Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you today about a way that you can help support
Speaker 1: the podcast if you're not already to support the channel
Speaker 1: is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon
Speaker 1: memberships that start at just five dollars a month, and
Speaker 1: when you sign up, you get access to all of
Speaker 1: our episodes add free. That's the big bonus for that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for
Speaker 1: our subscribers, but this is the biggest and best way
Speaker 1: that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if
Speaker 1: you'd like to, and we really appreciate that, So go
Speaker 1: and check us out at patreon dot com, slash the Teamhouse.
Speaker 2: Special Operations Cobert OPSSPI, and I the Team House with
Speaker 2: your Hopes.
Speaker 1: Jack Murphy, Hey guys, this is episode three hundred and
Speaker 1: eight of The Teamhouse. I'm Jack here with Dave and
Speaker 1: our guest on tonight's show is Hugh Kia. He served
Speaker 1: in three Para doing deployments through deployments to Afghanistan, tu
Speaker 1: to Iraq, a couple in Northern Ireland, and he is
Speaker 1: also the host of the h Hour podcast and Hugh.
Speaker 1: Before we jump into the interview man h hour, I
Speaker 1: sense is it somewhat of a similar mission statement to
Speaker 1: what we do here, except on the other side of
Speaker 1: the pond.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like it. I think there's there's definitely
Speaker 3: cross over between the two, and it's you know, you've
Speaker 3: got a long form going on. It sounds like you
Speaker 3: interview people you're pretty much interested in, predominantly from a
Speaker 3: military or or military adjacent background, So I think, yeah,
Speaker 3: seems seems pretty similar, except mine mostly Brits and yours
Speaker 3: are mostly.
Speaker 1: Who what kind of people do you? What kind of
Speaker 1: Brits do you have on your podcast? Oh?
Speaker 3: Man? But it's starting off, you know, predominantly my network
Speaker 3: is dominic X military and next military mail, so's ex
Speaker 3: military male. And now I go into all sorts of
Speaker 3: different areas, so from experts in psychedelics and medicine and psychology, politicians, musicians,
Speaker 3: it's predominantly ex mill But you know, it goes the
Speaker 3: bigger the network gets, the more access you've got to
Speaker 3: other people, you think they'd be a good chat too.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Well, yeah, congratulations. I hope people will go
Speaker 1: check out each hour get a different perspective on a
Speaker 1: similar topic, right, but you let's let's start off. I
Speaker 1: want to hear a little bit about you. Tell us
Speaker 1: about you know, how you grew up and how that
Speaker 1: took you towards the British military.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question. So I think you know
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of people who end up
Speaker 3: in the military do so because they've got family who
Speaker 3: are in the military, and it's kind of almost a
Speaker 3: right of passage in some families and or it's expected.
Speaker 3: Wasn't the case for me. I grew up. I grew
Speaker 3: up in in in Wales, Wales which is part of
Speaker 3: the United Kingdom, you know, next to England, but it's
Speaker 3: definitely not in England. It's not to be not to
Speaker 3: be confused between the two countries, right, And I grew
Speaker 3: up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, you know,
Speaker 3: like four three or four miles away from the nearest neighbor.
Speaker 3: Was literally no one around. So I spent a lot
Speaker 3: of my time out and about doing what you do
Speaker 3: when you're all You've got his countryside and you and
Speaker 3: your dad's are keen, keen clean countryside enthusiast in the
Speaker 3: most positive way I mean that. So we went out
Speaker 3: rambling you know, he was out showing me how to shoot,
Speaker 3: and I just learning, learning, learning all about it. So
Speaker 3: that's where I grew up, and uh I ended up.
Speaker 3: I basically ended up. Initially, I wanted to join the
Speaker 3: Air Force, which is obviously not where I ended up.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure why I wanted to join the Air Force,
Speaker 3: but I think I had a feeling that I wasn't
Speaker 3: really I wasn't really happy with myself. I was quite
Speaker 3: low self esteem, really low self confidence. I'm not quite
Speaker 3: sure where it is. I think it's because I quite
Speaker 3: an isolated up bringing in terms of like social opportunities,
Speaker 3: Like there was animals, There wasn't many kids, you know well,
Speaker 3: and they don't talk very much. They talk a little bit,
Speaker 3: but I haven't a clue when they say it. But
Speaker 3: when you know, when you grow up, most people that
Speaker 3: grow up and they finished school and they're out socializing
Speaker 3: with their friends and then on the weekend of socializing
Speaker 3: with their friends. And I didn't really have that. So
Speaker 3: I think my social skills development was just really poor.
Speaker 3: And I think that as you grow up, when you
Speaker 3: become a teenager and you just more of these internationals
Speaker 3: expected and like social status becomes a conscious thing, and
Speaker 3: the way you interact with other people and they interact
Speaker 3: with you actually impact how positive or negative you feel
Speaker 3: about yourself. I think it really impacted me. So I
Speaker 3: was really the real self confidence, low self esteem going
Speaker 3: into you know, into my teens, and I think that
Speaker 3: I saw the military is not with you. Unity to
Speaker 3: sort of prove myself to myself, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Really that's what it is. It wasn't for anyone else.
Speaker 3: It was kind of approving myself, how you're not a loser,
Speaker 3: You've got something about you. And really the only thing
Speaker 3: I had gone about the times I'm pretty fit. I
Speaker 3: was physically fit, but physically fit from the waist down,
Speaker 3: Like from the waist up, it was just skin and
Speaker 3: bottom the waist down. I died like three trunks just
Speaker 3: from running on all the hills when I was grown up,
Speaker 3: you know. And so yeah, South Wales looking at the RAF,
Speaker 3: the Royal Air Force. I needed. I think I wanted
Speaker 3: to go into aviation engineer or something random like this
Speaker 3: that I've seen in a book about career opportunities in school.
Speaker 3: I needed a levels for that, which is our college
Speaker 3: college qualifications. I don't know what you call them. Over there.
Speaker 3: But it's you know, you go from your normal school
Speaker 3: stuff into college. Needed A levels. It's a couple of
Speaker 3: years to do that, and I got college royally wrong.
Speaker 3: One I wasn't attention and to I set up a website.
Speaker 3: This is like the nineties, so I was away ahead
Speaker 3: of the curve. I set up a website which was
Speaker 3: neath college sucks dot co dot uk and it wasn't
Speaker 3: And I thought I'd been really clever and hiding my track,
Speaker 3: but I wasn't. I aster leave the college before I pushed.
Speaker 3: So I wish I had still had that website, but
Speaker 3: I don't anymore, and so I left. I had no
Speaker 3: A levels, that couldn't join what I wanted to do
Speaker 3: in the RAF And there was an advert on TV
Speaker 3: at the time for saying I'll go and spend twenty
Speaker 3: four hours with the Paris. I had very little knowledge
Speaker 3: of the Powers or any of the military really, and
Speaker 3: I went and spent twenty four hours down in a
Speaker 3: place called all the Shot, which is in England. It's
Speaker 3: not too far from London, and that's where that was
Speaker 3: the home of the Powers at the time, and you
Speaker 3: basically go and spend twenty four hours. They show you
Speaker 3: all the nice shiny weapons systems and the nice uniforms
Speaker 3: and all a lot of the guys who were serving
Speaker 3: the time, and you do all the cool military stuff,
Speaker 3: none of the horrible military stuff. And there was a
Speaker 3: fitness assessment which was basically a run a mile and
Speaker 3: a half. I was a mile and a half warm
Speaker 3: up and then a mile and a half best effort,
Speaker 3: and I won that and then I thought, yeah, I
Speaker 3: said I'm going to join. I'm going to join the
Speaker 3: Paris and I signed up for that immediately, but it
Speaker 3: took about It took me about six months before I
Speaker 3: was I could even start training because my my mother's Irish,
Speaker 3: so Republic of Islands and immediately meant extended security. At
Speaker 3: the time, it was sort of the tail end. It
Speaker 3: was the tail end of the normal island the troubles
Speaker 3: as they known of a here. We were still we
Speaker 3: still had an active operation going on in Northern Ireland
Speaker 3: and they need across the t's and dot the eyes
Speaker 3: and make sure I wasn't the wrong kind of person
Speaker 3: getting into There was a lot of people get left
Speaker 3: got left off the family tree. With that that was admitted.
Speaker 3: The reality is is that that I and so small.
Speaker 3: You know, everyone's red, but be related to a terrorist
Speaker 3: like a member of the IRA or at least someone
Speaker 3: who helped them a few times. And it was there's
Speaker 3: at least one person I knew at the time who
Speaker 3: he was, I don't remember, twenty or thirty years older
Speaker 3: than me, and he was used to be a gett
Speaker 3: away driving for the RA after they'd been dropping bombs
Speaker 3: off and things. I was just claim to fame, so
Speaker 3: to speak.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a little bit of fiction on
Speaker 1: your entrance clearance there, but that that that is an interesting,
Speaker 1: you know thing, and something interesting that you know, the
Speaker 1: British government did have to deal with, right I mean,
Speaker 1: I can understand that they'd be concerned about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And you know, the reality is is that
Speaker 3: we were until very recently in our history in the UK,
Speaker 3: we were having terrorist bombings on home soil by by
Speaker 3: people who were born in the UK, you know, or
Speaker 3: they were south of the border in Ireland. So you've
Speaker 3: got Northern Island, and you've got the Island of Island,
Speaker 3: and you've got nordn Island, which is part of the UK,
Speaker 3: and below that is the Republic of Ireland and the
Speaker 3: terrorists want, they want that to be reunited, and they
Speaker 3: don't want the UK to be any part of it.
Speaker 3: And they were planting bombs and blowing people up in
Speaker 3: the UK, London, Birmingham, you know, all the shop different places.
Speaker 3: They do it in Northern Island as well. But that
Speaker 3: wasn't that long ago. It's pretty crazy when you think
Speaker 3: about it. I was growing up in times like that.
Speaker 3: You just these days you think of terrorism, you think
Speaker 3: it comes from overseas, as in, it comes from a place,
Speaker 3: a country which they don't look like you don't speak
Speaker 3: the same language, and they can't possibly understand your culture.
Speaker 3: And the reality is it wasn't. It was. It was homegrown,
Speaker 3: so to speak, and it made for pretty challenging operations.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, when you when you you're going out
Speaker 3: to do current insurgency operations or any kind of operation
Speaker 3: against an enemy who speaks exactly like you speak. They
Speaker 3: grew up in the same culture you did. They know,
Speaker 3: they know exactly how you operate. They don't look that
Speaker 3: much differently, they don't dress that much differently. Really difficult,
Speaker 3: really difficult. It turns out we're pretty cunning, yell.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll get into that a bit. But so
Speaker 1: you joined the paaras tell us about you know, your
Speaker 1: intake what kind of like selection process, there is a
Speaker 1: training to just get into this unit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the so on paper on paper, I think the
Speaker 3: first the first two phases of joining an infantry unit
Speaker 3: in in in the British Army, you've got a phase
Speaker 3: one of the phase two right pretty much for everyone,
Speaker 3: and the phase one is basic basic idustry skills, and
Speaker 3: in phase two you're normally gone to you start specializing
Speaker 3: in the tredes if you weren't going to infantry, if
Speaker 3: you're going to engineers or something like that, in phase
Speaker 3: two would be oriented around that, and then some other
Speaker 3: units will have a phase three with its extended learning,
Speaker 3: particularly technical fields you know infantry. So it's just phase
Speaker 3: phase one of the phase two. With the difference being
Speaker 3: for the Paras different to every other infantry unit in
Speaker 3: the British Army is that we have a selection at
Speaker 3: the end of phase two. So it's not just the
Speaker 3: case of okay, past your basic tests and demonstrated basic
Speaker 3: knowledge and phase one of the phase two and you're
Speaker 3: into unit. You go to demonstrate those as a minimum
Speaker 3: and then do your selection at the end and then
Speaker 3: maybe you'll be selected. Even if you pass the selection,
Speaker 3: you may be failed, but just ignoring that for a
Speaker 3: second sort of the phase one, the phase two takes
Speaker 3: about eight months, seven or eight months. I think it's
Speaker 3: still the same now question finish, Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 3: phase one is like twelve weeks. The first six weeks
Speaker 3: you're on you're on camp, you don't get to go home.
Speaker 3: And then after the six week period you have like
Speaker 3: a sort of the first formal piece of hey, you
Speaker 3: know your basics now, and you do a little parade
Speaker 3: on the on the parade square and you get given
Speaker 3: like I think at that point you give At that point,
Speaker 3: we were given it like a Maroon beret. You had
Speaker 3: the powers cat barge on it, but it had like
Speaker 3: a green backing stuck behind it to demonstrate that you
Speaker 3: were real powers, just in training. But you get to
Speaker 3: wear the and the cat batch and you wear that
Speaker 3: then continuously throughout. For me, the first the first twelve
Speaker 3: weeks phase one were pretty they were pretty all right.
Speaker 3: I thought, I didn't find it difficult. I don't recall
Speaker 3: finding it difficult. I think the you know, the instructors
Speaker 3: I had, they were I would describe him as pretty
Speaker 3: easy going. You know, you, guys, you experience in training
Speaker 3: will differ to the next guy who went through all
Speaker 3: dependent on the year you went through. Who you had
Speaker 3: instructed you. Did you have decent guys, did you have lunatics,
Speaker 3: did you have violent guys, did you have people that
Speaker 3: took noble shit, or did you have people that didn't
Speaker 3: want to be there? And for me that that Phase one,
Speaker 3: I had a bunch of guys. There were great instructors.
Speaker 3: It was just pretty laid back, I thought for most
Speaker 3: of them, at least the section commander I had is
Speaker 3: in charge of my ten twelve guys were super laid back.
Speaker 3: And the problem with that for me was that that
Speaker 3: was not setting me at well for Phase two, which
Speaker 3: was like carnage. I went from I went from having
Speaker 3: this laid back crew to go into phase two and
Speaker 3: just having a bunch of like psychopaths and uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so yeah, I was kind of I kind of left
Speaker 3: phase one after that twelve weeks still kind of being
Speaker 3: the low self esteem, those sorts of confidence guy, but
Speaker 3: not realizing it. It's like this false sense of confidence
Speaker 3: that gives me. Yeah, than twelve weeks I'm a real
Speaker 3: soldier now and I wasn't. Phase two became back ship
Speaker 3: and also it was it was a change in location
Speaker 3: as well. So our Phase one time was done in
Speaker 3: the Birmingham area, which is like west of England, and
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of there's not a lot of
Speaker 3: hills there, there's not a lot of mountains, so the
Speaker 3: training area is pretty limited. And the Phase two we
Speaker 3: moved up to an area called Katrick which is in
Speaker 3: North Yorkshire. And North Yorkshire is north of England. It's cold,
Speaker 3: it's miserable, you know. That's why everyone everyone in North
Speaker 3: England's like pretty tough because they just have to deal
Speaker 3: with hardship, like people from Boston, right, just like they
Speaker 3: just grow up in misery. So they just like the
Speaker 3: hardcore people. It's like north of England, the same with Wales.
Speaker 3: In Wales is the same just miserable island too. And
Speaker 3: so I had like that that change in sceniory, change
Speaker 3: in surroundings and up to Phase two where we went
Speaker 3: to where we went to Phase two stopped me ear
Speaker 3: if you want to stop everything, yeah, so we went
Speaker 3: to Phase two. The changing surroundings was also that the
Speaker 3: Paris training location there on the barracks Hell's Barracks it
Speaker 3: was called at the time. I was at the time.
Speaker 3: It was right next to it was on a massive camp,
Speaker 3: a big training camp, and there were lots of other
Speaker 3: units there, lots and lots of other units there. So
Speaker 3: one of the so one of the reasons that it
Speaker 3: was kind of quite chaotic and quite a lot more,
Speaker 3: a lot tougher, i'd say, dealing with the staff I
Speaker 3: had anyway, is that not only that they were trying
Speaker 3: to train us in being the best that we could
Speaker 3: be to go to the units, they're also trying to
Speaker 3: teach us to absolutely detest and loathe anyone that wasn't
Speaker 3: like in training to be in the Paris or even
Speaker 3: anyone any soldier who wasn't wearing that cap attue was you.
Speaker 3: You literally don't speak to them, you don't look at them.
Speaker 3: They're not they're not worthy, They're not worthy of your attention.
Speaker 3: Are we recruits? As we told this, and I kind
Speaker 3: of got it. It's like one of the one of
Speaker 3: the differences we have, one of the advantages we have.
Speaker 3: I think, well, it isn't advantage, it's that power of
Speaker 3: recruits go away through We were only trained predominantly only anyway,
Speaker 3: most of us are only trained by other Paris, so
Speaker 3: all other units they'll be trained by anyone. So if
Speaker 3: I want to join, I don't know, let's say the
Speaker 3: Rifle's Regiment or any other regiment. I can go to
Speaker 3: a training unit. I could have one instructors from could
Speaker 3: be the Paris one instructor from the Royal Irish Regiment,
Speaker 3: one instructor. You have a mix, and I think that
Speaker 3: I think I think that shouldn't be the case because
Speaker 3: I think it. I think in most cases it kind
Speaker 3: of walks down the emotion an investment that an instructor
Speaker 3: has in training up a recruit. That recruit could be
Speaker 3: going to any unit. Whereas if you're training up recruits
Speaker 3: so you know your unit, I think you take a
Speaker 3: bit more pride in this pilot turd goes to because
Speaker 3: what happens is if when I got the three parrot
Speaker 3: and you get some idiot come from training, the first
Speaker 3: thing you ask is who you're instructor? Who's your instructor,
Speaker 3: because you want to know who's who trained this map
Speaker 3: it up? Or you want to go and ask that
Speaker 3: instructor what the hell happened, Like why is he through.
Speaker 3: So we we were only trained by ourselves and that work.
Speaker 3: I think that works well because we have this sense
Speaker 3: of pride, real sense of pride and elitism drilled into us,
Speaker 3: so we put extra effort into training our guys. It
Speaker 3: wouldn't work so well if you didn't really give it
Speaker 3: down or unit didn't really give it down, you know.
Speaker 3: And and the reality is and also the instructors. I
Speaker 3: mentioned the selection process at the end of Pea Company,
Speaker 3: at the end of phase two earlier. Instructors want all
Speaker 3: the guys to pass. The want as many as the
Speaker 3: guys to pass is to come. They don't want to
Speaker 3: fail because it demonstrates how good the structor they were
Speaker 3: getting the guys to that point. You know, that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean they don't want to drop people off. They won't
Speaker 3: bin people off, you know.
Speaker 1: But you go to Paris selection and it's inverted right
Speaker 1: and there there there's instructors want to see how many
Speaker 1: people they can get to drop out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, basically, I mean, I mean I started
Speaker 3: when I started in phase one, there was sixty three
Speaker 3: of us. And when when I finished, when when I
Speaker 3: got the battalion, there was twelve or fourteen it was
Speaker 3: who got through all the way? Yeah, who got through
Speaker 3: all the way? Which is a pretty pretty big like
Speaker 3: failure rate, so to speak. But a lot a lot
Speaker 3: of those, you know, most of those numbers they dropped
Speaker 3: off pretty early on in Phase one and phase two
Speaker 3: because especially Phase two, it was so it was so challenging.
