All right, we're ready for departure. Here at the Pilot Project Podcast, the best source for stories and advice from the pilots of the RCAF. Brought to you by Skies magazine and RCAF today. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With me today is our guest from the Christmas episode, Greg Gerling. Greg, welcome to the show and thanks so much for being here. Hey, thanks for having me. Before we start, let's go over Greg's bio.
Greg graduated from flight training in 2008 and was posted to 403 Squadron in Gagetown, New Brunswick, flying the Ch 146 Griffin. After getting qualified, he was deployed to Afghanistan with a Canadian helicopter Force Afghanistan from October 2009 until August 2010 in support of Op Athena. While there, he flew close to 600 combat hours in 103 sorties, doing mostly Chinook escort reconnaissance, close combat attack, and armed overwatch missions. While deployed, he held the position of
electronic warfare officer. Upon his return, he was able to complete his Advanced Tactical Aviation Course, or ATAC, and got his A Category Instructor rating and was employed as a standards officer and check pilot. In 2019, Greg was posted to the Joint Rescue Coordination Center, or JRCC. In Halifax. As an aeronautical coordinator there, he was responsible for defining and coordinating missions for SAR crews, including marine, air and humanitarian missions.
On his days off, Greg got his airline transport pilot license for helicopters and was able to fly for Breton Air, based in Sydney, Nova Scotia. In August 2023, Greg was posted to the Halifax Recruiting Center and is just getting started there. Greg has close to 3000 hours military flying, including 600 combat, 800 instructional, and 500 on NVGs. So where did aviation start for you, Greg? Great question. Aviation, it's, um,
not something I ever grew up thinking about or wanting. I actually grew up on a farm in Anaganish, Nova Scotia. We had a beef farm, and my dad had a farm equipment dealership. So my whole dream in life was to sell tractors. So I started with an agricultural business diploma from the Nova Scotia Agricultural College. I did a farm equipment mechanics apprenticeship course on the side while I was working
as a mechanic. And then I also went to St of X University in Anaganish to get my degree in business. Towards the end of that degree, my dad had an offer to buy his business. And I looked at the numbers and stuff, and I knew that if they had that kind of money to buy him out, they had that money to put him out, too. So the business decision for him was definitely to sell. So that kind of left me up in the air. What I was going to do with the rest of my life.
And it started a little journey on the business path where I went to work for a company called Irving, and I worked for them for two years. And on the sidelines, I started in the infantry reserves going into my last year university because my roommate was doing it, and he's like, hey, this will be fun for the summer. Run around, shoot guns, throw grenades. That does sound like I can go do that. So I never had
any interest in the military at all. And then I sort of got my foot in the door because of my friend that got me into that. Then I was doing that on the side while I was still working for Irving and decided that, you know what, I really wanted to pursue a full time military career. So I went to the recruiting center and I
said, hey, I want to go full time military. At this time, I had already done all of my officer training, and, uh, I was employed as a platoon commander with the first Nova Scotia Highlanders at a Picto. So I said, that was a lot of hard work to get all that done, so I'd like to do that job. And at the time, Afghanistan was going on and I was interested in deploying as an infantry officer. When I went into the recruiting center, the guy there basically said, well, you have a business
degree. You could be a logistics officer. And I said, Well, I haven't really thought about anything else. And then he said, well, geez, you could be a pilot if you want. And I'm like, that sounds pretty good. Put me down for that. So that's how I became a pilot. Like, just that simple. And, uh, I went through the training and the selection, and here I am today. Did you have any background experience in
aviation? Had you ever flown an airplane before that, or did you go to air shows or anything like that? So my dad had taken me to an air show in Shearwater when I was a kid, and I still remember that. And the funny thing about that story is, years later, after training, I got my wings and I flew my dad out to Winnipeg. Uh, and you know how that is, the wings grad party. We had a few drinks and stuff, and we were at the back of the
mess and I said, dad, isn't it crazy? Like, all I ever wanted to do was sell tractors. And he said to me, he's like, you know what, all I ever wanted to do is be an Air Force pilot. No way. And I never knew that until I had wings on my chest. And it was really interesting because, um, he actually went and applied for the Air Force, but he immigrated from Holland after World War II. My grandparents survived World War II, got married, had my dad and then immigrated here to
farm. So he didn't learn English until he was nine. So he was always a little bit behind in school. Super smart, very, very common sense. Just full of common sense. He ended up going to the recruiting center and they said, well, you need to have a degree. And he's like, Well, I'm not getting a degree. He went on and got a mechanics license and then went on and became successful in
business. And I did know that he did pursue a little bit of flying when I was a kid, but he was too busy with the kids and the business was sort of taking off at the time, too, so so it's really interesting that my dad had such an interest in aviation that I never knew about. And then here I ended up sort of living his dream and he sort of lived what I always dreamed that. I was going to do. How did you find your flight training experience in the forces? Really, really rewarding, challenging,
rewarding. Super fun. Yeah. Had a really good time and I had really good, uh, instructors and I had really good peers around me. My strength was always hands and feet. I don't know why. I think partly because of growing up on a farm, just operating equipment really served me well, and also having that work ethic from being on a farm to be able to put the work in. I
had really good friends around me to help me with the book stuff. There's one guy who's a lieutenant colonel now, Chris Bowers, who's in Winnipeg, and we did every course right from air crew selection together, right up until we had our wings. And I would go to his house every night and study, and he would teach me everything that was going on in the ground school. And I beat him on every exam except the very last one at our wings
course. And I definitely credit him for being one of the best instructors that I've had for the ground stuff, and certainly a very good friend in the peer. And he's off doing really big things now, too. He went into the maritime helicopter community and now he's in Winnipeg doing big senior staff officer stuff. Awesome. Yeah. Were you stressed out at all, or was it fairly smooth sailing for you? So I wasn't stressed, um, too much for the simple fact that it was never my dream
to be a pilot. And I think that that served me very well when I had a stumbling block or something I found challenging. And it's like, I don't know if. I'm going to get through this or not. I was like, well, if I don't, I'm going to go to the infantry. Because I was already qualified as an infantry platoon commander, and I was already a lieutenant at the time too.
So I had options, like I was going to be in the military and I was going to do something that I loved to do, whether it was being a pilot or in the infantry at that time, they were both good options to me. So because of that, I really handled the stress well, because it wasn't something that I was going to lose. I never felt like it was something I had or really even wanted to be honest with you.
So I'm really grateful that that was the approach that I took, because stress is the thing that really is the most challenging thing for student pilots, for sure. I think managing it is one of the hardest skills you learn, and it's such a hard thing for a lot of people. That is their dream. Right? For most of them, I would argue that is their dream. So you do put a lot of pressure on yourself, and it's such a tricky thing to manage.
Yeah. So you've got through your flight training, and selection time rolls around and you get selected. Griffins was that what you wanted? I got a good story about that one. So when I joined as a pilot, I went to do my OJT at 413 Squadron in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. And I wanted comarons, for sure. I got out with a guy named Major Steve Reed. Uh, he's still in he's at Gander right now. He's over at Wing Ops there. And he was just a wonderful mentor to me. He took me on flights and stuff.
