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Speaker 3: Slash the Teamhouse, Special Operations, Coberts Aspionage, the Team House
Speaker 3: with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 1: This is Dave.
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Speaker 4: Hey, everybody, Welcome to episode two hundred and ninety four
Speaker 4: of The Team House. I'm Dave Park Jack Murphy our
Speaker 4: guest night legendary Mike West.
Speaker 1: His book Mike West Special Force of Super Soldier.
Speaker 4: Mike served in the Gray Scouts, the Rhodesian Light Infantry
Speaker 4: and the sas and then went back to Reki when
Speaker 4: when all was said and done and has done a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of other stuff. Please, well, thank you very
Speaker 4: much for joining us.
Speaker 1: And it's super late there, Mike. Thanks for joining us tonight.
Speaker 5: Pleasure pleasure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a what time is it right now?
Speaker 5: Well, we were running at about just off to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got you guys are great. Thank you for
Speaker 1: doing this. Thanks so much so, Michael.
Speaker 4: We always like to start these shows with a person's
Speaker 4: origin story. How did you grow up, you know, and
Speaker 4: what led you into the service?
Speaker 5: The child I think we had a My dad met
Speaker 5: my mother during the war. She was the Italian. He
Speaker 5: brought it back and we had a very bad life
Speaker 5: and my mom ended up getting rid of us and
Speaker 5: dumping us in an orphanage my brother and I, which
Speaker 5: was was you didn't realize that at the time because
Speaker 5: everybody was and it looked normal, but it was torture.
Speaker 5: So it was a It was a difficult stage to
Speaker 5: go through, but it prepared a guy for life, you
Speaker 5: know what lay ahead, So it didn't at this stage,
Speaker 5: it didn't face. It was difficult, but you went through
Speaker 5: it and once we got out there, you know, My
Speaker 5: whole life was always violent. But my family was violent.
Speaker 5: My father was violent, my uncles were violent. They all
Speaker 5: came out of the war. They they loved. They enjoyed
Speaker 5: the old fisty cuffs and fighting, and we witnessed so
Speaker 5: much of these fights. We used to walk over to
Speaker 5: your place. And we lived in a mining town in
Speaker 5: Welcome in the freest and our entertainment, our television was
Speaker 5: to go to the old Valkymotel and watch out. The
Speaker 5: Italians and the Africans used to get stuck into one another,
Speaker 5: bottle each other. It was it was absolutely we enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: You know, a lot of blood and it was good fun.
Speaker 5: And that's what we lived with. There was a lot
Speaker 5: of animosity between us and the Afrikaans kids. This stems
Speaker 5: now the parents reared the kids. They hated the English people,
Speaker 5: you know, and and this what was about. So we
Speaker 5: ended up going to boxing clubs where I actually became
Speaker 5: a Northern Free State boxing champion, and we went through
Speaker 5: a lot of this stuff, a lot of violence. Violence.
Speaker 5: But life was difficult. It was really difficult. Obviously, we
Speaker 5: were very poor. You didn't worry about being poor because
Speaker 5: everybody was poor in the mining town and my life
Speaker 5: turned out. I'd got a step mother. My dad noted
Speaker 5: another woman stepped mom and didn't go very well, and
Speaker 5: I decided to disappear. I ran away and I lived
Speaker 5: in Banangna plantations. I even slept in a subway with
Speaker 5: some hoboes, and I slept in railway stations. And this
Speaker 5: was the way I was going. And through this whole
Speaker 5: tour of mine around the country. Event she landed up
Speaker 5: in a place called Victoria, where had her aunt over there.
Speaker 5: And I must have been there two weeks or so,
Speaker 5: and then she the police were looking for me, and
Speaker 5: then she notified got all of my parents or whoever
Speaker 5: got out. But anyway, the cops came and got me
Speaker 5: police and took me back, and the plans were to
Speaker 5: put me in a reformatory, but some guy came up
Speaker 5: with a with a with the ingenious of an idea,
Speaker 5: and they decided to put me in the prison Service
Speaker 5: Training College was was in the Fee State as well,
Speaker 5: in a place called Crown Stuff where they took me
Speaker 5: on and I went there and trained as a warder
Speaker 5: to go work in the prisons. So that was up
Speaker 5: to their very violent life. Let me tell you these
Speaker 5: little Africanas founded us. I tell you, I've never I
Speaker 5: don't think anybody's got as many hidings as what I got.
Speaker 5: You know, I really my brother and I got some very.
Speaker 2: For Americans out there who don't necessarily understand South African culture.
Speaker 2: If you want to explain a little bit about the
Speaker 2: Afrikaners of Dutch heritage versus you know, people of British
Speaker 2: or Angle heritage, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's correct. They You know, they still got anger
Speaker 5: from the bull walls when the English got down. Yeah,
Speaker 5: this anger still exists, and the parents installed this anger
Speaker 5: into their children. Anyway, these kids used to be like
Speaker 5: backgrounds on top of us, and we had a tough time.
Speaker 5: That's why my dad put us in the in the
Speaker 5: boxing where to go to boxing club? I remember I
Speaker 5: went to a boxing club called Western Holdings and I
Speaker 5: had a coach name was Solraled the Beer and I was.
Speaker 5: I went over there and I did very very well. Well.
Speaker 5: I had no option. You had to fight. And the
Speaker 5: fun part of a young was the parents. My dad
Speaker 5: would be in the mind. Everybody's kids would go and
Speaker 5: box and the miners would bet probably a ten cent
Speaker 5: or five cent, I don't know. What it was? Whose
Speaker 5: son with thump? Who in the club? You know? And
Speaker 5: the coach soreled the beer. Well, I didn't really like
Speaker 5: English either, so I landed up in quite a few
Speaker 5: little skirmishes at the club as well. It was a
Speaker 5: very interesting childhood, but it for the for the whole,
Speaker 5: my whole upbringing was incredible violence. I went home many
Speaker 5: a day with a blood nose and bleeding lips and
Speaker 5: you know, and a black eye. And is it all?
Speaker 5: Africanas really laid into us. They actually hated us. I
Speaker 5: haven't got another word for it. You know, they used
Speaker 5: the most horrific names for us, which you people wouldn't
Speaker 5: understand over there, you know, the type of names are
Speaker 5: used in Afrikaans uce. But there was an unbelievable amount
Speaker 5: of animosity and that was normal to us.
Speaker 4: Well, and you mentioned, you know, the violence at home
Speaker 4: and the violence you know, out in public, but also
Speaker 4: your school. I remember your comment about your principal. I'm
Speaker 4: headmaster East.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's quite an interesting day where the head mass
Speaker 5: his name was missed the East and my surname was West. Now,
Speaker 5: admittedly I was a naughty little bugger because I was
Speaker 5: a boxer, and you know this. We were just naughty
Speaker 5: and the school came down on the thing. It was
Speaker 5: a very popular thing. The cane rises in the east
Speaker 5: and sets on the west. OHI used to thump me.
Speaker 5: You really gave it to me. But I was I
Speaker 5: was naughty, man, I was a naughty little bugger. I
Speaker 5: know it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so so you you eventually you get kicked out
Speaker 4: of school. Basically, your dad tells you have to go back.
Speaker 4: Mister E says no, and you can't work in the mines.
Speaker 5: Right, quite correct. What happened was they decided when I
Speaker 5: eventually got back after my little tour around the country,
Speaker 5: when I ran away and I got back, they just
Speaker 5: decided I had to go. You know, they had enough
Speaker 5: at me. You know. One of the happiest moment was
Speaker 5: was as I was leaving the school grounds. Now we
Speaker 5: had a duplex, and these kids were hanging out the
Speaker 5: windows screaming and waving and all. I was never so
Speaker 5: throlled in my life. I really hated school. That was.
Speaker 5: We did a lot of fighting in the school as well,
Speaker 5: you know, but I hated school. And then I wanted
Speaker 5: to go to the mines and my dad said, no way,
Speaker 5: are you going to land up in the mines. But
Speaker 5: they so the problem came up. The welfare took over
Speaker 5: with me, and they, like I said, they wanted to
Speaker 5: put me in a reformatory, and some guy came up
Speaker 5: with this brilliant idea and they put me in the
Speaker 5: prison Service College, which served me well. You know. That
Speaker 5: kept me out of trouble, and that was quite an
Speaker 5: interesting little trip. It was nice. It helped me ahole
Speaker 5: of a lot in life. And when I finished during
Speaker 5: my dad was in nineteen sixty five. When I finished
Speaker 5: during my prisons of a training, they sent me they
Speaker 5: transferred me to a place called zond of Art, near
Speaker 5: the Color of Mine where that huge diamond was found,
Speaker 5: now as zoond of Arta. Once again I landed up
Speaker 5: in a lot of fighting, you know, where the miner's kid.
Speaker 5: And I was just a bit of a ruffian. I
Speaker 5: wasn't a year of any sorts, but I just somehow
Speaker 5: landed up, always landed up in the in the fights
Speaker 5: and the trouble, and I became quite a problem to
Speaker 5: this lot. We had an officer over there with the
Speaker 5: name of a snaye On and they called him Double
Speaker 5: O seven. And these guys couldn't handle me and I
Speaker 5: got up to a lot of weird things, and I
Speaker 5: was making money on the side doing other things. I
Speaker 5: would drive into town and go and work for Indians
Speaker 5: and do illegal things for Indians, like driving cars and
Speaker 5: parking cars at places. And I got paid for these
Speaker 5: things and I made good money. And they started to
Speaker 5: investigate because it didn't make sense how a guy like
Speaker 5: me could own Alpha Mayors and he had underds and motorbikes,
Speaker 5: and they they just had enough at me. But I
Speaker 5: was causing a lot of trouble. But on the other end,
Speaker 5: I played a very good game of rugby because I
Speaker 5: was a violent littlebugger. And in the end they decided
Speaker 5: they wanted to get rid of me. And Pierremont Franti
Speaker 5: was a guy at the Prison Service College, a country
Speaker 5: members rank colonel or Brigadier. Pierremont Fronsali was with the
Speaker 5: Northern trans Or rugby teams. They brought me to Vittoria
Speaker 5: because of my rugby skills, you know. And they got
Speaker 5: me there and then they placed me in the gallows,
Speaker 5: the maximum security and I worked in the gallows, not
Speaker 5: as a hangman. I just was one of the assistants
Speaker 5: in the gallows. Which was a very very interesting story.
Speaker 5: But inside the gallows there was a gentley the name
Speaker 5: of Demetrius Offenders. That was the same gentleman that murdered
Speaker 5: the Prime Minister handled for both in parliament when he
Speaker 5: standing to death. Wow, So I got to meet this
Speaker 5: chappie over there. He wouldn't reveal anything, but you know,
Speaker 5: I met the guy said that was a very interesting
Speaker 5: part of the history. Now, while I was at the gallows,
Speaker 5: I started to moonlight by going and doing part time
Speaker 5: taxi writing because the prison service didn't pay money. It
Speaker 5: was a pathetic story. While I was moonlighting on the
Speaker 5: one Saturday morning and at the railway station, and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden we see this chappie come running along
Speaker 5: in petigear and it was one of the convicted guys,
Speaker 5: a guy with the name of Fanstian. He had been
Speaker 5: sentenced to death for killing of a He killed a detective.
Speaker 5: He had an affair with the guy's wife and then
Speaker 5: he murdered him and then he got the death sentence.
Speaker 5: And I ran over and I grabbed this puppy and well,
Speaker 5: obviously he tried to resist, which was you shouldn't have
Speaker 5: tried that anyway, But I saw to him out quickly,
Speaker 5: we dumped him in the car and we raced him
Speaker 5: back to maximum security where he escaped from. And it
Speaker 5: was it was such a strange sight to see because
Speaker 5: they had they must have had two hundred wardens with
Speaker 5: rifles and dogs and they were going on this massive
Speaker 5: manner to look for this escape conmy and yeah, I
Speaker 5: suddenly pitched up with his guy at the gallows. Now
Speaker 5: that that made me a sort of a year and
Speaker 5: I landed up in newspapers with photos and you know.
Speaker 5: And what happened was this guy had quite influential friends
Speaker 5: and they were they decided there was talks that people
Speaker 5: wanted to kill me, and you know, things were going wrong.
Speaker 5: So the prison service decided they getting rid of me
Speaker 5: out of Petorium for my safety, and they sent me
Speaker 5: to Point Prison in Turbert, which was a real shittle
Speaker 5: excuse the word. I managed to get out of there
Speaker 5: and get back to Pretoria again. When I got back
Speaker 5: there and I looked at this lot and I thought,
Speaker 5: I don't see chance for this discipline stuff anymore. I
Speaker 5: just had enough of this lot and I decided I'm
Speaker 5: now going to do. I want to become a full
Speaker 5: time taxi driver. Now, you know, people look at taxi drivers.
Speaker 5: I don't know, different countries, different opinions about taxi drivers.
Speaker 5: But those days, a taxi driver was encyclopedia of knowledge. Man,
Speaker 5: let me tell you this. Now, I did a lot
Speaker 5: of fighting in the taxi game as well. You know,
Speaker 5: you hit people. It happened. I was just that way
Speaker 5: in claim. And at that time, while I was at
Speaker 5: the taxi I was fighting for a Phoenix boxing club
Speaker 5: which was run by Tony Currm, a Lebanese guy, very
Speaker 5: very good trainer, and the South African heavyweight boxing chump,
Speaker 5: and Jimmy Richards was at the club. But anyway, that
Speaker 5: was all the interesting parts. And I had a physic
Speaker 5: cuff with a one taxi driver at the railway station.
Speaker 5: Now was a brutal a guy and a very aggressive guy,
Speaker 5: and everybody was very cautious of him because he you know,
Speaker 5: he lost his school very easy. He owed me money,
Speaker 5: and I owed him money. You know, we had he
Speaker 5: owed me more than what I owed him. But he
Speaker 5: had a very bad day and he decided he wanted
Speaker 5: his money. And he told me, listen, I want my
Speaker 5: money or so I'm going to thump you. You know what
Speaker 5: I mean. And I told him to go and fly
Speaker 5: a kite, you know. And then this pubby came charging
Speaker 5: down on me, which was the biggest mistake because I
Speaker 5: could throw the fists, you know, and I was boxing
Speaker 5: and I something good. I beat him and he fell
Speaker 5: over a corner, was hitting and people pulled me off,
Speaker 5: and this guy ran up towards the railway station where
Speaker 5: the railway police are, and while I was standing down
Speaker 5: at the station, he came out to the railway policeman
Speaker 5: and he was shouting, that s him, that shim, that's him.
Speaker 5: But I was angry at this stage of the game,
Speaker 5: and they told me, told me I must come out,
Speaker 5: and I just told him to go and fly a
Speaker 5: kite because I was very very angry. But you know what,
Speaker 5: the beauty I was. One of the other taxi drivers
Speaker 5: went up with him after I thumped him, and when
Speaker 5: they went into the bathroom, then he attu rinse his
Speaker 5: mouth and the water was coming out of his cheek.
Speaker 5: I had given this guy a man. I was so proud.
Speaker 5: How he took the blow, I don't know, but the
Speaker 5: water was coming out of his cheek and I felt
Speaker 5: toughed with myself you know, because he was an aggressive guy. Well, anyway,
Speaker 5: I told Eventually, because the Row police couldn't get anything right,
Speaker 5: he went down to Central Police station to lay a
Speaker 5: charge against me over there. But this was on the
Speaker 5: premises of the railroad Police. It was their jurisdiction, so
Speaker 5: they couldn't charge me. Anyway. This thing went up and down,
Speaker 5: and somehow the other, the railway police or ever behind it,
Speaker 5: got sick and tired of us guys, and decided we
Speaker 5: got to get off the station. You know, they didn't
Speaker 5: want us anymore. There's good money and everybody knew us.
Speaker 5: And I mean, you could come to me as a
Speaker 5: taxi driver and there's nothing you couldn't add. I could
Speaker 5: arrange anything you wanted, you know, Encyclopedia of Knowledge. Anything
Speaker 5: doesn't matter what you want, I could arrange it. And
Speaker 5: I had very good customers, and I was making very
Speaker 5: very good money and I was living well. They decided,
Speaker 5: you know, they had enough of us, and they removed
Speaker 5: us from the station and we had to go and
Speaker 5: start a new rank in Fambilan Street in Petoria. Now
Speaker 5: you can't just go and open a taxi rank in
Speaker 5: a new area. You need client tell anyway, they didn't work. Outside,
Speaker 5: I sold my taxi. I had a human vogue, a
Speaker 5: little automatic, little job, and I sold that to an
Speaker 5: Italian guy with a cinema from Wandi, and he bought
Speaker 5: up quite a few of these taxis while he lost
Speaker 5: all his money. Eventually, because it didn't work, I decided
Speaker 5: I went to work for a guy with the name
Speaker 5: of Vessels. Good guy, nice guy, had a valiant, wanted
Speaker 5: these old valiants, and I was doing quite well over there.
Speaker 5: But while I was over there, now I there was
Speaker 5: a local pub called the fron of Cell Pub, and
Speaker 5: there used to be all these railway apprentices, ruffians man
Speaker 5: really rough little guys. We just do a lot of fighting.
Speaker 5: And the barman's name was Richard, and he asked me
Speaker 5: one day, don't you want to come and sort out
Speaker 5: these puppies rice, you know. And then every time they
Speaker 5: called out, run drive down, and I'd gone sump these guys.
Speaker 5: You know. I got a couple of good shots against
Speaker 5: their head there as well. But anyway, I sorted this
Speaker 5: lot out at the in the pub. Now, this Vessels guy,
Speaker 5: now I was losing customers who'd come to the taxi
Speaker 5: and I wasn't there, and they went and complained about it.
Speaker 5: So he came and he gave me a bit of
Speaker 5: a bollocking which I didn't handle. I told him to
Speaker 5: go and fly a kite. Now I was joblessly. I
Speaker 5: had no work. Now where do I go? And I
Speaker 5: need job. At this stage of the game, I'd married
Speaker 5: another woman and I had you know, I had a
Speaker 5: kid with her and I needed income. So I get
Speaker 5: an ingenious idea. I decide I'm going to join the army.
Speaker 5: Now at this stage of the game, these special Forces
Speaker 5: of South Africa, the Wrecks, very well known special forces.
Speaker 5: They were on the go and I was sitting in
Speaker 5: the pub talking to Richard, and I said, I'm going
Speaker 5: to give this a go. You know, I'm going to
Speaker 5: give it a go. So I go over to the
Speaker 5: head office. A whole lot of guys we're completing forms,
Speaker 5: sitting there, were handed in. We're waiting, and the guy
Speaker 5: comes out. He were speaking in Afrikaans and told the
Speaker 5: guys okay, we'll contact you contact. They came over to
Speaker 5: me and said to me, you know you can go.