Speaker 3: It was literally, you know, it was there was no
Speaker 3: room forever, the smallest area was hammered. And I get why,
Speaker 3: but in that particular, you know, training team violence was
Speaker 3: always not always like a go to for fix this problem,
Speaker 3: you know, And part of the issue I had was,
Speaker 3: like I said, I was like super nervous. I was
Speaker 3: all panicking, Like in my head, I was always panicking
Speaker 3: as I'd make mistakes, tiny things, and I would just
Speaker 3: get battered for it because you know what it's like,
Speaker 3: you make one mistake, and if you're not in the
Speaker 3: right mindset, it just creates another mistake, right, another mistake,
Speaker 3: you start overthinking, another mistake. And I was in that
Speaker 3: early on in phase two, I found out the hard
Speaker 3: way really hard. I hated it. I hated it initially,
Speaker 3: but got there, got to the selection and managed to
Speaker 3: pass it.
Speaker 1: Hugh, I'm gonna flip it over to Dave here for
Speaker 1: a quick word from our sponsor and we'll jump right
Speaker 1: back into it.
Speaker 4: So if you guys sleep hot at night, you know
Speaker 4: just how disruptive it can be. Whether you're having trouble
Speaker 4: falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of
Speaker 4: the night, or all the above. That's where ghost bed
Speaker 4: can help. As the makers are the coolest beds in
Speaker 4: the world. Ghost bed is your go to for cooling mattresses,
Speaker 4: cooling pillows, and even cooling bedding. From their simisor ghost
Speaker 4: Ice fat brick to patented technology that adust with your
Speaker 4: body tempter, Every ghost Sped mattress is designed with cooling
Speaker 4: in mind. So whether you want a plus your mattress
Speaker 4: that cushions your shoulders and hips, or a firmer option
Speaker 4: with excellent support, your ghost Bed will keep you cool
Speaker 4: and comfortable all night long. When you purchase a ghost
Speaker 4: Sped mattress, your comfort is guaranteed. You can try out
Speaker 4: your mattress for one hundred and one night's risk free
Speaker 4: and make sure it's the right fit for you. Plus,
Speaker 4: they offer free shipping and most items ship within twenty
Speaker 4: four hours. If you're not sure which ghost bed is
Speaker 4: for you. Check out their mattress quiz. You'll answer a
Speaker 4: few questions and get your personalized recommendation or reach out
Speaker 4: of the friendly team of sleep experts for all the
Speaker 4: help you need. Even better, Team House listeners can get
Speaker 4: fifty percent off site wide for a limited time. Just
Speaker 4: visit ghostped dot com slash house and use code house
Speaker 4: at checkout again. That's ghostped dot com slash house with
Speaker 4: the code House at checkout to sapping fifty off site wine.
Speaker 1: And I want to tell you guys about We Defy
Speaker 1: my book I have coming out in December, the Lost
Speaker 1: Chapters of Special Forces History. Tomorrow, I will be at
Speaker 1: an event in Hackensack, New Jersey, ninety two Kennedy Street, Hackensack,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, sponsored by a Triple A Lot Design clothing company,
Speaker 1: and I'll be there at eleven am and we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about the book and some of the
Speaker 1: stuff in here covers Detachment A, Detachment KA, green Light,
Speaker 1: Blue Light, the Commanders in Extremist Force, some things that
Speaker 1: haven't been written about before. So I'm excited about it
Speaker 1: and I hope to see at least some of you
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning.
Speaker 4: And for our podcast listeners. That's that's on the ninth.
Speaker 4: So by the time you've heard this, yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 4: So don't show up tomorrow when you hear this.
Speaker 1: And and please check out our Patreon there's a link
Speaker 1: down the description. If you sign up, you get access
Speaker 1: to all these episodes ad free and support the channel.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it you guys keep this whole thing going.
Speaker 1: So Hugh back to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Hugh, real quick, from the the numbers that dropped,
Speaker 4: what percentage of if you can take as we're self select,
Speaker 4: and then what percentage were like blowed out by the instructors.
Speaker 3: I man, you asked me, no, I I'd say inficenty
Speaker 3: of seventy percent with sound select. Yeah, like mentally you know,
Speaker 3: I mean the phrase will be rang the bell we
Speaker 3: don't have. Mentally you've spin out. And then the other
Speaker 3: thirty percent were gone. A very small amount would have
Speaker 3: gone back basically gone back to a previous platoon. Hey,
Speaker 3: a different training platoon. We've gone back a step. Need
Speaker 3: to redo. This could be life firing. It could be
Speaker 3: say I fund on the weapon. It could be you
Speaker 3: know something critical. You're going back all fitness, Yeah, fitness,
Speaker 3: go back and others would just get down. Did I
Speaker 3: say about seventy percent with sound select.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's probably true of all of them, Yeah,
Speaker 5: all of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's amazing how many people go into these processes
Speaker 4: and decide that it's just not for them midway through
Speaker 4: or part way through.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think, you know, I think they just have
Speaker 3: a I don't know. It's a combination of what Some
Speaker 3: people have just been pure ignorance. Some people be over confidence.
Speaker 3: Some people won't know what they're doing. You know a
Speaker 3: lot of people who a lot of people who join
Speaker 3: up what we're here is because they've got a lack
Speaker 3: of options. And it was definitely part of what it
Speaker 3: was with me. I sort of lot. I didn't really
Speaker 3: know what I wanted to do. I saw a lack
Speaker 3: of options, and yeah, this is something and and it's
Speaker 3: also for sure they mismanage your own expectations, don't lie
Speaker 3: how hard things are going to be. And that has
Speaker 3: to be more the case of these days, you know
Speaker 3: where things are pretty easy. Yeah, when you go these days,
Speaker 3: they were pretty easy when I was growing up, but
Speaker 3: relatively speaking, a lot easier now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then what were are there any good slang
Speaker 4: words at the pair would use, like when they were
Speaker 4: conditioning you against the non pairs, Like what what were
Speaker 4: some of the words that the pairs called the other units?
Speaker 3: There's two man, well there's one main one, so we
Speaker 3: would refer to other units as crap hats, crap hats.
Speaker 3: And the reason being is that so so we've got
Speaker 3: you know, we've got algy normal standard dress, and we've
Speaker 3: got a ceremonial dress. So for us, the head dress,
Speaker 3: we wear our beret. That's all we wear. We wear
Speaker 3: that ceremonial dress, wear that standard dress is like, we
Speaker 3: don't have any option. But most are the units, with
Speaker 3: the exception of one I found out recently, most of
Speaker 3: the units, if not all, apart from our tank reagiment,
Speaker 3: they have the beret. But then for the ceremonial dress,
Speaker 3: they wear these like weird cap things. I say weird.
Speaker 3: They're really common, but to me they're weird and they
Speaker 3: make them look like a postman somewhat. So you just
Speaker 3: the crap I don't just stay away from the crap hats.
Speaker 3: And the other one was, which was less commonly just
Speaker 3: non ferocious. Stay away from the non Ferocious's not they're
Speaker 3: not worth every time. Yeah, I mean, yeah, being taken
Speaker 3: on a little bit by other other We've been taken
Speaker 3: on my a few crap outs recently units and they
Speaker 3: tend to say, they tend to say, it's a bit
Speaker 3: of slammed earth. You want to meet someone else a
Speaker 3: bunch of crap outs, and I think you are too.
Speaker 1: Before yeah, but before, before we move on, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about what the pairs actually are, especially
Speaker 1: for the Yank audience listening to this that maybe isn't exposed.
Speaker 1: I mean, the parents are a storied unit in a week,
Speaker 1: you know, airborne infantry unit within the British military. I mean,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about the unit and its
Speaker 1: history if you can.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, so we're relatively young, you know, the British
Speaker 3: obviously you've got an esteemed history of military going back
Speaker 3: hundreds of years, and so we're pretty young in terms
Speaker 3: of military city in in in the British Force is
Speaker 3: and people do take they do got great pains to
Speaker 3: try and point out as a weakness, but I like
Speaker 3: to see it as a a we're model. You know,
Speaker 3: we're not. We don't have all these troops crazy tradition
Speaker 3: holding us back, but we were formed in nineteen forty two,
Speaker 3: and it was it was actually Churchill who called for
Speaker 3: he sort of Germans had sort of Germans had deployed
Speaker 3: paratroopers in I think forty one or forty maybe, and
Speaker 3: the Germans had actually had a horrendous casualty rate when
Speaker 3: they did it, and Churchill thought, hey, that's sound like
Speaker 3: a great idea. That's that's the reality. What happened. We
Speaker 3: needed we need airborne, we need airbone infantry. And what
Speaker 3: they actually did was they they they basically started training,
Speaker 3: They got ass of volunteers from different units and they
Speaker 3: put together put together an everyone unit and became originally
Speaker 3: known as Commandos and then later on became the Parachute
Speaker 3: Regiment and actually went through a couple of litererations early on.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so nineteen forty two when we were formed.
Speaker 1: Might be a little off on my history, but I
Speaker 1: think we may have gotten our maroon berets from you
Speaker 1: guys actually.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, well yeah, the maroon bays are pretty common
Speaker 3: across them.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think it was the exposure to the
Speaker 1: American forces to the British that that came from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well the moon the maroon actually was Yeah, so
Speaker 3: the maroon color was actually chosen by are you who
Speaker 3: have a general or field marshal. We ended up as Montgomery, But.
Speaker 1: I thought, wasn't it the wife of one of the
Speaker 1: officers that chose the color?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, it was Monty's wife.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's that's where the American Airborne got their
Speaker 1: maroon berets from. Also, it originated with you guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense sanch where
Speaker 3: it came from. So it was forty two. Yeah, But
Speaker 3: I mean originally the intent was and still now, the
Speaker 3: you know, the the the the the main function, the
Speaker 3: capability of our regimen is shock troops, you know, deployed
Speaker 3: un animalized quickly and function you up basically, you know,
Speaker 3: just cause mayhem and to enable other operations to go on.
Speaker 3: That's how, you know, that's how our main wartime role.
Speaker 3: That must be the same for your your pretty much.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's the ultimate flanking maneuver, right to parachute
Speaker 1: behind enemy lines and hit them where they don't expect
Speaker 1: you to.
Speaker 3: Be right, Yeah, exactly exactly. We're the only we're the
Speaker 3: only unit of the British Army whose whose sole purposes
Speaker 3: you know, power, power, insertion.
Speaker 1: Basically, And so they did operations in World War Two.
Speaker 1: I take it, mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Lots and lots of operations. Lots and lots. I could
Speaker 3: reel them off if you want a battle on his office.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it, Let's hear it, let's go. This is
Speaker 1: this is the Power Appreciation Podcast.
Speaker 3: So you okay, Bruneval out in the Reville Ryan, the
Speaker 3: Rhine crossing on them, Normandy, Primasile break Athens, somewhere else
Speaker 3: I can't remember, somewhere else I can't remember, and then
Speaker 3: Funtlands and the ninety two.
Speaker 1: Do you have any ideal offhand? I know I'm kind
Speaker 1: of putting you on the spot, but do you have
Speaker 1: any idea how many airborne combat operations they did during
Speaker 1: the war.
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: I couldn't tell you. Hundreds, okay, hundred? Yeah, yeah I could.
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I couldn't read left them.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting that on the American side, the Rangers
Speaker 1: were not airborne during World War Two. That didn't happen
Speaker 1: until Korea. But the one hundred and first first who
Speaker 1: are not airborne today were during World War Two and
Speaker 1: they jumped into uh into Normandy and did all that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one first on ample and today.
Speaker 1: They're ir mobile. They're they're in helicopters going from point
Speaker 1: A to point B. They're not they're not parachuting.
Speaker 5: No, don't you still though have do they still have
Speaker 5: the airborne designator on.
Speaker 1: The They might have an airborne tab, yeah, that might
Speaker 1: still be there, but they're not.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, they're airbile.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that. I didn't know that. No, I
Speaker 3: didn't know that. Well, I'm sure, so when did that
Speaker 3: happen because I I've just come back from on and
Speaker 3: well I said, just come back by two months ago,
Speaker 3: just come back from on them, which obviously was Operation
Speaker 3: Market Garden. You guys are were Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 3: there's always a lot of Americans out there. And I'm
Speaker 3: sure I jumped into them, and not in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 3: but I did it in like two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: I think it was no yet the nine maybe, And
Speaker 3: I'm sure I jumped with one hundred and first. I
Speaker 3: jumped the young air Frahim.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's possible that they were one hundred
Speaker 1: and first guy that went to airborne school and was qualified,
Speaker 1: I mean, or somebody who was in the one hundred
Speaker 1: and first and had their combat patch and then went
Speaker 1: to an airborne unit. I mean, it's it's possible, sure.
Speaker 3: Jumping with Americans, by the ways, it's different cattle fishes
Speaker 3: jumping British.
Speaker 5: What's it.
Speaker 3: What's the difference between the two, Well, some structure and
Speaker 3: order in how we send the sticks out. We'll go
Speaker 3: out half a second each side, half a seconds to
Speaker 3: stop the Now. When I jump with the Americans, with
Speaker 3: you guys, it was it seemed to be every man
Speaker 3: for himself. And what surprised me most was people are
Speaker 3: really eager to get out the door. It's not the
Speaker 3: case for those like you know, Okay, we'll get up
Speaker 3: and get out. We're hot, we're hert and sweatly, but
Speaker 3: we'll get out when we get out. And you know,
Speaker 3: some people aren't finally jumping because that obviously the injury
Speaker 3: rates really high. But we jump with When I jump
Speaker 3: with the US one and they was like they were
Speaker 3: gagging to get out. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4: I think I think part of that, especially like with
Speaker 4: the eighty second, I think part of that might be
Speaker 4: just because the sheer number of people they're trying to
Speaker 4: get off a bird at one time in each pass
Speaker 4: that they're just these mass tack like passes where you
Speaker 4: know it's just raining bodies from the sky.
Speaker 5: Well hopefully not raining.
Speaker 3: But you know.
Speaker 1: The control descent semi control.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, because you guys like.
Speaker 4: Like stealing air and things like that probably aren't major
Speaker 4: concerns for you guys when you're jumping right that you
Speaker 4: spaced out and you're spaced out as quorderly enough.
Speaker 3: Uh. You know, we'd always when we jump, we always
Speaker 3: try and jump this close together position, so a half
Speaker 3: a second, so you know you when when this when
Speaker 3: the simsticks going out the door, when you've got the
Speaker 3: people listening on the way, you've got blokes jumping out
Speaker 3: both sides of the air for him half the chancefer
Speaker 3: and the air steels still pretty high. You know. One
Speaker 3: of the one of the things I like to do
Speaker 3: when to go out and watch jumps and on him
Speaker 3: is spent what four hours laying down my back on
Speaker 3: the on the on the drop zone looking up and
Speaker 3: along with everyone else going steel. You don't you know
Speaker 3: they let the controlled easy descent and not the ones
Speaker 3: you're looking for. You're looking for the ones which.
Speaker 1: Something's never changed. Yeah, so you make it through Paris selection.
Speaker 1: Tell us about being like a young guy, new recruit
Speaker 1: showing up in the unit and what that's like.
Speaker 3: Oh man, well again it's like a he loved you
Speaker 3: into falstense of security of things. Did phase one yet
Speaker 3: thought yeah, great in phase two that was like carnage,
Speaker 3: and then finished phase two, got did selection past selection.
Speaker 3: I was selected, I should say I was selected again,
Speaker 3: and you think yeah, like I saying when the powers now?
Speaker 3: And got the battalion and and it became it was man,
Speaker 3: it's like walking into a meat grinder. You know, you
Speaker 3: think you think you've made it, you think there's nothing
Speaker 3: else you need to prove, and you walk into the
Speaker 3: unit and you realize that you're the smallest fish in
Speaker 3: a lot of people have been there for a while,
Speaker 3: all of these people. You all of a sudden realized
Speaker 3: I was looking up to these people nine months ago,
Speaker 3: eight months ago, nine months ago, these I was looking
Speaker 3: at these guys in thinking this is the reason I'm joining,
Speaker 3: And now you're in there with him and expected to
Speaker 3: be the same standard. And it was pretty daunting, pretty daunting.
Speaker 3: I ended up in a room, an ape Man room,
Speaker 3: where I first got put into really basic and I
Speaker 3: had a mate in there actually, who I had from training,
Speaker 3: and I broke my hand on selection. So I had
Speaker 3: been delayed to get into the unit because I needed.
Speaker 3: After you do selection, you do like a live fire
Speaker 3: and exercise, final exercise and something else, and so I'd
Speaker 3: been delayed going on to that. So I came a
Speaker 3: few weeks later and I got and put into a
Speaker 3: room with him, and he he we were chatting with
Speaker 3: literally my first hour in there. We were chatting away
Speaker 3: and he came. A guy came into the room who
Speaker 3: looked pretty young, and I said, all right, mate. Whatever
Speaker 3: I said to him called him mate. Whenever however he
Speaker 3: was speaking, I referred to him his mate. And he
Speaker 3: walked out on my friend ben Uh who actually went
Speaker 3: on to British s F. He said he was looking
Speaker 3: in and he was like a ghost, and he said,
Speaker 3: what are you doing? I said, what's it? He said,
Speaker 3: you called him mate? Who is he?
Speaker 1: He said, he's a corporal, like it's the Minister of Defense.
Speaker 3: But I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting, Hey, it's
Speaker 3: big boys rules. I've like, you know, I've passed my
Speaker 3: driving test kind of there, I can drive whatever I want.
Speaker 3: I've done all my training, I can do what I want.
Speaker 3: I'd have to call corporates corporal and I wasn't the CASS.
Speaker 3: I just called. He's one of the most respected and
Speaker 3: formidable corporals in the unit. He also went on to
Speaker 3: s F as well, and yeah, it's sort of oh
Speaker 3: ship in this world again, going to try and you
Speaker 3: get through it. But it was hard and fast, you know,
Speaker 3: it was it was. It was January two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: I think when I got to the unit, and it
Speaker 3: was kind of a weird time because the British Forces
Speaker 3: at the time, our operational temple was not high. We
Speaker 3: had a few small things going on every now and again,
Speaker 3: and you know, a regiment would deploy and do some
Speaker 3: peacekeeping or something like that. The exception had been had
Speaker 3: been a there'd been an operation hostage rescue mission into.
Speaker 1: What was that s right, Yeah, we had we had
Speaker 1: Phil On talking about it, Phil.
Speaker 3: Camph did you okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 3: so that was you know Paris, Paris Marines and and
Speaker 3: s A S and s BS when that So that
Speaker 3: happed the year before. But apart from that, nothing much
Speaker 3: have gone on. And you know, when when the operation.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's like the US MILL, but
Speaker 3: I imagine him like when the operational temple is low,
Speaker 3: people get real board real quickly. Tension is really poor,
Speaker 3: Recruitment is pretty poor, and the kind and the people.
Speaker 3: You end up with a big pool of people who
Speaker 3: are in who are senior, who haven't actually done a
Speaker 3: lot right, and.
Speaker 1: You get it.
Speaker 3: It's very it's very a very different environment I know
Speaker 3: now to being in when the operational temper was really high.
Speaker 3: You know, you end up doing just bullshit tasks, bullshit tasking,
Speaker 3: bullshit training. It's just very repetitive. You know, you've got
Speaker 3: commanding officers who have taken over, for example, three Power
Speaker 3: for two years, who want to make their mark. They
Speaker 3: want to get there the CBE or mb that they
Speaker 3: want to get the knighthood of their award from, you know,
Speaker 3: the Buckingham Palace for amazing service of the country, And
Speaker 3: how can I do that when there's no operation going on.