And after the crash in 2006 of 914, there was lots of issues and there was hesitation in taking OJT pilots flying. That was the comrade. The comrade. Yeah. Off cancer. Nova Scotia. So I was there at that time, uh, and he still took me on this one mission where we went like 150 miles offshore off of Yarmouth. And we rescued a lady who had a lot of problems on a cruise ship. And, uh, I watched the Sartex go down and package her up and take her up, and just working on her in the
helicopter. And they saved her life. And it was very impactful for me as a human, but also as a member of this team. Even though I was just a passenger, that really stuck with me, and that was something that I wanted to do. So then I went through flight training and stuff, and at the end of Moosejaw, I did well, and they tried to push me jets, and I was very interested in jets. I had spent time in Cold Lake, and I really loved the community. Like, all the people there were amazing. Some
of the best pilots you'll ever meet. And my flight commander at the time was a very experienced fighter pilot who did the F 15 exchange tour up in Alaska a few years before. And he had been around for a long time. I think he even started on Voodoos. So he was telling me, hey, I think you'd be really good at this. And of course, as a student know, you're just going to be happy getting wings at that point, right? And then to kind of have your tires pumped a little
bit like this. It felt really good. And I also I loved the form phase. Like flying in the Harvard and doing formation was just I just loved it. Yeah, it's very exciting and it's very. Challenging and it's the one thing that only the military really does. You know what I mean? It just felt this is military flying, right? So I told him, I'm like, I'm not sure. And he's like, well, come to work tomorrow. We're going to put you
up in the Hawk. We'll send you for a flight. So there's a two ship flight going out with a person that was just upgrading. They had to do a radar square, so just take off two ship, an instrument approach leading a two ship. And then we had a whole bunch of gaffes. So they're like, well, then we're going to go play. So we went out to the training area and we did like, 500 foot separation. And the pilot I was with is actually, um, Major Parker, who's the lead of
the Snowbirds right now. Um, yeah, I talked to him here in Halifax not too long ago and he let me fly the whole thing. And so after I landed, I came in and my flight committer was like, so was that a fun flight? I'm like, honestly, that was the best flight I've ever had in my life. Who gets to fly these jets around and do all this? He's like, so are you going to go jets? And I'm like, well, I need a little bit of time to think about. He's like, you have
30 minutes. And I was like, well, I've wanted to do chrome runs for two years at this point, so 30 minutes isn't going to be enough time to think on this. So I said no. So after I told him no, I went back to Anigan and Sean leave. And a couple of days later he had called me and said, hey, Greg, we really
want you to go this. We've got a few jet slots here. And there was a lot of really skilled pilots on my mooseja course too, that a bunch of them did go on to fighter jobs and they're very successful there and they've had a lot of operational experience. But he wanted me to go and he talked me into it pretty much. And I'm like, look, I'm 95% in on this. I just need to talk to one guy, Major Steve Reed, because he's been my mentor, he's been very good to me. So at the time he
was at a desk job in Ottawa. So I called, left a message he was busy. And I went out for a run just on a dirt road in behind my house in Antigone ish about six k into the run, a Comrade helicopter flies right over my head. And I'm like, that has to be a sign. I ran home, I packed a bag, I went down to Greenwood. I stayed with, uh, a friend of mine, Ron Bush, who was a pilot on the Comrade at the time, and also
a good friend, too. And I went, I talked to everybody in the community, and I talked to a friend of mine that I recruited into the military who was a Woofie tech, water fuel, environmental technician. Like, we went to high school together, and so we went and had lunch. And I'm like, this is what it's all about. It's like being in my home,
know, flying search and rescue missions. And for me and, uh, where I was at in my life at that time, it just made the most sense to gun for the Comrade spot, not knowing that I could get a Comrade spot. Yeah, I'm now putting my hat in for helicopters. So then when I went to helicopter school, I ended up being on the small group evaluation for the Outlaw. So I was on the first Outlaw course. There was four of us, and they wanted
a person to go to each of the fleets. So there was a Comrant spot, a Griffin spot, uh, Seeking spot, and a Chinook Exchange in Australia. So I knew that I better take a look at these communities before I actually go to helicopter school because I didn't know anything about maritime, I didn't know anything about Tech Hell mhm at the time. I just knew that I loved Comarines and the mission set, right? So I talked to my
flight commander, and I recommend this to all OJTs. Try to get a week OJT, uh, on this airframe. Like, go over and see the aurora, go over and see the cyclone. If you can do that, and if it's in the budget, it's very beneficial because if we can get our OJT pilots on airframes that they enjoy the most and are the best fit for them, not just for airframe, but mission set and also location mhm we're going to keep them longer, so it
benefits us. I went and spent a week on the Seeking, and it was very interesting what they do. Their mission set is very cool. They get to travel the world and all that stuff, but it just wasn't a good fit for me. And then I went up to Gagetown and a guy named Jim Newton, who ended up being the, uh, squadron commander there, took me under his wing and he put me in the simulator. He'd got me flying every day, got me on night flights, on night vision
goggles, and it was low level flying. And I actually flew with, uh, General Alexander. Okay. He actually flew me there. He probably wouldn't remember that very cool, but I remember it. Yeah. That week was a game changer for me because I fell in love with Tackl. I mean, with my army background as well, too. I understood the customer because the customer of Tackle is the army, right? Yeah. And I also understood what it was like being a soldier, getting supported by air, especially helicopter
support. Right. So I was like, wow, I really love this flying. This is like, a really good fit. And so when it came to selection in Portage, I did top the course. So I had my first choice, and there was a comb run spot available in, uh, Greenwood. And my course director at the time, he's like, you got your comrade spot. Do you want to do that? And I said, I kind of want to go to 430 Squadron because I want to learn French.
And then I want to get posted to Gagetown and become an instructor there on my second tour so I can be on the East Coast because location was very important for me. So then they said no to the 430 Squadron because my French wasn't good enough. I had a profile. Yeah. But then my course director came to me and he's like, hey, would you be interested in going as a pipeline to 403 Squadron? And I was like, yeah, I would be.
Okay, so we're going to shift gears, and the rest of the interview is going to be focused on your time in Afghanistan. Sure. How did you find out you were going to Afghanistan? So when I left helicopter school and got posted to 403 Squadron, I started my course right away. Like I mentioned earlier, that's when Canada decided to buy six Shinook helicopters and deploy eight Griffins to theater. So when I was on course on my Griffin course, I was told by my Co at the time that I was going to
go, and I was really excited about it. So it's funny because when you're going through pilot training, like, when I was going through, we didn't have any deployed air assets other than, uh, uh, transport missions in theater at the time, and there was no visibility that that was going to happen. And then all of a sudden, we bought six Chinooks and put eight Griffins into Afghanistan, which was a very active combat zone. And here I was, just a student, still learning how to fly and
preparing to go to this combat theater. So I think it's really important for a lot of your listeners who are pilots going through the training system to know that, hey, the stuff that you're learning right now, you may be using this within a year even. You just never know what Canadian foreign policy is going to be totally. And where the government is going to commit its assets, its, uh, resources.
Yeah. I never expected to, within less than a year of finishing qualifying on the Aurora to be flying over Iraq. That's for sure. Right. This is submarine hunter, so that was not in my crystal ball. It's crazy. My aircraft commander at the time, Ron Krueger, he said, I feel bad for you guys, because he was at the end of his career and I was at the beginning of mine, and he's like, this is the highlight of your career. Like, this Afghanistan job is very important and very dynamic, and it is what
Takhel is all about. And you are not going to get this again in your career. Uh, I would bet that's the pinnacle of what Takhel is meant to do. Yeah. And for me, it actually worked out really well, because I went in and I got to deploy and do the job for ten months. When I came back, I had more combat flying time than I had domestic flying time. So I was very experienced with combat operations and with the EOIR MX 15, like, electro optic infrared systems and combat attack
work and all that stuff. And escort that EOIR that you were. Talking about there, electro optic infrared, uh, and that, for the listeners, is the camera. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So I always try to call it. EOIR, but we call it EOIR. Everybody calls it flur, and some systems. Are flur systems, but flur being forward looking infrared. That's right. Yeah. Anyways, that became a very useful tool for us because our role on the Griffin is attack and reconnaissance. Right.
And tactical aviation does three roles mobility, attack and reconnaissance. So the Griffin basically took over the attack and reconnaissance roles for Afghanistan, and the Chinook was the mobility. How did you feel when you found. Out you were going? I was excited. Yeah. Any trepidation? Of course. Yeah. There's risk involved. Right. But we all signed up for that risk. Yeah. It's a funny thing, because we sign a blank check when we first sign up
for whatever risk the government chooses us to take. We've already pre signed the check. Right. Yeah. I think the interesting thing is when you start to define the mission and location that you're going, then you start to think about the specific risks. And I think that if anybody didn't have trepidation about it, I don't think. That would be healthy. I think it's healthy to think about, hey, what can go wrong?
What is the risk? And then, how can we mitigate it? Right. So I was, um, probably more excited, though, because my infantry background and having known infantry friends that had deployed, and I wanted to be in the fight, and I believed in the mission. Yeah. I mean, all of us who signed up post 911 kind of knew there was a decent chance you'd end up in Afghanistan. Right. Yeah. So I was more excited, but cautious as well. So it allowed me to really focus on my training, though.