Speaker 5: You don't qualify. I said, what's wrong? I said, no,
Speaker 5: you don't have qualification. Because I was expelled. You know,
Speaker 5: he son at six. I had a son at six
Speaker 5: certificate because I was naughty and I was fighting, and
Speaker 5: we were naughty little buggers, so I could. And I
Speaker 5: had no religious upbringing. You know nothing, we religion didn't
Speaker 5: exist for us. We weren't worried about things like that.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I said, where do I go with all
Speaker 5: this cup? So Richard and I was sitting in the
Speaker 5: front of Stell having a good chat and we talk
Speaker 5: about Rhodesia. Now, the war was on the go in Rhodesia,
Speaker 5: and I said, oh, man, I must give this a go.
Speaker 5: But now I know I've got absolutely no military backer.
Speaker 5: I've never served. I'm a damn taxi driver. Came out
Speaker 5: the gallows, taxi driver with no military expen How am
Speaker 5: I going to get into a military organization? Now? Way
Speaker 5: back when I lived in the Friest, a guy with
Speaker 5: the name of Bruce Fisher came and lived us, and
Speaker 5: he was in the arm and he used to spin
Speaker 5: a lot of which I didn't know at the time.
Speaker 5: I used to believe him. And whilst there was a
Speaker 5: taxi driver, we would take a lot of the guys
Speaker 5: to the military base in fir tracker work there, and
Speaker 5: I used to listen to all these stories. So I
Speaker 5: decided I bothered my dad's green page and station wagon
Speaker 5: had a bit of bucks, and I decided I'm going down.
Speaker 5: So I concoct the story the biggest load of bullshit
Speaker 5: under the sun about infantry. And I can't remember all
Speaker 5: the crap I put together. But anyway, when I got
Speaker 5: to Salisbury, I completed this application form and I thought,
Speaker 5: I'm in the military. No, we had to go back
Speaker 5: and they would inform me, you know, they'd called me up.
Speaker 5: Oh what a disappointment to go all the way back
Speaker 5: because now you've got a riding convoy with the BSAP
Speaker 5: escorts here because the convoys got ambushed by the terrorists
Speaker 5: on the roads. Anyway, all the way back I speagan
Speaker 5: the correction and maybe three weeks two, three weeks down
Speaker 5: the line, Yeah, I get a telegram ticket and all
Speaker 5: I'm being called up to go to Rhodesia. Man was
Speaker 5: I thrawed? Oh, man, I've got a job, you know,
Speaker 5: Because I can't get a job. People didn't like me. Well,
Speaker 5: I didn't know why, but I didn't understand at the
Speaker 5: time where people didn't want to give me a job,
Speaker 5: you know. Anyway, on the train got to Salisbury, there
Speaker 5: are some guys waiting in the gyp picked me up
Speaker 5: and they drive me off to a place calleding Como
Speaker 5: Barracks to the Gray Scouts. Got there and it's horses
Speaker 5: and questions centers and allah felt, I got a camouflage uniform,
Speaker 5: boots and oh man, I felt on top of the wall.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm in the military as a taxi driver
Speaker 5: with the biggest loaded crack. I don't know anything about
Speaker 5: military Mike. How old are you right now?
Speaker 1: Late now?
Speaker 4: No know, at that point in time, at this point
Speaker 4: in the story.
Speaker 5: Must have been let me work it out, at seventeen.
Speaker 5: Let me just get I was twenty seven, twenty twenty
Speaker 5: six years old. So you and I went to war.
Speaker 1: You were to find it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're kind of an old man compared to like
Speaker 4: a lot of the other people around you.
Speaker 5: Oh well, they do military training at eighteen years old,
Speaker 5: you know. Yeah. Yeah, I come along as a taxi driver,
Speaker 5: being twenty six, twenty seven years going to you know,
Speaker 5: joining the Bloody Army, you know. Yeah, And fortunately the
Speaker 5: Gray Scouts wasn't a hell of a big compatant unit
Speaker 5: at that stage of the game. So I had to
Speaker 5: go through the questions and go through all the necessity
Speaker 5: ups and downs to you know, to get to no
Speaker 5: horses and fit saddles the normal stuff, which was was
Speaker 5: was quite fun. And they gave me a horse with
Speaker 5: a name of Wetfort, a potolous, a big puppy, and
Speaker 5: I was jeoff. But you know what the beauty is
Speaker 5: now I'm sitting here cow, I'm in the army. Man,
Speaker 5: I've got no idea what anything is about. I'm just
Speaker 5: winging my way around, you know. And anyway, we were
Speaker 5: very fortunate to get through the question. I could ride
Speaker 5: horse because as youngsters we used to ride donkeys and horses,
Speaker 5: you know, the place called Rainbow Valley in the mining areas,
Speaker 5: So it wasn't a problem. I just struggled to fit
Speaker 5: a saddle on a horse because I had no idea
Speaker 5: to fit a saddle. But I mean, obviously I mastered that,
Speaker 5: and wow, man, a great moment of my life. This
Speaker 5: whole convoy got together, horses were loaded on vehicles, RL's
Speaker 5: Bedfords and four or five Merks and we off. We
Speaker 5: go to a place called Yama Panda, which was well
Speaker 5: quite away from Mozenbig, but was in the eastern area
Speaker 5: off to our base camp. You must remember Yarm sitting
Speaker 5: as a taxi driver amongst a lot of people. Now,
Speaker 5: a lot of the guys that came and came from America,
Speaker 5: you name it, all over the world. They joined Rudesia
Speaker 5: because it was a war. You know, they took everybody
Speaker 5: on and all on. I'm just listening to all this stuff.
Speaker 5: But the guys are talking. Some guys spoke about Vietnam
Speaker 5: and I was listening to all this stuff and I
Speaker 5: just was winging my way around. I had no idea
Speaker 5: what's going on. Anyway, we got to this place Nearma
Speaker 5: Panda and there we hung a run in the base camp,
Speaker 5: grooming horses and doing gud duty and so on. And
Speaker 5: then on a day came they said to us, okay,
Speaker 5: we're going to deploy. Now. The guy's name was Dave
Speaker 5: Spots was my first team leader. Came over and he said, okay,
Speaker 5: guys were going out, and you know we're going to deploy.
Speaker 5: You know, praduc felt today. You know, you can imagine
Speaker 5: this taxi driver with a uniform. They gave me a
Speaker 5: heavy barreled FN and I need to any rounds the
Speaker 5: same as any normal effort, but it weighed about three
Speaker 5: or four killos eavery year. But I felt an ace. Man.
Speaker 5: Now I'm sitting on a horse like Geronimo, wepping up
Speaker 5: in the air, and yeah, we riding through the camp
Speaker 5: and all the guys again. Oh with the point, I
Speaker 5: just wish I can explain how I felt as a
Speaker 5: taxi driver sitting on a horse, whether every barrel machine
Speaker 5: going going into war, got no idea what was but
Speaker 5: I'm on my way. Yeah, anyway, that was. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 5: It was. But as time went on. Now I'd seen
Speaker 5: a black and white movie in my life about a war,
Speaker 5: you know, Second World War, guys running with payments on
Speaker 5: rifles and and that always suck in my mind. Now
Speaker 5: we're out of these horses and that, and I was
Speaker 5: thinking to myself, oh, you look, I'm not a stupid guy.
Speaker 5: And I was thinking, oh, if somebody shoots at men
Speaker 5: on top of this horse, I've got trouble. You know,
Speaker 5: there's typical custos scene over here. And the other thing
Speaker 5: had got me very concerned. When we went into an lup,
Speaker 5: which is a lineup place for the day, then the
Speaker 5: horses got to be tied at a certain area. Now,
Speaker 5: these things stump and fought, and you know, they carry
Speaker 5: on and the horse flies and it's noisy. So we
Speaker 5: got to be quite a distance away from the horses
Speaker 5: because you couldn't hear a stampede coming with the noise
Speaker 5: that these horses made. And the other thing was fearful
Speaker 5: at night, these things they always make a noise, and
Speaker 5: I was scared. We wake up one morning and the
Speaker 5: horses are gone, and the terrorists had made hamburgers out
Speaker 5: of the bloody things. But we decided we at night times,
Speaker 5: we would stay over in a protected village, which was
Speaker 5: a kip where all the locals were kept because of
Speaker 5: the terrorists activities in the area. They get all the
Speaker 5: locals in these protected villages and there was a group
Speaker 5: called the Guard Force that look after them. And that's
Speaker 5: how we would go out in the day, ride around
Speaker 5: and sleep there at night. Now they were a punch up.
Speaker 5: There was a punch up, but we had split up
Speaker 5: and the other guys had a punch up, and I
Speaker 5: arrived there too late, and they killed two of these turs,
Speaker 5: and I was oh. I was angry because I wanted
Speaker 5: to shoot somebody, you know, and anyway, we burnt the
Speaker 5: villagers and whatever the case, God and I did. I
Speaker 5: did a couple of these things, but I didn't get
Speaker 5: satisfaction out of it. Departs from the fact that I
Speaker 5: was like Geronimo, sitting on a bloody horse with a
Speaker 5: heavy barrelfort, which looked good. But I wanted to be
Speaker 5: the guys with a bayonet, you know, charging trenches and
Speaker 5: like I saw in movies, and just I don't know,
Speaker 5: it just appealed to me. Good fortune came my way.
Speaker 5: I remember getting back to the camp the one way,
Speaker 5: and our officer's name was Heywood. He was a lieutenant,
Speaker 5: a good guy, and he said to me, listen, Mike,
Speaker 5: we're going to go and do a resupply with an
Speaker 5: oorl which was a bedfit. We got to take some
Speaker 5: rations out. I want you to escort me. Oh sto
Speaker 5: thrilled about it by that time. Then I got a
Speaker 5: normal F and I got rid of the heavy barrel
Speaker 5: f because there was pointless carrying a thing with bipods.
Speaker 5: It took twenty rounds like any other. And I'm in
Speaker 5: the in the ourl in Kyward's driving and he's got
Speaker 5: his dog which is a Labrador, beautiful dog by the
Speaker 5: name of Blue, sitting between us, and yeah, we go
Speaker 5: driving into the sunset. I never we get looking. You know.
Speaker 5: We were going east and I just felt so much.
Speaker 5: You're sitting with us fn out the window. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm serving a purpose, no idea. What the hell's came on, man?
Speaker 5: And anyway, the roads are in a very very bad state.
Speaker 5: And it's zigzag zig zag all over the road because
Speaker 5: it's a lot of potholes and you name it, very
Speaker 5: bad roads. And I remember it's coming with the speed
Speaker 5: to the one side, to the left hand side of
Speaker 5: the road wed like a dip where we could go
Speaker 5: through quite smoothly. And all of a sudden, nothing, we
Speaker 5: hit a land mine. Now I didn't I couldn't identify
Speaker 5: a landmink for the life of men. Didn't even know
Speaker 5: where a land mine is. You know, I learned all
Speaker 5: these things afterwards. What happened was the vehicle we were
Speaker 5: traveling east, that this land mine hit it, lift the
Speaker 5: vehicle up, threw it off the road in a suddenly direction,
Speaker 5: facing south, and there we sat. The windskin was out,
Speaker 5: and the dog was gone, and I was sitting there.
Speaker 5: It was just dust and I didn't even Okay, I'll
Speaker 5: tell you what happened over there. Now I'm sitting and
Speaker 5: we and I looked over KVID. But my ears are
Speaker 5: blasted now, you know, the ear drums and a medim
Speaker 5: saying we must get out and get out. They can
Speaker 5: kill us, you know. And I jumped out. And when
Speaker 5: I got out, I'm holding my eff and in my
Speaker 5: hand and it's broken. I've got photos of it. It's
Speaker 5: actually smashed. Now, what happened was good fortune when the
Speaker 5: landmine went off. Now what you must understand, the oral
Speaker 5: has got water in the tires for the shock. Then
Speaker 5: it got conveyor belting riveted on the floor. Then it's
Speaker 5: got sand bagging, so you sit with your legs quite bent.
Speaker 5: Then you've got to cross over seat belt that ties
Speaker 5: you down. Now when this, when we hit this landmine,
Speaker 5: it snapped the seat belts and hit me into the
Speaker 5: ceiling the roof of the of the of the cab,
Speaker 5: and good luck to me, the FN came past me
Speaker 5: and smashed and damage broke the weapon and it caught
Speaker 5: me under my chin and lost my head. Who decapitated me? Anyway,
Speaker 5: I get it. I'm standing with this broken weapon in
Speaker 5: my hand. I don't know what's going on. I'm deaf.
Speaker 5: It's a hell of a store. And your blue comes
Speaker 5: running over. Now when the landmine went off, blue and
Speaker 5: right through the where the windskin was, he went right through.
Speaker 5: But it came over all happy and no problem. All
Speaker 5: of a sudden, all these vehicles right, and it's these engineers.
Speaker 5: Now I'm learning as I'm going along now and we
Speaker 5: get a lift, they later said, they take us back
Speaker 5: to camp. When we get back to campyn with my
Speaker 5: broken eff and then we learn there's a mind called
Speaker 5: the TMA three, which is a Yugoslavia And it looks
Speaker 5: like these cheese you buy it in the supermarket, you know,
Speaker 5: cheddy cheese in the dread there's that shape has got
Speaker 5: no metal on, it's just the T and T. Now,
Speaker 5: this was a double puppy because the size of the
Speaker 5: hole and the way it threw us. Now, I wasn't
Speaker 5: supposed to be alive, but I didn't know it at
Speaker 5: the time that I'm supposed to have been, you know,
Speaker 5: because I was right on top of the landmine. But
Speaker 5: I felt, I tell you, you know, proud I felt
Speaker 5: of that one I had survived this landmine. Everybody slapping
Speaker 5: me on the back. My back was hurt, my ankle
Speaker 5: was hurt, but I felt top notch I had. Now,
Speaker 5: I mean combat man, this is what I wanted and
Speaker 5: being worn this was it. I was so proud of myself.
Speaker 5: And whilst I was in the Gray Scouts, I heard
Speaker 5: about the Revision Light Infantry. These guys used to jump
Speaker 5: into combat from Dakotas or deployed by Alouette choppers into
Speaker 5: the war into combat. There's no question. You go on
Speaker 5: the ground and you look for teurs. You were right
Speaker 5: in the combat. And I thought, now I want to
Speaker 5: join this man, you know, I want to progress a
Speaker 5: bit because this landmine really motivated me. I loved the
Speaker 5: I just felt like a year omen. Anyway, got back,
Speaker 5: did my forms and they sent me to URL and
Speaker 5: I landed up in a IN two commando. Now remember
Speaker 5: I'm now twenty seven years old, and my troop commander
Speaker 5: was a guy with the name of Mike. She was
Speaker 5: a lieutenant. He was nineteen years old, nineteen year od kid.
Speaker 5: And all the youngsters that people around me are kids,
Speaker 5: and you understanding amongst these kids, it was another world,
Speaker 5: you know. But I was there and I was happy
Speaker 5: I was there, and while we tied, just my luck,
Speaker 5: they decided that I was going to be one of
Speaker 5: the guys going to be trained as a paratrooper. Now
Speaker 5: in Rhodesia, they had to train people in parachuting because
Speaker 5: we didn't have enough aloege to deploy everybody. So I
Speaker 5: landed up on a parachute course, basic parachuting. My instructor
Speaker 5: was the guy with the name of Andy Steen. It
Speaker 5: was a magnificent course. It was out of this wall there. Now,
Speaker 5: I'm a parabat, day taxi driver, no war experience on
Speaker 5: a par of course, you understanding. And I'm a parabat
Speaker 5: and I got a nineteen year old officer leading me.
Speaker 5: Let me tell you something. This guy's name was Mike Rich.
Speaker 5: It looked like a tom Cruiser hall of Ahn, some
Speaker 5: looking a smart guy. You would never say that this
Speaker 5: guy's a combatant, but balls of titanium. You must see
Speaker 5: these guys in combat. I've never in my entire life,
Speaker 5: well up to that stage. I mean, what I don't
Speaker 5: know about war. Eighteen nineteen year old kids like that
Speaker 5: they go into combat. Now what happened was I was
Speaker 5: very fortunate. I wasn't deployed to a place called the
Speaker 5: Grand Reef where there and off go the sirens. We
Speaker 5: run to the Dakota. The choppers are warming up, the gunships,
Speaker 5: the CA cars. It's got a twenty mile the geekas.
Speaker 5: We've got twin Brownings on that goata warming up, We
Speaker 5: got the shoots on. Your weapon gets struck and into
Speaker 5: the deck. You're going off we fly. Now, I'm very
Speaker 5: very excited today. I mean, I don't ever know what's
Speaker 5: going on. What do I know? I just hear these
Speaker 5: stories and then we get our stand up, you know,
Speaker 5: hook up, check equipment, and then eventually out the door
Speaker 5: and we jump right into combat. Man, you know how
Speaker 5: fantastic I felt. You know, the strangest thing is I
Speaker 5: didn't know any fear because I didn't know what war was.
Speaker 5: He was a hell of a lot of shooting and bangs.
Speaker 5: The gun ships were flying around circling, and twenty males
Speaker 5: were going and Brownings were going. It was oh, it
Speaker 5: was unbelievable. There was Lynx lobbing, napalm comes down, staffing
Speaker 5: and I thought, wow, man, this is beautiful. Now, this
Speaker 5: is my first time I've actually been in real combat.
Speaker 5: And remember being on the ground on the left flank. Now,
Speaker 5: I've got the mag which when I was at oral
Speaker 5: they obviously went less. I've got a machine gun. It's
Speaker 5: a big puppy. It it's a big weapon to jump with,
Speaker 5: about thirteen kilograms. Anyway, I'm on the left flank, and
Speaker 5: as we're swooping through our sea, on my left flank,
Speaker 5: I see that as the choppers are circling, there are
Speaker 5: two of these terrorists under the trees, firing through the
Speaker 5: canopy of the tree at the choppers. And I turned
Speaker 5: the alan and I open up, and I get the
Speaker 5: spirits of sayin, I take the one guy it must
Speaker 5: have been I reckon eighteen meters. I'm speaking under correction,
Speaker 5: but I know him. The other puppy goes to go
Speaker 5: and he starts opening up at me, and I enjoyed that,
Speaker 5: and I rapped him, and I put a hell of
Speaker 5: a person and I got rid of him, and I
Speaker 5: used the whole hundred rounds over there to kill these
Speaker 5: two guys. Then I put a new belt on and
Speaker 5: then we stepped forward, and then I got covering fire
Speaker 5: and they did the rest of the job. I never forget.