Speaker 3: They invent ways, they're trying to reinvent the wheel. It
Speaker 3: just becomes friend So it wasn't a pretty place to
Speaker 3: be at the time. It was difficult, but then obviously,
Speaker 3: you know the two thousand and one like I sellar Generator.
Speaker 3: I joined and then September everything changed, literally everything changed.
Speaker 3: I deployed to Ireland, Northern Ireland the end of twousand
Speaker 3: and one of the Christmas. They're the first operational tours
Speaker 3: in norm Island, and again that was winding down, so
Speaker 3: it wasn't that interesting. I mean, I don't even remember
Speaker 3: it being that exciting. I remember a little bit of
Speaker 3: trepidation going out my first patrols around the areas are in,
Speaker 3: but nothing crazy. There was nothing real kinetic going on.
Speaker 3: Tax and things at the time in Nordon Island were
Speaker 3: directed inward to themselves as into the local populace if
Speaker 3: anything was going on, or towards the police, very little
Speaker 3: towards British troops because the Nord Island Peastie and all
Speaker 3: this had been signed and it was winding down and
Speaker 3: British troops a pulling out of there slowly. So that
Speaker 3: was all of it an anti climax. But you know, uh,
Speaker 3: nine to eleven happened and the world was changed forever,
Speaker 3: and probably allus has changed forever as well.
Speaker 1: And tell us about that, about how things changed and
Speaker 1: your unit deploying, and you know that first pump over
Speaker 1: to I don't know if it was Afghanistan or Iraq
Speaker 1: first for you, but what that was like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was I mean I was actually at home
Speaker 3: on leave when when that all started unfolding. And by
Speaker 3: that time, we moved off of the mountain and we
Speaker 3: moved down into a little village in the valley floor
Speaker 3: right next to a couple of rugby pictures, and I
Speaker 3: was going out to the kick a ball about the ball,
Speaker 3: and this thing unfolded on TV. And I was sat
Speaker 3: there for hours later, five minutes later, still my my
Speaker 3: rugby boots on my rugby ball. I hadn't gone anywhay.
Speaker 3: I was just sort of captured by what was going on.
Speaker 3: I don't think I really understood what it's gone all
Speaker 3: the time. I was only young. I was very naive
Speaker 3: where military was concerned and just globe du you know,
Speaker 3: global politics was concerned. And when I returned to the
Speaker 3: unit after leave, you know, like maybe a week or
Speaker 3: so later, it was it was just something different in
Speaker 3: the air. We knew we we kind of had an
Speaker 3: inkling that people are going to start deploying. We didn't
Speaker 3: know what. We didn't know, we didn't know who, we
Speaker 3: didn't know where so just all of it happened the
Speaker 3: air and my my actual first global war and terror operation,
Speaker 3: if you like, was was matter of fact, it wasn't
Speaker 3: the global war and terror was the Iraq Vision, the
Speaker 3: Vision of Iraq in two hundred and three. That was
Speaker 3: the first related thing I did. But before that there'd
Speaker 3: be deployments into Afghanistan. Cabul marines went and two Power
Speaker 3: went on that. But my first big big off was
Speaker 3: into yeah, the Iraq ovasion of Iraq.
Speaker 1: Tell tell us about the invasion then, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a hell of your first pop. That's pretty hardcore.
Speaker 3: I remember getting told about it, Remember getting told about
Speaker 3: it and told we were going. Uh. I remember being
Speaker 3: like elated. I was driving, I got a phone call
Speaker 3: similar to deploying to Iraq, and I remember being like,
Speaker 3: can I get a phone call? I remember we anyway
Speaker 3: at the point I was elated about it, as in
Speaker 3: my car driving home, I remember like shouting out loud,
Speaker 3: going to war, Yes, go to war. And I think
Speaker 3: back and I think pretty naive that we reacting like that,
Speaker 3: like excitement, But the excitement happiness was a bit a
Speaker 3: little bit too elevated. But again we were, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of off the back of that period of nothing
Speaker 3: going on, and the prospects of nothing going on every
Speaker 3: in your career was becoming pretty pretty obvious. Sort of
Speaker 3: the trans war it was was exciting. We started we
Speaker 3: started a beat up process, you know, a pre deployment
Speaker 3: training very early on. But that was the first sort
Speaker 3: of example there I saw of what sort of continued
Speaker 3: for a few years where our ability to our capability
Speaker 3: to train train ourselves for these other types of operations.
Speaker 3: I mean, even though the war war type, like the
Speaker 3: Iraqi version was we kind of weren't there. We still
Speaker 3: had like our training regime and our training, our TTPs tactics,
Speaker 3: techniques and procedures and everything was geared up for Northern Ireland,
Speaker 3: Northern Island mainly, and like peacekeeping missions in Kosovo or
Speaker 3: Bosnia wherever we were, and that kind of continued on
Speaker 3: even to Afghanistan where where it just wasn't wasn't good enough.
Speaker 3: So the the Iraq training beat up was was a
Speaker 3: lot of conventional the two company attack like stuff. We
Speaker 3: did a we did a massive defensive exercise which was
Speaker 3: we jumped in we jumped into a drop zone in
Speaker 3: in Salisbury plane which is kind of southern England, west
Speaker 3: of west of London, big open area. We dropped in
Speaker 3: there for a tender exercise, pure defensive, jumped in with
Speaker 3: a crazy amount of kit and as you always do.
Speaker 3: I think we marched in maybe fifteen mile ten or
Speaker 3: fifteen miles through the night, through the next day and
Speaker 3: then just started digging trenches stage three as we would
Speaker 3: call them. So you're the full full war style trench
Speaker 3: to two fire to fire because say fire pits, they're
Speaker 3: not fire pits. Yeah, yeah, fire trench either side, wriglely tins,
Speaker 3: tin in the middle, earth of the top so they
Speaker 3: can standing a chemical biological editing attack, which took like
Speaker 3: two days. It was one of those have you ever done?
Speaker 3: Have you ever done those kind of exercises?
Speaker 5: Not not full trench lines, just fighting individual or like
Speaker 5: in body pairs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, yeah, terrific. The first time I experienced hallucination,
Speaker 3: well to sleep deprivation because it was just madness. But
Speaker 3: you said, you spend all day because you're digging with
Speaker 3: to day, you spend all obviously you've got your patrols out,
Speaker 3: you've got centuries out, but most people just dig it.
Speaker 3: You spend all day looking for where the engineers are
Speaker 3: with their like their digger trucks come along to help
Speaker 3: and you see them coming up the line help the
Speaker 3: different trenches and then by the time they get to
Speaker 3: your trench, maybe they helped them get out or maybe
Speaker 3: you get the guys in, put some explosives in and
Speaker 3: blow it and it almost always makes the trench worse,
Speaker 3: makes more work for you, just taves it in. Like fuck.
Speaker 3: We did that. Did that horrific in terms of sleep deprivation,
Speaker 3: effort and and a lot of life firing in an
Speaker 3: area called Breck and Sennybridge Training Area, which is like
Speaker 3: is our main infantry sort of training area in the UK.
Speaker 3: It's in it's in Wales. Conveniently it's about half an
Speaker 3: hour from where I grew up, which is good and uh.
Speaker 3: And then we headed off to Q eight Again that
Speaker 3: was a big unknown, you know, I think we were expecting.
Speaker 3: We were definitely expecting full, full on, full scale war
Speaker 3: fighting for us. The reality was for that is that
Speaker 3: most British units didn't didn't have that. We had some
Speaker 3: low real low level contacts, you know tics. Some units
Speaker 3: had a bit more than others. The armor was really
Speaker 3: the ones the units that had a lot, but we
Speaker 3: had very little infantry, infantry wise, and we were all
Speaker 3: pretty naive to it as well. I remember I say
Speaker 3: naive to it. We were. We were pretty wet behind
Speaker 3: the US when it came to any form of compact,
Speaker 3: you know, because none of us have done any of
Speaker 3: it ever. And again going back to the point about
Speaker 3: the kind of people who are in command positions, almost
Speaker 3: everyone in the command positions in that unit three para
Speaker 3: had done no form of combat whatsoever. They've never been
Speaker 3: never been shot at, never shot at anyone else. There
Speaker 3: was a handful of people who had been who had
Speaker 3: served in the Falcon Islands in ninet eighty two when
Speaker 3: the when Nigentina invaded, and they were you know, they
Speaker 3: had they had literally done the heart most hardcore, hardcore fighting,
Speaker 3: but twenty odd years before, and there were only a
Speaker 3: few of them, so their impact was very little, and
Speaker 3: we really looked up to them. But you know, those
Speaker 3: guys were they weren't in command positions. They were like
Speaker 3: court the masters and things like this, or long engagement
Speaker 3: officers to Ellie and Ellie is what we call that.
Speaker 3: A guy who's or a girl who's gone all the
Speaker 3: way through the ranks from private all the way up,
Speaker 3: and then they basically get invited to stay on and
Speaker 3: they get converted into a commission, convert to captain and
Speaker 3: stay on. And there was a few of those, so
Speaker 3: apart from them, no one knew anything really in terms
Speaker 3: of the realities of combat. I remember being sat in
Speaker 3: the trench and we are getting wh and I said
Speaker 3: a shell script was a trend to shell scrip maybe
Speaker 3: a couple of feet deep, and the Ramala oilfields and
Speaker 3: when we're getting artilleried, and the guy next to me
Speaker 3: was still a good friend now Tom, and he's a
Speaker 3: little bit of panic. So what we're going to do
Speaker 3: if what we're going to do if we get hit nothing, Mate,
Speaker 3: you can't do buddy, that We're going to be fucked.
Speaker 3: We're going to be fun, he said, you are. Don't
Speaker 3: speak like that. Don't tell them, well, you know what
Speaker 3: you what you're talking about? This guy, you know the
Speaker 3: kind of reality, the reality of the situation here, and
Speaker 3: uh and that and that. You know. That was kind
Speaker 3: of an example of sort of the Navy fast forward,
Speaker 3: fast forward three four years, and it was a very different,
Speaker 3: different experience for everyone. People are very very different at
Speaker 3: that point, you know, so Iraq always a put of
Speaker 3: an anti climax rye unit. Some guys had a good
Speaker 3: time in terms of that. Sally got you know, they
Speaker 3: they pop the channel, so to speak. I didn't really
Speaker 3: you know, got we got artillery, big deal. We had
Speaker 3: no we had no close quote or any court, my
Speaker 3: my section, my platoon anyway, no form of engagement whatsoever.
Speaker 3: The nearest we got to that was we went out
Speaker 3: on a We went out to ambush the Ford, the
Speaker 3: Ford observation officer, the Iraqi Ford observation officer was coming
Speaker 3: forward on a motorbike getting his binders out, trying to
Speaker 3: spot where we were, and the bugger off. He was
Speaker 3: just out of range. Bugger off, and then they artillery
Speaker 3: we come in, and so we went out to ambush him.
Speaker 3: We went out one height, he didn't turn that he
Speaker 3: didn't turn up next morning, and then another plat out
Speaker 3: the next day and they shot him up and got them,
Speaker 3: but we didn't get them. As the closest we got
Speaker 3: really a big an my Max. Which was weird because
Speaker 3: we came back from there and everyone we were treated
Speaker 3: as heroes, like, well, amazing, he did all this crazy stuff.
Speaker 3: It's like yeah, you don't want to say, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, my parents and everyone else in the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're headed you a beer and you just nod
Speaker 1: your head. Yep, that's exactly how it happened.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, but again, but then, but then that's
Speaker 3: a matter of perspective, right, because even if I said
Speaker 3: to him, well, this is what we did, they still go, wow,
Speaker 3: that's amazing. Yeah, okay, you just thought again, shot, that
Speaker 3: is amazing.
Speaker 5: How long How long was your first pump? How long
Speaker 5: were you guys out there?
Speaker 3: That was so four four months? Four and half months. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So we ended up we did like a couple of
Speaker 3: months of war and then we went into the when
Speaker 3: the peace keeping all the post war phase kicked in.
Speaker 3: We ended up moving to patrol the Iranian border because
Speaker 3: there was a concern that there was a concern that
Speaker 3: the Iranians were trying to kick start an insurgency like
Speaker 3: immediately and they were smuggling weapons across the border, which
Speaker 3: they were right, So we would go over patrol the
Speaker 3: border in vehicles, patrol the border. That's pretty fun because
Speaker 3: he the border area. I don't know if you've been
Speaker 3: in the border area, like the said in the rock
Speaker 3: with it on. It's it's like flat as a pancake,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's all marsh and you've got raised roads,
Speaker 3: dirt tracks. You can see a vehicle four or five
Speaker 3: kilometers away. You can see the dust. So if we'd
Speaker 3: spot them, spot people doing a deal on the side
Speaker 3: of the road, mainly when we got hair ass chasing
Speaker 3: after them, they see us coming, they see us coming,
Speaker 3: but it still wouldn't stop going. As a good catch,
Speaker 3: it was a bit of fun, you know, we get
Speaker 3: there and they'd chuck all the weapons and they chuck
Speaker 3: all the car there weds of cash, they chuck all
Speaker 3: the cash and we bring that back in. Sometimes we
Speaker 3: catch people and bring them in for for a question.
Speaker 3: But it was again, it was pretty It was pretty timid,
Speaker 3: pretty timid, you know. It definitely definitely not was expected.
Speaker 3: There was what I was expecting in reality is what
Speaker 3: we got in two thousand and six on the first
Speaker 3: Afghan Tal, but that's not what happened.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that. Then about the next trip over
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan, I.
Speaker 3: Actually went back to Iraq, actually three I went back
Speaker 3: to Iraq and then the five which was a little
Speaker 3: bit different. You know, they'd switched to that. By that
Speaker 3: point I d's were front and center of the of
Speaker 3: the modus operande of whether it was decided to attackers.
Speaker 3: So it's very different. But again not a huge amount
Speaker 3: went on. And then in two thousands, not for myself anyway,
Speaker 3: and then in two thousand and six when we were
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan, so that was that was known as Operation Herrick,
Speaker 3: Operation Herrick four. Actually there'd been three operations before in
Speaker 3: but the three before basically establishing our base, which was
Speaker 3: Camp Bastion, it was called HERK four was the first
Speaker 3: time that combat troops had been sent in and that
Speaker 3: was that was that was three Power battle group. So
Speaker 3: it was our battalion for three power of which probably
Speaker 3: five hundred six hundred powers with a few if you
Speaker 3: had added on to that, and then a battlegroup. The
Speaker 3: rest of the battle group was to support as is
Speaker 3: like two thousands strong, so logistics, engineers, you know, all
Speaker 3: the usual that would come along, medics and and specialist signals, coms,
Speaker 3: guys and all that. That was also pretty much an
Speaker 3: unknown going in. I remember I remember there was a
Speaker 3: there was an interview with a politician at the time,
Speaker 3: I forget his name. And he'd said that he hopes
Speaker 3: that he hopes that the operation would go without a
Speaker 3: shot being fired, is what he said. And the mission
Speaker 3: was to go in and basically go and take control
Speaker 3: of not to take control, but have a presence in
Speaker 3: key areas in in Hellman Province, so to basically lay
Speaker 3: the lay the ground for reconstruction, provincial reconstruction where it
Speaker 3: was needed, and to stay the lights like local government
Speaker 3: and minimize Taliban minimized Taliban influence in those areas. So
Speaker 3: he said, not shot being fired, and then six months
Speaker 3: later that we've done over a million or a million rounds.
Speaker 3: I think he got it way wrong. You got it
Speaker 3: way wrong. Yeah, we went. I mean that was our
Speaker 3: beat up training for that was in Oman. Now by
Speaker 3: that point, I mean, you know, I said, Iraq had
Speaker 3: been the two tours there being pretty much an anti climax,
Speaker 3: but didn't take it away from the pack. And now
Speaker 3: we were used to deploying what the operator, what you
Speaker 3: have deploying operations is like different mindset of switch switches.
Speaker 3: The different expectations you'd have, don't have any expectations. Anything
Speaker 3: gets thrown from the type accommodation you're going to be
Speaker 3: in to how often you see that accommodation to the
Speaker 3: how much water you're going to be getting, so the
Speaker 3: weapons systems you're going to be using, and that was
Speaker 3: no difference with with Afghanistan. But the difference was that
Speaker 3: there was a definite difference in the beat up training.
Speaker 3: And that is because I think the history of of
Speaker 3: Afghanistan is so different. Like you know, the Brits have
Speaker 3: been beaten up pretty badly in Afghanistan before Russia got
Speaker 3: smashed pretty recently relatively beginning of that point in Afghanistan before.
Speaker 3: It's not a it's not a place to be trifled with.
Speaker 3: And it was a great book. There is a great
Speaker 3: book called The Bear Went Over the Mountain. Yeah, I was, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's interviews with Russian commanders from the seventies
Speaker 3: and eighties and they're trying to understand basically after action reviews,
Speaker 3: but a whole book of it and where they went wrong.
Speaker 3: Why why the Mudji had Dean? We were just to
Speaker 3: just do them over and and you know, in summary,
Speaker 3: because the Muddia had Dean. The people of Afghanistan mainly
Speaker 3: who are part of the Jahadeen and now the Taliman
Speaker 3: they're pretty savvy, like they know how to they know
Speaker 3: how to fight, they know to fight the foreigners, and
Speaker 3: I think we knew that. So the beat of training
Speaker 3: going in was very different. We spent The last thing
Speaker 3: we did was we spent three weeks in Oman, and
Speaker 3: by that point I was with the sniper platoons, so
Speaker 3: I'd gone to the sniper patuone in two and four
Speaker 3: and so within within three powers only. The way, yeah,
Speaker 3: the way it works with our snipers is you can
Speaker 3: get badged, so you can you can be invited to
Speaker 3: go and attempt the sniper course. The selection if it's
Speaker 3: not a selection selection for the unit, but the sniper
Speaker 3: course we come back to the unit, you may get
Speaker 3: invited to go into the into the sniper of platoon.
Speaker 3: And the way the snipers work is we will very
Speaker 3: rarely operate as a platoon, but we will go and
Speaker 3: put one or two snipers to different sub units, different teams,
Speaker 3: different different sections, different companies to support whatever they're doing.
Speaker 3: So in oh Man, that's very much where we where
Speaker 3: we focused our training. It was on you know, shooting
Speaker 3: in those kind of conditions, and we'd also been graced
Speaker 3: with quad bikes, you know, like ATVs, so we were
Speaker 3: trying to get trying to work out how best to
Speaker 3: use it. We haven't asked those It's kind of just
Speaker 3: been chucked as you know, like you get the big
Speaker 3: operation staff, lots of money gets thrown in and often
Speaker 3: you get a lot of kids. Think what we're going
Speaker 3: to do with this. We got given a bunch of
Speaker 3: cord bikes and did a lot of training with those,
Speaker 3: and and then and then, and then, and then deployed
Speaker 3: afghan Definitely a different feeling went out there than it
Speaker 3: was to Iraq. The first time we went to Iraq
Speaker 3: for the war. It just seemed more serious if we
Speaker 3: just everyone just seemed very serious. Was like like we
Speaker 3: knew ship was going to go down, but you didn't
Speaker 3: quite know why. And again, I think it's just down
Speaker 3: there the history of that place. I mean you said
Speaker 3: you were in Helmand, Yeah, yeah, the first time when
Speaker 3: I was in Helmand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's like one of the most contentious
Speaker 1: parts of the hit dire country.