Yeah. Speaking of your training, what was the workup training like for Afghanistan? It was a lot it was very intense. Yeah. So I was a brand new Fo. I just learned how to fly. And then I learned how to employ the Griffin tactically low level flying. And then we had to step that up a level and say, let's do it at 50 degrees, and let's do it at 3000ft, and let's do it with dust. And now
let's do it with somebody shooting at you. Mhm, you know what I mean? So we had to prepare for all that stuff but the workup training that we did, it was incredible. We did everything from rehearsing mission orders to planning was there was a lot of planning training which was basically we just did missions but we ran through the whole operational planning cycle and then we would employ our tactics on these different
types of missions with the given threats that they would give us. And a funny story is we did simulators so we would actually get the intelligence briefs. We were in, like, Petawala at the time or something, I think or Edmonton. And we were doing an exercise, and this one was in Edmonton. And, uh, they gave us a scenario and we planned this mission and then we go into these little tents that had computers in them and we would fly the missions on a simulator. And this one mission, I
remember we went and we did and we got shot down. As luck would have it, we got shot down for real pretty much in the same spot as we did in that simulation which really prepared us well for it. Uh, and I tend to use the term shot up more than shot down because we were sort of able to recover the helicopter and it feels like more of a win that we recovered it. It was pretty damaged and we didn't get it all the way home. We just got a
two Ford operating base. But the crazy thing is that's exactly how we handled that situation in the simulator six months before it actually uh, happened. So very intense training plus all your first aid and there's a lot of things that you don't think about. There's cultural awareness training so you know where you're flying and how the people deal with day to day life so you know actually what patterns of life look like and stuff like that.
Because uh, for us, something that maybe would appear to be a threat with the knowledge they gave us about the communities that were living there, we knew that, oh, actually people gather here because of this at this time or just. That every household has a rifle. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I will say that by the time pre deployment training was done we were all very happy to actually get deployed to have that end. It was a lot of work, it was intense.
Yeah, but as you were saying, you never know when that training is going to come in handy. Right? You do it in a simulator and then you see that in real life, and it's just that much easier. Yeah, absolutely. And that's like flying and handling. Just normal flying emergencies, right? Yeah. We've spoken a little bit about this, but what were the roles the Griffins filled in Afghanistan? So the role of the Griffin was doing attack and reconnaissance work, and, uh, the Chinook did the mobility
piece. So with that mobility piece that the Chinook was handling, they were the workhorse of Afghanistan. It was the Chinook. Our mission for CHFA was to protect ground troops and to do that, 80% of the casualties at the time were due to roadside bombs. So flying people by air was the safest way to do it. M and Canada basically bought these Chinooks to put them there so that we wouldn't have to rely on partner nations to move our own troops.
CfHA I think we said earlier is Canadian forces helicopter Afghanistan. Yeah. In order to put the Chinook there and keep it safe, it needed an armed escort, which we decided to put the Griffin there in that role. So anywhere a Chinook goes, it has protection with it. So the Chinook is the protected force and the Griffin is the protector. So, uh, probably about 70% of our workload was Chinook escort. The Chinook ended up moving 7 million pounds of cargo. Wow. And 91,000 troops. That's crazy.
And CHFA was able to reduce the casualty rates significantly there. So I'm really proud of being a part of that just because I know that being able to move those troops by air kept a lot of troops alive. You don't know for sure, but we felt that the job was very important, very rewarding. So that was the bulk of our work with Chinook escort. But we were also able to do reconnaissance. So sometimes
intelligence would need imaging of something. So we had our camera system that we could go out and take, uh, pictures, or we could look at future landing zones and stuff like that for upcoming operations. We did a lot of air assaults where we would take soldiers, whoever they might be, um, sometimes special forces, sometimes conventional army troops, and put them into different areas of operation to complete
their missions. We would move them by air so we could go out and get imagery of the landing zones and stuff like that to see if it was safe. Or we could get pattern of life stuff as well. So that was sort of the biggest part of the reconnaissance role. But we would also go out at night and look for roadside bombs. The really cool thing about the camera that we had with the, uh, infrared on it basically gives you an
image based off of temperature. So the way that Afghanistan was was in the day, it would be like 50 degrees, so everything would warm up. All the ground would heat right up. And then at night, it would get down to sometimes like -15. Okay, so. There's a huge temperature swing. And at night the Taliban would go out and dig these roadside bombs into the roads, letting all that cool air into that top layer of dirt. So we would fly down the road and we'd see these things called lollipops, which was
the main charge in the center of the road. And then they would dig a line, like a detonation cord kind of thing. So you'd have like a lollipop for us, it would show up in the camera and we would see that's a bomb. Yeah. And so we would call that to an EOD team. Explosive ordinance disposal. Yeah. So we would get an EOD team out in the morning
and they would detonate the bomb and it would save lives. And then sometimes we would find people digging in the road as well, which we had certain rules of engagement that we would follow to deal with those threats and that sort of carries over into the attack work that we would do. So our attack work was if anybody was in theater, in the area that we were, like basically we mostly operated just in
Canada's area of operations. But any troops that came into contact could call us up if we were flying in the area, whether we would be on Chinook escort or just as a two ship of Griffin's flying around and they would call us to support the firefight. Most of the time we would show up and the firefight would be done because the enemy were scared of us because of the gun. The gun M really was effective. Very, very effective. And if we had to engage the enemy, we were
capable of doing that. We did a lot of training on different patterns and tactics that we employed to do the attack work and work with the ground forces to make sure it's an effective attack. With the primary goal of that being where are the friendlies? Uh, protect the friendlies, don't shoot at the friendlies. That was the biggest rule out there, is like, first where's the friendlies? And then start working out from there. Try to see if you can help
support those friendlies and the firefight. Yeah, the friendlies were very good at handling their own firefights a lot of the time, but I don't know any Griffin crew that was, uh, out there for very long in a firefight. The firefights ended pretty quick. Yeah, well, those Dylan guns, like you said, how many rounds per minute? I think it's 3000 rounds a minute. Yeah. I mean that's a pretty huge advantage. It's a lot. Yeah. So we would carry 4000 rounds. Wow. Yeah.
So it's like we could shoot for a minute. So you got to be careful what you're shooting. But is it hard to tell troops from each other, like enemy from friendly. When you're flying around? No, it's easy to tell friendlies, but it's hard to tell civilian and enemy. It's very challenging. Yeah. That must be really difficult. Yeah. So our rules of engagement were very appropriate, I'll say, for the theater. Canada, to my knowledge, has never had any kind of collateral
damage that I know of. Canada's preferred method of attack work was the Griffin in Afghanistan. From what I've seen anyways, it worked really well because we had small bullets and we had to be right there, so we knew exactly what we were shooting and we weren't going to take down a building with that. Yeah, it's not like you're using explosive rounds or something that causes collateral damage. Exactly. Yeah. There is a capability that the Griffin has on the Gao 21, which is a 50 caliber.
Okay. Yeah, we can put explosive rounds in that, but I've never used them before. What's it like being in a firefight? It's busy. Really busy. Yeah. I'll tell you a quick story. We were doing a patrol in Afghanistan, just two Griffins. So it was always two Griffins. We called them a Griffin's weapons team or a GWT. So a, uh, Griffin never went anywhere
alone. We always had mutual support. So if one person is sort of off to the front left, the other Griffin would kind of stay back to the rear right, so it can cover the 06:00 or the tail of the lead aircraft. And then the lead aircraft would sort of COVID or scout the ground that the trailing aircraft was going to fly. That's just an example of one tactic on how to fly. But we were able to keep each
other really safe, working in pairs. So we were flying around one day and we got a call from a sniper detachment at a forward operating base. And they had a target of four people that had an illegal vehicle checkpoint set up. And it was a valid target within our rules of engagement. So I was flying with a very senior team at the time. We had our camera system, so we just punched up the lat long and the camera went right to it and we
were able to validate that. Okay, this is the target, and it does fit the rules of engagement. So the team on the ground, the snipers, wanted to take the first shots, which is fairly common in combat operations. So you probably saw this, uh, in Iraq as well. Usually like a Predator or some kind of UAV or a fast air asset will drop a bomb and then they'll bring in helicopters, sort of for cleanup, or people that survived the initial impact of the bomb and are now running from the area.
