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Hi and here, I'm taking a short break, but I'll be back with more interviews from January twenty second. Military and army personnel are regularly pushed to the limits of the human body and mind. From my time in the military, I know firsthand what told this can take on your physical and mental health. In this special episode, I'm revisiting some of these powerful conversations I've had in the last year.
Today you're here from Oliolaton, Damion, Tomlinson, and Brian Udell, who have each had to endure hardships and learned lessons as a result. First up, my brother in the ds odioloton Oli, spoke to me about his military career and the moment he realized that the war he was fighting was within himself.
I just think a big problem with me. I don't know if anything ex doing world have satisfied what I needed to solve inside, you know, and I need to learn that the hard way. I finally left after six years said I was never going back to a war zone three months later, I'm in the war zone as a contractor.
So you never got back to a war zone and then someone comes along and back in that day. Though when the year ractif as a private contractor, it was you were owning a ridiculous amounts of money. What it was about the money, it wasn't really about going into and having job satisfaction. Is like I've got the s F stamp. Yeah yeah, Now as a private contractor, you're
getting paid ridiculous amounts of money. You're going from your fifty quid a day to your five it was, and all of a suddenly living you know, yeah, you just living in the process, but you're living like a pop star, right.
Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent, which was was a blessing and a curse.
Yeah.
Well for me it was like I got out there exactly. I now call it fools gold because I've never compromised my mental and physical state to do any job. You know what I mean, we are the most important project is that this fact. So for me out there, you're obviously compromising everything, the safety and everything that I don't talk about safety because health and safety wasn't something that
we was a part of our life anyway. But the thing is you're out there doing jobs that you would never do in the military, you know what I mean, and you're like doing You're risking things like you know, I've got twelve people, I'm looking there's two of us looking after twelve people on a convoy. You will do that top cover as well, no top cover, no nothing. So you know that if you get whack, when you get whacked, it is probably highly likely you're not coming out.
So that's happening on a far too regular basis, you know what I mean, and you haven't. And for the first time I can remember that first attack. I talk about it a lot because I learned a lot about myself in that, you know, one hundred and forty k's one hundred and forty kilometers driving down the road in the convoy got whacked by the militia two car attack on tours from behind and mate, in that moment, it was like, I absolutely shit myself, not literally, but you
know what I mean. When that attack came in, was like, and I'm driving a car and I'm like realizing what's going on?
A big cover. You've got nowhere assets, you've got a weapon, a couple of mans, two of you against a whole army.
Base exactly who don't give?
Don't give? Who don't And you've got no yea, there's no fire and maneuver out there.
And no no no safety covering, no nothing. And then you realize in that moment that how you know, back in the day when that happened, when you're in s F, you would like, bring it.
On, yeah, bring it on. Yeah you got.
You know what I mean, everyone's best weapon system in the world, you know what I mean, And you just want that to happen. You're gagging for it to happen. But in that moment and I started thinking, this is you know, I've analyzed this time and time again about what happened in that moment, because it was almost like I'd stop breathing for a minute, you know what I mean. And that's what happens when we get into stressful situations. You're you, you start to shallow breathe, yeah, of course.
And then once you start to do that, Cortersole starts to increase chemical reaction, which is the fight or flight or freeze. I'm driving a car, it's not the best thing to happen. You know what I mean. I start thinking about all the things that could go wrong, So you then start to build into that fear. Fear is a mental and emotional rehearsal for something you don't want to happen, you know what I mean. You can't allow
it to dominate. It's contagious, isn't It doesn't mean to turning back on it, but you And in that moment, it wasn't until I actually they started shooting at it, you know, the intimidating sound of that orchestra of hell, of all those AK forty sevens going off, that it snapped me out and it was like bang. Nothing more was Everything was subconscious from that moment and the training kit back in, thank god. And I took a breath in that moment, almost like I'm not breathed for the
last minute and a half or whatever. And in that moment, breathing just adding clarity, which which dropped the quartersole. Give me a mindset of clarity and not confusion. What do I need to focus on? Not the people in front, not the things, all the things that could go wrong, the people that are shooting at me. Nothing else matters apart from that you know, and in that moment that that's why I learned so much. And I'll talk about that breathe we calibrate delivery.
Alery that would gives you that calvity of mind exactly.
Yeah, yeah, and as you know it, and I talked about that a lot with people afterwards, and it was like, you know, that's the one thing that got me out that situation. We got back and it was incredible. Although in that you know, I learned so much from that, so much from that, And that's the fact that you know, and you can use that adapt that in every situation because you get to a stressful situation, whether you're asking for a pay rise of whatever you're doing, or any
situation that is uncomfortable. Unless you get control of your faculties, you're going to make a decision. The heightened sense of emotion, which is then going to create a negative situation that you know, you're pushing yourself in your mind just goes, get me out whatever wherever you want to take me.
Get the first thing that pops up, you action it and yeah, it's desperate, and.