Speaker 5: When we got back to the camp, the mockery because
Speaker 5: now the old man, I was the old man. I mean,
Speaker 5: these are kids, man. I had an underground and the
Speaker 5: command of the base cap was mocking me that it
Speaker 5: took a hundred rounds around to killed two guys. But
Speaker 5: I was a bloody taxi driver and I enjoyed it,
Speaker 5: you know, Dave and Jack. I just want to tell
Speaker 5: you something how this relates to this story. Two women
Speaker 5: are sitting and having tea, and they chatting about the kids,
Speaker 5: and the one says to the other one, Oh, my
Speaker 5: son has gone to the military. They've given him a uniform,
Speaker 5: they give them a big steel helmet, they've given him
Speaker 5: a gun and boots, and he's gonna go in and
Speaker 5: kill all these people. And the other lady looks at
Speaker 5: it and says, to you, but I amn't too scared.
Speaker 5: They're going to kill him, she says, But why would
Speaker 5: they do that. They don't even know him, you know,
Speaker 5: gave me that. Yeah, people were shooting at me, and
Speaker 5: I wasn't scared, because what do I know about bloody war,
Speaker 5: you know? But I enjoyed it. It was It's fun.
Speaker 5: How can I numerous of these punch ups, A lot
Speaker 5: of punch ups.
Speaker 4: Mike, can I just ask you real quick because obviously
Speaker 4: you when you were younger, you were very it seems
Speaker 4: like you were very anti authoritarian.
Speaker 1: Right you were? You were your own person.
Speaker 4: How did you find your way to mesh with the
Speaker 4: military where that part of you didn't come out?
Speaker 5: I was so keen to have a job. I just
Speaker 5: fell in with this story. I just followed orders. I
Speaker 5: just did what I did. You know, I just blended.
Speaker 5: It's just a flexibility, call it that. And the most
Speaker 5: difficult thing for me was, Dave, you must imagine these
Speaker 5: are youngsters, man, Yeah, kids, yeah, And in that contact,
Speaker 5: I saw these guys in action, and you you don't
Speaker 5: see this anyway. It's unbelievable to see eighteen nineteen year
Speaker 5: old kids carry on. As I'll explain a bit further on. Anyway,
Speaker 5: I landed up in a lot of punch ups and
Speaker 5: I enjoyed it. And I know there's a lot of
Speaker 5: talk where they say everybody crept himself in war and that,
Speaker 5: but I just couldn't wait to get out of the
Speaker 5: bloody plane. I don't know what it was. I just
Speaker 5: got a hell of a thrill out of us. I
Speaker 5: saw didn't even worry about death. Death never worried me,
Speaker 5: and we went into We had the Sulu scouts would
Speaker 5: be on the ground. They would pick up the terrorists
Speaker 5: coming in the country. They would notify the fire force
Speaker 5: in the area, and then we would go up. And
Speaker 5: we went out for another punch. Up was a nice,
Speaker 5: big group of urs over there, and we jumped out
Speaker 5: and I had the MG. Now the MG, if you
Speaker 5: see the fight, there's a massive weapon which is stapped
Speaker 5: over your shot. It's massive. And I'm coming in for
Speaker 5: backward landing. Now you know, they're taking shots at us
Speaker 5: coming down and I connect the ground without knowing it.
Speaker 5: The butt breaks off of this MD and I'm on
Speaker 5: the ground. I loosen it. They get it up and
Speaker 5: I pick us up and there's like a submachine gun.
Speaker 5: It's but the butt still is touched on the swings.
Speaker 5: I'll throw it over my shoulder. Got the pistol grip.
Speaker 5: I loosen the bipods and I tell you it must
Speaker 5: be the first time. I don't even think Amber has
Speaker 5: done this and into combat. Didn't perturb me. I'm honest
Speaker 5: with it. Didn't even perturb me. And I've got this
Speaker 5: thing and I'm having born man, I'm gaining. I'm having fun. Anyway,
Speaker 5: we called a lot of guys there, and the one
Speaker 5: guy managed to slot one of these guys who was
Speaker 5: carrying an RPD. Edward Lindsall was his name. He passed
Speaker 5: away reously, a brilliant youngster, was eighteen years old. There.
Speaker 5: I was towering over these guys. This guy's had bump
Speaker 5: fluff men. You can't believe it. The bravery is I
Speaker 5: can't explain it. Anyway, they give me this RPD and
Speaker 5: they took some turs and undertwo what they threw them
Speaker 5: on the aloe with a gun and offered when I'm
Speaker 5: sitting with an RPD, and I all I had to
Speaker 5: know is where the barrel was, where the trigger was,
Speaker 5: and the safety catch. And I was thrall and I
Speaker 5: so badly wanted to kill somebody with us. And we
Speaker 5: went in, but I didn't have a chance to kill anybody.
Speaker 5: I was so peered off with us. I really wanted
Speaker 5: to kill somebody with us. Anyway, went back to Kleoopity
Speaker 5: and so on and so forth, and as this thing progressed,
Speaker 5: I was I was so excited with us, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm sure I could have fathered some of these guys,
Speaker 5: you know. Yeah, and the beautiful thing came up in
Speaker 5: seventy seven Operation Dingo, probably the biggest operation ever Indonesia.
Speaker 5: I think it compares with Vietnam with the biggest ever
Speaker 5: they was. And I land up with Mike Rich the
Speaker 5: nineteen year old. Oh what a gutsy guy. That's you
Speaker 5: can't believe it. It's awesome, man, and MG and off
Speaker 5: I Gobert. I mean alo is Now we're going out
Speaker 5: the stop groups now and the three commanders and the
Speaker 5: sas we're going to jump in sweep to the camps.
Speaker 5: And we were putting a type of horseshoe around it.
Speaker 5: I can't remember the whole story, but I'm in the
Speaker 5: stop group and they jump in and they represent they
Speaker 5: come running towards you as man, what a dream that
Speaker 5: was for me. I love the day. I well, I
Speaker 5: can't explain it to you.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 5: Seventh pep and now that was beautiful. We nailed these guys,
Speaker 5: and I really mean we flawed them, mate, and we
Speaker 5: swept through and and but anyway, we cold stacks of
Speaker 5: these guys. And I but now I'm lying that night
Speaker 5: and I hear all the bangs and because there's fires
Speaker 5: and whatever. And I'm listening, I say to myself, you know,
Speaker 5: I saw the says, wings and the brain. I saw
Speaker 5: these things around people, and I thought, hell man, and
Speaker 5: I've heard so much about Look, there's nothing like the
Speaker 5: essays anywhere in the world. I'm telling you that. And
Speaker 5: I thought, hell I want to be in the Essays.
Speaker 5: So once we get back to your two, Commander, I
Speaker 5: go to my crits and I said, I want to
Speaker 5: go to Essays application for selection. Oh man, that I
Speaker 5: regret that.
Speaker 1: How long have you been between between the.
Speaker 4: Gray Scouts and the Rhodesian Light industry. How long have
Speaker 4: you had you been in the service at that point
Speaker 4: in time?
Speaker 5: Oh, I can't remember offhand. I must have had about,
Speaker 5: uh three, maybe six months. I don't know. I'm speaking
Speaker 5: under correction. You know, time goes so fast when you're
Speaker 5: in the fire force because you you in so much comeback.
Speaker 5: You know what I loved about the ROI You don't
Speaker 5: jump in and you don't fight when you jump in.
Speaker 5: As soon a scouts have put them the books, given
Speaker 5: the lockstack where there are the decks, come they drop
Speaker 5: off gunships put them down there. We go and we
Speaker 5: cull and it's it's it's absolutely amazing, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so time goes, time flies. The one day we deployed twice,
Speaker 5: the record is three times. I can't remember which command
Speaker 5: it was, but we deployed twice. And that day I
Speaker 5: felt it because we got out about half the sixth
Speaker 5: that night. But it was a hell of a buncher.
Speaker 5: But it was so enjoyable. You know, that smell of
Speaker 5: the gun. Well, and I don't know, I just crave
Speaker 5: this stuff. I just loved it. Maybe my childhood dreams
Speaker 5: some singer the Second World War movie. You didn't get
Speaker 5: enough of this anyway, This SAS appuilt, man, I thought
Speaker 5: I came for a selection. Wow, man, who let me
Speaker 5: tell you all the instructors in the SAS are qualified operators.
Speaker 5: They don't take shit, man. Did I only realized when
Speaker 5: I was there. I heard stories and the stories you
Speaker 5: hear about SAS selection. Believe it, I'm telling you believe it.
Speaker 5: That is at another level. That is torture. But I
Speaker 5: was determined to make it. Now. With the reputation that
Speaker 5: I arrived there, they didn't really favor me much and
Speaker 5: I they gave me a hard time. But I was
Speaker 5: a tough cookie, you know, I wasn't going to give
Speaker 5: it because I wanted that parade and I wanted to
Speaker 5: be says. I wanted the war that they had. I
Speaker 5: wanted this comeback and I stuck it out. Look, they
Speaker 5: gave it to me, but I was fortunate over there.
Speaker 5: They at one stage I hammered me very very hot.
Speaker 5: And the guy's name was Rob Johnson, was a major
Speaker 5: awesome operator. I operated him afterwards as calm as hell
Speaker 5: under fire as while a brilliant operator. And they decided
Speaker 5: they didn't exactly like who I was and where I
Speaker 5: came from because I I was a trouble make and
Speaker 5: if you and I did a lot of smuggling, I
Speaker 5: told you I was drive cars pop cause don't know
Speaker 5: what's in the cause get paid, land up in fights.
Speaker 5: It was a bit of a hooligan and he wanted
Speaker 5: to get him me, so they turned up a pressure
Speaker 5: on me. But to break me you needed to add
Speaker 5: a lot, a lot more instructors. Because I wanted to
Speaker 5: be there. I ended up wrestling in the mud with
Speaker 5: Brian Murphy, religion player and that open guy. Yeah, what
Speaker 5: a tough guy. Him and I were brawling in the
Speaker 5: mud anyway. Eventually Rob Johnson went to Darrell what what
Speaker 5: got wounded in the leg and he was on the selection.
Speaker 5: He was out of combat, and he said, we can't
Speaker 5: break this puppy. And Darrell said, give him to me. Man,
Speaker 5: you know, I'll take him because Daryl was my type
Speaker 5: of guy that was a shutster. Listen, this is a
Speaker 5: tough puppy. This is not a type of guy that
Speaker 5: you find anywhere. It's a very unique human being. He
Speaker 5: loved trouble with this out of the bush and you
Speaker 5: in town at night, he will fight. You'll cause trouble.
Speaker 5: If he's in the bush and he's bored, you'll go
Speaker 5: look for trouble. And I love this guy. But i'd
Speaker 5: only heard of Darrell What then. And I remember the
Speaker 5: one up. Everybody spoke about Daryl Arret Tarts all the years,
Speaker 5: Darryl Darrell and I wanted this guy because I just
Speaker 5: some man knew this is where the fight was. You know.
Speaker 5: I ended up in a lot of punch ups with
Speaker 5: different offices. But I remember going on this up with
Speaker 5: him now and we went to an area called Kavala Mana.
Speaker 5: Now we were four manting. Now I was the RPD gunner.
Speaker 5: I love machine gun because you know I could kill
Speaker 5: with this thing. Now I loved just just something appealed
Speaker 5: to me. I was a bit of a not We
Speaker 5: had a signal a medic and Darrel wattered myself and
Speaker 5: four guys and we got into an Lupa area which
Speaker 5: is a high ground, and we were sitting up on
Speaker 5: the ill and were scouting, looking with binoculars. Now you
Speaker 5: look for shine, you know, yours, your normal shape, size, spacing, silhouette,
Speaker 5: shadow shine movement. And we looked for this. And as
Speaker 5: the day got near last night, Daryl came over and said, listen,
Speaker 5: I picked up a glint. It was to the west,
Speaker 5: so I picked it quite away from there, probably about
Speaker 5: five seven killers, I can't remember. He said, I'm going
Speaker 5: to We're gonna go invest it. He said, Mike, you're
Speaker 5: going with me. So we leave all our heavy kid dying.
Speaker 5: I've got my just my normal bult webbing on and
Speaker 5: my RPDO. Loved my rpdo just what I loved it.
Speaker 5: I could have married a arpedion and I just loved
Speaker 5: the weapon. Anyway, we went down and walked into got
Speaker 5: into the night, walked and eventually found vehicle tracks. Remember
Speaker 5: I come out of fire force. Now I've got a
Speaker 5: lot of combat. I'm not scared of fighting, and I'm
Speaker 5: used to combat now. And Darryl Man, I wish you
Speaker 5: guys could meet this guy. This guy's as wide as
Speaker 5: what is taw and man I called him the god
Speaker 5: of war. Nothing like that or what on this planet? Man? Anyway,
Speaker 5: we are, we walking and we get you a makeshift
Speaker 5: boom and the vehicle tracks agagain and Darrell's walking. I'm
Speaker 5: following Daryl and we walk right into a turken But
Speaker 5: I think most people who realized it had turned around
Speaker 5: and scamp it in another direction. But not there or what.
Speaker 5: He just keeps walking. Now. I don't know if we
Speaker 5: were in the middle of the camp on the side
Speaker 5: of the camp, but we were between the turs. I
Speaker 5: could hear the night sounds this is but I had
Speaker 5: this RPD and I was ready, And yeah, Darrel was walking.
Speaker 5: Beautiful moonlight, but a lot of trees in the camp.
Speaker 5: And we walked, I don't know, maybe one hundred meters
Speaker 5: to get through this camp. The other side. We got
Speaker 5: to a Cattie bush. Now we're standing in bright moonlight.
Speaker 5: It feels like I'm standing, you know, on a light
Speaker 5: so bright, and he's just listening and I'm standing and
Speaker 5: I'm waiting, and I don't know what's going on. And
Speaker 5: he just does this and yeah, he goes back on
Speaker 5: the same way walking, and yet all these nights sounds
Speaker 5: and I think wow, But I didn't. At that stage
Speaker 5: of the game. I realized were right in amongst the puppies.
Speaker 5: But I wasn't actually the ter because I was Darrel
Speaker 5: in the Daryl. I heard so much about him, I
Speaker 5: didn't care. You know, a bunch of with him as
Speaker 5: wouldn't worry me. Anyway, we get right to the camp.
Speaker 5: We moved a long distance on the camp, and we
Speaker 5: moved up into a high ground. Now we're sitting on
Speaker 5: this high ground and Suddy, we hear these rifle shot,
Speaker 5: these gunshots going off. Now I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm a fire force man, you know, a
Speaker 5: taxi driver. They're not gray scout, grown up with a
Speaker 5: bloody landmine. Now I'm sitting in this nice combat and
Speaker 5: I said, what said, Daryl says, it's hunters. I said hunters.
Speaker 5: He says, oh, they're going to shoot meat in that.
Speaker 5: So I said, would you like to go and take
Speaker 5: these guys out. I said, oh fuck, I'd love it,
Speaker 5: you know, love it. And he says, okay, let's go listen.
Speaker 5: This sounds like you don't you won't even see this
Speaker 5: in a bloody movie. But it doesn't register me to
Speaker 5: me as normal, you know what. I'm just doing what
Speaker 5: I'm told. And Daryl walks, gets down and finds some
Speaker 5: jumbos for elephants for But there's a lot of bush.
Speaker 5: It's sick. It's Zambia, and he points in that direction.
Speaker 5: He says that that places off you go. And I thought,
Speaker 5: what the hell. Now I'm walking with the RPD and
Speaker 5: I'm walking. I look at my perif. It's about five
Speaker 5: meters behind me. You know, I might as well be
Speaker 5: walking in down window shopping. And I'm walking and in
Speaker 5: the bush round, and all of a sudden there come
Speaker 5: these three chappies. The one's got some game over his shoulder.
Speaker 5: That and the other are but too late. The advantage
Speaker 5: was I knew they were there, and Daryl told me,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm gonna go kill one. They did not
Speaker 5: as they and they went for the guns. But sorry
Speaker 5: for you, you know, too late, and I got rid
Speaker 5: of them. I dispose of them very very effectively. Anyway,
Speaker 5: now we have caused quite a commotion with this machine
Speaker 5: gunner mine. So we moved to another eye ground and
Speaker 5: Daryl's sitting up there wants to see what reaction comes
Speaker 5: if the camp picked it up, because we found the
Speaker 5: cant Now we got to attack this place. While I'm
Speaker 5: sitting up there listening, and I look at him, I
Speaker 5: seemed smiling at me, you know, and I say, well,
Speaker 5: I called himself. I said, what's it? So he says, hey, Wes,
Speaker 5: did you ship yourself? I said, hold one, you know,
Speaker 5: close it was, and he gives a little little chuckle
Speaker 5: of his He just loved the day. Oh, he loved
Speaker 5: He just loved it. I mean it was. It was
Speaker 5: bloody close, you know. I mean say, there was seven
Speaker 5: or eight groops. You know, I could have been in
Speaker 5: quite a fight, but I would have got them. I
Speaker 5: have confident of the modelm Anyway, we moved back to
Speaker 5: the lup with the other two guys with our hop
Speaker 5: with our single thirty A TR forty eight big radio
Speaker 5: mate comes to Salisbury gives them the whole picture, and
Speaker 5: we moved about twenty five kilos to the south, and
Speaker 5: then they came and dropped a lot of guys in
Speaker 5: so we could attack this cap. So there's a lot
Speaker 5: of slogging, minimum sleep and a lot of walking. And yeah,
Speaker 5: but you're an operator, you're an Essays operator. When you
Speaker 5: pass an SAS selection, let me tell you you're your something else.
Speaker 5: That is, if you got five at of one hundred,
Speaker 5: you've got a hell of a lot of people to
Speaker 5: get in over there. Because I remember the day when
Speaker 5: we went to Llewellyn Directs its a lot of these
Speaker 5: wanna be puppies around. Everybody goes in to get a
Speaker 5: day office, probably about six hundred people coming to participate
Speaker 5: in it. In the end when it was all over,
Speaker 5: I think we were seven that made the bloody selection.
Speaker 5: It's a hell of a story. It's torture. I really
Speaker 5: do not recommend as to my worst enemy to go
Speaker 5: and try SAS selection. It's not fun. Anyway, we got
Speaker 5: the lads and we slug all the way back and
Speaker 5: we attacked the camp and it was absolutely amazing. I
Speaker 5: mean I was now in the skirmish line with Darrell
Speaker 5: and man we moved these guys. It was absolutely amazing
Speaker 5: it and we did quite a lot of these things,
Speaker 5: quite a lot of his camp attack one of the
Speaker 5: I did a lot of camp every single camp attack,
Speaker 5: gave and jack every single kampa tech did introudiesia. I
Speaker 5: was on every single one. You can read from Mike
Speaker 5: Rich it was he was in the RLI with me,
Speaker 5: he was in the essays, and he was in the
Speaker 5: recuse with me. And then Darrell what the god of
Speaker 5: war is probably the most renown soldier you're computing. You
Speaker 5: gotta look what they write about me bottom day. You see,
Speaker 5: no people, no guys ever been as much combatant. Now,
Speaker 5: I'm proud of that. As a you must remember why
Speaker 5: I'm proud of it. I'm a bloody. It was a
Speaker 5: taxi driver. I didn't do a military training. I mean
Speaker 5: this is standard. Yeah, yes, this man, that was absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1: How you know you mentioned selection a bit? Can you
Speaker 1: tell us, Uh.