Helicopters were a good asset to sort of track them down and find them. So you can also do this with snipers as well. So the sniper team on the ground that day wanted to take the first shot. It was a long shot, 2.6 km probably for them, something like that. Uh, which would be like sort of world record territory sort of thing. So we came up with an attack plan. We briefed the section. We worked with the ground forces that are
going to take the opening shot. So we were sort of in a holding area, and then we dropped low level and we turned in for the target. There was four tack Taliban troops at the time, so we sort of had it divided up, like, who's going to attack what, or we cover off different directions to make sure that we do an appropriate attack on the target, right? That's efficient and safe for us. We call the attack. So we roll in, snipers call shots away.
The bullets probably got, like, a five second flight time, I'm guessing. And, um, I'm watching on the camera system, and I know this is a valid target, but nobody moves, nobody falls, nothing. And the, uh, snipers called the attack off. So we broke off and we came back up to our holding area, and they're like, hey, we missed it's such a distance that the bullet went subsonic, so they didn't hear it. So we're going to
try this attack again. And at the time, I was flying with my commanding officer, who is a very senior aviator, very switched on person. And he's like, hey, we got this, right? So we come up with a new attack plan, right? At that time, there was a forward operating base, like, very close, within, like, a kilometer or something like this. We could look down, see them because we were in a sort of a top cover, kind of up at altitude,
coming up with our plans. And they called us and they were taking fire. Okay? And they were involved in a tick, right, which is troops in contact. So they're like, hey, can you come and help us? And we're like, yeah, we're rolling in. So we had done all this work working on this illegal vehicle checkpoint. I'm not sure how many minutes it would have been total, but basically, then these guys are actually being shot at. They're
involved in a firefight. And the flexibility that we had as a crew was just amazing looking back at because we basically just started diving low level, left hand turn, briefed our, uh, dash two. Hey, it's going to be a right door gun engagement. There's two at. We use clock distance reference or clock distance feature, right? So 02:00, 300 meters, two Taliban fighters behind a brick wall. And then we just rolled in and we just engaged on those two fighters at the time.
So it was crazy. And then we popped up, and then we were like, okay, well, let's go back to this illegal vehicle checkpoint. But they were gone because they heard all the firing. Well, yeah, I guess so, yeah. I don't know, but it's wild to sit here and talk about it because it was very much like our life at the time. And, I mean, it feels like a lifetime ago, but it was the job. But it still feels unnatural, do you know what I
mean? But it is very much the job. And nobody ever wants to get into attack work, but we definitely want to keep our troops on the ground safe. What is the feeling when you go in and you guys are going to I mean, we'll just say it. You're going to kill somebody. So what is that feeling when you go in and you get some bad. Guys when they're shooting back at you? I never had a problem with it. And I will say this. There's a dissociation that I'm able to have as a pilot
mhm, because I didn't have a finger on a trigger. And I think that the door gunners. So we would operate with an infantry door gunner in the back. And they generally, for us, had a ground tour before we took them, and they brought a lot of knowledge to the crew on what's going on in the ground. And then we also had a flight engineer door gunner. They were the ones actually pulling the trigger. So it's interesting because the
responsibility lies with the aircraft commander. We will work with, like, a joint tactical air controller or somebody on the ground about defining the target. Is it within the rules of engagement? All this stuff is done by the aircraft commander, and now the aircraft commander has to talk on the door gunner to make sure that they're engaging the right target. Right. So there's a lot of responsibility there that the aircraft commander holds and then
the door gunner. I like to think of it this way anyways, it'd be interesting to get their take, but they're not deciding what to engage. They're just following the orders, which I think gives a little bit of, uh, a healthy dissociation with it. That okay, everything's been defined and stuff and I just have to pull the trigger. And for a pilot, we just had to fly them and put them in a position to be able to engage the target
in the best manner. Right. So for me, uh, to answer your question, I never had a problem with. Yeah, I didn't do it a like. This is not something we did on a daily basis. This was few and far between. Okay, so now that we've covered the. Roles that you guys were filling in Afghanistan, can you tell us what an average day looked like for you in Afghanistan? Yeah. Ah, so we were on pretty much like a three day cycle. So
you'd do a day of planning. You'd get up in the morning, you'd probably go to breakfast at, like, seven or something, jump in the trucks and drive over to work. We were on the other side of the air base. We would get over there and, uh, you just start a day of planning. So operations would come and they'd be like, hey, we have this mission coming up, you guys need to plan for it. So prepare. It could be anything from like, ah, a standard Chinook escort where they would just
start moving troops. They just kind of go from Fob to Fob, dropping off some supplies. And it's kind of like almost like a milk run sort of thing. Or it could be like a, uh, bigger operation, like, hey, we're pushing. We were part of an operation in Helman province where they're moving like 15,000 troops. So it's like somebody has assigned, hey, you need to plan this. So those were kind of set aside for the planning days and then you would end up flying for two days. So you go out? It depends.
I mean, it could have been a night mission, could have been day. The schedule changed a lot. But you'd go out and we'd fly typically from 6 hours would probably be the average six hour flying days. Maybe a lot of eight hour days. A lot of extensions to fly. And I think my longest mission in a day was a 10.2, which is a lot in that heat. It's a lot of time in a. Helicopter and it's a lot of time in a helicopter. Yeah, you
get a callus on your butt for sure. And it's intense where it's not mundane, any of it. You're in a threat environment the whole time, so your mind is constantly on alert and, uh, being aware. And so at the end of the day, you're so tired. But we would work on fitness, so I'd go play floor hockey or go to the gym. There's a couple of really good gyms there. The food was decent, so we would always get square meals.
And my bed was amazing. We lived in a tent, but it had a little air conditioner and, uh, so I shared like a Mod tent with eight other pilots and that was connected to another tent with eight more pilots. And it was all the Griffin pilots. So we're a very tight team and we would do some social activities as well too. Like we played Jenga and some other games and stuff and hang out and see, uh, who got the latest box of candy sent from Canada. And we'd
share that. Right. And then we would go out. And when you're flying those missions, you're doing the roles that I spoke about earlier. They're busy days. Yeah. And then I did that for ten months and then, uh, I got two two week breaks. HLTAs. So you guys were going seven days a week? Yeah. No breaks? No, not really. There's nothing else to do there but work anyways, right? Yeah. Generally, I remember I did have a day off.
I probably the whole time, maybe I had three days that we just didn't go into the office. I want to go to the office. You're like, I want to go to the office. Because we believed in the mission right. So the more time we had at the office and the more time we put towards planning, the better prepared we were and the less stressful the missions. Which is like flight training. Yeah, absolutely. What was the hardest part of the job when you got to Afghanistan?
The hardest part of the job was just adjusting to the climate. First of all, the hot weather and the dust was challenging the smells. Uh, we were living on a base that I was told this before. It was designed for 3000 people and there's 30,000 people on it. So the base basically grew around the pooh pond. So when you had like a south wind, it was, it was pretty pungent. Stings the nostrils, as they say. That pooh pond is pretty infamous.
It's pretty infamous. Anybody that's been to Afghanistan knows the pooh pond and we all drive over and take a look and it's like, oh, there's the like it's like the touristy thing to do. Tactical tourism, we call it. Right. But yeah. So adjusting to the climate was challenging. And from, uh, an operational perspective, being able to fly the Griffin in that environment was a challenge too. And same with the Chinook cruise as well.
The Chinook is an amazing helicopter. I heard your podcast with Jackie there and she had a great story from Molly and the things that the new Chinook is doing as well. So getting her insight on the planning for that helicopter that's so capable. I mean, there's still so much going on to adjust to the climate, even with, uh, a beast like the Chinook. Yeah. So that was probably the biggest thing that we had to adjust to was, uh, the climate. How did you folks overcome that?