It's desperate and it's in the wrong direction, you you know, And that's obviously quite an extreme but people could. Yeah, but people, you know, there's a lot of stuff now out there about breath work, which is so powerful, you know, starting to control your breathing everything else, which is incredible. So but that moment taught me so much about that situation,
about about myself. But the thing is, the negative side is that that was the fact that I thought that was early on in the days of getting there as a contractor, you know what I mean. And then from that moment on, I was like, I ain't coming back from here. But I kind of giving up by that time. Anyway, I was drinking too much a lot, you know. We went back to the village, I was drinking. Everyone was drinking. When the tools went down, everyone was drinking, but I
think I was drinking more, you know. I was like, I made sure in my room I had a stash, so I knocked myself out, you know what I mean. I used to sleep with a pistol under my pillow, not knowing if the door was going to be bashed in by the militia. And I lived like that for four years. Started taking Valley in the day after just to handle the anxiety of the hangovers and this living in back Dad in the Red Zone, and it was
it was a horrible It was absolutely horrible. I look back now and that really did cay me in mentally. You know, I had to get out of there. Four years later, I just said, I plucked up the courage to leave. And it's so hard when you're being paid that much money, you know what I mean. And that's why I call it fool's gold now, yeah, because we're quite happy to compromise everything for the dollar.
In two thousand and nine, Commando Damon Tomlinson was serving in Afghanistan when one night changed everything. He was working a night patrol when his unit drove over a Taliban ied Damien lost both of his legs in the explosion and was left fighting for his life. He was determined to reclaim his life on his own terms, and he spoke to me about the mindset that enabled him to do so.
I'm making progress. If it hurts, you know what I mean, it's and then you've got doctors who are just used to dealing with punters who go in with a sawnee or whatever. And then I'm like, I don't really care what what you guys have got to do. I'm going to be doing this. You're either going to be someone who's on the journey with me to do this, or I'm going to find someone who is you know what I mean like and that. So I never really looked at a lot of the because to me, I was
still me, you know. But I definitely knew that everyone on that night saw something though were never going to unsee. And apparently the time where every now and then because they had moved to white light to save me. You know, they've done everything they could turn the caves and stuff like that, but the village because you can hear what they're saying on their icon radios. There was a huge, huge conference, like there was way more of them than
we originally thought. But we're basically saying, let's light them up. So everyone's posturing and getting ready. If one shot got fired, the US chopper wouldn't have got me out and I'd be dead wall at the minute of the troops in contact would have happened, that rings through. I'm a flag on my parents' mantlepiece.
And what did you manage to keep? Then? What did you lose? And what did you manage to keep? Because I was looking pretty grim at one moment that you're going to these arms.
Yeah. So when my parents found out, the word was he's really low single digit percentage chance of living and if he does, it's going to be a triple ampeteue like And at that stage, I was in at Camp Bastion, which is the UK base, with the trauma team, under a space blanket and if I couldn't hold my body heat, I was I was gone. So that was that was when they found out. And I mean, it's so disjointed when you get back, but to me, I woke up and I was still meet.
You seem to have tackled it with a super positive mindset. Do you think if you hadn't, do you think there's any gray areas herel do you think you go to you stoop to the lowest of the lows where you don't want to be here anymore? And did that mindset ever take charge?
I got to dark places through it. Yeah, I definitely did, but not in the initial phases for me were like, I remember having this comment with my dad because he's always said, you've never used your brain. It's disappointing. He walked in with his great big grin on his face. I'm like smiling on him. We're having a laugh like in a hospital, and he goes, well, you got to use your brain now, don't you.
Good old dad, you got me TV.
I'm gonna now, and then you know he's sort of mapping out or up. We've got to change, We've got to do different things. But to me, the most important thing was there's a group of guys who have gone through something that I can't imagine seeing, let alone it being something you care about, and they have somehow kept me alive. So the mess that I could see, I saw was the result of people's effort on the ground, you know, which I still see it as that it's
what it is. So I've got to try and do something that then has them know how good of a job they've done. So to me, I then had a finite timeline of when they were flying home and I had to be up walking standing in a pair of jeans so you couldn't see prosthetic legs, and it didn't matter what it took. And then like there were bits where like it it hurts a lot.
That was your goal, that was your next objective, that was your next mission, which again we talk about purposes like and you've done everything that you can to make sure that you've done that.
Yeah, And I mean I was like, by all accounts, I was probably one of the worst patients in the history of north Shore Private Hospital because I was just done compromising with it. You know, if I didn't think and right or wrong, didn't think that someone was aligned with my goals, I would like remove them from the process or ignore their advice. You know, I just go all right, I've been through enough to know where I'm
going with this, Like, I know my limits. You don't, like there's a picture of me like five weeks after on a prosthetic that you're not really supposed to wait bear through. But I was like, I'm going down the hall on this because we've got so I'm on one of those walkers pushing it along with the thing, like and there's just concerned face drack.
In his prosthetic leg along. Yeah.