Speaker 4: We're familiar with like United States selections and even a
Speaker 4: bit with the essay British essays selection, but can you
Speaker 4: tell us what it was like in Rhodesian essays selection.
Speaker 4: It's happening during a time of war, kind of in
Speaker 4: a neural inner neural war zone.
Speaker 1: How did that work? How long was that?
Speaker 5: Well? We went to an area called the matopos, very
Speaker 5: mountainous area, a lot of scorpions and gombles, you know, mules.
Speaker 5: It's sheer torture. Then you've got r V point you've
Speaker 5: got to make in certain times, the one you go
Speaker 5: through what they call a three six hour rev. Now, listen,
Speaker 5: this is really not This is where most of the
Speaker 5: people fall out. You know. They got a galvanized bathtub
Speaker 5: with ice in it and Coca colas and everything in it.
Speaker 5: And then they ride next to you and they run
Speaker 5: you in the yat of the sun with sand bags
Speaker 5: and they really give it to you, and they tell you,
Speaker 5: come on, jump on, man, go to the club at night.
Speaker 5: There was a club called the Electric Circles in bull Away.
Speaker 5: Come go with the dollies man, and you see other
Speaker 5: guys jump on and take the coats, and that's how
Speaker 5: they love you on. But it's just help you go
Speaker 5: through a three six hour red. No sleep, no food,
Speaker 5: no water, no shit. You got bricks and all you've
Speaker 5: got to shout the whole time is I love my instructor,
Speaker 5: I love selection, I love my brick. And you got
Speaker 5: to carry on with us, and they nail you, and
Speaker 5: they nail it never. It just doesn't stop. I can't
Speaker 5: explain it to you. And then at one stage they
Speaker 5: line you up in the line and they come with
Speaker 5: a salt tablet and can't remember what they call it
Speaker 5: with quaninia also for for malaria, and you open your
Speaker 5: mouth and check it in your mouth and you got
Speaker 5: to chew it. Then they got a dirty, old bloody
Speaker 5: kettle which they get tissue from the scullery, the rubbish,
Speaker 5: dirty water, and they walk past and the age just
Speaker 5: pouring it and if you get some in your mouth,
Speaker 5: you're lucky and that's your water. But man, it is
Speaker 5: it is, it is. It is torture. Listen, it's torture.
Speaker 5: Then they pull another trick on you. When the thirty
Speaker 5: six hour rivers over, we get a massive log and
Speaker 5: must weigh about three hundred kilograms, and it's called daffodil,
Speaker 5: a daffodil. These are supposedly mortar tube. Now and we've
Speaker 5: got to go about fifty kilometers over uneven ground to
Speaker 5: get to a high point to mortar certain down on
Speaker 5: a tourist map, and you have to be there at
Speaker 5: a certain time. Yeah, now this is where they now
Speaker 5: whilst you're doing this thing, this is where you see
Speaker 5: where the guys start fading. Then when we get to
Speaker 5: the end of this, they give every guy a piece
Speaker 5: of paper and a pencil and you must write down
Speaker 5: who do you think must go because that's where you
Speaker 5: see where the guys don't pull their weight. Then you
Speaker 5: lose a lot of guys over there there, you lose
Speaker 5: a lot of guys. Yeah, and listen it, man, I
Speaker 5: tell you I wouldn't well, I couldn't do it today anymore.
Speaker 5: I'm seventy six years old now. I wouldn't chance it
Speaker 5: again in my life. I wouldn't even think of it. Listen,
Speaker 5: it's not meant for everybody that. It's a very very
Speaker 5: tough game.
Speaker 1: And then what is beauty?
Speaker 5: It prepares you. That's really Look, let's be honest, that's
Speaker 5: not It doesn't matter how tough you are, Army selections
Speaker 5: you pass. If you haven't got it in you to
Speaker 5: go out there and face people with guns, right, if
Speaker 5: it's not in you, don't do it, because that's a
Speaker 5: different bloody ball game. I mean, those people are killing
Speaker 5: time to kill you. Man. Yeah, we landed up in
Speaker 5: a in a skirmish line with another guy at another office,
Speaker 5: and it wasn't there all and well, I killed my
Speaker 5: first albino. I was so proud of myself. He was
Speaker 5: a machine gunner and I was a machine gunner and
Speaker 5: I got rid of this guy. Oh, I was toughed.
Speaker 5: You didn't fight out from the front. He John was
Speaker 5: shutting the oh man, you know, Oh, I felt good.
Speaker 5: If I read a book where some revision book where
Speaker 5: they killed an albino and this, I just felt like
Speaker 5: a you know, I killed my first albina. I'll ask
Speaker 5: proud of myself. Mane. But we went on a quite
Speaker 5: a few of these competexts, but a very nice one
Speaker 5: one that I call nice that I don't people probably
Speaker 5: so I'm stupid, but I don't know. It was nice.
Speaker 5: It was the mccushey one. Now there were females and
Speaker 5: males and with the what happens is the aircraft go in.
Speaker 5: The Canberra's bombed the place. The hunters come in and strike,
Speaker 5: and then the gun ships are up nailing it with
Speaker 5: the twenty moors and it and then US guys come
Speaker 5: in with the decatas and we jump out. But we
Speaker 5: jumped very lowly. You haven't got much time that if
Speaker 5: you're shoot malfunctions too dead because we're jumping too low.
Speaker 5: But we can't jump high because this puppies shoot at us.
Speaker 5: My shoot actually got hit already, you know, with rams
Speaker 5: going through it. It's but it doesn't worry you. Now
Speaker 5: with your weapon being swept, you got a nine more
Speaker 5: behind you, your reserve, which as you come down you
Speaker 5: must if they're shooting at you fight back. But when
Speaker 5: we jump that lowly on the ground very quick, remember
Speaker 5: eating the deck in mccushey. And I'm on the ground.
Speaker 5: We scattered all over and I tell you not look up,
Speaker 5: and I just see this whole lot running towards me.
Speaker 5: And I got this high powered browning and I'm just
Speaker 5: going and I actually dropped them with this bloody thing,
Speaker 5: but a thing I remember, you know what, Dave and Jay,
Speaker 5: I swear I can see the guy's eyes still today.
Speaker 5: You had a brownieh that looked like an overall nearly
Speaker 5: like sad South African defense, all the type overall. This
Speaker 5: guy in mid air turn he came running at me.
Speaker 5: So many turned in mid air, but I doubled apt
Speaker 5: him and I put him away. So with a nine ball.
Speaker 5: While we're on the gun, some guys are stuck in trees.
Speaker 5: You know, it's you don't know where they held you hand.
Speaker 5: It's a very dangerous game and it can break you up.
Speaker 5: One guy even broken neck once Keith click. So it's
Speaker 5: a hell of a dangerous game. So you get all
Speaker 5: your machine gun off for you, whatever weapon you got.
Speaker 5: Once you got that in your hand, man, and you
Speaker 5: formed that line. Now the cake which is your your commander,
Speaker 5: the ops commander guides the skirmish lines now from the
Speaker 5: cake of and then we moved through the camp and
Speaker 5: we nail these guys and that listeners are we're always outnumbered. Man,
Speaker 5: you have ten thousand, two hundred of us or that
Speaker 5: we've hopelessly outnumbered. But we're essays. We are men. These
Speaker 5: are men, and it's a different caliber of mandates. You've
Speaker 5: got to people, I see so much in you, so much,
Speaker 5: but you've got to experience being with the r I
Speaker 5: and the essay. I've never seen fighting force. I don't
Speaker 5: even believe anything like it exists on the planet. It
Speaker 5: is unbelievable. The amount of people we take on the trenches,
Speaker 5: we take on the amount of fire we take, and
Speaker 5: how we beat them at their own game. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 5: But you know how you do it if you've got
Speaker 5: the right teacher. I'm so glad I Darrell what around
Speaker 5: me most of the time because what I don't know.
Speaker 5: That guy just didn't stop me. He was, Oh, I know,
Speaker 5: wish people could meet this guy. This is the type
Speaker 5: of guy I'd like to have up on the wall
Speaker 5: stage and tell people about this guy. Oh man, what
Speaker 5: our operator. Anyway, we sweep through these canton It was
Speaker 5: quite a good oplet and the one officer, Colin was
Speaker 5: there next to me, and we very staggered the line
Speaker 5: because the ground and everything. And he walked past a
Speaker 5: massive branch which obviously got blown off with the explosion
Speaker 5: with one of the planes with a bond strike. And
Speaker 5: I was behind him about five meters by, and as
Speaker 5: us coming on, I see this movement and I yanked
Speaker 5: his branch away. And he has one of these gooks
Speaker 5: where the sks at his back, and I yanked the
Speaker 5: sks out and I doubled tap it in the head. Well,
Speaker 5: he said thank you, but he was a gone. He
Speaker 5: was as dead as can be. But that was fun.
Speaker 5: But anyway, a lot of some guys have a lot
Speaker 5: of actions. Some don't you know, you know, what I
Speaker 5: love about this guy. You can be three meters from
Speaker 5: another guy. You don't know what war is fighting taking
Speaker 5: more numbering a duot. It's just the unbelievable experience and
Speaker 5: the smell of cordite and and and the Nate palm
Speaker 5: and whoh man, it's another game. And we sweep through
Speaker 5: this camp and we I mean, we really flow the
Speaker 5: slot and we get to the other side are we're
Speaker 5: standing over there. While we got to the other side,
Speaker 5: we see a hell of a lot of these Zambian
Speaker 5: troops coming with steel helmets and all that. And we
Speaker 5: watch them coming and we wait. We waited them come.
Speaker 5: But there's a river bed down at the bottom with
Speaker 5: reeds and everything out because that's where the water was.
Speaker 5: And as they got close it, we open up and
Speaker 5: we we slotted a lot of these guys, so they
Speaker 5: take cover. Then they're opening up from the low ground
Speaker 5: at us now. And I'm just gonna say, Graham told
Speaker 5: us calling us, listen, guys, go around and hit them
Speaker 5: from the flank, you know. And so we go around
Speaker 5: and we come up on the side of these guys. Man,
Speaker 5: you can actually see the white in their eyes. We
Speaker 5: mowed these puppies to pieces. We took them apartment, we
Speaker 5: really really took but they had an adoptive with them
Speaker 5: with white hair, which I think was could have been
Speaker 5: a German, I don't know what. But we couldn't find
Speaker 5: this puppy. He dived into the river somewhere. We were
Speaker 5: lobbing Empton grenades into the water to try and you know,
Speaker 5: to get him, and we couldn't find the guy. But
Speaker 5: that was a was a was an awesome bloody operation,
Speaker 5: as with all the others. You know, there were many
Speaker 5: of them, and they were absolutely If anybody once experience
Speaker 5: of war going into a camp, man, wow what an experience.
Speaker 5: And I've done so many of them. It was absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about a little bit about how like the
Speaker 2: latter part of your SAS career and how like the
Speaker 2: war wound down for you personally and went into the next.
Speaker 5: The essays career over there, Jack, you know what happened
Speaker 5: while I was in the SS. You know, I was
Speaker 5: always I was actu hungry. We were gonna do bounty hunding.
Speaker 5: So the Redgit the back of association would hire us
Speaker 5: and give us one thousand rand a kill. If you
Speaker 5: kill a gook, which you don't get from the army.
Speaker 5: So I put a four man tin together and we
Speaker 5: go to the merrymount area to go and hunt this terres.
Speaker 5: Now you must remember this is ridiculous. This area is
Speaker 5: liberated to terrests, the farming areas. We haven't got enough
Speaker 5: troops on the ground, so we go. We do bounty
Speaker 5: hunting for money. But now we fall Chappis, and you're
Speaker 5: taking on unbelievable odds. Anyway, we went into this area.
Speaker 5: We stayed at the farm the night we deployed. Four
Speaker 5: o'clock in the morning, I got on to the Mother
Speaker 5: Donna Mountains is high and I was watching a kid
Speaker 5: and I saw somebody come out shake the God Force guy.
Speaker 5: But the God Force were friends of the ters man
Speaker 5: because obviously because they would kill their family. And the
Speaker 5: guy came down down and he disappeared in the valley
Speaker 5: down beneath the mountain. And I said, we got them.
Speaker 5: So I leave the guys up there with four guys
Speaker 5: in the in the in the in the lup the
Speaker 5: lying up place on the hill, and I take Mark
Speaker 5: with me and we go down to go and see
Speaker 5: where the hell did this guy go. Anyway, we work
Speaker 5: our way down and we got into an area that
Speaker 5: looked like a holiday resort. Man, but the way that
Speaker 5: the rock formations were it was absolutely amazing. But there
Speaker 5: were no Thursday, but we can see it was a
Speaker 5: hold income and so Mark puts up four claymores, puts
Speaker 5: up a banquet. Claymores out of there, well concealed, you know.
Speaker 5: And we moved back now to go back up the
Speaker 5: thing down. But half way up, yeah, we yea this
Speaker 5: listen that valley the mountains. That's a hell of a
Speaker 5: puppy game off over there. So I get on the
Speaker 5: small means and I call the other John Berry, and
Speaker 5: the guild guy said, hey, guys come down with we've
Speaker 5: got the groups. And that's a let them get away,
Speaker 5: you know, we want the money. So they come down.
Speaker 5: But now it's getting dark and they're starting to rain.
Speaker 5: It's really rainy, and we're moving down and you've never
Speaker 5: seen such rocky area in your life, and trees, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 5: Down the saddle like we call it going down, and
Speaker 5: we're moving down, moving down, and a hell of a
Speaker 5: long distance. Through a gap, I see two guys carrying
Speaker 5: a guy on the stretcher and and I'm pointing, and
Speaker 5: I'm showing we must go, and all of a sudden
Speaker 5: all l breaks loose and a firefight breaks out. So
Speaker 5: I've got I've got the Allen G with me, Alan,
Speaker 5: I love my machine gun and I'm pumping lead, and
Speaker 5: I hear on my left flank I'm hit. I'm hit.
Speaker 5: I'm hit. And I recognized John's voice. A very good
Speaker 5: friend of mine. He was the godfather of my daughter,
Speaker 5: very good friend of mine under under nineteen redision rugby play.
Speaker 5: A brilliant guy. Anyway, I get over to him. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he's lying. Now, you can't drag him? Is he through
Speaker 5: the middle of now? And we're in the ship they
Speaker 5: there's spec shit and it's dark, it's raining coming down,
Speaker 5: and he's now wounded. So what happened is I quantum,
Speaker 5: So I kneel behind his body and I'd fire over
Speaker 5: his body, which is the only thing I could do.
Speaker 5: But he's screaming because he's in pain. So I take
Speaker 5: my face, oil up my neck and a stick it
Speaker 5: in his mouth. And John was the medic, and he
Speaker 5: left the m A three pack behind in the in
Speaker 5: the in the l up. When I called them down
Speaker 5: because he rushed down, so we had no morphine, we
Speaker 5: had nothing lost, and he had sosagon and each operator
Speaker 5: carries a sozogon and a bomb bandage, so all I
Speaker 5: could do I hit John both soasagons couldn't touch him up.
Speaker 5: It was to my blood as bomb bandages good nothing,
Speaker 5: So I fought over his body and I stayed there
Speaker 5: for the whole night. But it's it's raining now, and
Speaker 5: it's cold, and it's miserable, and slowly but surely life
Speaker 5: was running out. All I could do the best thing
Speaker 5: you can do for any guy in combat is give
Speaker 5: him hope. Now we knew the snow support when you're
Speaker 5: going downtown thing. Nobody supports you on your own. And
Speaker 5: I just kept telling them the choppers on the way
Speaker 5: chopping which was alive, because I knew John was dying anyway.
Speaker 5: He died anyway. The next day we mowed the trees
Speaker 5: down with L and G. The choppers came, they loaded
Speaker 5: John's body and we had to go back to the
Speaker 5: Joint operations come on at Matopos. Gave them the whole
Speaker 5: story what happened. They faire us back to Salisbury, and
Speaker 5: remember I conducted Now you know what what I didn't
Speaker 5: mention that I conducted the illegal operation as a troop
Speaker 5: eate no rank, and I two guys into wolf and
Speaker 5: I lost a qualified operator. Now when I get back,
Speaker 5: it's I can't explain to here. That's it's dead quiet.
Speaker 5: I'll see other says guys standing, But everybody's dead quiet.
Speaker 5: And I got to go over to the main block
Speaker 5: to the head office and they tell me the standouts,
Speaker 5: and the Orizon comes over says wait out, and then
Speaker 5: he comes and he doubles me in there. Y, I
Speaker 5: just walk. I thought they held with you. Man. Now
Speaker 5: you guys don't bug me, and they take me in
Speaker 5: front of the It was like an old formation in
Speaker 5: front of me with these officers. Remember these guys all
Speaker 5: qualified operators. Now qualified operator. But the worst thing what
Speaker 5: I did while John was dying, he was suffering. He
Speaker 5: asked me to get him out of pain. And I
Speaker 5: was teaching John to fight because I liked the office,
Speaker 5: and I was hitting down with and I dammaged his
Speaker 5: whole jaw. And this was on the report as well.
Speaker 5: Now I land up in front of these guys, Man,
Speaker 5: did they give it to me? I was the biggest
Speaker 5: load of crap under the sun. They gave it to me.
Speaker 5: They chased me out the risen ski me. I just walked.
Speaker 5: I thought they held with you, man. I wait outside.
Speaker 5: They called me back and then they said to me,
Speaker 5: what happened to his jaw? And I told him what happened.
Speaker 5: Then they said, oh, why did you hide behind his
Speaker 5: body and take cover behind his body? I said, no,
Speaker 5: I did what I had to do. Well, I mean
Speaker 5: it was on the downslope. I was fighting over his body.
Speaker 5: I wasn't lying, I said, I was kneeling and fighting.
Speaker 5: What am I supposed to do? It was a hall
Speaker 5: of a debate. They chased me out there, and I
Speaker 5: thought they were gonna get rid of me, because, I mean,
Speaker 5: I lost a qualified operator conducted illegal operation. Nothing happened.
