people find you on Instagram? What's the
instagram? Ham Instagram at big Field CAMPIONI okay, everything that big Field camping
with me. So if you if you google big Field Campion or at big
Field Camping on Instagram. Funnily enough, TikTok a Big Field Campion zero one
off in climb on there because someone there's there's about ten field campions on TikTok
and there's only one that's me, and I haven't managed to get better yet.
So yeah, all the TikTok challenges that they do, the dances and
dances and all that, I haven't done any I've done a few. I've
I've done a few of the press up challenges, and yeah we eat a
couple of chilis and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, okay,
there would be grand daughter sometimes. That's awesome. That's awesome. Uh No,
Phil, this has been a lot of fun. Man, I haven't
laughed this hard in a while. Next Friday, we're gonna have a retired
c I a officer on the show. Uh served in ground Branch. Uh
served as a chief of station in Europe, did a lot of really interesting
stuff. We're gonna have him in studio. I'm excited about that. Phil,
again, thank you so much for joining us tonight. It's great to
reconnect with you. You. Yeah, what pleasure, buddy, Phil.
Before we go, I know we mentioned them passing, but I just want
to say these out loud for people listening on the podcast. You have two
books out. One is Born Fearless, Commando param Yeah, Commando Para mercenary
sas Pirate Hunter and I forgot. Do we have questions for Phil? Oh?
We do? Uh? And then the second one is Big Phil Campion's
Real World says Survival Guide. So so guys check those out. Yeah,
your Survival Guide just came oh no, twenty fourteen and then twenty eleven.
Well, I wrote Who Dares Wins as well, which is another book,
is the second part to my life story. So oh, I see it.
I'm sorry about that. Yeah, Phil, we may have so much
questions for you if you got the more questions. Yeah, sorry about that.
Almost I almost forgot about it too. Yeah, that's right. That
was plugging me book. They'll finod me book if they won't have a look
for it, you know, uh, to publish a rich anyway, let
me get to the questions. Are these coming live now? Yeah, they've
been coming in during the discussion. We used to we used to sort of
ask him during the show as they would come up so that they could be
because a lot of times they were mastered to what the person was talking about.
But it is, but we just kept on interrupting people because that,
you know, to ask the questions. So now we we let you tell
your story and then we then we go to all the questions and people have
sent in, so we have three right now. Mcintirety three. Thank you
very much. Did you know or ever meet Cameron Spence? If so,
what was he like? No? It didn't No, No I don't know.
Yeah, Uh, thank you very much. If Phil has what if
Phil has one? What is his favorite operation? Uh? The s A
O. The says pulled off in World War two? Do you know what?
Probably my favorite story actually is not it's not even an operation. Is
when they were first setting up, they raided the they raided the Kiwis camp
and nicked the piano. And so that's a bit of me that that's a
bit of me. That's sort of like I'm setting up a Special Forces a
special Forces regiment, but I'm not doing anything until I've thought of my napiw
out with a piano and a few beers. It's a bit of me there.
But there was some tremendous operations and there's too many to sort of even
even think about going down, all of which were you know, tremendous guys
at that time doing doing extremely cool stuff. So yeah, I think the
piano story always sticks out for me, but the rest of them absolutely phenomenal,
phenomenal times I've been in the regiment, Scotchy, thank you very much.
What for did you take in Northern Ireland? And why? I don't
know? Okay, Yeah, So we would basically we would get tasked.
We wouldn't always know why we were taking the photographs. You might just get
a front door and get told we want to know everyone who's been in and
out of that door. You then go and find somewhere you could see that
front door from, whether it be a bush, a derelict, or somewhere
you could hide up, and you'd literally stay there, sometimes in excess of
three or four weeks, and take photographs of that said door and you wouldn't
even know why or who it was. Sometimes it was coming in and out
of there. You'd pass on up the chain and they'd do what they needed
to do and that would be it, Like you know what I mean.
So it could be a door, it could be it could be anything that
could you know, they could just ask you, you know, can you
go and take a photograph of you know, can you wait on this thing
and see if you see this car? We're looking for a car with this
rench plate? And it could be anything. Yeah, So you very often
didn't know. In fact, ninety nine percent a time I would not know
why or what it was or even sometimes who it was that I was taking
photographs off. And that's done just to keep it's a need to know basis.
Yeah, you know what I mean, And you just need to know
what you need to do. Then they do what they've got to do.
What what what you found out for them? You know, out of curiosity.
You did that while you were with the uh the is it the Hampshire?
Yeah, the Royal Regiment and the Princess as well as the Wroyal Regiments.
So yeah, they're both the both infanty units. And I did it
with both of them. So would I be wrong in saying that those are
classically sort of uh, conventional infantry units. Yes, yep, conventional infantry
units. But what it was s F isn't the hugest. It isn't the
hugest in the world. And you know, they didn't have enough guys right
with everything going on to do everything they needed to do, so they had
to farm some of it out. So they set up every battalion that went
to Northern Ireland had a copp platoon and those copp platoons would pick up some
of the stuff that special forces couldn't do, or didn't have time to do,
or needed done in a hurry. So then did they for that cup
platoon? Did they send you to like or did they teach you how to
you know, photograph like you Oh yeah, yeah, you did a photography
course and you had to do this thing called uprating, which basically meant that
you had to sort of trick the film the camera and it was all done
with that normal, normal film in my day, so it wasn't there was
no digital, so you had to learn how to uprate and stop the film
from getting grain in the eye. It was it was an absolute nightmare.
It really was you and you could go out and you could end up taking
photcasts for a week, come back in and the whole thing if you've got
this, if you got these numbers wrong or the or the settings wrong,
you could mess the whole thing up. Come back in and photos developed and
go right, we can't read any of that or see yea and no.
So yeah, there was a lot riding on it. It was really difficult
work. And then just towards the end of the time I was doing it,
you know, video cameras were coming out and it was getting a little
bit easier. But even then, you know, we were talking, we
were taking lenses in there sometimes that were as big as me. Right,
this lens celestron, it was absolutely huge. You were trying to hide this
thing in a bushlight, you know, give us. Yeah, it was
fun. Yeah, that's awesome. And that's why I was wondering, because
you know, you have this you know, conventional entestrea and you guys are
out there doing really a kind of wrecky sneak and peek, you know,
sneak and peak type stuff, and so yeah, it's good. It gives
you an insight, and it gives you. You know, if you're that
way in coin an infantry unit and you want to take it to the next
level, it gives you a great insight into what the other into what the
other guys are doing right right. Oh, Phil, thank you so much
for joining us. Man people out there, go check out Force Radio dot
Live. Really appreciate this interview. Thank you for sharing, you know,
your life story with us. Phil, And you know we're we'd love to
have you back on the show sometime. You want to show the next chapter.
Yeah, love to go, love to come over and see. Yeah,
okay, what's you want us know? Next time you're come up with
you can make our Christmas party this year. We'll we'll we'll make sure we
have Figgie pudding. But I mean I'm in, I'm in. Judge it
once to me. I'm telling you all right, guys, we'll see all
of you on Friday.