Speaker 3: It was. Yeah. I mean at the time, we weren't
Speaker 3: clear on just how active the Taliban were there and
Speaker 3: how many they were and how how and what their
Speaker 3: appetite was for having a square and the first I
Speaker 3: think the first four or five four or five weeks
Speaker 3: where we were deployed, nothing happened, you know. We we
Speaker 3: I remember going I remember being in a place called Goesh,
Speaker 3: a little town called Goes, and we knew there was
Speaker 3: a Taliban influence there. We went in. We were linked
Speaker 3: in with the local, the local the local leader. It
Speaker 3: was actually we were actually based out the US based there.
Speaker 3: There was the US space and in that US but
Speaker 3: I can't remember the US unit was the U s
Speaker 3: were there. There was also a unit of our Special
Speaker 3: Boat Service so SBS our specially one of our special
Speaker 3: forces units, and then a company of Paris went in there,
Speaker 3: myself included. We went into a bit of patrolling around
Speaker 3: the town. But the people were like they didn't have
Speaker 3: a clue where we were there. They didn't understand what
Speaker 3: was going on, you know. They hadn't just been a
Speaker 3: war where we were going in to rescue them from
Speaker 3: something being the enemy kind of. We just we weren't
Speaker 3: there one day and then the next day we were.
Speaker 3: From that perspective, I remember getting asked by the Turf
Speaker 3: getting asked if we were Russians by a lad in
Speaker 3: the town you know, we weren't greeting positively, we were
Speaker 3: greeting negatively. For the first four or five weeks. That
Speaker 3: was kind of what it was, just bedding in, getting
Speaker 3: a field of things. And then after that, I think
Speaker 3: once the Taliban got a handle on us and kind
Speaker 3: of where we looked like we were going to be
Speaker 3: settling into then they then they kicked off. And I
Speaker 3: remember the first again, up to that point, it's the
Speaker 3: other six two thousand and six. Now you know, we've
Speaker 3: done Iraq to the Iraq invasion, then Iraq again, two
Speaker 3: Power being out to Macedonia, one Power of Sierra Leo,
Speaker 3: and all these things had happened, so I mean pockets
Speaker 3: of little things going on. But even up to that point,
Speaker 3: the thought of having a firefighter contact was like wow.
Speaker 3: If you knew someone that being in the contact was
Speaker 3: like wow, that guy got shot out and he shot
Speaker 3: back like it was it was literally like it was
Speaker 3: like a there was like a mythical beast, these people.
Speaker 3: It was so rare at that point. And then I
Speaker 3: remember the first the first contact happened. It was a
Speaker 3: big battle that happened in an area cause now and
Speaker 3: I can't remember I wasn't on that op on that mission,
Speaker 3: but I remember the guys come back and it was
Speaker 3: a company up and our snipers came back in off
Speaker 3: that and they were just so happy. I mean they
Speaker 3: were just sweat and dust and just they looked fucked.
Speaker 3: They looked like wrecked, like they just done one hundred miles,
Speaker 3: you know. And the reality was they just tasted their
Speaker 3: first experience of you know, and hours long, hours long
Speaker 3: battle in forty fifty degree heat in Afghanistan, in finding
Speaker 3: an enemy that know exactly where all the rabbit runs
Speaker 3: on hide and they don't weigh uniform. They look like
Speaker 3: just like the locals. Yeah, all the tricks in the book.
Speaker 3: And and that was the first one, and then after
Speaker 3: it was just carried on, you know, they started everywhere,
Speaker 3: the Taliban started hitting, hitting everywhere. Obviously the most famous
Speaker 3: one is one of the most famous is the Sang
Speaker 3: Sanging Manley Sanging district where the I think where we
Speaker 3: eventually left years later and the US Marines came in
Speaker 3: maybe eight I think I was ten Marines came in,
Speaker 3: so you know, you guys have been there as well.
Speaker 3: But it was the the tempo of contacts with the
Speaker 3: enemy was like nothing I ever I ever expected, no
Speaker 3: one expected. It was just through that. It was crazy.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: What was your unit's mission there? You know, you talk
Speaker 1: about these contacts like, what was it you guys were
Speaker 1: trying to accomplish versus you know what the Taliban's trying
Speaker 1: to stop you from doing?
Speaker 3: We were trying to you know, I got one of
Speaker 3: the things I've realized over the last couple of years
Speaker 3: of my own interviews. I mean, you'll know, you guys
Speaker 3: think through things and you prob the things from ages
Speaker 3: based on what someone else said. I think I should
Speaker 3: be able to we should be able to remember these missions,
Speaker 3: the batam and the realities. I don't that's a bit odd,
Speaker 3: But in summary, it was to It was to gain
Speaker 3: and hold ground and minimize influence in these key areas
Speaker 3: so that we could so we could bolster the key leaders,
Speaker 3: the local leaders basically both the local governments and in
Speaker 3: areas where we wanted to do some reconstruction or improve education,
Speaker 3: improve civil services and all that, then we could do
Speaker 3: that down the line. That was our mission anyway, So
Speaker 3: we ended up going to I think we had five
Speaker 3: or six five or six locations sang in KSh now
Speaker 3: is that a bunch of different places, and we we
Speaker 3: bid off a bit more and we could chew. Really
Speaker 3: we spread tooth in. I think, well, we know we
Speaker 3: spread tooth in because what what what resulted, what ended
Speaker 3: up happening was instead of being able to get into
Speaker 3: a position, get into a compound. Most of the time
Speaker 3: we would take over like civil buildings, like the civil center.
Speaker 3: I said, takeover. We'd go in there with the police
Speaker 3: is blessing, local local leaders, blessing, go in there, and
Speaker 3: we would. The aim would be to saturate in the areas.
Speaker 3: But when the Taliban started attacking back, we didn't have
Speaker 3: the troops saturate in the area because we'd already taken
Speaker 3: on too many places. We had too few troops dot
Speaker 3: were around to do any kind of saturation. Now it
Speaker 3: just became pure fighting just to survive, basically survive and
Speaker 3: keep it, keep a handle on these areas, very limited
Speaker 3: to get any supplies in or you know. I ended
Speaker 3: up in a I ended up for two months in
Speaker 3: a place called Maskala, and it's known as the Siege
Speaker 3: of Mazkala. It's been a few things written and produced
Speaker 3: about it, documentaries, And for two months, you couldn't get in,
Speaker 3: and you couldn't get out, and you know, we we
Speaker 3: were down to our last rounds of ammunition, we were
Speaker 3: down to our last like our last supplies of food
Speaker 3: and and by the time I got out of that place,
Speaker 3: the rest of three Powers already back in the UK
Speaker 3: because they couldn't the RAF wouldn't fly in because if
Speaker 3: they tried to fly in, they get an airframe shot down.
Speaker 3: It's just complete lockdown in that position. That's kind of
Speaker 3: the worst of it. It was kind of the most
Speaker 3: famous example of that. Yeah, it wasn't it was it
Speaker 3: was it was. It was life changing, like the genuine
Speaker 3: life changing, you know that that was the calla example.
Speaker 3: I mean, we we get hit five, six, seven, eight
Speaker 3: times a day, and sometimes it would be five or
Speaker 3: ten minutes, a five or ten minute contact battle. Other
Speaker 3: times it'd be our hour plus every day, all day,
Speaker 3: every day. And and it was the same in Sang,
Speaker 3: you know, in Sanging and Sang in DC, they're quite
Speaker 3: uly there where they had the ability to get out
Speaker 3: the gate. There was a bit of there was a
Speaker 3: bit of dead not dead ground. There was like a
Speaker 3: buffer zone of open area between the compound walls. So
Speaker 3: to speak. And the green zone. Now, when I say
Speaker 3: the green zone, I don't mean like iraquens. I mean
Speaker 3: green zone is in green area where when we can hide,
Speaker 3: because obviously the green zone is known by a lot
Speaker 3: of people who like serving Iraq as safe area. Green
Speaker 3: zone in Afghanistan to us means a totally different thing.
Speaker 3: It means like foliage. It means river foliage, you know,
Speaker 3: ditches and irrigation. And they sang and get out out
Speaker 3: in patrol and go out and do fighting patrols and things.
Speaker 3: But they would experience the same thing like every time
Speaker 3: they go out, they get smashed. They probably get smashed
Speaker 3: way out, they get smashed away back in, they get
Speaker 3: smashed from the compound. And the casually rate for that
Speaker 3: that tour across the battle group was like one in
Speaker 3: ten was pretty pretty pretty high in a ten day
Speaker 3: in a ten day period. In the first ten days
Speaker 3: I was in masse Kaala, we took fifty five casualties
Speaker 3: in that ten days. Now a big proportion of that
Speaker 3: and there was only eight eight of us, but we
Speaker 3: also had Afghan forces in there. There were maybe twenty
Speaker 3: or thirty of those. So between them and as eighty
Speaker 3: eight fifty odd fifty old casualties three down in ten days.
Speaker 3: It's just carnage. Yeah, it was. It was pretty it
Speaker 3: was pretty heavy, but there was nothing to tal about
Speaker 3: out lockdown in that compound. They could they could literally
Speaker 3: get to the walls like if you were to, if
Speaker 3: you were to, if you're doing like a war bit
Speaker 3: of war training, a bit of war gaming, and you
Speaker 3: had a map of the town of ms Kaala and
Speaker 3: you were asked to, hey, pick the spot on there
Speaker 3: you which would be most difficult to defend. You picked
Speaker 3: the district center because like impossible defender, that's exactly where
Speaker 3: we were and we hadn't chosen it, like we hadn't
Speaker 3: chosen it. So some months before the the Afghans have
Speaker 3: been in there and one of our one of our
Speaker 3: our path Finder Platoon unit, which is one of our Elite,
Speaker 3: which is one of our early reconnaissance units called Pathfinders.
Speaker 3: They were basically driving past one of a better expression
Speaker 3: in the desert, high on the high ground, looking into Mysakala,
Speaker 3: just doing some reconnaissance and at the time there was
Speaker 3: a there's a contact on on the Afghans were getting
Speaker 3: the Afghan police were getting hammered by by the Taliman
Speaker 3: and they went into support. They were in support, got
Speaker 3: in there into the compound and then couldn't get out
Speaker 3: because of the delay of the land. You know, you
Speaker 3: could you could walk a Taliman fighter could walk to
Speaker 3: the wall and not be seen, you know, and you
Speaker 3: can have a sentry up here, high up and not
Speaker 3: be seen because it was just it was is the
Speaker 3: center of a very very dense, very dense built up area.
Speaker 3: They got in and then they struggled to get out,
Speaker 3: and we put a battle group up in. So the
Speaker 3: whole battle group did an operation just to create a
Speaker 3: safe path through the town so we could take the
Speaker 3: path finders out and replace them with a Danish unit,
Speaker 3: which we did as on that as on that put
Speaker 3: that that was just crazy as well. Taliban did not
Speaker 3: want us to get in there. We put the Danish in.
Speaker 3: Then the Danish got stuck and and they took a
Speaker 3: lot of casualties, and they also had a sniper threat
Speaker 3: at the time. There was a Taliban sniper who was
Speaker 3: being pretty effective taking people out headshots within the within
Speaker 3: the compounds.
Speaker 1: So that Danish unit was that armadillo or am I
Speaker 1: thinking of a different one.
Speaker 3: Oh, it rings a bell. I'd have to check on that, though.
Speaker 1: They did it. They did a documentary about it is
Speaker 1: a Danish infantry platoon, did.
Speaker 3: They maybe it was maybe laugh to check on that,
Speaker 3: have to check on that, but yeah, I got asked
Speaker 3: with going going in with a friend of mine who
Speaker 3: was my sniper buddy, were working with my pair, going
Speaker 3: in with a section which is eight eight with eight
Speaker 3: infantry guys for parents, eight other parents and a major
Speaker 3: and a sergeant major. And we were going to go
Speaker 3: in because by this point there was a platoon of
Speaker 3: Royal Irish Regiment in there, and wrote the Royal Irish Regiment.
Speaker 3: They were part of our battle group. They were supporting
Speaker 3: us like additional numbers and they were stuck in there.
Speaker 3: So we were going into basically battlefield casually replacements and
Speaker 3: they had no sniper capability either. So we went in there.
Speaker 3: Danish ripped out. We went in and it was a
Speaker 3: helicopter desk, one of the last helicopters that came in
Speaker 3: dropped us off, and I remember it was it was nighttime.
Speaker 3: Got shown this at the room were sitting in. We
Speaker 3: were going to be sleeping in myself and Jared is
Speaker 3: my oppose name we were sat next to the option
Speaker 3: room and just a cacophony of noise just outside kicked off.
Speaker 3: Knew it was a contact, but it was just it
Speaker 3: was loud and it seemed like it was coming from everywhere.
Speaker 3: You know, when you're in the building inside the room,
Speaker 3: when you hear a contact on it, it sounds like
Speaker 3: it's everywhere anyway because of the acoustics, and we went
Speaker 3: grabbed the weapons, were running outside. We didn't have a
Speaker 3: clue of the layout of the compound, didn't know anything.
Speaker 3: We literally just landed and we went bolting outside and
Speaker 3: it was literally all four sides of the place was
Speaker 3: just erupting. Everyone's getting the talent. IAM were bumping all
Speaker 3: four sites and it's a complex attack. It was you know,
Speaker 3: multiple multiple flanks, multiple weapons systems. You had you know,
Speaker 3: small arms who had rockets, who had Chinese rockets, and
Speaker 3: RPG's going down and so we just grabbed the first
Speaker 3: bit of high ground we could and just start and
Speaker 3: started shooting and what we could. And it was wild
Speaker 3: you had because you had the British in there, who
Speaker 3: you know, we were pretty squared away as in professional
Speaker 3: soldiers like Paris, but you also had the Afghan forces
Speaker 3: in there, who were you know, they may think they
Speaker 3: were a professional, but they were like crazy. There's one
Speaker 3: guy who we learned this. You could easily spot him, this,
Speaker 3: this policeman. You could easily spot him in a contact
Speaker 3: at night because whichever the sanger he was in was
Speaker 3: with the one where all the sparks were flying from.
Speaker 3: Because the a K forty seven you had had a
Speaker 3: bed barrel, so you would fire the you would fire
Speaker 3: it anyway. Sparks everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: why not you can't couldn't get a replacement in there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know that that uh that yeah, that first
Speaker 3: night was just that shit. And that's how it went
Speaker 3: on for the entire thing, like a proper batter's from
Speaker 3: the fire. And the thing is with that is we've
Speaker 3: been in I've been in loads of stuff up to
Speaker 3: that point. That tour that was like I went into
Speaker 3: was the car in augant. I'd landed in Afghan in March,
Speaker 3: so I was pretty seasoned by that point in terms of,
Speaker 3: you know, facing the enemy, and that was just took
Speaker 3: it up a whole a whole other level. And it's
Speaker 3: it's also a different ballgame when you were really restricted
Speaker 3: what you can do tactically. We didn't have the manpower
Speaker 3: to even get out the gate, because if we've tried
Speaker 3: to get out the gate, we'd only have maybe a
Speaker 3: section or sort of get out unless we took everyone
Speaker 3: from the from the from the compounds out, and that
Speaker 3: means we'd be giving the compounds up to the Taliban.
Speaker 3: We weren't. That wasn't my mission. We had to hold it.
Speaker 3: They couldn't go out of the gate. It was literally
Speaker 3: just defend. That's all we could do. And because they
Speaker 3: could get to the walls, you know, you one day
Speaker 3: you'd be getting a small out attack from a couple
Speaker 3: of flanks, now that they'd be getting grenades torunover of
Speaker 3: the wall from the mosque, which was just to buy
Speaker 3: the rub bub. At this point, it was pretty it
Speaker 3: was pretty frantic. It wasn't a nice position to be in.
Speaker 3: It's different dealing with stuff like that when you've got
Speaker 3: lots of tap options at your disposal, when you are
Speaker 3: pretty much at the behest of what the enemy wants
Speaker 3: to do that day. Is pushing a different mindset, completely
Speaker 3: different mindset. And also we didn't know when we were
Speaker 3: leave it. There was no you know, there was no
Speaker 3: there's no indication of when we were leave it whatsoever.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if you know anything about that siege.
Speaker 3: But what ended up happening was our a combination of
Speaker 3: negotiations with our officer in command. There a guy called
Speaker 3: Adam Jowett, Major Adam Jowet. At the time, he was
Speaker 3: discussing with a local leader who started coming in on
Speaker 3: behalf of the Taliman to try and sort of bring
Speaker 3: an into the carnage because the town was just getting trashed.
Speaker 3: There was no civilians there at this point. It was
Speaker 3: just it was just Taliman. Apart from what there was
Speaker 3: one civilian guy, and he was an old dude, mad
Speaker 3: as a box of frogs, walk a stick, blind as
Speaker 3: a bat, and he would he was living outside the town,
Speaker 3: still live inside of the town at some point, but
Speaker 3: every day he would walk in feeling his way up
Speaker 3: a wall, regardless of what was going on, what firefights,
Speaker 3: but anything was going on. If feelers were at the wall,
Speaker 3: you get to it. At the shop, do whatever you
Speaker 3: need to do in the shop. He wasn't selling to
Speaker 3: anyone because there was no one to buy anything. What
Speaker 3: everyone's doing the shop maybe getting supplies whatever, and then
Speaker 3: he would like man hand himself back out blinders about
Speaker 3: every day and he was the only cingling that would
Speaker 3: come in. What happened is the Adam and then outside
Speaker 3: of that, the back in Bastion, there was more senior
Speaker 3: conversations going on with senior senior Taliban and senior parts
Speaker 3: of the British military to negotiate a ceasefire. And the
Speaker 3: ceasefire happened, and the Taliban organized local transport for us,
Speaker 3: so you know, local Jingly trucks, cattle trucks, Afghan cattle
Speaker 3: trucks completely afgand drivers. And one morning a bunch of
Speaker 3: trucks turned up that's don't don't and just before dawn
Speaker 3: and we jumped onto those trucks and the Taliban extracted
Speaker 3: us into the desert where a bunch of Cheriks were
Speaker 3: waiting for us. She's nice of them. It's just so
Speaker 3: so surreal. Yeah, at the time, didn't anything, but you
Speaker 3: know too, you you you the stories of oh yeah,
Speaker 3: the you know, the the enemy allowed us to leave
Speaker 3: and save us. They did sort of kind of got
Speaker 3: us out. They like Second World War stuff or Korea
Speaker 3: or somewhere else. It's not two thousand and six Afghanistan, Like,
Speaker 3: that's what happened. And when we were actually when we
Speaker 3: came back, when we came back in, we were told
Speaker 3: so we finally got the CAMBASTIONI we were we were
Speaker 3: brought together and told you won't this didn't happen. You
Speaker 3: want to talk about this? Yeah, yeah, And we didn't,
Speaker 3: you know, even even even a lot of guys in
Speaker 3: three paras didn't know about it until much later. And
Speaker 3: the first I saw that it would be sort of
Speaker 3: become public was on Wikipedia nine.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting.