Speaker 5: When I looked again, I became a lance corporal in
Speaker 5: the essays, I was joff. Then I was a corporate.
Speaker 5: When I looked again, I went on the sergeant's cart
Speaker 5: at all, I became a sergeant. You know what it
Speaker 5: is to be a sergeant in the essays, probably the
Speaker 5: same as a general in any other bloody army. Man,
Speaker 5: it's a hell of an achievement. But anyway, I'm in
Speaker 5: big shit to that said. Daryl comes me one day
Speaker 5: and he says, you want to go bounty Undy. I
Speaker 5: said yeah, he says, okay, this guy. You know, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 5: There was a mission over then the mary Mount area.
Speaker 5: Now we were in the Mount Darwin with that previous
Speaker 5: one with my crap I had. Now we're going to
Speaker 5: the Merry Mount where it's also liberated area. We got
Speaker 5: a lot of guys and off we go to combat again.
Speaker 5: No backup that or what taking us as tide? Yeah,
Speaker 5: what a bummer. And anyway, we moved into them. There's
Speaker 5: a lot of tours, a hell of a lot of turs,
Speaker 5: and we moved onto this high ground. We could physically
Speaker 5: watch the BSAP guys chatting to the turfs from the
Speaker 5: high ground. Obviously their families, you know, so they feed
Speaker 5: them and they don't trouble them. I don't report them anyway.
Speaker 5: When we look again, that comes a little black guy.
Speaker 5: We call them majiebas. They walk with the goats in
Speaker 5: there and then they look for spot. Now they must
Speaker 5: have picked up something on this high ground because they
Speaker 5: sent this majieba up against our high ground and as
Speaker 5: he got to a certain point. The guys grabbed him
Speaker 5: and hold him. Now we know we got ship because
Speaker 5: I mean, the tours are waiting for the magieba and
Speaker 5: it doesn't come back. When we looked again, along comes
Speaker 5: a skirmish line. I don't know how. There was a
Speaker 5: love a lot coming up as you to attack us.
Speaker 5: So that alsiddenly says, hold on, this shows wait right
Speaker 5: right right, wait, you initiate. Daryll always initiates, and we
Speaker 5: wait and we wait in these groups. I reckon about
Speaker 5: fifty meters or whatever, and Daryll double taps and takes
Speaker 5: the one guy out and we open up and we
Speaker 5: take this lot out. But there was a lot of them.
Speaker 5: So Darrell what then says attack, So of course we
Speaker 5: jump up and we run at these guys. Now they're
Speaker 5: crazy stuff, but you know, we do it. And I'll
Speaker 5: never forget that. I had the chop of pilot's name,
Speaker 5: he was flying it. Then Darrell got a chopper to
Speaker 5: come out, which were not that I had, but allot
Speaker 5: came out a gunship with a Chico with brownings on
Speaker 5: and they're flying head. Now got a small means and
Speaker 5: I got the op it and I'm running them up
Speaker 5: firing and that's why I got the name of Audie Murphy.
Speaker 5: All I felt proud of myself. But anyway, was this
Speaker 5: punch up. That punch up we went through. We didn't
Speaker 5: get the googs. A lot of cerities were shot there.
Speaker 5: It was it was all other thing. We are not
Speaker 5: totally blown, but we want to still take them on.
Speaker 5: So we got to get out because we don't know
Speaker 5: where they've scattered you. So that all says we're getting
Speaker 5: God Force to come and take us out with a vehicle.
Speaker 5: So God Force came there with a Koodoo. It's a
Speaker 5: funny looking vehicle and the crocodile and the whole lot
Speaker 5: of us bold on the crocodile, down on the Koodoo
Speaker 5: in front, and we're driving out. Now these goops were
Speaker 5: ay man, they aggressive. So they set up an area
Speaker 5: with a gorin or that's that machine gun who shoots
Speaker 5: a seven sixty fifty four round same as the sniper rifle,
Speaker 5: a big weapon, but on fixed firing line. And they
Speaker 5: set this weapon up and RPG seven's waiting for us,
Speaker 5: and unbeknown to us, Yeah, we gain and as we
Speaker 5: got to a certain point, they said, how's that baby,
Speaker 5: And I'm sitting with my back against the cat, my
Speaker 5: head lying back, you know, relaxing, and this RPG seven
Speaker 5: fedy sent in my enters and blows that drive it
Speaker 5: to smother rings. And of course ear drum's gone again.
Speaker 5: But the shirt will hits me, hits my weapon. You
Speaker 5: mus see how my RPD look doesn't hit me again,
Speaker 5: much the same as a landmine throws me to the ground.
Speaker 5: We come up and they pumping us with the got
Speaker 5: ingof Fortunately it was set on wheels in it just
Speaker 5: below the otherwise none of us who have survived it. Anyway,
Speaker 5: We opened the fire, we jumped off Carrot daryld Love
Speaker 5: mortars and we managed to repel them. And then that's
Speaker 5: when they abducted all those nuns and that from the
Speaker 5: Merry mountains and all that once again, all over we
Speaker 5: get back to Salisbury. I never I won't even use
Speaker 5: the language that the officer look at me, said, you
Speaker 5: are such a don't you ever bloody learn? I didn't learn,
Speaker 5: you know, It's just the way I was. I just
Speaker 5: liked it. Look, I know it's stupid, but I enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: I don't say you you don't shift yourself at times.
Speaker 5: Look it gets difficult out there. Have you ever had
Speaker 5: rounds coming you guys? Got explained out closer. It sounds
Speaker 5: like popcorn. Man, Now, I could never describe it. My
Speaker 5: friend Blackie from Threety Battalion said, oh, like popcorn. I
Speaker 5: said exactly that. I've been under that on younumerous times.
Speaker 5: But anyway, this whole thing went and everything came. Then,
Speaker 5: Oh to end it? What Jack you were asking out?
Speaker 5: Take it down? Look at it was a hell of
Speaker 5: a lot. I can carry on all night. I can
Speaker 5: talk a whole week to you guys, and I don't
Speaker 5: need book and I don't need to make notes dates. Yes,
Speaker 5: but not here us. I know my team, This is
Speaker 5: my game. I loved it. We got to a stage
Speaker 5: over there when they decided that we must pop mcgarby.
Speaker 5: And who do they select for the job, Darrell? What
Speaker 5: in my west? Off we go. We had a team
Speaker 5: that helped us, and we had this culvert under the rod,
Speaker 5: this pipe, and we packed us with TNT and all
Speaker 5: because he was coming back from a rally and we
Speaker 5: packed all this and we're going to take us Poppy out.
Speaker 5: I must remember, had we taken this democratically elected first
Speaker 5: black guy of a country take and would have been
Speaker 5: strung up. We had have been given away, I can
Speaker 5: promise you now. Yeah, but something went wrong. I don't
Speaker 5: know what went wrong. I've read a lot of things
Speaker 5: off towards our detonation went off in front of the
Speaker 5: vehicle and we missed it. Now, we couldn't miss I
Speaker 5: can tell you now, we couldn't miss, but we didn't.
Speaker 5: We ever said that off it was a aircraft flying
Speaker 5: a Telstar. We know something went wrong there.
Speaker 2: It's all the books I've read, you know, they talk
Speaker 2: about this, how there is this contingency plan to kill
Speaker 2: Mugabi after the election. But they all say that that
Speaker 2: operation never went forward. So like I'm hearing this for
Speaker 2: the first time that something didn't go forward.
Speaker 5: Oh, no, it did we that was that? No, that
Speaker 5: was a very serious thing. Wow, we really add it.
Speaker 5: And now Darrell I. After that, we're running for our lives.
Speaker 5: And guess what happens? A bloody take over a twenty
Speaker 5: million in a right above us? What the hell is this?
Speaker 5: You know? So we well obviously we old old soldiers,
Speaker 5: you know. So we're ducking and diving in the SKA
Speaker 5: car circling us with a twenty more. Now. We read
Speaker 5: an article a little while later when the guy said,
Speaker 5: Mike and Darrell, my guns were cold. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I have to accept it. But we had to escape
Speaker 5: and the vaide out of there and we managed to
Speaker 5: get to the point that we arranged where a vehicle
Speaker 5: picked it up. We washed this, change their clothes and
Speaker 5: we're ride into a BSAP roadblock and yeah, but we've
Speaker 5: thrown everything out the window. We three. We got a
Speaker 5: dolly driving Joe and a dolly driving the car with
Speaker 5: a cover story. They stop and they ask questions. They
Speaker 5: look around the car and I see this guy look
Speaker 5: in the car and he looks at the back and
Speaker 5: he looks at Daryll and you could see he knew
Speaker 5: Darrell was. He just went like that and he said
Speaker 5: you can go, and off we went and we got
Speaker 5: away with that one. Mate. Oh man, but I'm telling
Speaker 5: you had we succeeded and we killed mcgoby. They didn't
Speaker 5: know this because afterwards it came out he was behind it.
Speaker 5: Then we had another temple I think it was borroweday
Speaker 5: when we went by his house we're going to kill him,
Speaker 5: and then under wolves school we were added at him
Speaker 5: in now he was dead, telling he was dead. I
Speaker 5: could have run fixed by mits and killed him. They
Speaker 5: stopped us and he survived that one as well. That
Speaker 5: was a it was an unbelievable war, but there was
Speaker 5: so much Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting too.
Speaker 4: I mean that was that was pretty early on from
Speaker 4: who before A lot of the heinous steff right.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I mean it was Zipra and some
Speaker 2: of the other groups was pretty bad. Yeah, what they
Speaker 2: did to the villagers.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When he came to power, obviously he brings the dictatorship. Yeah,
Speaker 2: then things go south. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a it was another story that.
Speaker 2: So tell us about how you left Rhodesia and how
Speaker 2: you entered the South African Defense Force.
Speaker 5: Okay, but being Mike West, now I got up to
Speaker 5: some other bullshit again when I got arrested by murder
Speaker 5: and robberies squad, I ended the and I got locked up.
Speaker 5: Well anyway, I appeared in court there and the money
Speaker 5: that I was going to commute was taken away and
Speaker 5: blah blah and all that, and I had to go
Speaker 5: back to the cops station of it. Now, I missed
Speaker 5: out on the last focus of the SAS and everything,
Speaker 5: and I missed out on the last thing. When I
Speaker 5: got back here, Dave, look, he knew I was. I
Speaker 5: knew the s He said to me, listen, giving you
Speaker 5: twenty four hours get out of this bloody country because
Speaker 5: I'm going to lock you up. So I gapt it.
Speaker 5: Now I took her. By the time I got to
Speaker 5: the border, I scared it an ar restaurant, I go
Speaker 5: through customs, so I took He got a dugout. Now
Speaker 5: that's not a man. What an uncomfortable thing to row
Speaker 5: across and the crocodiles and anyway, I got in his
Speaker 5: dugout and I rowed across, got across the Limpopo, got
Speaker 5: to the other side, jumped out, and I must have
Speaker 5: so dip into the bloody worster man with my bag
Speaker 5: because I got out the other side, stripped down and
Speaker 5: had to dry my clothes off, you know, because I'm
Speaker 5: a mess. Now. Eventually I got this all done and
Speaker 5: I headed for Vittoria. Now the whole SAS and now
Speaker 5: come down to South Africa because June nineteen eighty everybody
Speaker 5: had to get out. Mike West left behind again with
Speaker 5: all his nonsense. You know. Anyway, I get to this
Speaker 5: Best Corps Special Forces head office. They know the travisions
Speaker 5: come down. I port over there, I go and see them.
Speaker 5: I tell them who I am, and I asked me
Speaker 5: if they can help me with a lift to get
Speaker 5: me to Durban. They tell me, and I must consort
Speaker 5: my own shit out, you know. Then I said, can
Speaker 5: you offer me some accommodation for the night because I
Speaker 5: look like over there said no, you must go. So
Speaker 5: I left, and I went and slept in a lot
Speaker 5: of blue gum trees for the night. And the next
Speaker 5: time on the road and eats liked. And I got
Speaker 5: to Durban. Now that same Rob Johnson, who was in
Speaker 5: the selection with me, I didn't want me there. When
Speaker 5: I arrived, they called me over and he said to me,
Speaker 5: if it was in my powers, Mike Westy said, I'd
Speaker 5: get rid of you right now. No, no, right now,
Speaker 5: get rid of you because I've had enough of your shit.
Speaker 5: But it couldn't because now I was I belonged to
Speaker 5: the sadf Wow. Then then I saw my family drove
Speaker 5: me down with a busty man some TOATI saw my
Speaker 5: family again after the very very long time. Next time,
Speaker 5: I've got the uniform. Now I've got browns on I
Speaker 5: didn't like browns. That's not a uniform with appealed to me.
Speaker 5: Didn't look at the part, you know. I mean we
Speaker 5: wear camouflage. You know, camouflage is all over the world.
Speaker 5: It's a beautiful it's war man. Anyway, we got our
Speaker 5: group photos. They can now we've become six RECKI the Philistines,
Speaker 5: they called us. Can I take a minute break? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, one minute? Yeah, go ahead, club, be right, guys.
Speaker 2: I just want to tell folks out there about this
Speaker 2: book I have coming out December ninth, We Defy. It
Speaker 2: is the Lost Chapters of Special Forces History. So it's
Speaker 2: not a huge tome. It's going to be about two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty page. Is five chapters, Dot Cover Detachment
Speaker 2: A and Berlin, Detachment KAY and Korea Green Light, the
Speaker 2: guys that jumped in with backpack nukes, Blue Light, the
Speaker 2: first counter Terrorism Team, and the Commanders in Extremist Force,
Speaker 2: or the five chapters of the book. It's up for
Speaker 2: pre order right now. You can find a link down
Speaker 2: in the description. It's just the Kindle version for pre
Speaker 2: order the paperback. Amazon won't let me set up pre
Speaker 2: orders unfortunately, but that the paperback will be released the
Speaker 2: same date as the Kindle version of it, December ninth,
Speaker 2: So appreciate it.
Speaker 1: If you guys check it out.
Speaker 4: And check out Mike's book, Mike West Special Forces super Soldier.
Speaker 4: It's a fantastic like the stories he's telling, they're all
Speaker 4: in here and more, they go deep. There's some great
Speaker 4: photos in here. It's quite an adventure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you've heard the interview so far. It's
Speaker 2: it's an insane story but great and fastening thing.
Speaker 1: And then on.
Speaker 4: What's that I was gonna say, Also our patreon, Yeah,
Speaker 4: check out our Patreon.
Speaker 2: There's a link down the description to that. If you subscribe,
Speaker 2: it's five dollars a month. You support the channel and
Speaker 2: we really appreciate it. You also get access to all
Speaker 2: of these episodes ad free, both the podcasts our sister
Speaker 2: podcast eyes On also on there, and you'll get all
Speaker 2: that stuff add free. And on Monday, we're gonna have
Speaker 2: John Daily, who was one of the guys who helped
Speaker 2: stand up Marsaka. I believe I know he was in
Speaker 2: Detachment one because I'm reading the book now, So we'll
Speaker 2: have him on Monday, and then on Friday, I believe
Speaker 2: it's Joe Mussia who wrote Cry Havoc about the Rangers
Speaker 2: that jumped into Grenada in eighty three. So that's kind
Speaker 2: of what's coming at you guys next week.
Speaker 5: Mike all good, Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 5: got a bit of coffee tonight to keep me awake.
Speaker 1: You know, s's a picture running.
Speaker 2: So you went in six Racky and tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit more about like the integration, because there's a
Speaker 2: culture clash happening here too between Rhodesia and South Africa,
Speaker 2: like they were different countries, different military communities, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: What happened was in the late sixties, Colonel John Breitenbach
Speaker 5: came down to Redision, came to see what the essays
Speaker 5: was about, and then he came back to South Africa
Speaker 5: and they started this Reky story. Then they sent a
Speaker 5: lot of guys up who attended the selection, and then
Speaker 5: they came back and they formed the Reconnaissance. The Rekis
Speaker 5: now the Rekis. Remember Redision was twenty two SASC Squadron.
Speaker 5: So when the w Rekis were finished with a selection,
Speaker 5: they sent them up to Revision. They came to us
Speaker 5: as the squadron and we took them into war and
Speaker 5: that's how they learned and it was a fantastic relationship
Speaker 5: between us and these guys. We got on famously. However,
Speaker 5: when we came down in June nineteen eighty and we
Speaker 5: got the total different ball game. They wanted nothing. That
Speaker 5: just turned out to be absolute animosity. And it's not.
Speaker 5: It's no nonsense. This is fact. You can yet all
Speaker 5: over from any goldure anywhere. How bad it was, it
Speaker 5: was a very bad story. But we hung around and
Speaker 5: we stayed one side. We didn't attend their parades because
Speaker 5: every morning they have church parades. They pray their boots
Speaker 5: of polis they need. You know, we're Ruffians. We come
Speaker 5: out of a you must remember we come out of
Speaker 5: a full scale war. This is is like a part
Speaker 5: time there man. You know, they didn't have the war
Speaker 5: we had. That's why they came to us for war. Anyway,
Speaker 5: So it carried on, carried on, and we were very fortunate.
Speaker 5: Operation came up in a in Mozambique called Matola. There
Speaker 5: was a NC nests houses out there. They were causing
Speaker 5: problems from there was quite big puppies from the a
Speaker 5: n C. I'm not going to mention names, it's in
Speaker 5: the books, but they were at these targets, and there
Speaker 5: was a lot of There were three different targets we
Speaker 5: had to hit. So they decided that six Wrekki, which
Speaker 5: is the Revisions, are going to eat two targets and
Speaker 5: the Wrekis are going to eat one target. And so
Speaker 5: we all traveled, did a lot of rehearsals in empty
Speaker 5: buildings and the normal old crap in preparation. Excuse me.
Speaker 5: Then we went down to Gomati Port just outside the
Speaker 5: border fence. We sat in the in the bush and
Speaker 5: we got all our things ready over there. The the
Speaker 5: unfortunate part was just we had timings. Maybe everything goes
Speaker 5: about timings yet and as we're about to go the
Speaker 5: old the old Germany or past, the pictures up and
Speaker 5: he wants a deliver sermony, which was the wrong time
Speaker 5: for this type of stuff. And this guy sort of
Speaker 5: got carry ried away or felt important and he just
Speaker 5: elaborated on this, and man, this was annoying me. By
Speaker 5: the time he decided to wrap up his load of stuff,
Speaker 5: he was busy with we had to rush off. Now
Speaker 5: we're late. Now cut the fences we're going through and
Speaker 5: we got lost on the way. Oh this is beautiful, man.