We, uh, just prepared for it. We were in the books. So for the Griffin, it's a very limited machine based off of its capability. The Chinook is much more capable. So we were just doing planning all the time. Like, where are we going, what is the altitude, what is the temperature going to be there today? Is it dusty? Do they have a prepared LZ and. LZ is landing zone. Landing zone, yeah, exactly. So they had different
methods in Afghanistan to deal with the dust. So they had a thing called rhino snot, which was like some kind of goo they would spray on the ground and then it would make a suitable landing zone. Basically like bind it all up so it doesn't go flying. Yeah, so it's just like tar almost. Right, okay, so they would do that. But there's other methods too. I mean, they would get gravel or they would get these, um, sort of metal pads that they would stake into the ground. And there's all kinds of ways
of doing it. And when they had those, it was much, much safer because the dust was the most challenging, for sure. Yeah. Well, it led to two accidents in Afghanistan. Right. Yeah. We lost two helicopters, three people killed. Yeah. So in July 2009, a Griffin ended up getting caught in some dust. And it can happen really quick. Uh, it's a scary thing to think about overcoming. It basically was lots of prep and practice.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What did you find was the most fulfilling part of the job in Afghanistan? The most fulfilling part of the job would be when you got called on the radio by troops that are in contact, and you hear in their voice the stress and they need help, and you hear them returning fire in the background. And you get the lat long and you fly over there.
And then like I said earlier, most of the time we didn't shoot a single round and the firefight would end just because they would hide, they would run away, whatever it might be. But then now you could talk to that soldier on the ground and you could tell that the stress had left their body. You could hear the relief. Yes. Very rewarding. That's really cool. Yeah. Were you guys very often called into ticks? It wasn't the most common thing. I wouldn't even know a number for me.
Okay. What was your best day in Afghanistan? My best day in Afghanistan was probably, uh, Christmas Day. It was very rewarding to be able to be tasked by a foreign nation to support flying their general around to see their troops. Yeah. It was just a real proud moment. As a Canadian, it's a position of. Trust they put you into. Yeah, for sure. We weren't going to do anything anyways that day except work, but I remember it's like the first Christmas I ever missed at
home. But I was with amazing people. Like, our teams over there were just amazing, so we had a lot of laughs. Like, I could show you some pictures of me wearing a Christmas sweater and a mullet wig that day. We always kept it light, which you have to, I think, when you're in a theater like that. And then we got home to our Christmas dinner in a box lunch. It was like, in Styrofoam. And we ate and we loved it. Ah.
We had a great time. Other than being home with family or whatever, um, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than with, uh, sort of your band of brothers and sisters. Right. So absolutely. Yeah. And if listeners would like to hear more about that, we first had Greg on the show for our Christmas episode last year, and you can hear the full story there. Yeah. What was your hardest day in Afghanistan? The hardest days were when Canadians were yeah. Yeah.
We would go out. There was, uh, an five there's five casualties, and they were blown up real really, it was a big, big bomb. And so we went out. Um, we supported any of the IDs, like, we always would go and do an in or outer cordon rights for security. Uh, and then we would go and pick up the bodies. And, uh, the Griffin generally didn't pick up the bodies. It was always a Chinook task, but we always escorted to Chinook. And I
always remember going back into, uh, Kandahar. You'd be it's sort of like in Canada when you're flying around, you carry the rescue call sign, everybody gets out of your way. In Afghanistan, it was called Angel Flight, and, uh, it was really hard. The main pieces of the bodies right, were kind of set aside, and then they had picked up all the rest of the body parts, and they put them in one body bag, and that was the only cargo. So it just made sense for a
Griffin to do it. So we went up to this place called Camp Naismith to pick it up. And, uh, it's good to talk about and, like, you know, it's. The that's the toughest part. There's another day, too, that there's bison, uh, that got hit by a roadside bomb, and it was really bad. And you talk about, like, going to mental health. Um, I used to go to the. Clinic here in Staticona, and, uh, they. Have pictures and plaques of all the people that were
killed. And so those two are right there. So every time I'd have to go to see the therapist or whatever, I'd walk by that, and it's just such a trigger. Right. Yeah, man. Yeah. Because I was there when they died. Right. So it's tough. Yeah. I can't say I understand because I didn't have those experiences, but I know it's hard to have tough stuff. I think you do understand. I mean, I think it's different for everybody, but you understand that sometimes this emotion comes in, right?
Yes. It's tough to control. That is part of the process. Now, you have a red entry in your logbook representing the day that you were shot down. Can you tell us more about that flight? Yeah, so that was my 9th mission. So, uh, I was fairly new to the theater. On arrival, we were doing sort of our indoc and stuff, and I was doing a lot of stuff focused on, uh, the electronic warfare piece. So once I hit the flight line, we started
going pretty hard. And on November 24, 2009, we were tasked with a Chinook escort to, uh, head up north to a place called Terrancout to support some Dutch troops. I believe on that day, it was. A challenging day, uh, for weather, because we actually had rain and clouds, which we didn't have
very much of. I can't remember another day that stands out of my mind that we had these conditions, but it made it challenging because we had to go up through the mountains in the higher terrain and our route, we have to keep a certain minimum safe altitude. And we didn't have any kind of approach capability with the Griffin at the time in theater because we stripped all the Ils and all that instrument equipment out to save
on. Ah, yeah. And we took the side doors off as well, because we needed every ounce that we could get. So it really restricted us a lot for the places that we could go. So we were sitting on this mission for the day and we were watching the weather. And then we decided, okay, hey, we can go and do this. So we started heading up north. The Chinook was in the lead, and then we had two Griffins shake down, two five and two six in the back,
following them. And as we were going, we generally there's a certain safe altitude in combat that you want to keep. What we call the threat band is like from a low altitude to a high altitude. If you're above it, you're good. If you're below it, you're generally good for small arms fire. So, on this day, we were going. Up a, uh, valley that had rising terrain on the valley, and each mountain peak on the
sides were covered in cloud. We just knew we wanted to get a little bit higher because we were aware that we were in the threat band a bit. And so we kind of wanted to creep up, but we did not want to creep into the clouds. Yeah, it would have been really bad. So we were kind of creeping up a little bit. And then, um, I heard this loud bang and smoke started pouring into the cockpit. Oh, wow. Yeah. Uh, so immediately, as a trained pilot, I
was like, oh, white smoke in the cockpit. What would you think that is? Electrical fire. Electrical fire. So I started. Okay. Like, descend land as soon as possible, whatever the checklist said. I started executing that. At the same time, we lost our ability to communicate with each other as a crew. Okay. Because we were using a, uh, certain secure communications capability, we ended up losing a
generator. It went offline, which knocked that offline, and then we just had static on the radio, so we couldn't really communicate with the formation or each other as a crew, which made it pretty challenging. So at that time, I heard the door gunner yelling, like, break right or break left? That door gunner now is actually on his multi engine course. Oh, wow. Yeah. Alex Cluccier, shout out to him. Cool. Um, yeah, he's switched over to pilot recently
and is now doing that. He's a great, great guy. And then Ron Krueger was the aircraft commander at the time with me. And then, uh, Luke Carlson was our doorganner. And we get in touch every time, every anniversary. But one of them yelled, Break right, we're being shot. So I start breaking. And then you could see the bullets going by. Wow. We had been shot. A bullet had actually came up through the belly of the aircraft right by my leg and into that
air data computer sitting next to you there. And I thought it was an electrical fire because we had all the electrical problems, but that's because the bullet went through 50 wires on its way into that. It severed 30 and right off and 20 were damaged. Wow. Uh, so we had all these problems. So it was apparent that this is more than an electrical fire. It turned out that there's so much dust in Afghanistan, which is like this powdery flower, that when the bullet went into that,
it knocked all this dust loose. That's why I thought, we're on fire. Looks a lot like white smoke. Okay. Yeah. So at that point, I start evading, which we would always do that anyways. We generally don't fly straight and level, which is so against everything we were taught in flight training. Yeah, no kidding. It's super fun to fly tactical helicopters because it's like, okay, just keep a little bit up a little bit. Down a little bit. Right? You're a harder target. Right.