Speaker 4: It's to me, it led it lends to the frustration
Speaker 4: of a lot of JA veterans in terms of especially Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: I mean it happened in Iraq, but especially in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: They put a few guys out on these tiny little
Speaker 4: cops or these little you know, positions that couldn't really
Speaker 4: be held.
Speaker 5: And really what these positions did, what they did is they.
Speaker 4: Served to draw the enemy to them. You know, it's
Speaker 4: always like we need to deny the enemy this area,
Speaker 4: but you're not with you know, you're not twenty guys.
Speaker 4: You're not denying anything to anybody. And and they would leave,
Speaker 4: you know, Allied troops in these positions, these untenable positions,
Speaker 4: and leadership didn't do anything with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was Yeah, Yeah, I agree, and
Speaker 3: I think that I think the cause of it in
Speaker 3: those six was we just underestimated how much effort the
Speaker 3: Taliban would put in annoyed would be as being there,
Speaker 3: you know. And I mean I'd like to ask Tootles,
Speaker 3: so that the colonel of three Powers, a guy called
Speaker 3: Stuart Tootle, and he's quite well known over you as
Speaker 3: a military expert, tactician, very well respected by us. You know,
Speaker 3: he he led as well that he was. He was
Speaker 3: a perfect CEO at the time, and but I'd like
Speaker 3: to ask him, you know what, like why do we
Speaker 3: go in all those positions? I can't imagine it was
Speaker 3: his decision. I'd like to think it wasn't his decision,
Speaker 3: you know. I think you'd like to think it was
Speaker 3: higher up. But I think if we consolidate, if your point, naw, Dave,
Speaker 3: if we consolidated on a few, like half the number
Speaker 3: of positions, you know, that's six months. But then I
Speaker 3: don't know, it could have been could have been time pressure,
Speaker 3: could have been just get they do as much as
Speaker 3: much as we can, as quick as we can, and
Speaker 3: we'll deal with it. And it just didn't go on
Speaker 3: like that because that really set the tempope for the
Speaker 3: rest of the operation.
Speaker 1: Because it also sounds like the expectations when you guys
Speaker 1: first went in there was that this wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be what it became right, that you weren't going to
Speaker 1: have that level of resistance.
Speaker 3: And the thing is is that The thing is is
Speaker 3: that the other interesting thing is is that people people
Speaker 3: didn't believe us when we came back. When we described it.
Speaker 3: It was like, which was really frustrating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they Yeah, they didn't believe because the story
Speaker 1: at the time was that the war's going well and
Speaker 1: you're telling something different.
Speaker 3: No, no, it was because we're gone again. We've gone
Speaker 3: from a military which very little experience or chance of
Speaker 3: having a contact with the enemy to all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: you've got this unit coming back and going, hey, guys,
Speaker 3: you need to get seriously training, to get your medics
Speaker 3: trained up. This is not it's not child's play anymore.
Speaker 3: Because one of the things that happens in that there's
Speaker 3: low operation temples as well as you kind of pay
Speaker 3: lip service to the training. If you're doing all the
Speaker 3: training you're giving, especially on the medical fund, you do
Speaker 3: the basics, you do what you're supposed to do, but
Speaker 3: it's no like emotional investment in it and all the
Speaker 3: lessons you learn from the previous carnage operation mission you know,
Speaker 3: War Falklands in our case, or Gulf One. You know,
Speaker 3: they'd not carry forward when the operations aren't temper wasn't high.
Speaker 3: So we had come back and thought, shit, yeah, we
Speaker 3: need to pay like we need to up our game
Speaker 3: with medical training for example, first day training. We are
Speaker 3: upper game with other things, basic things, and and we
Speaker 3: were trying to So we came back, we got we
Speaker 3: got asked, some of us got asked to go and
Speaker 3: be part of the pre deployment training for the what
Speaker 3: would be the third unit going out there, because obviously
Speaker 3: we left the unit already can be, which is the
Speaker 3: Marines or battle group. You guys to go on advising
Speaker 3: these things. And and I went on as I did
Speaker 3: two stints on that two different places. I went and
Speaker 3: trained and was part of training for a company, an
Speaker 3: infantry company from a different unit, a different regiment. And
Speaker 3: I also went down to the a sniper training unit
Speaker 3: elsewhere the sniper training unit. They wouldn't they wouldn't believe
Speaker 3: what our webs what the weapon system was capable of
Speaker 3: is an album they three which is three three eight,
Speaker 3: like a. I think we were telling them it's capable
Speaker 3: of much more. What the pamphlet tells you. By the
Speaker 3: way I can go further differences is you know, it's fine,
Speaker 3: but the the company, infantry company was much more more frustrating.
Speaker 3: You know, we were told literally told when by the
Speaker 3: permanent staff are doing instruckt and like, don't scare them,
Speaker 3: don't don't because the other thing is it's these are
Speaker 3: different kinds of units. There's an advantage for having us
Speaker 3: action process. Yeah, right, Anyone who arguments different argue argues different.
Speaker 3: He's talking about non and they do argue differently. The
Speaker 3: units who don't have a selection process don't want to bleed.
Speaker 3: Having a selection process is better. The reality is having
Speaker 3: a selection process means you end up with on average,
Speaker 3: more resilient, more capable people than than the unit that doesn't.
Speaker 3: Obviously his exceptions to that rule.
Speaker 1: Here comes huge straight out of Afghanistan, with a wild
Speaker 1: look in his eyes.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but yeah, no, yea, yeah, and there wasn't.
Speaker 3: There was definitely. It was definitely a worry that people
Speaker 3: go out there with the wrong attitude. You don't want
Speaker 3: to be going out into a mission like that, sure
Speaker 3: and being worried about losing your life. You want to
Speaker 3: be going out on a on a mission like that
Speaker 3: and thinking, I'm as capable as it can be and
Speaker 3: exactly what needs to be done. There's no more training
Speaker 3: I could do to prepare me for this. I trust
Speaker 3: the people around me, and I trust the unit. A
Speaker 3: part of so you went enemy were softly softly build
Speaker 3: the discuminants. Yeah, exactly. It was softly softly and it
Speaker 3: was It was over a couple of weeks, this particular
Speaker 3: part we were on with them, and it was coming
Speaker 3: towards the end of the beat of training, and they
Speaker 3: were just doing really basic things wrong. Like the officers
Speaker 3: would there'd be a battle going on, and this is training,
Speaker 3: be a battle going on, and the officers would they'd
Speaker 3: want to consult the map and they get behind like
Speaker 3: a land Rovere, a soft skin vehicle to consult the map.
Speaker 3: Because for twenty years they could do that in training
Speaker 3: and hide behind a soft skin vehicle as if that's
Speaker 3: going to stop around. They look at the map and
Speaker 3: we come over and go, guys, you can't you know,
Speaker 3: if you do this out there, you're literally gonna you're dead.
Speaker 3: It's not gonna stop stop it, and went on and
Speaker 3: no one was listening. And they got to the they
Speaker 3: got to the last day and and stood up with
Speaker 3: the British expressions. We ripped a new asshole into them
Speaker 3: and just told them, you guys need to start switching on.
Speaker 3: You're not paying any attention. You're not listening to what
Speaker 3: we're saying. Part of the problem was as well, is
Speaker 3: that the powers, the Powers in the UK, we're not
Speaker 3: that popular amongst other units for a bunch for a
Speaker 3: bunch of different reasons, right, and it's unfounded reasons.
Speaker 1: Mainly Airborne unit being cocky. I don't believe that pretty.
Speaker 3: You know, like I said, we've got these names for
Speaker 3: the unit. Well, and there was definitely a part of
Speaker 3: it in people not believing this and that they thought
Speaker 3: we were sort of inflating it, build it up like
Speaker 3: yeah with great, yes, we need to make these stories out. No, no,
Speaker 3: this is really what happened. You're really going to go
Speaker 3: out there and as soon as you go on the ground,
Speaker 3: you're going to get shut up. And if your drills
Speaker 3: and skills aren't good enough as a team, as a unit,
Speaker 3: or as an individual, you're probably going to get injured
Speaker 3: or get someone injured or killed. It's going to happen.
Speaker 3: It took, you know, it took a couple of couple
Speaker 3: of couple of tours for everyone to realize, Hey, it
Speaker 3: is actually like they said it was. It's it's it
Speaker 3: is that crazy.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, this is interesting because you know, you're
Speaker 1: going from you know, being that sort of like HACKI
Speaker 1: young paratrooper to growing into being a professional soldier and
Speaker 1: like passing these skills on to the younger guys that
Speaker 1: need this stuff when they get overseas, which I think
Speaker 1: is like a very interesting progression to make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think yeah. I found that actually quite
Speaker 3: the command side of it, I found I was finding
Speaker 3: a little bit difficult. Not in terms of tactics on
Speaker 3: the operations so to speak. No, I was not bad,
Speaker 3: like modest, modesty, kicking in. I wasn't bad, you know,
Speaker 3: on the ground, not bad at all. But the reality
Speaker 3: for me in terms of career, my my career progression
Speaker 3: promotion to being a rapid, crazy rapid normally to be
Speaker 3: to become a section commander, you know, running the running
Speaker 3: the team of eight, you looking at eight years maybe
Speaker 3: average of about eight years to get to that position
Speaker 3: at that point, I did it within three or four
Speaker 3: and not I say I did it. Wasn't aiming for it.
Speaker 3: I just ended up as a you know, running run
Speaker 3: of my own when see me at that point. And
Speaker 3: then I became a sergeant within eight and a sergeant
Speaker 3: normally like eleven twelve years, and it was it was
Speaker 3: too quick, you know, I was. I cut my teeth
Speaker 3: in terms of combat, if you like. But I still
Speaker 3: I still was dealing with that sort of confidence issue,
Speaker 3: I believe it or not, in terms of handling guys,
Speaker 3: commanding guys. And it was almost to do with like
Speaker 3: a status thing, social status thing. One of the one
Speaker 3: of the things that happened. I don't know what happens
Speaker 3: you're side of the pond, but when I first joined
Speaker 3: three PARA, if you got promoted, then you would move
Speaker 3: units sub units. So if you if you got promoted,
Speaker 3: you'd move from at least move platoons. You go from
Speaker 3: this platoon to that platoon. You're supposed to go from
Speaker 3: company to companies. You go from a company strength ross
Speaker 3: like one hundred and forty, you'd move companies. And the
Speaker 3: reason being is is that you're not all of a
Speaker 3: sudden being put into a leadership position within your peer
Speaker 3: group because group stilly peer group, a stilly friends, the
Speaker 3: stilly fuck.
Speaker 1: They will do that in like in ranger regiment for instance.
Speaker 1: That's more when you get to the platoon sergeant level,
Speaker 1: a lot of the squad leaders are kind of home
Speaker 1: grown in the element, but when you get to the
Speaker 1: command has some concerns when like all three or four
Speaker 1: of the platoon sergeants and the company are boys that
Speaker 1: like grew up together, that you're creating like you're creating
Speaker 1: a little mafia.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's how you know, the killer squads
Speaker 3: come together.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah so they yeah, at that point they start
Speaker 1: to guys get moved around a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah so yeah. So when I got my first promotion,
Speaker 3: I ended up staying staying in the same They didn't
Speaker 3: they didn't move me. I can't remember why. I just
Speaker 3: might not like I have like social circle with a
Speaker 3: group of people who's just like alphas. I was not
Speaker 3: an al at that point. It wasn't that, well, who
Speaker 3: is at any point really and I found it really hard,
Speaker 3: but oh six changed it. I think thinking about it,
Speaker 3: Oh six changed it. You know, I got a real
Speaker 3: belief in myself there. You can say, there's not much,
Speaker 3: there's not much else can give you a bigger, bigger
Speaker 3: confidence boosters going out doing something tasty, even if one off.
Speaker 3: If the people out there, I've only ever done one
Speaker 3: one bit of combat they've been in, but the being
Speaker 3: they've done it as if they did well with the team,
Speaker 3: they've respected, they got through the chief the mission that
Speaker 3: is like that is literally can be life changing. That
Speaker 3: that oh sixth though, is basically what the t meet
Speaker 3: I am now just you know, outgoing sell a confident guy.
Speaker 3: I was totally different before and I managed over time
Speaker 3: to pull that into and and help me with the
Speaker 3: command element, just confidence command. You know, it wasn't it
Speaker 3: was not that I was week a week commander, but
Speaker 3: I it was almost like a poster syndrome. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just like so quick I just gone through the
Speaker 3: rank so quick. I was sitting around, you know, I
Speaker 3: was the equivalent ranked to people I was again looking
Speaker 3: up to when I was in training in some cases
Speaker 3: I was the same rank as people who would take
Speaker 3: me through training.
Speaker 1: In some cases, what was the next step for you?
Speaker 1: I mean, now it sounds like your section commander, like
Speaker 1: sounds like our version of a squad leader. Uh what
Speaker 1: what what was the next jump for you? I mean
Speaker 1: I think you did one more trip over to Afghanistan?
Speaker 3: Right? What did you want to did you? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So so I went to snipe is no for six?
Speaker 3: I was a I was a a full screw what
Speaker 3: we call a corporal see a second commander, squad leader,
Speaker 3: but within the snipe, within the snipers, so a sniper
Speaker 3: team commander. And and then uh eight was the next
Speaker 3: hour Afghanistan? Two and seven that year between was a
Speaker 3: combination of guest instructors and a snipe of course down
Speaker 3: in down again in southern England near London, and advising
Speaker 3: on pre deployment stuff for other people. Uh and then
Speaker 3: two that a night the start of that the start
Speaker 3: of that year was a leadership course for me, which
Speaker 3: was do my course for quality myself to get promoted
Speaker 3: to sergeant. So that would be from a sniper's perspective,
Speaker 3: that would qualify me to lead, the lead, the lead,
Speaker 3: the be the sniper commander. Basically I did that. I
Speaker 3: did that and that earlier and earlier in the year,
Speaker 3: and then deployed out Afghan. Now, the second Afghan tour
Speaker 3: for me was very much different than first. It was
Speaker 3: quite good, the whole the whole of three I said,
Speaker 3: what was quite good, the whole of three part. We
Speaker 3: deployed out to Canada heart at that point and that
Speaker 3: was a bit of a culture shock. That's the first
Speaker 3: time I'd ever been on a big accoump with us
Speaker 3: A Canadians, like one of these huge camps like the
Speaker 3: Canadians hockey. You guys must have been that.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, the boardwalk with the Tim Whartons.
Speaker 3: And Yoard or you know, I just come off. My
Speaker 3: first experience of Afghan was six right, you know what
Speaker 3: the bricks are like, we're pretty tight with our money,
Speaker 3: Like we're pretty frugal. There's nothing, there's no it's none
Speaker 3: of this coffee shop. It's literally like stepping into a
Speaker 3: what do you guys call it a mall? It's like
Speaker 3: a center bar and yeah, crazy crazy, So you went there.
Speaker 3: But the the ops we were doing, we were doing
Speaker 3: strike ups, so strike ups for High Valley targets in
Speaker 3: southern Afghanistan mainly, so you would spend two or three
Speaker 3: days in camp. What was the name of the camp
Speaker 3: camp not Camp Suitor com It was called uh in camp.
Speaker 3: Then the mission would come up and either a company
Speaker 3: of US would go out on the mission. And the
Speaker 3: mission could be the whole unit, but there's rare the
Speaker 3: whole The mission could be like a day out snatch
Speaker 3: and grab, like out out of the Allies, drop in
Speaker 3: to dropping to just outside the village, running grab the target,
Speaker 3: getting out, and it was it was never it was
Speaker 3: always capture like mainly capture and capture. A kill was
Speaker 3: quite rare. But then we'll be in, get them and
Speaker 3: get out and or sometimes the mission would be two
Speaker 3: or three weeks. It would go and be to support
Speaker 3: a US unit like a background area or or a
Speaker 3: British unit elsewhere, or to put a faint in for
Speaker 3: an s F attack going in somewhere. You know. So
Speaker 3: we did that for the six months there and that
Speaker 3: was that was really really good. You know, we had
Speaker 3: guys doing work, doing work with the CIA on a
Speaker 3: couple of on a couple of missions down near the
Speaker 3: down in the Pakistan border. I think you know, it
Speaker 3: was just interesting, varied, varied, varied missions, which I really enjoyed,
Speaker 3: really enjoyed, gives you different incld. We had some really
Speaker 3: good results as well, and we also got to do
Speaker 3: some of the tasty stuff we did in a six top.
Speaker 3: We're going and like I said, we're going to boasts
Speaker 3: a two para. We're out there at that time in
Speaker 3: Helm and doing a kind of equivalent tour we don't
Speaker 3: know six and they were doing some real real doing
Speaker 3: some real tasty places, and we went into a couple
Speaker 3: of their sports and bolted them and basically got to
Speaker 3: get given a bit of a rest and going and
Speaker 3: do us going to some areas they weren't able to
Speaker 3: reach purely because of resources and and and then the
Speaker 3: state of the troops. Basically, you know, we were we
Speaker 3: were fresher and I had some great results in there.
Speaker 3: That was the first time actually I came across a
Speaker 3: Taliban fight away uniform, as in it wasn't police uniform,
Speaker 3: was his own, his uniform.
Speaker 1: It sounds like this is kind of like a deployment
Speaker 1: where you're really moving on to sort of like oh,
Speaker 1: what's the term I want to use, but more more
Speaker 1: like special operations than infantry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, and that's yeah, yeah, definitely, And that was
Speaker 3: quite quite rare, quite rare at that point for us.
Speaker 3: For the regiment anyway, one Power, we're doing one Power
Speaker 3: I think we're already in the Special Force of Support rule.
Speaker 3: So they were doing sort of stuff with with s
Speaker 3: F and and our guys. So our guys rotate between.
Speaker 3: We've got three battalions Maine battalions one one Power, two Power,
Speaker 3: and three Power, and so you change between the battalions.
Speaker 3: So we had guys who go off to one Power
Speaker 3: part of Special Forces Support Group, they come back and
Speaker 3: it's just that's the that's to make sure that you
Speaker 3: don't have skill fay in any particular area because you've
Speaker 3: got a Special Force Support Group one Power, and you know,
Speaker 3: you do very little conventional stuff. You do a lot
Speaker 3: of s F orientedst training wise and mission wise and
Speaker 3: so and so we chopping ch between to make sure
Speaker 3: the skills aren't lost. And you and you and you
Speaker 3: and you share knowledge between the units as well. So
Speaker 3: that was quite anod that point, But it was, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was good, it was it was it was refreshing
Speaker 3: to have such specific, defined, team bound missions not like
Speaker 3: you have a six months.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it also massive. How good to go on
Speaker 5: the offense after your last tour.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh definitely, Oh yeah, yeah, good point. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I did for sure. And and it was also a
Speaker 3: variety of offensive ops we're doing. Sometimes, you know, we
Speaker 3: go out with vehicles and being laid up in the
Speaker 3: desert and aliga for a couple of days and then
Speaker 3: go patrolling into the green zone and and put a
Speaker 3: bump in. Other other times, you know, we dropped off
Speaker 3: on a helly k's away uh and then going on
Speaker 3: foot put an ambush and then and then bug out.