Well, and I'm just like, okay, cool, Well, this is what we've got to do this. I'm still played it at the time, like there's a lot of stuff I'm wrong with it, but I was like, I'm not gonna heal laying down and they're like you just you just you gotta rest, you gotta rest. And I'm like, everyone tells me to rest, like go home, you rest, Like get it up. I've got stuff to do.
My final guest today is Captain Brian Yudell. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Brian was fighting for his life. He just survived the highest speed ejection from a US fighter aircraft at nearly thirteen hundred kilometers per hour. Just as he started to think I'm going to die out here tonight, his resilient mindset took over.
My grandmother was an incredibly strong woman, and she always taught me that we don't get to choose the day we're going to have. We get to choose how we're going to deal with it, and we should be prepared for whatever the day brings physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And she says, if you're in a prop and a situation that you have no control over and you need help, you pray for what you need, not for what you want.
And so I put my head down on the raft and I say, God, I can't die to I I've got too much to do. I've got My wife was four months pregnant with our first child, And I thought to myself, how selfish of it would be for me to not be there and for her to get that knock on the door. I did not want her to get that knock on the door.
Your wife was four months pregnant at this time?
Exactly?
Did that thought process went through your head? Just as I suppose you're going to give up, It's like, I can't give up. I've got to stay alive. My wife is pregnant, I've got a child on the way. And was it that for that ultimately switched things up?
It'll give you superhuman strength, Yeah, absolutely, because I took that raft. I took that raft and I shoved it down into the base between my legs like this. I threw my shoulder into it like like that, and I rode the wave up And when I crested the top of the wave and went down the backside, my body flipped her into the raft. And I was sitting there perfectly, and my leg from the knee down was hanging ninety
to the right over the side. My foot was turned around backwards and folded up underneath me, and this arm was bit back like that. And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking to myself. You can't live out here looking like this. You're going to be out here a long time. You can't sit here and be looking at yourself like this. So you got to straighten yourself out. This is one of those times where it's better to look good than to feel good. And so I I grabbed my leg and I heaved it in and it
went from ninety right to ninety left. It's now rustling across the top of my other leg, and I'm thinking, oh, that doesn't look right either, So I shoved it down into the base of the raft. I pulled my foot out from underneath me and got it pointed in the right direction. Brought my arm around and immobilized it into my harness. And now I know I didn't structurally fix anything, but I'm if I'm going to be out here, I want everything pointed in the right direction.
Yeah.
So now I'm starting to go into shock. I'm shaking uncontrollably. I know that if I don't stop and treat myself for the shock, that I'm going to go unconscious. And at that point, I reached down to my g suit pocket. We have these pockets on the legs, and I opened the zipper where I always kept a water bottle. I stuck my hand down into that pocket to retrieve that water bottle, and the water bottle had been blown right through the bottom of the pocket and was gone. Well,
I was kept my wallet in the other pocket. I wanted to see if it was there, opened the zipper and stuck my hand down in there, and my wallet was also blown through the bottom of the pocket and it was gone. And then I started thinking, crap. I got to cancel credit cards, I got to go get a new driver's license, so I lost.
Tell me that that didn't go through your head.
That is exactly what went through my head. I'm thinking, somebody is good, that's the wallet's gonna wash up, and somebody is gonna get twenty bucks. And that was a lot of money back in the day.
But Brian, do you think do you think that way of thinking just just strats the mind from the bigger issues? You know, it keeps you alive on to me, doesn't it, because you know you're just trying to keep the mind active if you're trying not to, like you said, go into shock. So I suppose all these little things that you're thinking about a positive distraction from not actually looking
at the bigger problem, which is you can't move. You're now floating in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with one arm ultimately, and God, you're probably not going to make it out there.
I have.
Had the privilege of meeting and speaking to numerous Vietnam POWs and people that have gone through just incredibly insane things, and there's one common denominator that I have found in all of those people. The events are different, there's a lot of similar already between the events, but the one common denominator I have found is a sense of humor.
Of adversity.
That's exactly right to be able to find humor in the darkest places. If you can laugh at yourself and the situation that you're in, that's half the battle right there.
I was hoping you're going to say that, because that's one of the War Marine core values is humor in the face of adversity. And it's so true. It works.
Live it, love it, laughing man, Just freaking deal with what you got in front of you and and trudge on through. And things can always get worse. I mean, you know, I picture where you're at, where I'm at in the situation that I'm at. But you know what, I'm still alive. I'm still bringing in and out. And the other thing that I tell people, I said, is we all set these goals, right, Well, every goal has a set of sub goals. You'd go trying to attack
this goal. It's overwhelming, but you attack each sub goal, and each sub goal that's successful gives you confidence to keep going. And that's what that night was all about.
It was a.
Little victories exactly. That then leads to the ultimate of surviving the situation.
If you'd like to hear the full interviews with Ollie Olaton, Damion Tomlinson, and Brian Newdell, on linked them in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Headgame. I'll be back January twenty second with more powerful stories like the ones you've heard today. Until then, I'm at Middleton. Catch you again next time.