British Parachute Regiment Sniper | Hugh Keir | Ep. 308

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definitely not in England. It's not to be not to be confused between the two countries, right, And I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, you know, like four three or four miles away from the nearest neighbor. Was literally no one around. So I spent a lot of my time out and about doing what you do when you're all You've got his countryside and you and your dad's are keen, keen clean countryside enthusiast in the

most positive way I mean that. So we went out rambling you know, he was out showing me how to shoot, and I just learning, learning, learning all about it. So that's where I grew up, and uh I ended up. I basically ended up. Initially, I wanted to join the Air Force, which is obviously not where I ended up. I'm not sure why I wanted to join the Air Force, but I think I had a feeling that I wasn't really I wasn't really happy with myself. I was quite

low self esteem, really low self confidence. I'm not quite sure where it is. I think it's because I quite an isolated up bringing in terms of like social opportunities, Like there was animals, There wasn't many kids, you know well, and they don't talk very much. They talk a little bit, but I haven't a clue when they say it. But when you know, when you grow up, most people that grow up and they finished school and they're out socializing with their friends and then on the weekend of socializing

with their friends. And I didn't really have that. So I think my social skills development was just really poor. And I think that as you grow up, when you become a teenager and you just more of these internationals expected and like social status becomes a conscious thing, and the way you interact with other people and they interact with you actually impact how positive or negative you feel

about yourself. I think it really impacted me. So I was really the real self confidence, low self esteem going into you know, into my teens, and I think that I saw the military is not with you. Unity to sort of prove myself to myself, if that makes sense. Really that's what it is. It wasn't for anyone else. It was kind of approving myself, how you're not a loser, You've got something about you. And really the only thing

I had gone about the times I'm pretty fit. I was physically fit, but physically fit from the waist down, Like from the waist up, it was just skin and bottom the waist down. I died like three trunks just from running on all the hills when I was grown up, you know. And so yeah, South Wales looking at the RAF, the Royal Air Force. I needed. I think I wanted to go into aviation engineer or something random like this that I've seen in a book about career opportunities in school.

I needed a levels for that, which is our college college qualifications. I don't know what you call them. Over there. But it's you know, you go from your normal school stuff into college. Needed A levels. It's a couple of years to do that, and I got college royally wrong. One I wasn't attention and to I set up a website. This is like the nineties, so I was away ahead

of the curve. I set up a website which was neath college sucks dot co dot uk and it wasn't And I thought I'd been really clever and hiding my track, but I wasn't. I aster leave the college before I pushed. So I wish I had still had that website, but I don't anymore, and so I left. I had no A levels, that couldn't join what I wanted to do in the RAF And there was an advert on TV at the time for saying I'll go and spend twenty

four hours with the Paris. I had very little knowledge of the Powers or any of the military really, and I went and spent twenty four hours down in a place called all the Shot, which is in England. It's not too far from London, and that's where that was the home of the Powers at the time, and you

basically go and spend twenty four hours. They show you all the nice shiny weapons systems and the nice uniforms and all a lot of the guys who were serving the time, and you do all the cool military stuff, none of the horrible military stuff. And there was a fitness assessment which was basically a run a mile and a half. I was a mile and a half warm up and then a mile and a half best effort, and I won that and then I thought, yeah, I

said I'm going to join. I'm going to join the Paris and I signed up for that immediately, but it took about It took me about six months before I was I could even start training because my my mother's Irish, so Republic of Islands and immediately meant extended security. At the time, it was sort of the tail end. It was the tail end of the normal island the troubles

as they known of a here. We were still we still had an active operation going on in Northern Ireland and they need across the t's and dot the eyes and make sure I wasn't the wrong kind of person getting into There was a lot of people get left got left off the family tree. With that that was admitted. The reality is is that that I and so small. You know, everyone's red, but be related to a terrorist like a member of the IRA or at least someone

who helped them a few times. And it was there's at least one person I knew at the time who he was, I don't remember, twenty or thirty years older than me, and he was used to be a gett away driving for the RA after they'd been dropping bombs off and things. I was just claim to fame, so to speak.