Speaker 3: It was it was good to be on the offensive
Speaker 3: side for sure. And like I said, we had a
Speaker 3: lot of we had a lot of great results, like
Speaker 3: tangible results. You get feed One of the advantages of
Speaker 3: doing your missions like that is because because intelligence is
Speaker 3: so much more, you're closer to the you're sort of
Speaker 3: closer to the source of intelligence, right, You're closer to
Speaker 3: the agencies. It was really on on on top of
Speaker 3: where the intelligence has come from and what it can mean.
Speaker 3: And so we'd often get feedback. So if we captured
Speaker 3: the killed someone brought him in, we'd often get feedback
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks later, like that guy you brought
Speaker 3: in or that guy you shot, he was actually such
Speaker 3: and such commander, actually such and such, and you like, awesome.
Speaker 3: You don't get that in normal, normal operations, you know,
Speaker 3: you just you just because he very rarely returning a
Speaker 3: dead guy to two to the agencies, especially like in
Speaker 3: Musekala when sangin. You know, you haven't got time or
Speaker 3: the inclination to do it. The guy is standing out
Speaker 3: there and they're gonna and his friends are going to
Speaker 3: sweep them up.
Speaker 5: And you're not leaving the wire to recover the body.
Speaker 5: And even if you going to come and collect it, yeah.
Speaker 3: No, exactly, and most of them wouldn't have any actionable
Speaker 3: intelligence on them anyway.
Speaker 1: Then what was the third pump to Afghanistan?
Speaker 3: Very similar to the first in terms of you know,
Speaker 3: occupying platoon houses, occupying forward operating bases, and again it
Speaker 3: was in Hellman, but but obviously with so many more truths.
Speaker 3: I think I think at that point we had ten
Speaker 3: thousand in country. I think you guys had something like
Speaker 3: forty thousand, maybe maybe more. I thinking so smaller areas,
Speaker 3: we have more troops in smaller areas but because so
Speaker 3: that was two and ten to eleven through Christmas dollars.
Speaker 3: But because the public sentiment towards what we were doing
Speaker 3: out there started to shift slightly, Like the publics the public,
Speaker 3: the public's appetite over here for accepting casualties and deaths
Speaker 3: on a daily basis was really starting to die down,
Speaker 3: starting to dwndle, you know, a bit like this support
Speaker 3: for ukrain Is at the minute, it's like it's on
Speaker 3: the diet dying down. So it makes it really hard
Speaker 3: to the appetite of risk becomes less. And that tour
Speaker 3: was it was much less conventional and much less sort
Speaker 3: of small lands attacks from the Taliban. What the Taliban
Speaker 3: realized early on having a six and seven, so from
Speaker 3: the first instance of British troops getting out there is like, hey,
Speaker 3: we may not be able to combat them like this.
Speaker 3: We're not doing very well. We're getting slaughtered. So they
Speaker 3: started switching to the tactics over to IDs in direct attacks,
Speaker 3: much like happened in Iraq and happens elsewhere. And that's
Speaker 3: what that's what it was like eleven. They would they
Speaker 3: would tend to initiate contacts with small lambs if they
Speaker 3: were going to have a prolonged contact with small arms,
Speaker 3: they'd be quite far away, like minimal risks themselves, but
Speaker 3: it almost always been in direct in direct attacks from
Speaker 3: sort of an ID or something else, multiply I D's
Speaker 3: or something else. And and because of that lack of
Speaker 3: that less appetitite for risk that the British military had
Speaker 3: out there, it actually restricted us a lot in terms
Speaker 3: of what we could do technically. You know. So there
Speaker 3: were things like there was a rule that you weren't
Speaker 3: allowed to go and putting up put any for of
Speaker 3: mission in any form of patrol, any form of any
Speaker 3: action in which was less than twelve people. Now I'm
Speaker 3: a sniper, like twelve people is a fucking nightmare. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, we're doing that. And and so that immediately
Speaker 3: restricture ability to move super silently, to move without being seen,
Speaker 3: to move without being heard, you know, unless you've got
Speaker 3: twelve ninjas or twelve snipers. No, no, disrespectable last snipers.
Speaker 3: But like with the snipers, and we trained that way
Speaker 3: for a reason. We're just better at doing that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff than other people. It makes it really problematic,
Speaker 3: and again it provides more opportunity to be anyway to attack.
Speaker 3: And then you couple that with the ramp up in
Speaker 3: protective equipment that we had to wear. You know, we
Speaker 3: were really lumbered down with these massive, massive which is
Speaker 3: normal now, but these massive front plate, massive back plate.
Speaker 3: Our helmets had changed. So on the first you know,
Speaker 3: we went out in twousand and six, we be on
Speaker 3: like airborne helmets which were very light weight turns and ten.
Speaker 3: We couldn't do that in terms of six. The reality
Speaker 3: was because because of the way the Taliban could move
Speaker 3: so light when they're dished ashes, right, they've got they've
Speaker 3: got a few pouches with the mags in the AK
Speaker 3: forty seven. They don't need much water because they lived there.
Speaker 3: They'd like a customer climate. What we would end up
Speaker 3: doing a lot of the time on our offensive operations
Speaker 3: is when we get dropped in, so we jump off
Speaker 3: the hellies and we would take our armor off and
Speaker 3: we would case shit and even then, but the end
Speaker 3: the armor was really light anyway. It was like a
Speaker 3: flack jacket for one of a better word. And then
Speaker 3: a small chest plate you know, maybe I don't know,
Speaker 3: eight inches by four inch, maybe nine inches by four
Speaker 3: inches in shape cover your heart and on your back
Speaker 3: to cover your heart from the rear. We would ditch
Speaker 3: those and just put in a pile and we were
Speaker 3: going with nobody armor, and we'd have a helmet and
Speaker 3: we clip into our webon because we could move faster.
Speaker 3: And to us, the advantage to be able to move
Speaker 3: fast out with the disadvantage you have no armor, less
Speaker 3: likely to get short if you can get shot, if
Speaker 3: you can move quick. You know, if you can move
Speaker 3: quick as you had fast Forward eleven, you wouldn't be
Speaker 3: allowed to take your armor off. It was like nope,
Speaker 3: not allowed to do it. No helmet off. And and
Speaker 3: as as snipers, the kind of equipment issued, you couldn't
Speaker 3: even get into a decent fire position or like a
Speaker 3: prone fire position because of the armor would really chest up.
Speaker 3: The helmet would hit in the back of your arm.
Speaker 3: On the push forward. You couldn't get your help to
Speaker 3: look through the scope. Just a nightmare. Again, these I
Speaker 3: think these are just I don't know if you guys
Speaker 3: experienced the same thing or your your guys experience the
Speaker 3: same thing. You know, it's very frustrating, but how do
Speaker 3: you explain to the mother or father dead of a
Speaker 3: dead kid that you know less armors better right when
Speaker 3: maybe you know, I went into a I went into
Speaker 3: an inquest after the first tour when we came back,
Speaker 3: an inquest to a couple of guys who died. They'd
Speaker 3: been a direct hit with the water and they were
Speaker 3: just peppered, obviously, and the mother was and one of
Speaker 3: the and she asked of the Ministry of Defense representative
Speaker 3: is like, why can't why aren't you able to issue
Speaker 3: body arm that covers the entire body? You know, like,
Speaker 3: I know the answer to that. The answer is obvious
Speaker 3: to anyone who's rationally thought, but not to the mother
Speaker 3: of dead kids, you know, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So it really really hampered things, which ultimately I think
Speaker 3: is you know, one of the reasons that our footprint
Speaker 3: was a lot smaller. You know, you can put loads
Speaker 3: of troops in the area, footment is a lot smaller.
Speaker 3: The Taliban have more confidence, loads of ice star assets up.
Speaker 3: You know, we had loads of eyes on the ground
Speaker 3: and things, but very you need boots on the ground
Speaker 3: to have any form of influence, and in reality on
Speaker 3: those county surgery operations. As you guys know, one part
Speaker 3: of it is killing the enemy. The second part of
Speaker 3: it is winning over the locals demonstrate why we are here, right,
Speaker 3: you know, you got over and you need boots on
Speaker 3: the ground to do that and safe boots on the ground,
Speaker 3: and it was difficult for us to do it. Plus
Speaker 3: Afghana stand in the winter is miserable.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So coming back from that tour, talk to us
Speaker 1: a little bit about like you know, where your head
Speaker 1: is at at the time. You're kind of like you said,
Speaker 1: you moved along quite quickly in the paras. How did
Speaker 1: you see kind of your future prospects at this time?
Speaker 1: What was your decision making process?
Speaker 3: Like I wanted So one of the things we have
Speaker 3: to do were you're supposed to do before, certainly before
Speaker 3: you get promoted to a corp or so you know,
Speaker 3: at a squad leader or like a cartoon side if
Speaker 3: you're supposed to go and do a we call it
Speaker 3: a knee posting, external posting, supposed to go and do
Speaker 3: basically the common one is gone being instructor somewhere for
Speaker 3: two years just you know, So it's basically to me,
Speaker 3: it's basically to try and reduce the chance of someone
Speaker 3: getting promoted up to the ranks because hisnates high up,
Speaker 3: he's got mates, and this guy is actually useless to
Speaker 3: get promoted, it's sort of to validate. Hey, this guy's
Speaker 3: being externally audited if you like. Right, it's last, that's
Speaker 3: what it is. I didn't have to do that because
Speaker 3: the operation, because the operational temper what I was doing,
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't go anywhere,
Speaker 3: which I'm glad of because I would have missed the
Speaker 3: fear of missing out with extreme for any of these
Speaker 3: any of these operations. But I knew I was going
Speaker 3: to have to do well because they wanted me to.
Speaker 3: They be in the career. People in the unit wanted
Speaker 3: me to go to Sandhurst as an instructor and instruct
Speaker 3: young officers, so bringing young officers up, and that's quite
Speaker 3: a prestigious posting. Like you go there, if you get
Speaker 3: you get you get told to go to Sandhurst if
Speaker 3: your career projection is high, like you're going to go
Speaker 3: all the way, You're going to be a regimental sergeant
Speaker 3: major of one of the units. Basically they think that's
Speaker 3: the case. It's not guaranteed, but you've got to Sanders
Speaker 3: to do that. And I didn't. I didn't want to
Speaker 3: go to Sandurst. I want to go to Brecon Brecon
Speaker 3: Lets I mentioned earlier in Wales as well, how infantry
Speaker 3: battles school. It's cold, it's miserable, it's horrible. It's where
Speaker 3: you it's where you send soldiers to go to learn
Speaker 3: how to be tacticians, how to think under pressure, how
Speaker 3: to perform under pressure physically and mentally, in one of
Speaker 3: the most disgusting places in the UK, you know, in
Speaker 3: terms of environment and weather and terrain, midwhales, glorious country.
Speaker 3: I wanted to go there because Sanders was. You know,
Speaker 3: you're teaching a lot of drill, You're teaching a lot
Speaker 3: of You're teaching basically new recruits. All the officers out
Speaker 3: they build their boots, polish their boots, and I'm in
Speaker 3: the uniform. You don't know all the other stuff like
Speaker 3: teaching them tactics and all the rest of it. But
Speaker 3: I only wanted to teach that stuff, and I only
Speaker 3: wanted to teach it to the actual guy who's actually
Speaker 3: you know, young guys like I was, who were not officers,
Speaker 3: who were the guys who make everything work, you know.
Speaker 3: But they didn't want me to do that. So we
Speaker 3: had a full and I ended up leaving after after
Speaker 3: this the third tour, and I think I'm a bit
Speaker 3: about that. I mean, I wouldn't be you know, I
Speaker 3: told you guys if it wasn't But yeah, that's that's
Speaker 3: that's what I'm there. The the I became, I got
Speaker 3: pretty bitter about it because I sort of I'd not
Speaker 3: put up a fight about anything. I'd done everything that
Speaker 3: was asked to be up to that point. But my, my, my,
Speaker 3: my operational tempo throughout my career, I've been high non stop,
Speaker 3: you know, from two thousand and one, that first Northern
Speaker 3: Island tour all the way through twenty and eleven, non stop.
Speaker 3: My feet hadn't touched the ground, and I'd performed well,
Speaker 3: not grumbled about anything. And then the one thing I
Speaker 3: asked for and they said no, and I got very upset,
Speaker 3: very bit, very quickly. But the thing is at that
Speaker 3: time is that we knew that three Power knew that
Speaker 3: we weren't going back to Afghanistan. It was that was
Speaker 3: the end of it for us, because it was all
Speaker 3: dying off and the rotations we weren't on that roster.
Speaker 3: It was like another four or five rotations to go
Speaker 3: and were we weren't going to be on it, so
Speaker 3: and there was nothing else on the horizon. So the
Speaker 3: prospect of staying in and basically being you know, like
Speaker 3: one of those old grumpy guys that had been there
Speaker 3: when I turned up to hadn't tell them one, we've
Speaker 3: done nothing, you know, or bitter because they were in
Speaker 3: the Falklands and had done nothing since they were angry
Speaker 3: about that. You know, the prospect of being that and
Speaker 3: being basically a camp soldier, you know, a barrack soldier
Speaker 3: was was not exciting. And this circuit was kicking off
Speaker 3: at the time. You know, I think Dave you mentioned
Speaker 3: you were a contractor. So time since six actually since
Speaker 3: two thousand and six for us from three Power. Once
Speaker 3: people had done what they wanted to do and satisfy
Speaker 3: themselves with combat in the military, a lot of the
Speaker 3: guys after six Talk and three Power, they left and
Speaker 3: they went onto the circuit because the circuit in Iraq
Speaker 3: with booming, you know, private securities with booming since one,
Speaker 3: two or three sorry onwards, was booming, and there's a
Speaker 3: lot of money to be made. So those guys went
Speaker 3: and I did the same thing after after two thousand
Speaker 3: and eleven out there earned a lot of money. That
Speaker 3: was the plan. Earn a lot of money and so
Speaker 3: we get to do cool things. We're just getting paid
Speaker 3: more I did. It wasn't quite as wasn't I was
Speaker 3: looking at through rose tinted spectacles.
Speaker 1: How did it go in actuality?
Speaker 3: Well, you know what private security deals. Yeah, first of
Speaker 3: private security dealers are like out in in out in
Speaker 3: the oil fields out in Iraq and other places. It's
Speaker 3: basically glorified taxi service at the most part. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: uh yeah, you know, armored vehicles carrying oil workers around
Speaker 3: different parts of the area. It was a bit it
Speaker 3: was a bit surreal because we were we were working
Speaker 3: in an area that I'd been in two other three
Speaker 3: in trenches and the trenches were still there, you know,
Speaker 3: ramal and in place. So that's a bit weird. And
Speaker 3: flash fast forward to that would have been twenty twenty eleven,
Speaker 3: late twenty eleven. I started there and the Iraq hadn't
Speaker 3: changed much for the better since we went in in
Speaker 3: thousand and three. That's a bit of a common theme
Speaker 3: and other places. Right, definitely hasn't changed much. But then
Speaker 3: Iraq's a pretty a particular place. It's not I don't
Speaker 3: know it's a it's an odd it's an odd place.
Speaker 3: It's almost like they don't want to evolve that much.
Speaker 3: I don't think I think they're quite happy the way
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 1: Middle Middle Eastern politics are extremely frustrating, to say the least.
Speaker 3: Yeah true, yeah, true, And and and frustrate even more
Speaker 3: countries like Iraq where the politics don't seem to pervade
Speaker 3: outside of the capital city.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, yeah, and even more so even more so. Right,
Speaker 4: nobody cares what's going.
Speaker 5: On a cobbles. It's not their tribe, it's not their village.
Speaker 3: You're exactly this is, this is, this is I mean,
Speaker 3: this is a good point if this goes back to
Speaker 3: some of the frustrations we had. And on the third
Speaker 3: time he went out there, the third tour went out,
Speaker 3: I was doing a sort of dual role of like
Speaker 3: a low like a intelligence officer role but on a
Speaker 3: sub unit, so part of the part of the power company,
Speaker 3: and also a sniper role there on the offensive operations
Speaker 3: that we did. And so I got this sitting on
Speaker 3: a lot of assurance. The meetings with the key leaders.
Speaker 3: You know, by that point, they they were just they
Speaker 3: were just saying the words that they you know, and
Speaker 3: we knew that someone o were Taliban. We knew there
Speaker 3: was all he knew. They were playing both sides and
Speaker 3: they knew we knew, and we couldn't learning about it.
Speaker 3: And the reality is they knew we're going to leave,
Speaker 3: and they just they just march in time. They just
Speaker 3: they just plodded along until until the Taliban come back.
Speaker 3: And it's a real they said it stuck between a
Speaker 3: rock and a hard place, right. They know the Taliban's
Speaker 3: in the coming, they know we're there. We know they
Speaker 3: don't want us to like the Taliban or help. We
Speaker 3: don't want them to help the Taliban. But so they
Speaker 3: had to be seen to be helping us while not
Speaker 3: pissing off the Taliban, right because we're going to be gone,
Speaker 3: so and and back to the you know. The point
Speaker 3: that brought this up is that it doesn't impact their
Speaker 3: lives that much. Who's in charge. They still get the tender.
Speaker 3: This is away from like Cabull, away from lash Gagark
Speaker 3: and there in the sticks, the farmers, the rural areas,
Speaker 3: you know, the the bed win. Their life's the same
Speaker 3: when it's British all patrolling all the Taliban. You know,
Speaker 3: their life's the same, I think for the most part,
Speaker 3: and probably it's more probably they would perceive it as
Speaker 3: more structured and predictable and understandable under the Taliban because
Speaker 3: that's what they've known for longer. They understand sharia law
Speaker 3: and all the other things. They know them better than
Speaker 3: in no ways, they played a long game, right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's kind of it's not frustrating to talk about like
Speaker 3: this because I don't want to make it sound like
Speaker 3: what was the point of any of it? You know,
Speaker 3: it's it's but it kind of it puts it into perspective,
Speaker 3: and you see them when you when you leave like that,
Speaker 3: and ignoring the evacuation what three four what was it now?
Speaker 3: Four years ago? It puts into perspective when they move
Speaker 3: so easily back under the Taliban, just carry on his
Speaker 3: normal job and it's just like, take take out the leader,
Speaker 3: put this leader in this structure, government structure, and it's fine.
Speaker 3: They don't change anything.
Speaker 5: And there's there's very much a like a fatalistic.
Speaker 4: Tenor or whatever to like a lot of these Islamic
Speaker 4: countries where if a strong man is ruling, it's probably
Speaker 4: because the strong man deserves to rule, Like you don't
Speaker 4: have have these these ideas of like individual liberty and
Speaker 4: things like that.
Speaker 5: They just don't stand up for it often.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So it's like okay, yeah, so all right,
Speaker 3: so going there and we need to improve X country
Speaker 3: because their standards of living and what we expect them
Speaker 3: to be like don't match up with ours. Okay, but
Speaker 3: how do they match up to their expectations? Right? Because
Speaker 3: by their expectations they're totally fine. Right. It's like the
Speaker 3: tribe in the Amazon who don't have smartphones, right, they
Speaker 3: don't have bricks and they don't have bicycles, they don't
Speaker 3: bother because that's how they live and they're quite act me.
Speaker 3: They don't know any different. Even when you introduce something
Speaker 3: different than they're not, they don't like it. Still the same,
Speaker 3: it's kind of the same, and the standards are very different.