Speaker 5: Now we dressed exactly like for a Limo in the
Speaker 5: uniforms weapons vehicles, and we're driving on their roads and
Speaker 5: driving and we get lost and we drive right into
Speaker 5: for a lima base cap on the boom. He has
Speaker 5: a guy on the boom. Now we stopped. Now we
Speaker 5: got a guy with the name of Quiros was a
Speaker 5: Malati from Mozambique. I think it was Mozambika, mozambik Or
Speaker 5: and Gola. But he was a Malata and he could
Speaker 5: speak the lingo. And he's in a br d N
Speaker 5: that armored personnel can. He's standing up and he's craps
Speaker 5: this guy out on the boom. And the guy jumps
Speaker 5: to attention, salutes him, and he gives him, hell over there,
Speaker 5: you're untidy and I don't know what all and the
Speaker 5: carry on and he asked in directions and this guy's
Speaker 5: telling him where and what and what. And the whole
Speaker 5: convoy follows and we all turned right in front of
Speaker 5: the boom the enemy man. You know, big these bases
Speaker 5: on the brigades over there, man, And we drive right
Speaker 5: past and we go to our respective targets. Now I'm
Speaker 5: going to start with our target. This youngster Mike Riage
Speaker 5: from the ROI who was in the sas with me
Speaker 5: as well. What I love about Mike rich you can
Speaker 5: read them my book even when he was in the SS.
Speaker 5: Now you knew me in the URALI when he was
Speaker 5: in the SS and he had to go in operation,
Speaker 5: you'd say, I want Mike quest. You know. It was
Speaker 5: just a beautiful thing. And Daryl what wanted me? And
Speaker 5: he wanted me. I was, I was, I was in
Speaker 5: combat and I loved it and I felt actually important
Speaker 5: that these people wanted me. Anyway, we were mic reach
Speaker 5: in the head for our target. We got a twenty
Speaker 5: millies paro, the old thing you have them on aircraft
Speaker 5: twenty more and we drive to our target and we
Speaker 5: had but like a thirty meters of the pathway down
Speaker 5: towards house and we're in the gas and that stops
Speaker 5: and are gunna opens up to this twenty mile at
Speaker 5: the house. Now we killed and killed a lot of
Speaker 5: guys with that inside. We read afterwards. So myself, Dave Berry,
Speaker 5: Frank Tunning, myself, we run at this house now because
Speaker 5: I mean, the puppies are going to shoot at us.
Speaker 5: You know, everybody tries to kill everybody there. Anyway, we
Speaker 5: get to the doorway, and we got to get this
Speaker 5: door open. Now, the guy on the on the twenty
Speaker 5: mill has got a borderline he couldn't overshoot, but he
Speaker 5: obviously overshot with a twenty more and whatever shut on,
Speaker 5: either from the round or whatever. I'm right against the wall.
Speaker 5: We've got to get close to the wall because I
Speaker 5: mean there's lead flight and this thing goes right through me, mane.
Speaker 5: It just skinned me. And Dave's sitting in It hits
Speaker 5: him in the leg, takes him out in the middle,
Speaker 5: and Franks on the other side. So Dave's a big puppy. Now,
Speaker 5: I say, every guy, and I grabbed Dave and I
Speaker 5: run for the vehicle. And while I'm running with Dave
Speaker 5: to the vehicle, I'm telling you au fat. He says, shit,
Speaker 5: you know this, And you're telling Ah West and yeah,
Speaker 5: bloody human man, it doesn't matter. We had humor because
Speaker 5: you're from Essays, you know. Jumped him on the vehicle.
Speaker 5: Run back, Frank and I bridged ouse. We get inside.
Speaker 5: While we're in setting up a massive crate of plastic
Speaker 5: explosive with safety fuse A year something coming and I
Speaker 5: loved it. Whatever that was is history. I understand he
Speaker 5: went to the appy hunting grounds. They try to get
Speaker 5: out seat of the explosives, and then we all drove back,
Speaker 5: went to commodity work. But what happened was on the
Speaker 5: other target, just briefly. I wasn't there. Three essays guys died.
Speaker 5: They landed up in a hell of a battle. They
Speaker 5: had a bigger target than us. There were more guys,
Speaker 5: a bigger team, and had the bigger house. I wouldn't
Speaker 5: mind if I was on that one because it was
Speaker 5: more firing over there. But three guys died and the
Speaker 5: one guy landed up this he had a can of
Speaker 5: fuel with it, which was a reason for burning, and
Speaker 5: they had to destroy and a white foss went off
Speaker 5: and he set the light. He got hit as well,
Speaker 5: got shot, fell down next to a car. That fuel
Speaker 5: ignited brother's car and he was a ball of flame.
Speaker 5: So after all this punch up in it. And now
Speaker 5: you can't hang around too long with the target because
Speaker 5: remember now for limos coming. You know, when all these
Speaker 5: weapons got the troops come, so they get ordered to
Speaker 5: withdraw after a certain amount of the such and they
Speaker 5: drive away and he stayed behind in the fire. They
Speaker 5: couldn't do anything about it. That was quite quite a
Speaker 5: bad story. They found helmets and it was in newspapers
Speaker 5: and all that. But after that operation, when we got
Speaker 5: back at one Wreckie currently blew theirs away with a
Speaker 5: one who six ural coils, blew it away. We eat
Speaker 5: ours and they eat it. There was a lot of
Speaker 5: slong about us again, and of course so much crap
Speaker 5: and arguments, and you can't believe these were our friends.
Speaker 5: They came to Rudisi. We trained these guys, not me,
Speaker 5: But I went into war with it, you know. I
Speaker 5: mean they are as as a result of us, that's
Speaker 5: where they come from. But they had no time for us.
Speaker 5: And our guys had enough of these guys and their parades,
Speaker 5: and they're praying and they're flag raising seramonies, and listen,
Speaker 5: this is not our cup of tee. We bloody soldiers
Speaker 5: and the guys kadadle and they go in all directions.
Speaker 5: They are a very good idea. Had a good chance
Speaker 5: to go to other places. Now I could have gone
Speaker 5: to Paros, like I said, I could have gone to Lebanon,
Speaker 5: had a lot of chance choices, places I could go.
Speaker 5: But I decided I just loved war. I just loved cold, right.
Speaker 5: I don't know what it is. I just loved it.
Speaker 5: I decided to stay on. Fortunate for me, I stayed
Speaker 5: on because for some reason or the other, they these
Speaker 5: we went on a lot of this. Look one WRECKI
Speaker 5: where we were at the stage. There's a special forces outfit.
Speaker 5: They are not cunning for it. Their job is to
Speaker 5: penetrate deep enemy lines via strike craft submarine and destroy
Speaker 5: enemy installations and so bug up the economy. That was
Speaker 5: their task. Now Frank Tunney from Australia, Oh, what a
Speaker 5: brilliant guy. What a soldier was a boxer as well.
Speaker 5: Him and are sort of landed in fab and we
Speaker 5: seem to get these jobs and we would go out
Speaker 5: on these things and we loved it. Man, it was
Speaker 5: it was bloody awesome. It's it hasn't got the action
Speaker 5: and the shooting and that. But you sneak into refined
Speaker 5: his place, explosive, blow it up, sneak out. It's all right,
Speaker 5: but it's not that exciting like being in combat. You know.
Speaker 2: But you got to do some submarine submarine insurtions. Sorry,
Speaker 2: you got to do some submarine insurtions.
Speaker 5: Yes one what but the what happens with these things?
Speaker 5: You must remember us guys in Droodesia. Fact of the matter,
Speaker 5: from everything we went through, our ear drums were gone, perforated.
Speaker 5: We don't have our ears on a very bad way.
Speaker 5: So when we get on this we call them cotch buckets.
Speaker 5: These sycrow were from is a brilliant combat fight gun chips,
Speaker 5: these little combat ships, beautiful stuff, but they pop around
Speaker 5: like a core on the ocean. Anyway, when we're going up,
Speaker 5: it becomes a cotch bucket because you whatever you got
Speaker 5: goes out, goes out. You can't keep it in. But
Speaker 5: we landed on numerous very some very nice ones, you know,
Speaker 5: and I want to call two of them for you guys,
Speaker 5: quite interesting one. The one was called Operation Candlelight cat Candlelight,
Speaker 5: and the whole group we had to go in and
Speaker 5: blow this to find me up. But the small teams
Speaker 5: had gone in photographed. The place was about one hundred men,
Speaker 5: just clearance all around, spotlights up god ours, fences around
Speaker 5: the thing. We had to get to this and go
Speaker 5: and blow it. So we got to the area and
Speaker 5: we were crawling hands and knees over this open area,
Speaker 5: got to the fence cut and we went in. Now
Speaker 5: Frank and I were left on the fence because of
Speaker 5: the patrols said anybody come, we had to kill them.
Speaker 5: And these other guys had these explosive devices to go
Speaker 5: and put on the tanks. Now something went seriously wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 5: while they were in there and they were placing these
Speaker 5: devices on the tanks which have got a delay switch
Speaker 5: when you pull the pin, we get out to get
Speaker 5: back to the strikeert were out in the ocean and kaboom,
Speaker 5: you know, everything goes. But the one team, when the
Speaker 5: guy pulled the pin, whah, vaporized and the two other
Speaker 5: guys with him were about five meters away from him
Speaker 5: all around the fence. They made it and he was gone.
Speaker 5: If there was absolutely buggar all left of him logically.
Speaker 5: But anyway, while we're on the fence, we see this
Speaker 5: one guy running streaming like it. He didn't know his
Speaker 5: from his elbow, you know, was taste, but he didn't
Speaker 5: know where he's going. But they screamed him, got him
Speaker 5: and said what he said, the other guy is lying
Speaker 5: over there. So two guys went with him and they
Speaker 5: went and picked him up and they brought him out
Speaker 5: to the fence. Now, I want to tell you, guys,
Speaker 5: I mentioned it in my book and I mentioned on
Speaker 5: the podcast of Fighting Men of Rudesia. I got to
Speaker 5: mention this. It's very important to There's a lot of
Speaker 5: these things, and I feel quite offended by it. When
Speaker 5: we now got the wounded guy to the fence, we
Speaker 5: are now stranded in a refinery. God tell us up.
Speaker 1: In spotlights behind enemy lines.
Speaker 5: Guys out of that thing without dying. So the commander said,
Speaker 5: what the hell now? And I said, bugger you. Now,
Speaker 5: I'd a forty millimeters M seven nine grenade launch, you know,
Speaker 5: the old grenade launch ND seven nine, And I thought,
Speaker 5: bugger this, and I walked out into the light, knelt
Speaker 5: at the guard towel with the N seven nine. I thought, look,
Speaker 5: I would have called him now now that the tank
Speaker 5: had gone up. Now don't know if he had fallen
Speaker 5: down or where this puppy was. But he didn't shoot.
Speaker 5: And the team ran out and I showed them going.
Speaker 5: I sat to this ensign line, walked backwards and we
Speaker 5: got away and then we got to help the wounded guys,
Speaker 5: got them, got back to the strike craft, got on
Speaker 5: the stricraft. Whilst we're on the stricraft, this candlelight happens,
Speaker 5: this massive eruption goes up to the finery, goes beautiful
Speaker 5: sight this. I wish I had a camera to take
Speaker 5: a photo there. The one guy comes over to me.
Speaker 5: He says to me, why did you do that? You
Speaker 5: could have died. I said, how are you supposed to
Speaker 5: get out of the refinery. No, I didn't do it
Speaker 5: because I thought it's a bloody year. I did it
Speaker 5: because that's what you do. You know, get back medal parades.
Speaker 5: All the guys go for medals. Everybody gets medals. The
Speaker 5: guys who went and picked up the wounded guy got
Speaker 5: these high neurist crooks, medals, high decorations. When the refinery
Speaker 5: goes off, there's fire, nobody runs in the refinery. Nobody
Speaker 5: will go and to find the very dangerous there. There
Speaker 5: was no danger. You could have sent your mother in
Speaker 5: law there to pick up the guy. There's no danger.
Speaker 5: I'm telling you now, I don't give it. Damn what
Speaker 5: people say. When the refinery goes up, nobody runs around
Speaker 5: inside its death anyway, all decorated. Frank, who's with me,
Speaker 5: gets decorated. But nothing happens to me. I get nothing fit.
Speaker 5: What's going on? Now? You know? Six months later they
Speaker 5: decorate me for just the same metals the other guys got,
Speaker 5: but nothing of bravery, but just the liberty. There's a
Speaker 5: book written, I'm Fist from the Sea, yeah about this operation.
Speaker 1: We have it right over there.
Speaker 5: You read it. Yeah, And I spoke to the You
Speaker 5: see the author's names on the thing, and that's said
Speaker 5: him to.
Speaker 1: Book right there on the corner from one. Yep, that's it,
Speaker 1: take it down, Yeah, yeah, bye U.
Speaker 2: And I apologize for not being very good at pronouncing the.
Speaker 5: South from the see the one that died book, Yeah.
Speaker 1: From from U.
Speaker 5: In RNA. Those are the same guys. But it's a
Speaker 5: different than my book. My book's got a different cover.
Speaker 5: I'm on the front cover of the other book.
Speaker 1: This might be a UK edition, which is why it
Speaker 1: looks a little different.
Speaker 5: The one that we got is I'm on the front
Speaker 5: cover with the team.
Speaker 1: Oh really.
Speaker 5: And I phoned this guy and I said to him listening,
Speaker 5: why didn't you mention? I asked him out right because
Speaker 5: I felt quite offended because afterwards, you know, why didn't
Speaker 5: you mention that I put my life on the team.
Speaker 5: He said, well, they had to write the book out
Speaker 5: of the oh go, and you just forgot to mention it.
Speaker 5: I said, okay, no problem. You know, clean forgot that
Speaker 5: a person went to put your life on the line
Speaker 5: to say the team, and they just convenient to forget it.
Speaker 5: They didn't like me, not him, but the big guy
Speaker 5: at the base cap didn't liked me. I was. I
Speaker 5: just didn't like me being the Englishman from Reddish. I listen.
Speaker 5: I wasn't fallen on my mouth. I wasn't the most
Speaker 5: disciplined soldier or whatever I was. I could be a
Speaker 5: bit of a problem. You understand. I was a bit
Speaker 5: different than most people because I was really different. I
Speaker 5: grew up in a very violent life and I was
Speaker 5: just different. And they had a little bit of animosity
Speaker 5: towards me. But we land upon a I've got to
Speaker 5: tell you this. And we land up on a It
Speaker 5: was called Operation Keg. This was in Angola Mossamedes Harbor.
Speaker 5: Now there's a there's two bridges that have to be plowing.
Speaker 5: This is a massive operation. So whilst we're preparing for
Speaker 5: this operation at the place at Langabahn in the cake
Speaker 5: where the four Eki guys because they were going to
Speaker 5: take us in uh, we went to the pub over
Speaker 5: there called the Tropic Corner. But and I don't drink,
Speaker 5: you know, but I had I don't know, I must
Speaker 5: have had a bit of bierut. But anyway, we my
Speaker 5: friend pulled pulled the ones city down some timber bit
Speaker 5: and then we went There was some skirmish and some
Speaker 5: guy came out and made a comment and I decked him.
Speaker 5: But when I hit him, his teeth went into my fist,
Speaker 5: you know, in his teeth, and that wasn't that anyway,
Speaker 5: he landed up in the garden. I planted him. We
Speaker 5: finished the operation, but my hands started to get stuffed
Speaker 5: because the tooth went into the bloody bone and I
Speaker 5: had to get tentamus in action. But I can't close
Speaker 5: my hand. But I wasn't going to miss out on
Speaker 5: this bloody operation, you know. Anyway, we had rope ladders.
Speaker 5: We were carrying a hell of a lot of explosives,
Speaker 5: were very very laid and down, and we had to
Speaker 5: go over a very rocky ground. We had to use
Speaker 5: rope ladders to climb over things. Was difficult and I
Speaker 5: was winging it with one end much like Rambo, you know,
Speaker 5: to do it. But I wanted to be on the op.
Speaker 5: It was. It was a very difficult op, but it
Speaker 5: was enjoyable. We got to the bridge and everything on
Speaker 5: the ground when you get orders, nothing on the grounds
Speaker 5: the same as what you do in the office. That
Speaker 5: doesn't work that way. And when we got the small
Speaker 5: teams that'd been there, they'd photographed the target. But the
Speaker 5: main guy with the explosive, we all got advanced demolitions
Speaker 5: and you name it, all this stuff, but this guy
Speaker 5: set up to do the explosives on the bridges. This
Speaker 5: target was a totally different ballgame. And it took longer
Speaker 5: to set up the explosives. So by the time we
Speaker 5: had to be back on the sycroft out on the sea,
Speaker 5: and then the bridge is at to go. What happens
Speaker 5: were light and we might go way back and the
Speaker 5: sun is coming up. Now we're on the beach and
Speaker 5: the Kevlo boats are coming in to pick us up.
Speaker 5: Now now it's not low tide anymore because we're light.
Speaker 5: Now it's high tide and it's rough. And the one
Speaker 5: of the boats step over when the guys were getting
Speaker 5: on they lose their weapons. Where we look, we're in
Speaker 5: big crap yacht and right in the harbor, Mossamdia's harbor.
Speaker 5: Is this what do they call it? A Russian gunboat man.
Speaker 5: You must see this thing. It's in the book. I
Speaker 5: talk about it a cave or I don't know what,
Speaker 5: but it's a big puppy. But where the hell of
Speaker 5: a lot of troops on the day. But yeah, we're
Speaker 5: are okay. So now we on the hermon that the
Speaker 5: main command of the beach standing on the beach. We
Speaker 5: are all in the ocean, swimming trying to get on.
Speaker 5: Some guys are off drowning. I grabbed the one guy
Speaker 5: with my dammy's hand and I pulled him up, got
Speaker 5: him on the on the on the boat, and while
Speaker 5: we battling all that there the bridges go daylight. He
Speaker 5: dies in his swamps. You get him on, But now
Speaker 5: we're overloaded and the back of the trans and sinks
Speaker 5: into the water and the engine cuts out, and then
Speaker 5: we're stuck on the ocean. And what happens he has
Speaker 5: the enemy ride bys. We're dead man, all captured. You
Speaker 5: know what our luck was, which you found it off.
Speaker 5: Towards the night before, the commander or whatever of the
Speaker 5: of the of the of the battle cruiser gave the
Speaker 5: troops off to go and have fun with the ladies
Speaker 5: and get tanked up and everybody went on surely and
Speaker 5: they were out. And when the bridges went and the
Speaker 5: alarms went off, these guys were still called to their
Speaker 5: pants down and we had a chance to get away.
Speaker 5: So when the sycraft came in, came and got us
Speaker 5: and got us out, just we were all gunners over there.
