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Hi and here, I'm taking a Christmas break and we'll be back with more head Game stories on the twenty second of January. I thought this would be a great chance to take a look back at some of the amazing stories we heard last year. In this episode, you're here from three people who fought their lives, were heading in one direction and then one day changed it all for them. Firstly, you're here from comedian Simon Kennedy, who received a devastating call in two thousand and one.
Yeah.
So two thousand and one. So I was living with my girlfriend who is now my wife. I'd gone to bed. It was late and it was tennish at night and I I think I'd had a few drinks. I'd hit the hay. Then my phone rang and my wife she said, answer your phone. I went, I don't want to go to im and go to sleep. She goes, it's your brother calling.
Don't worry about it.
And he was calling from London. He lived in London. He didn't ring very often. It was very rare. Maybe on my birthday that'd be it. But I didn't want to answer the phone. But my wife made me. She made me answer.
She has come on.
I picked up the phone and I was pretty drowsy, and he said, hey, there have you been watching the news? I went, no, No, I've gone to bed. He goes, there's some stuff going on in America. There's some planes have hit some buildings, and I'm just a bit worried about mum because she's on holidays over there. Mum had gone on a bit of a retirement trip through the US and Canada and all that sort of thing, so
she was over there. I'm always a bit like, oh, god, like seriously, like, what are the odds in a country of three hundred million people and you expect that our mum's caught up in something like that?
But anyway, is that what went through your head? What are the odds?
And you were just like yeah, like I mean, honestly, I mean, logically speaking, I'm like, come on, I'm like, really, I want to go to sleep here. But my wife said, oh, come on, let's this is serious. I said, yeah, Well, I'd seen my mum a few weeks before the day before she left, and she handed me her itinerary, which she would always do. She was very prepared, worst case scenario. She was on top of it all. She had all all that going on. So she gave me her itinerary and.
It was weird.
It was weird because she always she had a dark sense of humor her self. I said, she gave it to me, and she said, what, I don't need this. She said, oh, no, it's just in case the terrorists kept me or something. And that was the kind of dark humor she had. I went to the itinerary, I checked out where mum was supposed to be at that particular time. I told my brother, I said, looks like she's leaving Washington on American Airlines flight seventy seven. I
remember the silence and the moment is there. He said, I think that's one of them. And then I just went and turned on the TV and we had a look at what was going on, and yeah, they started reporting on flight seventy seven having hit the Pentagon and that started the rest of my life. And it was it was a long It was a long night.
My next guest is Sam Bloom. Sam was in Thailand with her husband and three sons when their family holiday soon became a nightmare.
On our second day, we'd been swimming, and we'd actually planned to hire bikes and ride up to a fishing village which was about two kilometers away. And so beforehand, one of the kids, we'd had breakfast, and then the boys got a juice and one of the kids saw like a staircase going up onto this big flat rooftop. And so three years go up there and check out the view, drink our juices before we go riding, and so, yeah, we went up the stairs. And I actually don't have
any memory of even going up the stairs. And apparently I learned on the railing and it had dry right, but I didn't realize. So I leant for it obviously backwards and fell six meters and yeah, broke my back and sustained numerous other injuries. That was our fourth day of our holiday.
Fourth day of your holiday. Everything's going well. The kids are loving it, You're loving it. The children are up there.
Is that correct?
So the children do they witness you for six meters onto the ground?
Yeah, they saw, Well, a couple of them just saw my feet go over and then they heard the crashing case. It was like a metal railing and then so yeah, they all ran down, and yeah it was horrific. I mean, I obviously knocked myself out. I freshened my skull, so I was like bleeding from my head and oh, I'd bit through my tongue so there was blood coming out
of my mouth. Yeah. Yeah, I was just lying there unconscious and gurgling because I had a lot of internal bleeding in my lungs and stuff just from the force of falling. So yeah, it was It was horrible because you know, it's pretty horrific to like run down the stairs and then see your mom like lying unconscious bleeding.
Especially when you're going from one extreme to the other. You know, you're havingough time of your life and and and then that literally gets flipped upside down from having you know, all smiles, laughing and loving life to life's going to change from this moment onwards.
Yeah, and it split second everything changed. Yeah, So no, it was terrible. So then Cam rolled me over because I landed on my back and that's how I hit my head as well. And then he rolled me over and he saw this massive lump on my back and he started yelling for an ambulance, and yeah, it was horrible. I mean, I don't remember it, but it must have been. Yeah, it would have been horrific for the kids.
And Cam absolutely. What was your if you don't mind talking about, what's your first memory of realizing that you'd been in an accident.
Yeah, no, my first memory was probably two days after and my mom and my sister had come to Thailand to see me, and so at first after the accident, I was taken just to a little regional hospital and they were trying to stitch out my head and X ray me, and they're kind of like, yeah, it's not looking good, and so they put us all in an ambulance and drove us another three hours up to a private hospital.
And you can't remember any of this, man, I don't.