Speaker 3: Same with you know again Afghanistan. As you pointed out there,
Speaker 3: what is right and what is wrong is different based
Speaker 3: on your perspective and when you're understanding and what the
Speaker 3: culture is built on foundationally historic.
Speaker 1: So you did the contractors circuit for a little while,
Speaker 1: and where are you at today? What are you up
Speaker 1: to nowadays?
Speaker 3: I managed, well, I sorry, got I do Hate Shower,
Speaker 3: which is we started I as a hobby, the podcast
Speaker 3: off as a hobby, but now it's like a second job.
Speaker 3: Really a second job doesn't doesn't earn for me, but
Speaker 3: it's when I was a can't step away from because
Speaker 3: it's it's just so valuable for a million different other reasons.
Speaker 3: But I work for I work for a global Stockcom's company.
Speaker 3: I do. I do service delivery for for government government
Speaker 3: customers Startcom's company, which is interesting in itself, yeah itself,
Speaker 3: And it's also strange because I was never a comms guy.
Speaker 3: When I was in kind of can't work out, I
Speaker 3: ended up in a sackcoms company. But you know, I'm
Speaker 3: here and I'm enjoying it. But yeah, my day job,
Speaker 3: but that is very much an enabler for Hate Shower.
Speaker 3: You know, and have a few other things I do
Speaker 3: want to say, which is sort of you know, veteran oriented.
Speaker 3: But yes, what I do. I think, like you guys
Speaker 3: are trying, I try and do an episode a week
Speaker 3: at least at least.
Speaker 1: How did how did how did eah hour come about?
Speaker 1: How did that idea germinate in your mind and come
Speaker 1: into fruition?
Speaker 3: I all right. So in a nutshell, I went through
Speaker 3: a when I left, I wasn't in a great place mentally.
Speaker 3: I didn't know at the time, and I basically went
Speaker 3: through a number of years of tough times for various reasons,
Speaker 3: one of which was like my mental health, and that
Speaker 3: created all sorts of other problems, work problems, It's just
Speaker 3: all sort of things. A transition in my transition from
Speaker 3: the military and the civilian world was not smooth. It's
Speaker 3: not smooth for anyone, but mine was of a long
Speaker 3: time not smooth. It took asis and for a bunch
Speaker 3: of different things. I learned a lot of stuff along
Speaker 3: the way, and I got pretty pretty low mentally, like
Speaker 3: as low as you'd want to get mentally, or as
Speaker 3: you wouldn't you wouldn't want to get ment And I
Speaker 3: didn't want other people to go through the same thing basically.
Speaker 3: But at the time, I've been listening to a very
Speaker 3: popular podcast by mister Rogan, and like you guys, you know, interviewing.
Speaker 3: When you're listening to someone interview people from different walks
Speaker 3: of life and backgrounds and countries and perspectives, and you
Speaker 3: kind of you tend to pick something up from each
Speaker 3: one a little bit of information knowledge, and I think
Speaker 3: it arms you a little bit. It's sort of great,
Speaker 3: the tidbits that can help you unexpected time in life.
Speaker 3: So I basically wanted to communicate what I'd learned. I
Speaker 3: wanted to avoid my old friends and people I don't
Speaker 3: know behind me going through the same situation. I've gone through,
Speaker 3: little things like stuff I learned about the circuit, stuff
Speaker 3: I learned about mental health, stuff I learned about, you know,
Speaker 3: getting by in the civilian world generally. And so I
Speaker 3: started the podcast up for that reason. Basically, chat to people,
Speaker 3: have a conversation with people I'm interested in, and I
Speaker 3: committed to myself. I started that with all I mentioned
Speaker 3: a guy earlier called Jarrett. It was my sniper buddy.
Speaker 3: He did the first ten episodes with me and started
Speaker 3: up with the commitment that if I'm going to interview
Speaker 3: people and they're gonna have these conversations about these subjects
Speaker 3: and be you an open book otherwise, his point was
Speaker 3: doing it, I've got everything's going to be out there
Speaker 3: and be honest about my own experiences and when I
Speaker 3: think about things. And so that's why I did it,
Speaker 3: to try and communicate useful information to people. But I
Speaker 3: was sounded like a preacher. You know, if I walked
Speaker 3: into three power, so I started the podcast in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: if I walk into three power Lie three power line,
Speaker 3: three power barracks, for example, and said, hey, guys, if
Speaker 3: you tried meditation, I get beating up, I get kicked
Speaker 3: up back. Then beating up, kicked off can't never come
Speaker 3: back because it's go on about as if you bring
Speaker 3: it up in a conversation, in a in a decent
Speaker 3: contact with someone else who's of a similar background, totally
Speaker 3: fine as an example, Yeah, you know, you know the score.
Speaker 3: That's why try and get information to people that is
Speaker 3: useful basically, but it's got it's gone into something much
Speaker 3: more than that. You know, he's brought us about. So
Speaker 3: you know, one of the reasons I know about team
Speaker 3: houses from one of your patriots, guy called Coke, who's
Speaker 3: a British guy, and he's he's also he's also one
Speaker 3: of my patrons, and and I find that, you know,
Speaker 3: if I understand started my podcast, I wouldn't be just
Speaker 3: introduced duced to you guys and having these conversations with
Speaker 3: you guys and learning about learning about what you do
Speaker 3: and your side of the pond. And also I think
Speaker 3: it's huge value in spending time talking, actually active listening
Speaker 3: to talking, because there's so much that I pro even
Speaker 3: you know, the questions you fired at me today, there's
Speaker 3: so much that it makes me process and I will
Speaker 3: continue thinking about the next couple of days about what
Speaker 3: I think about things and why I think them, you know,
Speaker 3: which I think it's an invaluable thing that most people
Speaker 3: don't get to do these days. How often do we
Speaker 3: get to sit down and talk actually talked to someone
Speaker 3: who listened to someone for an hour or two hours
Speaker 3: at a time. No one does it.
Speaker 1: My my hope is that you know, for a lot
Speaker 1: of the guys, a lot of the veterans out there
Speaker 1: that are able to connect with, you know, a show
Speaker 1: like EH Hour or The Team House, and it sort
Speaker 1: of gives them a little bit of that connectivity, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't feel totally isolated or alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, true, that's I mean, that's one of it's
Speaker 3: one of them. I think it's one of the reasons
Speaker 3: that a lot of people struggle, MAXI military struggle when
Speaker 3: they leave, is that what we incorrectly think that we
Speaker 3: are the only person, right one of the very few.
Speaker 3: And the reality is, the unfortunate reality is that most
Speaker 3: or many many people go through it, and especially with
Speaker 3: guys and concerned, we just you know, we're just useless
Speaker 3: talking about feelings, and rightly so in a lot of cases.
Speaker 3: I understand it. But the but the worst thing in
Speaker 3: the world when you're literally is to be isolated, like
Speaker 3: I was talking about, you're isolated. Who's fucking horrific. I
Speaker 3: never want to go through that again. And the real
Speaker 3: is that we've got the buddy buddy system. We've got
Speaker 3: mutual support everywhere. There are people within our networks who
Speaker 3: we know or don't know, who have been through the
Speaker 3: same thing. I can offer advice. They're ahead of us
Speaker 3: on the track, they've been through the ship, you know,
Speaker 3: and they can help you. But if they don't know
Speaker 3: about it, they can't. And even with the distance, you know,
Speaker 3: with the best, with the best, we'll step up for
Speaker 3: each other, whether we know each other.
Speaker 4: I think it's also like very valuable to normalize the
Speaker 4: talk about, you know, the postraumatic stress about you know,
Speaker 4: the challenges of becoming a civilian again. Like it's good
Speaker 4: to normalize that because I think I think most of
Speaker 4: us when we go through that, we think that we.
Speaker 5: Are alone in that struggle, and we wonder what's wrong
Speaker 5: with us? And so what do we do?
Speaker 4: We do what we've been trying to do, which is
Speaker 4: to tighten up the rockstrack, you know, the uh rucksack,
Speaker 4: put our heads down and keep trying to put one
Speaker 4: foot in front of the other.
Speaker 5: And a lot of times that's not the solution.
Speaker 3: No, And it also also invites an attitude that let's say,
Speaker 3: you know, talk about postmatic stress and also and the
Speaker 3: symptoms associated, it also invites an attitude that it's something
Speaker 3: that is chronic and cannot be improved or CD, which
Speaker 3: most people think is the case, and it is absolutely
Speaker 3: not the case. Right, there's a few people again to
Speaker 3: the podcast, a few people I've been very lucky to
Speaker 3: speak to, and one of them is an American guy,
Speaker 3: a two American guys, actually one guy called doctor Mark Gordon.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've heard of him, but I
Speaker 3: know he's working with a few of your Special Forces
Speaker 3: units are there, and he is basically one of the
Speaker 3: world leading researcher on on newer end of chronology, so
Speaker 3: brain hormones adjusting newer end of chronology to combat the
Speaker 3: symptoms of PTSD. So we're right now, all the main
Speaker 3: focus on reducing symptoms of PTSD, in preventing PTSD is
Speaker 3: all on psychology and the sort of the physical side
Speaker 3: of it. The physiological side of it's missed. So what
Speaker 3: Mark has found is that so let's talk about preparing,
Speaker 3: let's talk about reducing the likelihood of developing PTSD. So
Speaker 3: what Mark, what Mark does with a bunch of s
Speaker 3: F units in the USA, and I know he's been
Speaker 3: engaged with cutle of SF units back here, is creatively
Speaker 3: supplementing guys and girls as it literally supplements which produce
Speaker 3: certain brain hormones which are susceptible to getting drastically impacted
Speaker 3: in like blast injuries, not blasting, but in blast in
Speaker 3: repeated trauma, repeated battles. So that layer upon there, so
Speaker 3: s F units SF guys operators who are doing a
Speaker 3: lot of work. He ministers these hormones which are naturally
Speaker 3: got them in your body anyway, so when they do
Speaker 3: go into a contact, go into an extreme situation and
Speaker 3: come out and survive the other side, get them back
Speaker 3: in checks the baseline for the hormones bumps up again
Speaker 3: what's what's what is deficient? And then it basically drastically
Speaker 3: produces his likelihood of developing post from It's amazing, Yeah,
Speaker 3: like incredible because because it just you, you've got the
Speaker 3: resiliency you can build in people like that just through
Speaker 3: training and your rigorous training and physical and mental and
Speaker 3: then this additional element, the physicological element, is incredible, and
Speaker 3: you can do the same with treatment of PDSD. So
Speaker 3: there's a there's an actually it's an amazing American documentary
Speaker 3: film called I think it's called Quiet Explosions. Mark Gordon
Speaker 3: features in it. There's a there's green beret features in it,
Speaker 3: as a US Navy lady features in it, and an
Speaker 3: American football player, and all these people exhibit the symptoms
Speaker 3: of PTSD and they've all basically got traumatic brain injuries. Now,
Speaker 3: the interesting thing is that three of them, so there's
Speaker 3: four of them, three of them have got traumatic brain
Speaker 3: injuries from blast or concussion. So obviously the American football player,
Speaker 3: you've got the you've got the Green Beret who was
Speaker 3: basically getting his head blowing out by preaching preaching charters.
Speaker 3: The Navy lady has got the same symptoms. She's got
Speaker 3: a qut PTSD, but she has never been around weapons systems,
Speaker 3: She's never been a blast anything of this. The Navy
Speaker 3: lady was raped and she was raided on the service vessel,
Speaker 3: but the trauma of the rape produced exactly the same
Speaker 3: symptoms and traumatic brain injuries everyone else. Now these people
Speaker 3: have been treated with again supplementation, new endocrinology, neuroendo chronological supplementation,
Speaker 3: checking which hormers are deficient, bumping them up and then
Speaker 3: seeing which, yes, the symptoms remain after that based on
Speaker 3: the physiological side, and then implement the psychological treatment if
Speaker 3: needs be so because after this point it's kind of
Speaker 3: like this physiological side has been completely ignored intentially, so
Speaker 3: how do you get into that or the PTSD. So
Speaker 3: a point on that is, you know, there is this
Speaker 3: I don't know about over there, but here there is
Speaker 3: a definite some So some guys and girls who have PTSD,
Speaker 3: they can they can sort of fall victim to the
Speaker 3: victim mentality and kind of be their own barrier to
Speaker 3: improve it, or they can misunderstand that it doesn't it's
Speaker 3: not necessarily a chronic condition. I think that's changing slowly,
Speaker 3: but it needs to be much much so.
Speaker 4: You said the doctor I took this notes on my phone.
Speaker 4: You said that the documentary was called Quiet Explosions.
Speaker 3: I think it's Quiet Explosions. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And the doctor's name is Mark gold.
Speaker 3: Mark Gordon Gordon, Okay, yeah, Mark Gordon.
Speaker 1: Do we have questions for you?
Speaker 3: We do.
Speaker 4: Hugh stated that he was beat in training. Uh oh,
Speaker 4: thank you very much. Showy one two three four all
Speaker 4: wheel drive to AWD two.
Speaker 5: H thank you.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: Hughes stated he was beat beaten in training, unit life
Speaker 4: and approves for discipline.
Speaker 5: Does this happen in the Rangers? Green Berets is, so,
Speaker 5: do you approve.
Speaker 1: In ranger indoctrination? There may have been some physical correction
Speaker 1: issued that may that may have happened. It's not common,
Speaker 1: Like corporal punishment isn't common. I don't want to give
Speaker 1: anyone that impression that like it's a normal thing and
Speaker 1: special forces know, I mean, what you'll find like is
Speaker 1: if like two guys are really butting heads and they
Speaker 1: might decide to take it to the woodline, so.
Speaker 5: Call thunder down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's a little bit different than like, you know,
Speaker 1: a squad leader taking a private walled wall slim and
Speaker 1: in a wall lockers, you know that kind of thing
Speaker 1: that I think that's mostly a thing of the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when I was in Marine boot camp, it was
Speaker 5: not unheard of. But this is back in eighty nine.
Speaker 4: But it was not uncommon for a drill instructor too,
Speaker 4: like maybe do a little wall the wall if they
Speaker 4: felt it was necessary.
Speaker 1: Desperate times, desperate measures.
Speaker 4: Since then, I haven't really seen it, like you know,
Speaker 4: you have you have you have like the hazing or
Speaker 4: the scuffing up, like they'll they'll scuff up the privates
Speaker 4: and range of battalion or they did, and this again
Speaker 4: this ninety seven. It might be different now, but they
Speaker 4: would definitely, you know, find fun and sweaty activities for uh,
Speaker 4: for for junior enlisted who maybe lost their firing pin
Speaker 4: or whatever. But yeah, soly, thank you very much. There
Speaker 4: are serving female officers in the pairs. How much fitter
Speaker 4: do they have to be than the soldiers. Is fitness
Speaker 4: for the pair of officers comparable to sas officers?
Speaker 3: Good question, No, the fitness levels are different. So so
Speaker 3: let's focus on the females a minute. The females that
Speaker 3: are in the powers that they've only they've only quite
Speaker 3: recently they've they've got there, but they do. Those females
Speaker 3: will do the same selection, the same physical selection process
Speaker 3: as their male officer counterparts, but that selection process is
Speaker 3: slightly different to as enlisted selection processes is slight differences,
Speaker 3: but they do the same as the male so that
Speaker 3: the fitness is the same. And then officer fitness levels
Speaker 3: comparable to SAS officer no different again I'm generalizing here,
Speaker 3: but different because the SAS selection fitness levels are so
Speaker 3: much higher requirement than what they are with the with
Speaker 3: the powers, I say, physical, so much higher. The biggest
Speaker 3: barrier to get into SF we hear special forces of
Speaker 3: your selection wise is you know you liked to getting injured.
Speaker 3: It's almost like you, yeah, you like to get an injured.
Speaker 3: You can get to it. You get to a point
Speaker 3: where you only need to be so fit to pass
Speaker 3: all the selection tests, but your body needs to be
Speaker 3: literally strong enough not get hammered and develop a stress
Speaker 3: fracture or roll an ankle or break a bone. You know.
Speaker 3: But no, they're different, not they're not comparable officer in
Speaker 3: the powers and they're not far apart.
Speaker 4: They're not they're not equal, solely, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: What sorry, sorry, I have something that popping out. Okay,
Speaker 4: how good were the enemy and the g Y? Did
Speaker 4: they have units comparable the U k U US special
Speaker 4: forces in infantry?
Speaker 3: How good were the enemy in what? Sorry?
Speaker 5: In the g Y in the Global War on tur
Speaker 5: and Iraq? After sorry?
Speaker 3: Oh, how good were the enemy? Uh? Relative to what?
Speaker 3: It dependent on where you were, depending on where you
Speaker 3: were and what time you served. I think you know
Speaker 3: where you were and went. You compare one of them
Speaker 3: to if you compared individual like Taliban fighter for example,
Speaker 3: to an individual British soldier, then not comparable or in
Speaker 3: terms of professional soldier and skills, there's no comparison. We
Speaker 3: had some tails above them. The reason that they were
Speaker 3: so challenging to fight is because you were fighting them
Speaker 3: on the wrong tur And again I alluded to some
Speaker 3: of the restrictions that we had in as earlier we
Speaker 3: had to we were much heavier to move around.
Speaker 5: And uh, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were just more they were mainly they're more agile.
Speaker 3: They new the twin and they weren't wearing uniforms, they
Speaker 3: weren't easily identifiable, and they also knew they could played
Speaker 3: a long game where we were playing the short game. Cunning,
Speaker 3: very very very cunning fighters. That was that was in
Speaker 3: Afghanistan anyway, And a lot of the time were even
Speaker 3: fight in Afghanist You know we killed we killed a
Speaker 3: couple of people one time when they were they were Pakistanis.
Speaker 3: They were there fight for Taliman. Yeah, just different different place.
Speaker 4: And the second part of that, did they have units
Speaker 4: comparable to the uk U S S F and and
Speaker 4: three And it's no, they didn't really have units.
Speaker 5: They just had a bunch of guys that would come together. Sully,
Speaker 5: Thank you much. How good were your military leaders? Did
Speaker 5: you have did you or have you?
Speaker 3: Ah?
Speaker 5: Did you have your versions of Rammel? I guess.
Speaker 3: Well when I was saying yeah, I think I think
Speaker 3: I mentioned a guy called Stuart Tootle earlier and he's
Speaker 3: quite famous over here. I say famous relatively speaking. And
Speaker 3: there's another guy called Tim Well, Colonel Tim. I can't
Speaker 3: remember his surname, so he's not he's relatively famous. Tim
Speaker 3: Tim gave a famous speech and the eve of the
Speaker 3: Iraq invasion, allegedly it was Bush had it up on
Speaker 3: his wall as in your present Bush added up on
Speaker 3: his wall in the White House for some time. But uh,
Speaker 3: Tootle I think the Tootle was he was one of
Speaker 3: those commanders who, outside of an operation grown you you
Speaker 3: would strike he was average, just another officer. And if
Speaker 3: we had another office at the same time, it was
Speaker 3: pretty much quite disliked to his junior to Tootle. But
Speaker 3: you get when operations and missions like this happen, exceptional
Speaker 3: things go on, you get unexpectedly, you get these like
Speaker 3: heroes emerged from from from the group of whatever, from
Speaker 3: the organization and the unexpected to become the perfect person
Speaker 3: at the perfect time for the perfect operation. And Tootles
Speaker 3: that for that time. And interestingly with Tootle, his his
Speaker 3: his regimental sergeant major, he's like right hand Maham was
Speaker 3: also not liked well too. It was like that his
Speaker 3: RSM was not liked all before thatand and six tour
Speaker 3: not like as in despised. However, the pair of them
Speaker 3: together on that tour, they were perfect. The personalities were perfect.