So at this point, we could see the bullets going by, not because there was tracers in the rounds, but because of the atmospheric pressure and the moisture in the air. It was leaving like little matrix type contrails. Oh, little like smoke trails. Yeah. It was bizarre. But the enemy were very smart that day to take the tracers out because we couldn't see the point of origin or the poo, we call it. So we actually never returned fire to whoever shot
us that day. What we ended up doing was I told all the tactical students that I've ever taught this story, because when it happened, I felt my aircraft commander get on the controls and start to shake the sticks. And I thought, well, he must want control because we couldn't say, hey, you have control, I have control. It's really, uh, abnormal. But he just reacted and jumped on the stick. So I was like, oh, he wants to fly. So I got to fix the radio problem here.
So I put my head down and I'm start going into the computer and started like, what's broken? How can I fix this? And I look up and his head's down doing the same thing. And in the Griffin we have like, uh, different levels of automation and happens. There's one that we call it force trim on. So if I press the button and put the stick somewhere and release it, it's going to stay there. So it was flying exactly what I wanted it to fly when I let go of the sticks and I looked down and
he's doing the same thing. So then I took control again. But it was really interesting, the things that you train for, you can't train for every scenario, and that was one that happened. So the most important thing is to keep flying. So then, um, I brought the aircraft sort of low. Level. We were able to get in non secure comms a mayday
call out to formation. The Chinook went high level and the other Griffin followed us down low level and we made the decision to go to a forward operating base that was very close by, like 10. Uh, we flew there and landed and the Griffin and the Chinook came behind us and put down. A funny story to that is we landed in the LZ and we tucked it way over to the side because these forward operating bases had so much helicopter traffic bringing in
supplies, ammo and stuff like that. So we tuck off way over to the side, we get out and we see that we had more bullets in the helicopter. Like, there's one in the main rotor as well. Oh, wow. And, uh, certainly the fear was that we would have one in the tail rotor, but, um, wasn't the case. So we were able to recover there safely. How did those 10 Km feel? They're scary. Yeah. So it's funny because, um, we're just dealt to deal with emergencies very well as military pilots.
So I dealt with all the emergencies and then we made the decision we're going to fly there. And then it was like all we had to do left was fly there. And that was scary because I thought, do we have a bullet in the tail rotor? Because we did lose an aircraft in 2002, a Griffin crashed up, uh, at a Goose Bay in Labrador because of a tail rotor crack. So I felt that it was sort of a weak spot. And we do really in depth inspections on that tail rotor now,
but certainly, uh, that entered my mind. And yeah, that was the scariest part of my tour, probably was that 10. Then when we landed, I ended up jumping on a forklift, was driving by. So I jumped on and I said, hey, take me to the Tactical Operations Center because I wanted to go and give the information to them so they could send out somebody to go and get this person that shot us. Right?
And I get into the Tactical Operations Center or the talk and this American Major, it was a Canadian Ford operating base, but it had recently been handed over to the Americans. He came up and I'm like, hey look, we're parking a helicopter. We're going to leave it here, it's full of bullets. And he's like, oh,
do you need a download? And for those people that don't know, a, uh, download is usually when an attack helicopter, like an Apache or something comes in that wants to take bullets off of the helicopter because they want to reduce weight. And it was very common for this forward operating base because it was the step off to going into the higher terrain up in the mountains. And so he's like, oh, do you want to download? He thought you meant you were carrying a ton of ammunition.
Yeah, exactly. And I was like, no, it's bad guy. It's just it's kind of funny that he said that, but, uh, then we went from there and we took just our kid off the helicopter. We jumped in the Chinook, they flew us home. We felt a little bit of shame because we always have this nice little back and forth with the Chinook, Griffin and Chinook people. Everybody in one wing knows I'm talking about. But, uh, we both have a lot of high mutual respect for each fleet. I have a tremendous amount of
respect for the Chinooks and their crews. And I'm thankful for them because they got me home that day, even though the Chinook got hit as well. And they didn't even know they were shot. Wow. Not until we got back to Kandahar. Man, that was some accurate gunnery. It was, yeah. So there's actually I have a video from the tailgunner on the you know, we didn't know we were being shot at, which was very common
for us in Afghanistan. We would often get calls from troops on the ground being like, hey, you're being shot at from the northwest of the Fob or whatever, ford Operating base. So we would go and try to find them, but we would never hear the bullets. But we know ear muffs. And we had CEPS. I'm not sure what the acronym is, but it's basically like headphones, like your air pods or whatever would be in your ears, plugged into the communication system.
Okay. And then you have your ear muffs on top of that and built into your triple layer. Yeah, and we had to do that because the door guns, when they're shooting, there's so much noise, you still need to be able to communicate to the door gunners, especially if you need them to cease fire. So that's why we required that amount of hearing protection. It just made you be able to communicate a lot better. M, so with that, uh, you don't.
Hear the bullets outside there zinging by you, but in the helmet cam that door gunner had, you could hear it. We have the audio from this helmet cam footage and it shows just how difficult it is to pick out the sounds of shooting over a helicopter. Listen closely to the snaps and cracks you hear. Those are bullets passing by the Chinook. No one on board could hear these shots. We were engaged by what was assessed to be a PKM machine gun. Yes. And they probably fired anywhere from, uh, one to
two belts at us. Wow. It'd be like 400 rounds. Yeah, it has a big box of ammo PKM. Exactly. So that's what got us that day. But then we got back to Kandahar. The Griffin that we were in that day ended up we sent out a maintenance team. They pretty much, I was told, hotwired to hot start like, one of the engines to get a special authorization to fly it back to Kandahar. And it took five or six weeks, I think, to get that aircraft back in the fight. Just it had to be totally rewired.
Yeah. But it was back in the fight. And then great story to that is, uh, it came back to Canada, it was rebuilt, and then it ended up at four or three squadron, where I was teaching new students how to fly the Gryffin on super cool. The very helicopter that I was shot in. Yeah. Uh, aircraft four, five, eight for anybody that's flying it there, that's awesome. Yeah. So that was definitely a standout day
for me, for sure. And it worked out really well because we were able to get home, and I went to work the next day and got another helicopter and went back out. Yeah. I was going to ask, what was the recovery like from that after getting shot up? Do you guys have any, uh, after effects, uh, in terms of going back out there? No. Mission nine. It's like yeah, I guess you did another 94 missions. Exactly. I felt coming out of that experience. That and this was as a pilot.
Sitting in the front, we had armored seats. Our door gunners and flight engineers in the back didn't have that. So for me, I always felt that either the bullet is going to go. Into the armored seat, or it can. Only hit me in the legs or the arms or in the head. And I always thought a headshot, you're done, arms and legs are going to survive. So most likely it's going to hit you either because we had, um, armored vests as well, too. So it's either going to get you in the vest or the
seat. So I just felt that if I was going to I mean, it's crazy to even talk to you about it right now and to think about it this way, but I thought, oh, I could get shot in the arm, and that's not a big deal. If I get shot in the head, it's done. It's not going to hurt. You know what I mean? Which is just a crazy concept to think about in combat. And I think it's just what gets you true. Yeah. You have to rationalize it. Yeah. But, uh, a true shootdown story is
Blowtorch 60 shot down. So two very good friends of mine were flying that aircraft that day, and it is an incredible story of being shot down. I like to say that we got shot up. I feel like it's more of a win if I say we got shot up because we recovered the aircraft and we didn't make it the whole way home. So it's in red in my logbook. But, uh, I mean, the aircraft went on to fly lots of missions, whereas that Chinook that got shot down, they got shot down. They were
engaged by heavy weapons. There was 21 troops in the back, and they were able to land, uh, and get everybody out to safety. And it's pretty amazing story. Yeah. Bill Fielding is the pilot that's flying, and Bill got the Medal of Valor for that, too. Yeah, he was, uh, in 400 Squadron. When I was there. I have a connection a little bit, so maybe I can get him on the show. Yeah. So you and I have something in common. Your time in
Afghanistan resulted in PTSD. What were the signs that this was becoming an issue in your life? Yeah. So it's an interesting thing. Like, when I got back from Afghanistan, I was so excited just even to see the color green mhm. It really affected me in a positive way when I first returned, because I just had such a great appreciation for everything. And that lasted for about three months. And then I started to
just lose patience, you know what I mean? I'm not generally angry person, but certainly I would be much more quick to anger. And I was sort of irritable, and I start to get a little bit of anxiety, which was completely unknown to me. And at the time, it's easy to look back and see that that's what I was going through. But I didn't attribute it at all to Afghanistan. Not even a
little know, so it took a little bit of time. And then what happens with PTSD is, like, you have a bucket that can only hold so much water, and, uh, I have a lot of stuff in my bucket that I didn't know that I had there from Afghanistan. And so now when you start putting your other things in your bucket, like your finances or your relationships, or somebody cut you off in traffic, whatever it is that hits that last drop of water that bucket can hold, then you have a little bit of a
breakdown or you get emotional. It comes out differently for different people. So, for me, certainly, I got to the point where my bucket was full and I knew that something was different. I didn't know what it was at the time. I didn't know anything about PTSD. So I just talked to my flight surgeon, who was an ex F 18 pilot, and he was, like, a really great guy that would just tell it to you straight and stuff. Uh, and so
he ended up sending me for an assessment. And so I got a diagnosis of PTSD, and then that sort of started my healing journey. Yeah. Did you have a big incident that led you to seek help? No, I think back at that time, I think they were looking at posting me to Moosejaw, and I think that impacted me because I had a very strong support network, um, on the East Coast. And I think that would have been the catalyst. They ended up not posting me. Yeah.