Speaker 5: But that was our operation to talk about. I'll tell
Speaker 5: you that was you see now the guys were sinking
Speaker 5: the guy's It was a dangerous story. Hi tied heavily
Speaker 5: laden guys in the waters, sinking, pulling guys over.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 5: It wasn't like a mad magazine. It was something else.
Speaker 5: But that's something you remember. It's really, yeah, something beautiful
Speaker 5: to remember you have gone through that. It was absolutely was.
Speaker 2: That sort of the tail end of your sadf career.
Speaker 2: I mean, how did you kind of finish out your
Speaker 2: military service.
Speaker 5: No, yes, my military career slot it still went absolutely crazy, man. Really,
Speaker 5: I spent up to nine months here. I was a
Speaker 5: very busy guy, and these guys specialized in these deep
Speaker 5: penetrations which I was part of. But other little operations
Speaker 5: would come up. In Southwest Africa. We had a base
Speaker 5: cap of the name of Fort rev where they kept
Speaker 5: captured swamp which you were turning with God, and they
Speaker 5: would send me up to few ops over there. I
Speaker 5: was busy and I spent a lot of time away,
Speaker 5: and whilst I was away, things went wrong at home,
Speaker 5: all right, And when I got back, I heard about
Speaker 5: it and I lost my Look the normal procedures, everything's
Speaker 5: going to follow military rules, not me. I had a
Speaker 5: pair of hands, you understand, and I landed up and
Speaker 5: what happened was there was a ruckus in town where
Speaker 5: the Stricroft had pub problems at a pub, and the
Speaker 5: guys left and said, we're going to bring the guys
Speaker 5: and we're going to flatten this pub. So when he left,
Speaker 5: they got all these bouncers together with patons and everything
Speaker 5: waiting for this lot to come. And we arrived, Mike
Speaker 5: West and these two buddies and one of our guys.
Speaker 5: The real asshole has trouble with a city in the
Speaker 5: fight breaks and we go out and what happens. There's
Speaker 5: lord of people come out of Therevid patons. I get pumbled.
Speaker 5: I've got a crackskull, broken broken nose, lying in Addington
Speaker 5: Hospital and I was in the ole of the state.
Speaker 5: But you're gonna get me down. I still got out.
Speaker 5: They decided. Then I was very angry, so I started
Speaker 5: to hunt these guys down. And somebody went and chirped
Speaker 5: by the commander what I was busy with, and they decided, listen,
Speaker 5: this king is a nutcase. So they sent me to
Speaker 5: the psychiatrist in Putorial. Guy's name was Paul Meyer, was
Speaker 5: the head of this, and they questioned, they got these
Speaker 5: little flip charts and what do you see? And what
Speaker 5: do you see and all this stuff crap. Anyway, I
Speaker 5: go through all this nonsense, I get locked up in
Speaker 5: the unique ward where the wounded guy was. I go
Speaker 5: for runs. I threatened the military police. I was a
Speaker 5: bit of a problem, and they declare me a jackal
Speaker 5: and hide a nutcase and they send me back. And
Speaker 5: when I got back to they empty. The military police
Speaker 5: get on the bloody trained with me, which is the
Speaker 5: biggest mistake. They've never done that. I walked in their compartment.
Speaker 5: I they if you ever saw a money, should have
Speaker 5: seen those guys. I would have flattened them, but not
Speaker 5: one moved. I was very angry with these bosses, for
Speaker 5: you know, I've been like anyway, I get back gud
Speaker 5: picks in the station. He says to me, Andre is
Speaker 5: waiting for it. That's a command. I'm not going to
Speaker 5: mention his rest a command that's waiting. He wants to
Speaker 5: see you get back there walking his office, says Mike,
Speaker 5: we've got a lot of trouble up and down. We
Speaker 5: want you to gut there. Tomorrow. We're taking you down
Speaker 5: to water Cliff flying him is going to sort it
Speaker 5: out for us. I said, no problem, man, you know
Speaker 5: I like it. Get to my house. My house is empty,
Speaker 5: curtains in the room, everything is gone, and my clothes
Speaker 5: in the cupboard, wife and kids, everybody gone. I said, yeah,
Speaker 5: what's going on? Yeah, I realized I's pictured. Anyway, next
Speaker 5: day they fly me down to water Cliff. Watercliff, they
Speaker 5: fly me to Endanga Swapper Base. Now get over there,
Speaker 5: walk in this guy, salute this puppy. He just tells
Speaker 5: me you're not going back to South Africa. You play you,
Speaker 5: you station, your permit. I said, but what about my family?
Speaker 5: I couldn't understand what's going on? Says not my problem.
Speaker 5: Get ready for deploying. You just arrived there with my
Speaker 5: water drunk and everything. No orders, keep my gear on everything.
Speaker 5: They load me up in the castle one of these
Speaker 5: armored vehicles. When the dark and they drive me out
Speaker 5: into the bush. Don't know what's going on. Nobody says nothing.
Speaker 5: They're obviously very cheesed off with me. The gates that
Speaker 5: the doors open, the back, I got to jump out.
Speaker 5: Off goes the vehicle. I'm standing in the dark. Your
Speaker 5: four of these captured swap will come sacrament and I
Speaker 5: know the guys and they come and they showed me.
Speaker 5: We go to the lup, the lying up place, and
Speaker 5: we slept there for the night. Now I'm lying there.
Speaker 5: I am so confused. I mean, I went to all
Speaker 5: this crap at the military hospitals and I was declared
Speaker 5: in that case. Then I get sent over yard. Then
Speaker 5: I'm told I'm not getting back to South Africa. They
Speaker 5: don't care about my family. I'm thrown in the bush
Speaker 5: with no orders. Yes, your mean y's something seriously on. Yeah,
Speaker 5: forty the next day, but I've said eight o'clock we
Speaker 5: eat the punch up where we kill seven guys, and
Speaker 5: that that lifted me up. But I needed action and
Speaker 5: that helped me anyway. We got back to the base
Speaker 5: camp and I only realized that now unpopular was this
Speaker 5: guy in this base camp didn't like me. I get
Speaker 5: back today, next day, deploy again. And so it carried on.
Speaker 5: But then I started to take my own teams out.
Speaker 5: And if I take a team out to that, right,
Speaker 5: I get. I'm I'm quite creative, you know. I enjoyed
Speaker 5: the game. And one specific, one, very specific one. They
Speaker 5: had these guys engineers that used to come up and
Speaker 5: blow all the pylons and things on the communication line.
Speaker 5: But they ride it around on bicycles and they put
Speaker 5: their weapons and on the on the bicycles. And they
Speaker 5: told me I actually slotted a couple of them at night. Anyway,
Speaker 5: we go out and shoot them with this KKB night's
Speaker 5: cope with the H one and they they told me
Speaker 5: they want me to try and block this line the
Speaker 5: cut these guys coming up. So it's quite a dangerous
Speaker 5: area to go up there. I mean there's a there's
Speaker 5: FOP light up there, armored, big big forces up that way. Anyway,
Speaker 5: I get up there, go in and I killed quite
Speaker 5: a few like that. I killed a hell of a
Speaker 5: lot of these guys on the time there. But this
Speaker 5: one specific day, as we lay up for the whole day,
Speaker 5: nothing happened slept the night. I walked about fifty meters
Speaker 5: of the ride going further north, and as we're going up,
Speaker 5: three of these guys came racing paths on the bicycle.
Speaker 5: The two far away with fire. We run, they get away.
Speaker 5: I realized that we've been firing, let's say, olive a noise.
Speaker 5: Not going to get out of the area. So I
Speaker 5: head east about three kilometers takes about forty five minutes.
Speaker 5: Am I going to lie up in the area because
Speaker 5: it's Can I take another break quickly? Can I take
Speaker 5: another break quickly?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 5: All right? Coffee to stay away?
Speaker 2: No, we understand, and we appreciate Mike and also his
Speaker 2: crew that's helping him out here because it's pretty late
Speaker 2: in South Africa right now. It's probably like two thirty
Speaker 2: in the morning in South Africa at the moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, super late. We appreciate those guys going the extra
Speaker 1: mile for us.
Speaker 4: I was just looking up our upcoming, our next upcoming guest.
Speaker 4: I know you went over Monday and next Friday.
Speaker 1: Let me get you probably need better organizations. Listen here,
Speaker 1: let's see here.
Speaker 4: So yeah, so John Daily on Monday, Joe Mucia, Musia,
Speaker 4: Eric O'Neil FBI Counterintelligence and Cybersecurity on nine nine. On
Speaker 4: nine thirteen, Damon Brown with the great book Black People
Speaker 4: Can't Swim, Yeah, Combat Diver.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then on nine to twenty you're Uriah Pop medic
Speaker 4: from a special missions unit. And twenty seven is it's
Speaker 4: still nine twenty seven right, our three hundredth episode. It'll
Speaker 4: be early October, early October, October third, Okay, so October
Speaker 4: third will be a three hundredth episode where we are
Speaker 4: going to play sometimes dragons, which we know the watchers
Speaker 4: and listeners of this podcast are dying, dying the content.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been dying.
Speaker 5: Yes. Yeah, It's gonna be our biggest show.
Speaker 1: Crossover event of the of the century. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Mike, you as you as you're telling this story,
Speaker 2: I gotta think and you must have picked up on
Speaker 2: at this point it sounds an awful lot like your
Speaker 2: commander sent you out to this firebase to die, like
Speaker 2: he doesn't think you're coming back.
Speaker 5: Well, I'll be perfectly honestly, I if you read in
Speaker 5: my book, I I the book's been edited, but I
Speaker 5: know for the fact that as I go on, and
Speaker 5: you'll see why, I tell you they tried, but they
Speaker 5: didn't succeed. And then listen, this is Blakely. I'll sit
Speaker 5: with the polygraph anywhere in the world and I'll take
Speaker 5: this story on to show you what they did to me.
Speaker 5: But they didn't scare me. I'm not worried about these people,
Speaker 5: but this specific instant, I had a three kilometers east
Speaker 5: and I get down in the position and lying low.
Speaker 5: You don't move in the daytime. Look, it doesn't matter
Speaker 5: where you are there. The gooks know where you are.
Speaker 5: It's day time. They know where you are. You can't
Speaker 5: move around in there, and turns don't know where you are.
Speaker 5: That's investigate. And I'll see to my north and I
Speaker 5: see extended line coming, but the bush is thick, and
Speaker 5: I could see about seven of them, but they're coming
Speaker 5: towards it. I realized, those guys that escaped to the bicycles,
Speaker 5: you know that it's coming. Anyway. We open up on
Speaker 5: these guys. You pop a couple of them. Wasn't a
Speaker 5: hell of a punch up. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: this piece of bark flies out down next to my head,
Speaker 5: and all old breaks loose from the right flame. And
Speaker 5: they knew exactly where, so they launched a flanking attack
Speaker 5: on me, which was a big mistake. As they came
Speaker 5: at me. I got that sixty round magazine. I'm the
Speaker 5: only guy sparest forces that add it. But this one worked.
Speaker 5: A lot of guys tried it. But once infuse those springs,
Speaker 5: the thing gets stopped. Just mine never stopped. Believe me,
Speaker 5: it never stopped. They can tell you it never stopped. Anyway, Attorney.
Speaker 5: We opened up and the only way I could beat
Speaker 5: these guys is what Darrell what taught me. Run at
Speaker 5: the bastards. And that's exactly what I did.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: I get two white guys with me, was he and
Speaker 5: Johnny and these guys, and we and I take over
Speaker 5: the speed with the sixty round, opening up with them,
Speaker 5: and we called a lot of them there and Johnny
Speaker 5: was and then the rest of them came in. They're
Speaker 5: not going to run with us, but when I ran,
Speaker 5: they came. And when I captured eight of them over
Speaker 5: there killed. We must have killed I don't know, ah,
Speaker 5: maybe nine, ten, I don't know. We killed a lot.
Speaker 5: It wasn't a big deal, you know. We were too
Speaker 5: fast in them and the most beautiful I've never seen
Speaker 5: anything more, these guys who were on their knees with
Speaker 5: their hands in the air. Man God felt so proud
Speaker 5: of myself. I took this whole lot wounded guys everything.
Speaker 5: We grabbed them. Look, we're in big trouble now because
Speaker 5: there's been a hell of a lot of shooting. You know,
Speaker 5: there's going to be trouble. So I grabbed these guys.
Speaker 5: We start moving south. I had to convince them, you know,
Speaker 5: to walk, and then we stopped at a point to
Speaker 5: hit them because they're bleeding profuse. And you'll see in
Speaker 5: my book there. We made homemade stretchers and we put
Speaker 5: drips in them, and I made these guys carry each
Speaker 5: other wounded on their own shoulders to get them out,
Speaker 5: because a life captures money. Not for me, but for
Speaker 5: these turn guys, you know, the Swapper guys that are
Speaker 5: fighting with me, and they prefer it if we left
Speaker 5: them alive because they don't want to kill their own guys.
Speaker 5: So we were takings and what happens was this foppler
Speaker 5: comes down. I don't know how many vehicles are after
Speaker 5: us now because of all the shooting, and I'm in
Speaker 5: big trouble. Man. I've got Turns that are captured, and
Speaker 5: we're heading south out the way and they on us,
Speaker 5: and I took on these guys that were with us.
Speaker 5: I didn't play games with them. They realized you better
Speaker 5: run with Mike Quest because yah, you're gonna die, and
Speaker 5: they went with us. So I got hold of the
Speaker 5: commander at and I said, please, we need backup, and
Speaker 5: they sent two impolers in. And these impolos came in
Speaker 5: out to strike at that speed and to see the
Speaker 5: enemy with that push is difficult, but I threw a
Speaker 5: white foscing gave them an indication there. The impolas were striking,
Speaker 5: and I moved and we got pumans and we got out.
Speaker 5: Now the funny part that never never, and I'm telling
Speaker 5: I'm looking, I'm telling you, never before in combat in
Speaker 5: that anybody captured so many guys and spuggered up so
Speaker 5: many guys like I did. We got it, got back
Speaker 5: to the base and you know what happened. Nothing. The
Speaker 5: commander got invited us called Sector one zero step out
Speaker 5: to go for dinner for the great success. It's not
Speaker 5: me get ready, you get into the bush. That's why
Speaker 5: he didn't like me. He didn't like me one. But
Speaker 5: because him and the guy back in Durban, we're big Chinas,
Speaker 5: you know, big buddies. And when he sent me up,
Speaker 5: he said, listen, let's make a plan with this guy. Now,
Speaker 5: any operation, Dave you guys, must you ever saying you
Speaker 5: and Jack after an operation, when you get out and
Speaker 5: your ben in combat, you've got to break, not Mike West,
Speaker 5: not screwboy. I get back whatever time leaving in tomorrow night,
Speaker 5: you're going out again. But I did. That's where you
Speaker 5: see where Darrell what writes that, or what the God
Speaker 5: of war says? Even Challenge essays, nobody says much combat
Speaker 5: as Mike West and Mike Rich, and he says as
Speaker 5: well in modern day warf and nobody's seen as much
Speaker 5: combat as Mike and Lift to tell us all now,
Speaker 5: I'm not boasting about this. I'm telling you these puppies
Speaker 5: threw me into this action continuously. But so what I
Speaker 5: did it? I did it, and I was created and
Speaker 5: I pulled the stint over day which with a lot
Speaker 5: of I had a lot Listen, I got a I've
Speaker 5: got a lot of experience in IEDs, you know, yeah, improvising,
Speaker 5: so I'm very good at stuff like this. And I
Speaker 5: went and I took a TAM fifty seven Russian landmine
Speaker 5: metal case, and I took car body putty in the
Speaker 5: guy's name was Villain at at the transport park and
Speaker 5: I packed his body putty and I made it clay
Speaker 5: more out of this this land mine, and I took
Speaker 5: it to Maramba, which is a big open area but
Speaker 5: far from the base cap, so the commander doesn't need
Speaker 5: it because they're gonna get a nappy rash with what
Speaker 5: I'm doing. And I used this as a clay more
Speaker 5: on targets. I was so impressed. I went back and
Speaker 5: I made another one. And anyway, I contacted the one
Speaker 5: group i'd captured eating rapist things. He must have wait
Speaker 5: twenty five thirty killers. Man, you must see the size
Speaker 5: of this thing with all this explosive put it in
Speaker 5: his head and the camouflage to Tim and who went
Speaker 5: to a place called Pupu, which is right up there
Speaker 5: in the western ere a lot of tears over there,
Speaker 5: and it came from there. And what happens, Why I
Speaker 5: enjoyed taking his turs out with me. They take it
Speaker 5: to where the gooks are because they know where they are,
Speaker 5: so you know you're gonna have a punch up. And
Speaker 5: that's what I liked about it. When you go out
Speaker 5: to them, you're gonna have a fight. You know, You're
Speaker 5: not going to sit and be bored over there. You're
Speaker 5: going to fight. And I made this guy carry this thing.
Speaker 5: But now the strangest thing without me laying it, Wallace
Speaker 5: heading up at wait Fopplay had a company coming my way.
Speaker 5: Now I don't know, some bush telegraph went off and
Speaker 5: they were coming towards me, and I was heading towards them,
Speaker 5: and the guy from one O one Battalion, Lucas Lopesha
Speaker 5: came up on the small means and said, hey, you
Speaker 5: guys are heading into big porpoil. Yeah, they're coming directly
Speaker 5: at your massive lot of guys. Now, had I been
Speaker 5: with Sas and what, we would have continued and taken
Speaker 5: these puppies on. But I know these guys, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: sand and fight, not the force like that. So we
Speaker 5: made a U turn and I headed back east. So
Speaker 5: I stopped and John and I decide we're gonna I
Speaker 5: call this landmine of mine Frankie Frankenstein. So let's set
Speaker 5: up frank Here we are on our tracks. So I
Speaker 5: put Frankie against a tree and John walked this long
Speaker 5: trip wire out we found a beautiful air. It was
Speaker 5: our old mash try and you could hide the trip
Speaker 5: wire and we lay this out and I told John
Speaker 5: get out the way. The scariest things to put a
Speaker 5: debt in a thing like that, because you know when
Speaker 5: this goes off, there's nothing left anyway. Got to debt well,
Speaker 5: camouflage and we gap it. We didn't walk al of
Speaker 5: a fine You comes look us charging where the casper's through.
Speaker 5: We all jump on because we're in big, big trouble.
Speaker 5: Is a hell of a lot of turs coming away.
Speaker 5: And the caspers turned and as we gain we suddenly
Speaker 5: feel this, you know, and we look and you see
Speaker 5: this bloom gager and we know these puppies walked into Frank.