Remember, no, not one. But I know, well, I was conscious. Apparently I was saying to Cam, I can't feel my legs, but I don't remember that. And so, yeah, it would have been a couple of days after the accident and I woke up. I remember seeing my mom and sister there and I'm like, what are you guys doing here? And then I remember saying to Mom, I want to get up. I want to get up because I was strapped to a spider board and I must have had this strap over my chest and I remember saying to Mom,
you know, it's hurting my boobs. It's hurting my boobs, or want to get up. Then that's all I remember then. And it's funny because my second memory, I was in theater, but I didn't know I was in theater. I had no idea what was going on. And I remember them pulling up my T shirt besu. I had this aqua T shirt, was quite a bright T shirt on and I remember them pulling it up and then cut it off and then I stuck like a central line or
something in my neck and that really hurt. And I remember just gripping onto the sheet and then you just see the mask come down, and yeah, that's my next memory. But I had no idea what was going on.
When did the reality of what the hell is going on? When did that kick in? And did you freak out? And what was what was going on?
No?
Actually, you know that's the weirdest thing. I don't actually think I realized that I couldn't walk mate, not so I got home from from Thailand.
So they didn't tell you that you were paralyzed.
No, Well, initially my main focus was actually on my head because I had like subdural extra pabo timers, so I like the most insane headaches, and that was kind of all I could think about. And to be honest, I remember that the nurses would often come in and just inject I don't know, some sort of painkiller, and I was pretty out of it a lot of the time. And I remember my best friend she also flew out to Thailand, and yeah, I remember seeing her bursting into tears.
But then it was just so it's so incredible, like how your your brain can just like just erase y.
Yeah, I think, yes, phenomenal, wasn't it. But when when did the news hit And how long were you in Thailand for before you got flown home?
Well? I was in Thailand for about three weeks.
You in Thailand for three weeks and no one told you that you were paralyzed.
Wow.
My final guest is Nigel Brennan. In two thousand and eight, Nigel was working as a photojournalist along with his colleague Amanda Lindhaut. They were hoping to capture the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Somalia. It was a risky trip and their planned seven day visit turned into a hellish four hundred and sixty two days in captivity.
We jump in our vehicle, we take off, We get to basically the outskirts of Mogadishi where the Mogadishu University is. You've got Africa Union troops that are stationed there. You can see all the sandbags and guys behind machine guns and those sorts of things. The car stops and a
security detail that are in the vehicle. Basically we're told pretty much at that point that they have to leave us and we now have to travel five kilometers without security detail until we pick up our next security detail.
Did that not raise alarm bell?
Absolutely do.
So there's there's an inside job going on right there or something along those way. Yes, because you get your security detail. The idea is that they stay with you, stay with you on the boots on the ground.
Well, it was explained to us that because they were seen as government forces, they can't travel into a militia run area, so that they would basically be stationed there. They would wait until we've come back from the day and we'd pick them up. So again, like you know, having done hostile environment training, we say, if the plan changes, you basically need to stop what you're doing, think about the consequences, think about the risks, and if it's too risky, you go home and have a cup of tea.
Yeah, the flags basically yeah, Yeah, So.
Amanda and I had a really quick conversation. We were like, you know, we've come all this way, we really want to get this story. And we made the decision that we punched through.
And is that because you've been getting excuse my friend ship stories before and you're like, this is the first meeting one we're going to get. This is the first one that we're going to Yeah, I think really sink our teeth into.
For the first three days, it was this sort of fed stuff that that was sort of I think, look, I think.
Almost just pleasing you with little little things.
You know, to keep us busy while while a juice was working with the nat Ja guys getting the stuff that we were sort of hoping or wanting to get as well. So it's just like you guys just can have the scraps off the table we'll just keep you busy, you know.
So the decision wasn't that hard. You were like, let's let's just go for it.
We're here now, let's go made a decision. There's five of us in the car. We leave our security detail and we basically punched down the road. I'm mucking around with my camera, basically looking at the images I've taken from the day before, deleting images slowly, like so had all the shots from while I was with the African Union Forces. I can remember hearing Amanda and Abdar, who was our interpreter, sort of speaking by the stage. We
created quite a good bond with Abdi. He was good fun, liked to laugh, and they were sort of singing and mucking around. And I can remember looking up over the driver's shoulder and seeing a car flashing at slights because we said they told us that we'd obviously intercept another security detail, and I just presumed that that was the
car that was our security detail. Didn't really take much notice, went back to my camera, and then as we got to that car, we stopped, and then I sort of looked up and looked over my right shoulder and just saw a guy fully mask faced with an AK forty seven literally sort of inches away from the glass, and then the next thing that you know, aw, four doors are ripped open. I'm dragged out of the vehicle drive.
The second the guy who's in the front seat with the driver, and then Abdin Amanda, who in the back world brought around to my side of the car, pushed face down into the dirt AK forty seven at the back of the head. Very quickly, all five of us are bundled into the back side of this slam cruiser. I've got this really big hostage taker who's now sitting beside us, so there's six of us in the back side.
I've got Amanda on my lap. Two guys jump in the front, one's got a pistol pointing back, and then two young guys again masks face at the back who are pointing AK forty seven's at the back of our heads.
If you'd like to hear the full interviews with Simon Kennedy, Nigel Brennan, and Sam Bloom, I linked them in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll be back on the twenty second of January with more great stories in the meantime, take care and I'll see you in the next episode.