Have you experienced any stigma in the forces as a result of this? No, none whatsoever. I have been somewhat open about my PTSD. I think it's important to talk about it. Um, there's a quote that says there's no Unwounded soldiers in war, and I believe that's true. Some people can come back and always see the green grass. Right? Like Afghanistan. Everything was brown because everything green was covered in dust.
Right. So I did experience that really strong feeling of appreciation for everything that we have here in Canada, which was really good. And some people are able to maintain that for a while, and then for other people it's a little different, but it remains the same that people are going to be different when you come back from combat zones and stuff like that. When you see traumatic things.
Yeah. So when I came out to my supervisors and stuff like that and told them sort of what I was experiencing, I found there was lots of support. Yeah. What about from your peers? Peers have been great. Yeah. Honestly, it's more prevalent than you'd think. Yeah. No, I agree. I had a very similar experience. I had super supportive supervisors. And when I kind of, uh, as you say, came out about it and talked a little more widely about
it, I had people reach out who were going through the same thing. A lot of people that I never would have thought that were going through very similar experiences. Yeah. And it's comforting. Yeah, it is. Because you're not alone. Yeah. You're not alone, that's for sure. What do you think has been the most helpful thing in your healing journey so far with PTSD? Well, the most important thing is asking for help. Yeah. And then the help. My experience with therapy and the mental
health system has been very good. A lot of people really care and they have a lot of experience with this. Right. There's a lot of different tools out there that you can learn to get yourself to a good place. And for everybody it's different. So I go to therapy regularly and it's great. The thing about post traumatic stress disorder is that it's stress that's not processed. Mhm, and it happens after the event, which is common
in combat, because you're just too busy doing the job while you're there. You're not going to have time to process this. And then when you get back, you're just too excited to be back. And then these things start to come out over time, the stress has just been never processed. So you'll get dreams and all this stuff. Right. M, so the therapy can definitely help you work through that stuff and process it. And then once it's processed, you can kind of tuck it to the bottom of your water
bucket. It's not ever always going to be gone, but you learn how to manage it. And definitely the help that I got gave me the tools to be able to manage it. Yeah. You found that made a big difference in your life. Yeah. What would you say to anyone who thinks, like, they're listening to this and this is ringing a few bells and they maybe think they're experiencing something similar? Yeah. Go into your flight surgeon or whoever, the mental health nurse or whoever it has to be, and just talk to.
Them, get checked out. And, uh, there's so much help and it's so good. And Veterans Affairs is really good with this stuff too. I know that long after I retire, I'll still be able to get therapy. And it's comforting. It's really good. So the scariest thing is that people. May not ask for help. Right. Because it can go to dark places. Right. So asking for help is the single best thing that you can do, and the help is very good from people that really care.
How did you manage to take that step? Did you have fears about losing your ability to fly? For sure, yeah. And I think that would be very common with any pilot. Our biggest fear is always like, hey, am I going to be able to fly? And so for me, throughout the process, asking for help was I didn't know anything about it.
I thought I'd still be able to fly. And I did get grounded for a brief period of time, and then I got put back on the flight line and whereas happy, like, flying was very good for me. But there are a lot of pilots that would be scared of losing their flying category and stuff like that. And I think, uh, it would take a long process to get to that point. For me, I opted to not take meds. Right.
So I stayed off meds as much as I could. And what ended up working for me really well was just working on healthy eating and fitness. I always find that if I lead with my body, my mind will follow. So if I get out and I go for a walk with my dog or whatever like that, uh, it's just going to help. Just clear some room in my head or whatever. Right. So that's always been good for me. But yeah, I would say that for anybody worried about that and losing their flying category, it's not worth it.
There's no flying category that's worth having to deal with stress that you just need to process. Yeah, I agree with that 100%. We're going to go back to a little bit of lighter subject matter. What was the most memorable flight you. Did in the Griffin? So the most memorable flight that I ever got to do was during pre deployment training. I was deploying with 408 Squadron out in Edmonton and I was posted in Gagetown, so I was away a lot.
My grandparents that came from Holland were having their 60th weding anniversary on a Saturday and I was getting home on a Friday. And my commanding officer at that time knew how busy I was, and, uh, he told me, he's like, why don't you just take a Griffin down instead of driving the four and a half hours or whatever it was at the time? Take a griffin. So myself and my good buddy Andrew Smith smitty that, you know, we ended up grabbing a Griffin and a flight engineer and going to
surprise my grandparents at their 60th weding anniversary. They didn't know we were coming. It was only my uncle. We had all the proper authorizations and stuff. And basically I had a time on Target 03:00. My dad knew and my uncle knew, and that was it. So everybody else thought that I wasn't going to make it. And we ended up coming around in the circuit and we landed in a field and shut down, and the whole family was there. And I had a very large
family, so, uh, it was very rewarding. And it was really cool for my grandparents, too, because, again, I'm, um, part of the military that they saw drive the tanks into the streets of Holland and bring them chocolate and cigarettes. Freedom. Yeah. So that's cool. That is really cool. Yeah. I'd also like to clarify all flying is good training. This isn't just a case of somebody using a government helicopter for personal use. They would have got great
training out of that. They're flying into an unprepared landing zone, lots of other things that they're practicing and getting out of that. So it's not just about going and going to an anniversary party. And in this instance, actually, it was, uh, for like, VFR cross country and navigation and stuff, because we had been so focused on the tactical portion of stuff, we had no time to focus on what about flying in Class G airspace? Just flying in Canadian domestic airspace.
Exactly. So we need to keep that skill up as well. 100%. So what would you say is the most important thing you do to keep. Yourself ready for the job again? So it's all about my mental health. M. So if I have a good. Fitness regime and a good diet, I'm pretty good to go. Yeah, that is the most important thing. The other thing, too, is just maintaining an awareness of my capabilities. So I have learned a lot in my career and I've forgotten just as much.
Like, probably everything I've learned in my career, I've forgotten it. And then I've relearned sometimes, you know, a good example would be a student will come to me and be like, hey, Greg, I have this question about the hydraulic system. How does that actuator work? And I'll be like, I got to. Go get the and it's I always looked at it like a so today at the top of the wheel is like, the hydraulic system and that actuator and oh, jeez, I got to get back in the books and read up on that and
eventually tomorrow. I don't know what it's going to be, but I'm going to be into whatever, like the rotor system or the engines or what's the fuel control system doing. That'll be tomorrow. And then the next day will be this one. And eventually I'm going to come back around to that hydraulic system, because that's what being a pilot is. It's just constantly being in the books and reminding yourself and just being humble about it and being okay with the fact that you do
forget things. And you do need to remind yourself yeah, 100%. And get back into it. Right. So I think that for me, the true skill came in identifying what's going to be next on the wheel before I get there. Yeah. It's, uh, been a while since I've looked at the hydraulic system. Maybe I better you get that feeling.