Speaker 5: Now the beauty was. We don't know who it wiped out,
Speaker 5: but we never ever heard of that patrol again. Now,
Speaker 5: I couldn't have killed them all, obviously killed the radio
Speaker 5: operate and whatever, But I tell you I'll put a
Speaker 5: serious dent in that bloody lot. My ranking. I I
Speaker 5: was proud of myself. But the base commander, oh he
Speaker 5: would get a nappy rash with my experiments by telling
Speaker 5: me I'm reckless and that because what I did. I
Speaker 5: would pull tooths off. Run. You know, when these guys
Speaker 5: come out to the bicycles, the weapons are tied on
Speaker 5: the handlebars. What dangers? He guys, there's no danger, and
Speaker 5: I would run and dive them off from catch them alive.
Speaker 5: You know what trouble. I got invested and I'm putting
Speaker 5: people's lives at this. I said, but there's no danger.
Speaker 5: They said, you don't do things like that. I said,
Speaker 5: why not? What's it gonna do? Well? I enjoyed a minute.
Speaker 5: It was if you read the book Born to Storm
Speaker 5: by armand Finiko. You see, he tells you about his
Speaker 5: operation he wasn't coming on, tells you about Mike Wist
Speaker 5: and his bicycle diving you little accident much fun. I
Speaker 5: enjoyed it. That was fun.
Speaker 2: Do we have any questions for Mike? We might have
Speaker 2: we have some viewer questions for you, Mike.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, pop off. Do you have any on Patrendy?
Speaker 5: Mm hmm?
Speaker 1: Got him?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Did anything from m Corbin? Thank you?
Speaker 4: Did anything from his your taxi career translate over to
Speaker 4: your military career?
Speaker 5: Just awest like question again?
Speaker 4: Did anything from your taxi driving career translate over to
Speaker 4: your military career.
Speaker 5: Well, I couldn't get any phase out there. My good person,
Speaker 5: come on, give you a look to charge you ten
Speaker 5: bucks or something, you know what I mean. Listen, I
Speaker 5: don't know how it worked out. I call it a
Speaker 5: rags to riches from zero and being rejected and told listen,
Speaker 5: go fly a kunt. You're not worth your You're not
Speaker 5: worth anything. Bugger off. I came back and I took
Speaker 5: them to war and another thing I want to tell you,
Speaker 5: I just want to tell her that, yeah, in Space Forces,
Speaker 5: as a team leader, you have to be an officer.
Speaker 5: Remember my words, you have to be an officer. I
Speaker 5: came back. I was so experienced and I was so
Speaker 5: in the thing. I was the first guy in the
Speaker 5: history of Spacial Forces as the NCO to become a
Speaker 5: team leader, and I was proud of it. And when
Speaker 5: they announced it, nobody said anything.
Speaker 1: That's awes And.
Speaker 5: I'm the only guy in the history of warfare to
Speaker 5: bring down am I a chopper with a Sam seven,
Speaker 5: which is an extinct dinosaur. Youat seeking missile because the
Speaker 5: choppers blade takes the eat away. We pulled it down
Speaker 5: that kill shot. Nineteen Cubans done with it.
Speaker 2: One survived that that was that in the Angola say
Speaker 2: again and yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah between by so long and Quita's amazing if we
Speaker 5: pulled off the most craziest things that was. It's just
Speaker 5: amazing how it went. It was just unbelievable. There's so
Speaker 5: many I can carry on all day. I could. I
Speaker 5: can entertain you for hours and with this and I'm
Speaker 5: not I should you not? You can not to go
Speaker 5: on the polygraph said on the wall stage.
Speaker 1: I love to do We have any other questions for Mike? No,
Speaker 1: that was it? Oh wait, wait, one more just came in.
Speaker 5: How many do you know?
Speaker 1: Do you know how many combat parachute jumps?
Speaker 5: You have? How many combat parachute jumps? Parachute jumps? Yeah? Okay, uh,
Speaker 5: A bit difficult. But if I combat ones and not
Speaker 5: to training one, just comeback, just comeback, Okay, all the kemps,
Speaker 5: all my fire force, maybe fifty forty. I don't know.
Speaker 5: There's quite a bit. I don't know. I'm speaking under correction.
Speaker 5: I don't want to say things. It's confusing with all
Speaker 5: the training jumps we had. Yeah, but I've got a lot.
Speaker 5: Let me.
Speaker 4: I just want to ask you, because you did do
Speaker 4: so many combat jumps, and that's not something that Americans.
Speaker 1: You know that we've done much operationally since.
Speaker 4: Like World War Two. You know there have been a few.
Speaker 4: But how high would you guys be when you were flying,
Speaker 4: did you have a reserve? How how long like your
Speaker 4: shoot would open? And then how long before you hit
Speaker 4: the ground.
Speaker 5: Okay, this is a very good thing. When we came
Speaker 5: to South Africa and I came and did a dispatcher's
Speaker 5: course in Bloompington, there was a guy where then there
Speaker 5: was a sergeant major Johnny became an officer. He presented
Speaker 5: the course. His name was Johnny Kiss. He criticiz because
Speaker 5: you're supposed to jump nothing less than six hundred eight
Speaker 5: under to six hundred. But remember we jumping into wall.
Speaker 5: These topies jump fun jumped right, so the lowest it
Speaker 5: was ever jumped is four hundred. Wow, now four hundred five.
Speaker 5: If you jump out and you got a twist in
Speaker 5: your when you get a twist, the first thing you
Speaker 5: do as you get out, you look up, kick out
Speaker 5: of your twist, get out of your seat belt, and
Speaker 5: then get a leading. My man, when you're out there,
Speaker 5: you hit the deck. If you have a malfunction, bye bye, yeah,
Speaker 5: you did, Yeah, you did sech on camp attext and
Speaker 5: they're shooting at your Yeah, that's another ball game, man.
Speaker 4: I mean so basically when you guys are going out
Speaker 4: at that, your your shoot opens and then you're pretty
Speaker 4: much you're on the ground very shortly after that.
Speaker 5: Very very short yes. Yeah, And you're not always in
Speaker 5: the ground. Sometimes you're in the tree, right right. We
Speaker 5: had a guy that got stuck in a weighted but
Speaker 5: the african't call a box thorns in all directions. When
Speaker 5: you fall in that, you hang right, you stuck, you
Speaker 5: hang up there. You've got to be cut out with
Speaker 5: site cuttings. They get stuck in a that's wild. So
Speaker 5: another ball game that way.
Speaker 2: Mike, tell us a little bit about like how you
Speaker 2: retired out of the SADF and what you'd like to
Speaker 2: tell us, if anything, about your post service life, what
Speaker 2: you've been up to since then.
Speaker 5: What happened was I landed up, But after that story,
Speaker 5: I landed up in two three massive attacks Colisseum, Firewood,
Speaker 5: and Hooper, and I nearly died in all of them.
Speaker 5: I really had some really was a shit show of note.
Speaker 5: I was in big trouble. You can read it in
Speaker 5: my book. After I'd gone through all of that, the
Speaker 5: war was basically over, and then a certain organization was
Speaker 5: formed underground and they needed space Force operators and it
Speaker 5: took very high level people to get permissioned. And this
Speaker 5: guy knew me. He wasn't most amenies with me, this officer,
Speaker 5: and he went and he said, I wanted Mike west
Speaker 5: and there to go to very top level, and then
Speaker 5: managed the war was over anyway, and they got me out,
Speaker 5: and then I went underground and I started to operate
Speaker 5: like that, and then I got up to.
Speaker 2: Was that the Civil Cooperation Bureau? Say again, was that CCB?
Speaker 2: I'm not going to talk about that at all. Yes,
Speaker 2: I'm going to see it completely clear of that police.
Speaker 2: The guy over there, I was. If I got to
Speaker 2: tell you what all happened there, I'm going to.
Speaker 5: Get into trouble. I want to stay totally out of it.
Speaker 5: I was involved, yes, but that's it. That's all I
Speaker 5: can say.
Speaker 2: Ghost fair enough, Mike, and and that went on for
Speaker 2: a few more years.
Speaker 1: I take it from the way you're describing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I really what happened. I've got a habit. When
Speaker 5: I started something, I go deeper and deeper, and I
Speaker 5: infiltrated organizations and became members of organizations. I actually sat
Speaker 5: in the Minister's office with voice activated recorders planning operations
Speaker 5: against the SADF Holy Ship. Meantime, I'm working, man. They
Speaker 5: were shit scared of me. They actually came and got
Speaker 5: rid of me. The military actually came assuming teld me
Speaker 5: that they're going to get rid of me because they
Speaker 5: were worried about the TLC, the reconciliation. They just said,
Speaker 5: we got to get rid of this paper, and they
Speaker 5: got rid of me. Tell me, get the hell out
Speaker 5: of you when they go in.
Speaker 2: When I got up there, I mean that that organization
Speaker 2: is from what I've read, I mean, was disbanded rather
Speaker 2: abruptly and everyone just sort of scattered. I mean, what
Speaker 2: was it like for you when when the unit was
Speaker 2: disbanded and you kind of had to find your way
Speaker 2: in life.
Speaker 5: But that organization you're talk about, that Dave spoke about that.
Speaker 5: The big guy over there didn't like me, but one
Speaker 5: of the main guys in the operator used me because
Speaker 5: I worked for one task force underground. Then they came
Speaker 5: and got to work underground and the security police wanted
Speaker 5: me because I was I was a busy boy, and
Speaker 5: I knew what I was doing. When all of this
Speaker 5: got disbanded, I'd already been up to so much trouble.
Speaker 5: I then decided. Then I went and I thought, okay,
Speaker 5: I became a bouncer, and you can really I used
Speaker 5: to pummel people. I enjoyed fighting, you know. And then
Speaker 5: when I enjoyed the fighting, then I got into VIP protection.
Speaker 5: And then if you've got to see what I went,
Speaker 5: you over there, how I got followed, how people tried
Speaker 5: to I got arrested, you must look at it. I've
Speaker 5: had a fun folk life I had. I've had really,
Speaker 5: I've had a very the day I lay my head down,
Speaker 5: I can tell you I've had a ride.
Speaker 2: So I mean, you live this incredible life doing some
Speaker 2: things that you know most people really just know nothing about.
Speaker 1: How did the idea of this book come about?
Speaker 5: I didn't want to do the book at all. I
Speaker 5: wouldn't do it. But they're all what said to me, Mike,
Speaker 5: because that all right, handful of hard mess. That's a
Speaker 5: brilliant book. And Daryl said, Mike, do the book. Do
Speaker 5: the book. Then I did the book. My daughter was
Speaker 5: I got my daughter's that ghost right, She wrote, the
Speaker 5: book and it lay for three years and then on
Speaker 5: a day this son of my as said, Dad, get
Speaker 5: this book. Ake. This is going to be a movie. Man,
Speaker 5: this is this is big because of what's coming back
Speaker 5: and that I didn't want. In the day I released
Speaker 5: this book, this thing went absolutely. I can't believe that
Speaker 5: this book took off.
Speaker 2: It was it was it like controversial when it came
Speaker 2: out in South Africa.
Speaker 1: I mean, what was the response like.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all these you'll see I talk about
Speaker 5: the wrekis over there, very good operators. This is the
Speaker 5: good soldiers. But there were elements said they didn't like me,
Speaker 5: and I had and there is they don't support me
Speaker 5: at all. Nobody can condemn me. But I put in
Speaker 5: the book. I haven't two days not one negative comment
Speaker 5: because I've told no lies, told the guys those that
Speaker 5: I said that, and they are that I mentioned it.
Speaker 5: But there's a lot of things that the author I
Speaker 5: looked at and we had to remove because if I
Speaker 5: got to put it in the book, it's going to
Speaker 5: Let me tell you that book can be one hundred
Speaker 5: and twenty pages more. I wish I could tell the
Speaker 5: whole story and tell you everything and what's all in?
Speaker 5: And I wish I could talk it just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: I would like to read that book someday, Mike. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I'd like to read that expand that edition at some point.
Speaker 1: Mike.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I don't think I'm going to be stepping on
Speaker 5: a lot of people's doing. I actually had a guy
Speaker 5: that when I initially started, said, Mike is better make
Speaker 5: sure he's dead when he publishes that book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, I should you not?
Speaker 2: Where where can people go to pick up a copy?
Speaker 2: I mean, is it available on like Amazon? What's the
Speaker 2: right place to go to to find it?
Speaker 5: Well? I don't know. I believe Amazon is doing the
Speaker 5: sales of my book. All In South Africa, I sell
Speaker 5: my own books because they give me books to sell,
Speaker 5: and then the authors you know, ex. Montabus Media sells it.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of outlets selling the book. But in America,
Speaker 5: I don't know. I think it's just Amazon.
Speaker 2: If people want to buy like an autographed copy directly
Speaker 2: from you, is there a place they can reach out?
Speaker 5: I don't know. I'd suppose a lot to what happened.
Speaker 5: I don't know how I signed all the books. You know,
Speaker 5: people have asked me a certain organization to ask me
Speaker 5: please don't sign books, and you know the policy is
Speaker 5: if you sign the book. I said, listen, I'm not ramble.
Speaker 5: I signed my bloody books. I signed all my books.
Speaker 5: So I go to bookstores and I signed the books
Speaker 5: in the store, just going to sign and I leave
Speaker 5: it there. You know they can charge more for it.
Speaker 5: I don't give it down, but I don't know how
Speaker 5: to get a signed copy. I've sent signed copies. People
Speaker 5: have picked up it, gone to Italy, gone to France,
Speaker 5: but they've gone all over the world. But people from
Speaker 5: Yo left that way, and I've sent to Zambia. I've
Speaker 5: sent to many places. But how how to get it
Speaker 5: to pay that cost to get my book to America?
Speaker 5: I mean, how the hell are you going to buy
Speaker 5: your backside or it's not true? How to get a
Speaker 5: signed copy? I don't know. Well, I don't mind signing
Speaker 5: it at all.
Speaker 1: Uh, you want to hold that up for the folks
Speaker 1: one more time.
Speaker 4: So it's Mike West, Special Force of Super Soldier, Great read.
Speaker 4: Highly recommend it. Link is down in the description. You
Speaker 4: can find it on Amazon.
Speaker 2: Mike, thank you so much for joining us, and I
Speaker 2: appreciate you and the crew. They are putting in the
Speaker 2: extra effort so late at night for us to come
Speaker 2: on and do the show. Anything that we failed to
Speaker 2: ask that you want to mention before we get going tonight.
Speaker 5: I just wish I could have covered camp tacks in
Speaker 5: South Africa. That is still a hell of a long Look,
Speaker 5: we're not even close to the end of the journey.
Speaker 5: But if I could have just brought you because this
Speaker 5: is a lot a lot of people die. I'm talking
Speaker 5: about horrible action, hiring people out under fire, getting shot there.
Speaker 5: Oh Colisseum trend clearing hit with BECNDS twelve seven anti
Speaker 5: aircraft weapon. When you what happened to calls out there?
Speaker 1: Would would you like me to come on the show?
Speaker 5: And and walking into ambushes? I can open a book
Speaker 5: written by an author called Jonathan put Away, and I
Speaker 5: can read this story and I can tell you exactly
Speaker 5: what the guy says. Now, they capture the terrorists on
Speaker 5: Operation Colisseum, and they told them there's an ambush up ahead.
Speaker 5: And what happens They drove to point they stopped. I
Speaker 5: said call Mike West came over and said, Mike, we
Speaker 5: want you to go and clear the roads to see
Speaker 5: there any ambushes. So they give me another team and
Speaker 5: I take that team because I don't know there's an ambush,
Speaker 5: and I make a tea formation. I take the extended
Speaker 5: line in front, and I got the information behind me.
Speaker 5: But had they told me the ambush is there, which
Speaker 5: they didn't, I would have been better prepared. And that's
Speaker 5: the one when they hit me with that rifle the night. Now,
Speaker 5: luckily it was an anti vehicle. I was so fortunate
Speaker 5: in my life. Otherwise I would have been my mind.
Speaker 5: This thing exploded right in front of me, threw me
Speaker 5: on my back. I jumped up. John Broco. My nickname
Speaker 5: was Zaka Nucci, which means as good as honey swapp it,
Speaker 5: And he said Zak I jumped up. I said yes,
Speaker 5: and I shouted my walk cry pomparing the horn, door,
Speaker 5: folded the wall, and I ran at these baskets and
Speaker 5: they ran it. I cleared that old ambush out and
Speaker 5: all the rounds that were coming at us, and sue us,
Speaker 5: we're hitting the guys in the vehicle there to lie down.
Speaker 5: But what annoys me? Why didn't they tell me there
Speaker 5: was a bloody ambush?
Speaker 1: That's what I mean.
Speaker 5: If the hell that they had in mind by sending
Speaker 5: me in without telling me it's there. But in the
Speaker 5: book you can read it. I've got I promise you
Speaker 5: I can photograph it there, he says, had to tell
Speaker 5: them there's an ambush. They don't tell me that they
Speaker 5: just sent me.
Speaker 2: We're already kind of uh touching the surface here. So yeah,
Speaker 2: people can definitely should check out the book and hear
Speaker 2: the rest of the story. But Mike, I'd be happy
Speaker 2: to have you back on the show if there's more.
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds like there's certainly more you'd like
Speaker 2: to talk about. I'd be happy to do that in
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 5: If I could delve into the Colosseum, the Firewood, which
Speaker 5: was a horrific but really horrific operation. A lot of
Speaker 5: guys die. We looked at guys dying over there. That's
Speaker 5: where I tried to shoot my own office over there.
Speaker 5: You commit it in the book. I had enough of him.
Speaker 5: Well luckily the well fortunately for when the troops you're
Speaker 5: looking was, you would have been longer. But there's a
Speaker 5: lot to cover there. Then Operation Hooper with those mortars,
Speaker 5: when I was caught in those beatens on you see
Speaker 5: this ship, my friend yay Man, it was Look, it
Speaker 5: was a romance of note day.
Speaker 2: We'll have to do it again and sometime I could.
Speaker 2: You said, you could talk for another like ten hours
Speaker 2: about this and I could honestly.
Speaker 1: Listen to it. Yeah, me too, because there's some fascinating stories.
Speaker 1: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: We're also like pushing your limits, uh, time wise, and
Speaker 2: probably some of the people watching this late at night
Speaker 2: as well. But we should do a second episode at
Speaker 2: some point if you're if you're up for.
Speaker 5: It, you're more than welcome because I'm gonna do a
Speaker 5: fighting Man of Rudesia with the author now, okay on
Speaker 5: colisseum fire, wouldn't it? But oh perfect, Okay, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of details to cover in this. There's a lot
Speaker 5: of stuff here. There's a lot of action.
Speaker 1: Thank you again for joining us tonight.
Speaker 2: We'll see all you guys out there on Monday with
Speaker 2: John Daily and then on Friday with Joe Muscia.
Speaker 1: So have a nice weekend everyone,