Speaker 3: The way Tootle commanded was perfect, The way the RSM
Speaker 3: was was just perfect. What was going on? Like anyone else,
Speaker 3: think it had been very different Ketle the fish, we
Speaker 3: would have more casualties, more deaths, we would have achieve
Speaker 3: what we did but they were perfect. So two lights
Speaker 3: on that. Yeah, he was our rommel Sally.
Speaker 5: Thank you match. Did you guys ever refuse an order
Speaker 5: during combat or ever hear this? H said he was.
Speaker 5: Hugh said he was refused to shoot an enemy and
Speaker 5: argue with his commander over this.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, that's not Yeah, so I didn't refuse to
Speaker 3: shoot an enemy. I would not maybe not have done that.
Speaker 3: So the situation, that's situation Sol's referring to is we
Speaker 3: were on high ground. It was in Afghanistan. My team
Speaker 3: was on high ground. We were we were extracting. We
Speaker 3: were with another team actually that was a joint that
Speaker 3: was a joint mission with the US unit actually, and
Speaker 3: we were extracting. We went very helicopters to come in
Speaker 3: and I thought I spotted it, So maybe eight hundred
Speaker 3: meters away, nine meters away, I thought I spotted, but
Speaker 3: we would call a dicker. I thought I spotted a
Speaker 3: local or remember the Taliban given signals the mirror, basically
Speaker 3: signaling where we were or something's gone on to other
Speaker 3: to the Talleman, other people. I wasn't a hundred percent.
Speaker 3: I was pretty sure he was signaling this was a person,
Speaker 3: you know, a fighting age male, but on the younger
Speaker 3: on the younger side, i'd say maybe twelve thirteen years old.
Speaker 3: And I reported this because I was there, and I reported.
Speaker 3: I say reported back. I was talking because the team
Speaker 3: were behind me. I was talking it back. And the
Speaker 3: commander of the other team that was where it wasn't
Speaker 3: a sniper team. The other team that was that was
Speaker 3: with us, tok to shoot topally, to shoot the guy
Speaker 3: and shoot the king. I should say, well, I said, no,
Speaker 3: he was. He was senior to me, but he wasn't
Speaker 3: my director sharing the command. And I said, that's the situation,
Speaker 3: Soley's referring to. I said no to that. I wasn't
Speaker 3: a hundred percent you know. And but I've killed him
Speaker 3: got away with it. Yeah, that's the right thing to do. No,
Speaker 3: would I be sitting here you were talking about with
Speaker 3: Dave at the start. I would absolutely something I'd absolutely regret.
Speaker 3: So it's the wrong. It was the wrong. It would
Speaker 3: have been the wrong decision to do it. No question
Speaker 3: was did I ever see anyone else doing anything of that? No,
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't see anyone else doing anything like that.
Speaker 3: So refuse refusing in order to shoot someone, it's pretty rare.
Speaker 3: It's pretty rare to receive an order to shoot someone like, yeah,
Speaker 3: very I've been told it once and I've given the
Speaker 3: order once.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Apart from that, it's mostly reactive, like see the enemy
Speaker 3: shooting dead within the rules of engagement. It's pretty rare.
Speaker 3: So I didn't see that off off off of anyone else.
Speaker 4: Thanks, and if you guys hear our church just started upstairs,
Speaker 4: So we apologize for any background noise, but dance.
Speaker 5: Along with a tune if you know it silly? Thank you?
Speaker 3: Was it?
Speaker 5: Ro Oe? Giving to your units? Always fair?
Speaker 4: Hughes said units were using surveillance wallounds to which han't
Speaker 4: their own during firefights.
Speaker 3: Are we always fair? Oh that's a matter of perspective.
Speaker 3: I think fair is an interesting word. No, I think
Speaker 3: I think the IRA were always almost always. It was
Speaker 3: too much control and there was too much risk, almost always.
Speaker 3: And I say that because for most of the time
Speaker 3: when I was in Afghanistan on my first tour, we
Speaker 3: were operating on Fortune nine Alpha, which we would you
Speaker 3: sort of. Coloaqu really described that as war fighting. RAI
Speaker 3: seeing enemy, armed enemy, you can kill them. I'm really
Speaker 3: generalizing you. So someone's going to pull me apart for
Speaker 3: let's say I'm more criminal, I haven't got the fortune
Speaker 3: ie Alpha in front of me. But it was kind
Speaker 3: of the most relaxed version. It was really rare for
Speaker 3: that to be issued. I was on it for most
Speaker 3: of the time in Afghanistan. In the places I was at,
Speaker 3: the units were to answer the question. No. For the
Speaker 3: most part, they're not fair. They really hamper us in
Speaker 3: terms of what we can and can't do. There were
Speaker 3: some For most of the most of the guys and
Speaker 3: girls in Afghanistan on the second and third tour, most
Speaker 3: of them were on a rule of engagement said that
Speaker 3: even if you saw a Taliman fighter with a weapon
Speaker 3: in his hand, clearly identified as a Talaman fighter with
Speaker 3: a weapon in his hand, you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 3: shoot him. You were not allowed to do it. You
Speaker 3: had to wait till that weapon was point at you.
Speaker 3: Then you had to go through a certain procedure before
Speaker 3: he couldn't pull the trigger on him, which is just crazy.
Speaker 3: It's great and I understand I understand the reasons for
Speaker 3: having the rows like this, but that it was a
Speaker 3: legacy follower or carryover from Northern Ireland Card Alpha for
Speaker 3: us as we call that rule of engagements from Lord Island.
Speaker 3: So no, they weren't fair. But the problem is you've
Speaker 3: got to mitigate for idiots. You got to mitigate for
Speaker 3: people who are trigger happy, and you've got to mitigate
Speaker 3: for people who don't understand the rules engagement or don't
Speaker 3: have the brain process in power to be able to
Speaker 3: quickly think through those engaged whether they're right or wrong,
Speaker 3: because they engage themselves. If they don't know when, they
Speaker 3: kind of can't pull the trigger. But it is frustrating
Speaker 3: for those for the majority of us who were quite
Speaker 3: capable of doing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, because we've talked to like j Tax
Speaker 4: who basically had to go through you know, a fifteen
Speaker 4: page document.
Speaker 5: To call in, you know, to call in an air strike.
Speaker 1: Oh, you probably had to go through fifteen layers of
Speaker 1: command at one point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I thank you. Do you think you or
Speaker 5: your colleagues are owed anything for you or their service?
Speaker 3: No, definitely, not none at all owed anything. No, it's
Speaker 3: nice to get some gratitude sometimes mainly it's nice, not
Speaker 3: it's nice to not get it's nice to not get
Speaker 3: it completely ignored. When we returned from Afghanistan and Thaven
Speaker 3: and six there was there was, there was nothing, it was.
Speaker 3: We made it quite a difficult reintegration. So on late
Speaker 3: later tools when it was kind of known what AFGAN
Speaker 3: was like. At that point, a unit would come back
Speaker 3: from being OCS for six months. They'll come back and
Speaker 3: they'd have a big service, they get presented the key
Speaker 3: to the city and all of these formalities and the recognition.
Speaker 3: And when we come back, we didn't have any of that.
Speaker 3: And the ash was actually very different from me again
Speaker 3: because I came back late later than everyone else. Three
Speaker 3: parad already been back. I was stuck in my Sicala.
Speaker 3: Came back a few weeks later and I got picked
Speaker 3: up by a minibus in a commercial airport because we
Speaker 3: came back in on. So no, I don't think we
Speaker 3: rode anything at all, and I think it's a mistake.
Speaker 3: I think we owed anything. Should Does that mean that
Speaker 3: the public shouldn't feel obligated to obligated to be demonstrating gratitude.
Speaker 3: Maybe yeah, I think the public should be obligated to
Speaker 3: do it, or even consider it not demonstrated. But actually think, okay,
Speaker 3: if people do a job and they are they are
Speaker 3: worthy of our admiration. You know, regardless of what you
Speaker 3: think of regardless of what you think of what the
Speaker 3: military is doing in X, y's at different place, being
Speaker 3: at Israel, be that Ukraine and the moment, be at sea,
Speaker 3: be it anywhere else. That's only a small part of it.
Speaker 3: The reality is that without the military, which have a
Speaker 3: country in your military, without your military, then your country
Speaker 3: would not exist and a stronger country would take it
Speaker 3: or when you would not be living in a life
Speaker 3: you live now. Yeah.
Speaker 4: You know here in the US, like we have the VA,
Speaker 4: the Veterans Administration, we have the hospitals who it's it's
Speaker 4: It can be very inefficient, mired and bureaucracy and has
Speaker 4: its own issues, but it is an organization that is
Speaker 4: there for the care and treatment of veterans. I know
Speaker 4: that you guys have your like National health Care, So
Speaker 4: is there anything like that for you guys over there?
Speaker 5: Is there anything that where where you are paid.
Speaker 4: Specific attention to for like post traumatic stress or the
Speaker 4: issues the veterans might might find themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the organizations, government departments that are doing it. They've
Speaker 3: got the OVA, the Office of Veterans Affairs. There's a
Speaker 3: few fledging organist say fledgling fledgling in yeah, they're relatively young,
Speaker 3: but also fledgling, and if they've been around for a while,
Speaker 3: they're not very well advanced. It's not great. Like you said,
Speaker 3: we have the advantage of the National Health Service and
Speaker 3: a few things that are coming in over the last
Speaker 3: five ten years. As you know, as a as a
Speaker 3: veteran here you'll get prioritized. Now, okay, in health services
Speaker 3: you can be you know, you go for your book,
Speaker 3: a doctor's appointment, then you can self identify as a
Speaker 3: veteran if you want, and it can prioritize you. So
Speaker 3: that's good, but it's nothing like you guys have got
Speaker 3: over there. But I think that's a cultural difference mainly mainly,
Speaker 3: but also probably a lack of appetite in spending money
Speaker 3: where there's no tangible and if it for the ruling party,
Speaker 3: you know, I think you could say, hey, do this thing,
Speaker 3: you will convert directly the votes for you. Then they
Speaker 3: don't do it. But in reality they can't. They can't
Speaker 3: predict that.
Speaker 5: The Unfortunately, yeah, sorry r S, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Sniper is now is out now on all digital platforms.
Speaker 4: So get yourself from Tom Beringer.
Speaker 3: Uh did you ever watch the Tom Barry Yeah, years ago, Joe,
Speaker 3: I think the last time I watched out before I
Speaker 3: joined up.
Speaker 1: Actually, hey, Sniper Sniper ten is out with Chad Michael Collins,
Speaker 1: who's we've had him on the show. We'll have him
Speaker 1: back when Sniper twenty comes out.
Speaker 5: Sally, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Would you guys be willing to speak with your enemies,
Speaker 4: even those who killed people you knew?
Speaker 3: If he's not been recorded and no one's going to
Speaker 3: be looking for him after, that's a good, good question,
Speaker 3: you know. I've got so I mentioned Nordon Island earlier,
Speaker 3: and that's so that Sully you're talking about is the
Speaker 3: Duwell patron you And I think I've mentioned to him
Speaker 3: before about the potential of interviewing a Northern Ireland like
Speaker 3: a Northern Ireland terrorist reformed terrorist, and he's pointing me
Speaker 3: towards a Northern Irish terrorist who killed a bunch of people,
Speaker 3: and it's especial remorse and you know, wrote to the
Speaker 3: family and apologized. I do know, I think that I've
Speaker 3: got room in me for remorse and regret in terms
Speaker 3: of those kind of things. Now interviewing someone who killed
Speaker 3: them of mine, I don't know, I don't know about that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know about that, probably probably.
Speaker 5: A no, yeah, hard no, yeah, Jack. Do you have
Speaker 5: an opinion on that?
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's somebody who killed somebody I knew,
Speaker 1: I mean, that makes it pretty personal. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know if i'd be able to just I will
Speaker 1: overlook that. But but somebody who fought, like, let's say,
Speaker 1: fought in Saddam Hussein's army against US, Yeah, I'd interview
Speaker 1: the guy.
Speaker 4: M yeah, Sally, thank you. When when is ex s
Speaker 4: A S. Ben Griffin next? Coming on both your podcasts?
Speaker 4: He claims the US used his unit to torture civilians.
Speaker 3: You guys, I don't know who that is.
Speaker 5: Is this an inside joke?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, Ben Griffin is your relatively well known
Speaker 3: name over here in in like pacist circles. Ben Ben
Speaker 3: was two PARA and then went to the s A S.
Speaker 3: He co founded the UK arm of Veterans for Peace
Speaker 3: over Here and I think Vetroans for Pieces is starting
Speaker 3: up in America, but he chaired Veterans for Piece over
Speaker 3: You in the UK. Ben is quite well known because
Speaker 3: he's and talk Have you seen when they do speeches
Speaker 3: at the Oxford Union. Yeah, I've seen yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 3: he's going to talk there about problems with our interventionalist
Speaker 3: foreign policy and things like this. But he's been He
Speaker 3: claims that he saw war crimes were committed by the
Speaker 3: Sas when he was serving with them in Baghdad, when
Speaker 3: he was out there with them in whatever it was
Speaker 3: three or four. Maybe I interviewed him twenty eighteen or
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, back when my views on things are very different.
Speaker 3: Then again, this is the advantages of talking to people
Speaker 3: long form. I think you form opinions much quicker, like
Speaker 3: I probably would have waited till I was seventy or
Speaker 3: eight years old to formed the opinions I old now.
Speaker 3: But in that conversation he he with him, he claimed that,
Speaker 3: and we locked horns on this. He claimed that in
Speaker 3: the in the British military, you could in Afghanistan just
Speaker 3: killed someone, but anyone just go and kill a civilian
Speaker 3: then you get away with it and there'll be no
Speaker 3: reprimand for it, which is absolute nonsense and it's it's
Speaker 3: it's nonsense in any unit. I think there's a there's
Speaker 3: a chain of command of disciplinary proceidure for a reason,
Speaker 3: and we get rules of engagement drilled into us for
Speaker 3: a reason, and we go through all the I don't
Speaker 3: know what here we have the over here we have
Speaker 3: these like virtual training systems where you will be sat
Speaker 3: there in a with a late a weapon but if
Speaker 3: ires lazy as and you'll watch a you know, a
Speaker 3: scenario and fold in front of you really complicated scenario
Speaker 3: and it basically it gives you a scenario where should
Speaker 3: you shoot the person or should you not? Is it
Speaker 3: within our area? If it's not. It's really complex. You
Speaker 3: go through all the mental mathematics in your head you
Speaker 3: got to go through to do it. Where we do
Speaker 3: that to ensure that we don't go killing people, we
Speaker 3: shouldn't go kill him and Ben thought differently or things differently.
Speaker 3: Now it was interesting with Ben Griffin is and I
Speaker 3: highly recommend him as a guest. Actually interesting with Ben
Speaker 3: is He's now no longer a member of Messans for Peace.
Speaker 3: He now relaxes doing a very simple yet rewarding job
Speaker 3: on an island off the course of Scotland. He's still
Speaker 3: very much up for conversations. He's coming back in so
Speaker 3: we can We're going to revisit that conversation. I'm interested
Speaker 3: to go back and listen to see where my own
Speaker 3: opinions has changed. Yeah, that's interesting, guy.
Speaker 5: Sally, thank you much. When will Jack and Dave appear
Speaker 5: on the h.
Speaker 3: R podcast anytime you want? Anytime you want?
Speaker 1: Yeah, whenever you're ready for us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe an in personal I'll come over when we
Speaker 3: can do it even better.
Speaker 5: That'd be amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Uh m, Corman, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: How can American soft make it culturally culturally acceptable to
Speaker 4: have a beer fridge like you find chefs?
Speaker 5: Well, what did you guys have beer fridges?
Speaker 3: We are, Well, just generally we have beer fridges. Yeah,
Speaker 3: where are we talking about?
Speaker 1: Specific I'm not sure. I think he's talking about like
Speaker 1: in your unit? You know, does your your platoon have
Speaker 1: a fridge of beers? And I don't want to serious, Yes,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to shock anyone. But there
Speaker 1: are some American units where that's a thing.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, uh uh did you see anything on the patron? Nothing?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: One last thing, because as we were having this conversation,
Speaker 1: it got me thinking, I feel like I recall a
Speaker 1: story about a guy he was either a para or
Speaker 1: a Royal marine that went and joined the Ira.
Speaker 3: I do not know that.
Speaker 1: That doesn't ring any bells. It was like way back
Speaker 1: in the eighties. It was before any of our time.
Speaker 3: No, I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I want Oh yeah, I mean I think that would
Speaker 1: be a fascinating story or a fascinating interview if the
Speaker 1: guy's still around.
Speaker 5: And then we have one. I'm a former two pair
Speaker 5: of bullshit blue on my three pair of gungji green.
Speaker 5: You won't know what I mean. Respect always and thanks
Speaker 5: for your service you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the battalions have their different thank you for
Speaker 3: The Italians have their different nicknames and mythical attributes. So
Speaker 3: three para. Apparently we're really grungey, which was really dirty.
Speaker 3: We never wash bothering this. I'll never wash your uniforms,
Speaker 3: never washed ourselves. That's what you're referring to. Two para.
Speaker 3: He's referring to a bunch of the very straight. They
Speaker 3: like their processes. I don't like the thing outside the
Speaker 3: box for him. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm just riling
Speaker 3: him up. One para. Weird, just odd odd odd people
Speaker 3: do odd things with broomsticks on the weekend when no
Speaker 3: one's looking.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find ehower?
Speaker 3: The best place is Charliecharlie one dot com, So yeah,
Speaker 3: Charlie Charlie and then oh any dot com is the
Speaker 3: best place to go, or just search for h Ower podcast.
Speaker 3: Do you find it anywhere? Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 3: for time today, guys. I really enjoyed Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 5: We really enjoyed it too. We really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, awesome perspective.
Speaker 3: It's difficult being in the guest seat, I forget.
Speaker 1: I actually find it comforting because I usually have to
Speaker 1: do the interviews. So when when it's someone else's responsibility
Speaker 1: to have the questions and everything, it actually is a
Speaker 1: little relieving I find. But next Friday, we will be
Speaker 1: back with John Kiriaku, former CIA officer. Is he Is
Speaker 1: he coming in studio date?
Speaker 3: No, he's going to be remote.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we will see you guys on Friday, Hugh,
Speaker 1: uh huh uh. Go check out Eyes on our sister
Speaker 1: podcast with Andy Milburn and Jason Lyons. It is on
Speaker 1: its own separate channel now search for it on YouTube.
Speaker 1: There's a link down the description. So we'll see everyone Friday. Hugh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for spending your evening with us,
Speaker 1: especially for you It's like probably one in the morning
Speaker 1: right now, right, Yeah, I'm not complaining. I appreciate it man,
Speaker 1: Thanks for thanks for making the effort.
Speaker 3: Yes, guys, stay safe, all right.
Speaker 1: We'll see all of you next Friday.
Speaker 5: By