I was talking to someone about that recently as well. You get that little spidey sense almost of like, oh, for me, it was not quite a sense of anxiety, but, oh, I'm really not as familiar as I should be with this emergency procedure or whatever. And that's your sign to go and review that. The best way to eliminate that worry is to go and relearn it. So if I told you you're going to go back to Iraq tomorrow, and I'm going to give you an ATO tomorrow, what are you going to be studying tonight?
Oh, my gosh, it's been forever since you read, which is an air tasking. Yeah, I'd have to go back and relearn how to read an ATO. Exactly. Yeah. So the important thing and I think this is where the upgrade process comes in for aircraft commanders is to be able to identify what is the priority to focus on at this time. And that translates right through to students as well. I mean, I heard a lot of your podcast, and I always loved hearing the instructors talk about different techniques and
stuff for teaching students. And, uh, I think the last one I was listening to, they were talking about phase three fighter, where their student is taking something that they've done, each of these. But it's like you could be thrown any one of them on this mission. And that's when we get into truly training thinking pilots. I think it's not until phase three, but mostly phase four, that it's truly like, all right, what are you going to do?
And, uh, when you say phase four, like, on your operational aircraft? Exactly. Yeah. You're getting out into the real world. You're out of the box, and there's a lot more variables out there. Exactly. And so the solid, strong aircraft commanders are the ones that can identify what's coming and prepare for it and prioritize important stuff. Right. Yeah. And that kind of rolls into my next question for you, which is, what do you think makes a good pilot?
I love this question, and I hear all of your guests talk about it, and I think everybody's pretty much on the same wavelength. And for me, I've heard it said in different ways on the podcast, but, um, for me, it's two things. It's stress management and work ethic. M. If you're a strong worker, you. Can overcome the stress management part. I give the example of you're going to go into an overhead break, say. In Moose Jaw, and you enter the.
Overhead break and you crank and you turn and you're like, oh, is it 62 or 63? And now you're doubting yourself, but the plane is still going 200 knots, or whatever it is. And what he means there is 60 degrees bank and 2G or three G. Yeah. So now you're stressed, and your decision making is getting smaller because the aircraft is so much closer to your next step on your final turn or gear down or flaps or whatever it might be, but your head is still back on the last decision.
Right. But with good, hard work, you can chairfly that. For some people, they might chair fly it five times. For other people, maybe they have to chair fly it 20 times, but you cannot get in that airplane and doubt yourself on that stuff. The other thing, I think that it's really important, not so much for students, but I think for instructors, the most important thing that you can give students is confidence.
Students need to know that they are doing the work, the correct work, because as instructors, it's important for us to guide students to focus their energy in the right place, because they haven't learned the prioritization bit yet. Right. And that's why it's easy in training. It's like, oh, LP One, this is what you're doing, right? LP five, you're going to do circuits, whatever. Um, so that works really well.
But as instructors, if we can focus them on working on the right things and then just give them confidence, sometimes it's good, bad, good. It might be, hey, you showed up in time today for your brief. Now let's debrief your flight. And it's like, oh, and by the way, your shoes are really shiny. That's really great. You got to leave them with something. Because these students are working
hard, right. And sometimes they're not getting the results that they're hoping for, which can be very discouraging, but giving them the confidence that it's okay to make mistakes and work on this and bounce back. And I think the strongest lesson for any pilot is that bouncing back from failure is the biggest lesson that you're going to get. Yeah, it's super hard, too. It's really hard when it can be emotional.
If you fail or you make a big mistake, it can cause a lot of emotions that you don't want to feel to come up. Some people cry, some people feel overwhelmed or angry or whatever, and you got to learn to deal with that. Yeah. And it's a huge growth opportunity, you know what I mean? Because that stuff happens to you in combat, mhm. Do you know what I mean? Like, oh, we got shot here. Am I just going to roll over in
the trench? No, um, you don't have a choice. You have to keep moving forward, keep doing the work, keep fighting, keep flying that aircraft. Right? Yeah. And I think that if students and anybody really just has the work ethic and understands their stress levels and learns how to manage them, however that works best for them, whether it be chair flying or going to the gym or whatever, and then for instructors to give confidence, that's just really, uh, helpful for students.
Love that question, mhm. That's a great answer. So we're down to our last question. This is my favorite question. If somebody's listening and they're starting to think, hey, I really want to join, I'd love to fly with the RCAF. Or maybe they've just joined and they're listening to this and they're getting excited about their flight training, what advice would you give to that new pilot? All right, so another great question. I love definitely the best advice that I could
give for anybody. First of all, if you're thinking about joining, come down and see me at the Halifax Recruiting Center and we'll, uh, definitely get you on the path for enrollment. Certainly a career in the forces is the best thing that's ever happened to me in my like, it's been amazing. The people that I've met, the friendships, the experiences, the stories, the know, the job security, you know, everything to pension, you know what I mean? There's just so many
benefits of a military career, period. I mean, pilot for sure worked out really well for me. I already discussed it wasn't my first choice. I would have been happy in the infantry, but it's awesome. So once, um, you get in that door, the best advice that I could give is just work hard, don't quit. You will get bumps. They will come. It will be
stressful, it can be emotional. But you just need to either just step back, have a coffee, and then get back in the books, or go for a run and find out whatever works for you to manage that stress and just keep working at it. Keep working at it. The dream is a dream. It is a dream job. We're very lucky to be able to call ourselves Air Force Pilots. It's quite an honor and it's definitely worth all the hard work. 100%.
But it is a lot of hard work. Some people get into it and they're shocked about how much hard work it is, but it always gets better, especially as you get experienced. I mean, the workload becomes less. Yeah, for sure. The first, like five years are tough. You're learning so much, so fast, and it requires so much review to make it start sticking. And at first it. Feels like it's never going to stick, but it does.
Eventually, you do enough reviews and you still always are, uh, reviewing, but it's much more familiar and it'll start to retain and like you said, the workload decreases. Yeah. Then you have more fun. The other thing I will say is have fun. Yeah. You know what mean? Like and especially for instructors and supervisors out there, too. I mean, it's really important to have an environment for your students or your new pilots on Squadron
or whatever to actually have fun. It should be know, it's easy because the workload is very demanding on Air Force pilots because there's so few of us and we're still trying to do the same missions that Canada asks us to do. And we all do it, and we all put a smile on our face, but it is really easy to forget how cool the job is. Yeah, totally. For me, it was always Family Day. Like, I go at Family Day and fly a civilian, they are going to just be screaming in the back of the
helicopter and loving it. And you're like, oh, yeah, my job is cool because the reality is, every day I go to work, I work with pilots that do the exact same thing. So that the cool factor wears off. But that's right. It's important, I think, to just step back and realize that you have an opportunity to do amazing things for your country and to support the ground troops or whatever force your airframe is supporting.
They're very grateful to have that support because air power brings a lot to the fight and we get to be the ones to do that and wear the flight suits and that's. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that does it for my questions. I want to thank you so much for I didn't mention this, but we're actually at Greg's house. My family and I are out, uh, traveling the East Coast, so we decided to make use of the opportunity and record this live together.
So thank you for having me here. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to chat, and thank you for sharing your experiences in Afghanistan. It's been really, really a neat thing to learn about, so thank you. Oh, thanks for having me. Yeah. Okay. That's going to wrap things up for our chat with Greg about his adventures in Afghanistan. On May 17, 2020, snowbird Eleven suffered a bird strike on takeoff resulting in an ejection. One of the two crew members on board did not survive.
For our next episode, we'll be sitting down with the surviving member, Rich McDougall, to talk about his experiences being in the snowbirds as well as that day. Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this episode or would you or someone you know make a great guest? You can reach out to us at, uh, thepilotprojectpodcast@gmail.com, or on all social media at at podpilot project.
It's been another great month for us, and we'd just like to thank you so much for that and to ask you for your help with the big three that's like and follow us on social media. Share with your friends and follow and rate us five stars wherever you get your podcasts. Uh, that's all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up. See you. Engineer shut down all four. Shutting down all four engines.