they were south of the border in Ireland. So you've got Northern Island, and you've got the Island of Island, and you've got nordn Island, which is part of the UK, and below that is the Republic of Ireland and the terrorists want, they want that to be reunited, and they don't want the UK to be any part of it. And they were planting bombs and blowing people up in the UK, London, Birmingham, you know, all the shop different places. They do it in Northern Island as well. But that

wasn't that long ago. It's pretty crazy when you think about it. I was growing up in times like that. You just these days you think of terrorism, you think it comes from overseas, as in, it comes from a place, a country which they don't look like you don't speak the same language, and they can't possibly understand your culture. And the reality is it wasn't. It was. It was homegrown, so to speak, and it made for pretty challenging operations.

You know. Yeah, when you when you you're going out to do current insurgency operations or any kind of operation against an enemy who speaks exactly like you speak. They grew up in the same culture you did. They know, they know exactly how you operate. They don't look that much differently, they don't dress that much differently. Really difficult, really difficult. It turns out we're pretty cunning, yell.

units will have a phase three with its extended learning, particularly technical fields you know infantry. So it's just phase phase one of the phase two. With the difference being for the Paras different to every other infantry unit in the British Army is that we have a selection at the end of phase two. So it's not just the case of okay, past your basic tests and demonstrated basic knowledge and phase one of the phase two and you're

into unit. You go to demonstrate those as a minimum and then do your selection at the end and then maybe you'll be selected. Even if you pass the selection, you may be failed, but just ignoring that for a second sort of the phase one, the phase two takes about eight months, seven or eight months. I think it's still the same now question finish, Yeah, yeah, I think phase one is like twelve weeks. The first six weeks you're on you're on camp, you don't get to go home.

And then after the six week period you have like a sort of the first formal piece of hey, you know your basics now, and you do a little parade on the on the parade square and you get given like I think at that point you give At that point, we were given it like a Maroon beret. You had the powers cat barge on it, but it had like a green backing stuck behind it to demonstrate that you were real powers, just in training. But you get to wear the and the cat batch and you wear that

then continuously throughout. For me, the first the first twelve weeks phase one were pretty they were pretty all right. I thought, I didn't find it difficult. I don't recall finding it difficult. I think the you know, the instructors I had, they were I would describe him as pretty easy going. You know, you, guys, you experience in training will differ to the next guy who went through all dependent on the year you went through. Who you had

instructed you. Did you have decent guys, did you have lunatics, did you have violent guys, did you have people that took noble shit, or did you have people that didn't want to be there? And for me that that Phase one, I had a bunch of guys. There were great instructors. It was just pretty laid back, I thought for most of them, at least the section commander I had is in charge of my ten twelve guys were super laid back.

And the problem with that for me was that that was not setting me at well for Phase two, which was like carnage. I went from I went from having this laid back crew to go into phase two and just having a bunch of like psychopaths and uh yeah, yeah, so yeah, I was kind of I kind of left phase one after that twelve weeks still kind of being the low self esteem, those sorts of confidence guy, but not realizing it. It's like this false sense of confidence

that gives me. Yeah, than twelve weeks I'm a real soldier now and I wasn't. Phase two became back ship and also it was it was a change in location as well. So our Phase one time was done in the Birmingham area, which is like west of England, and there's not a lot of there's not a lot of hills there, there's not a lot of mountains, so the training area is pretty limited. And the Phase two we moved up to an area called Katrick which is in

North Yorkshire. And North Yorkshire is north of England. It's cold, it's miserable, you know. That's why everyone everyone in North England's like pretty tough because they just have to deal with hardship, like people from Boston, right, just like they just grow up in misery. So they just like the hardcore people. It's like north of England, the same with Wales.

In Wales is the same just miserable island too. And so I had like that that change in sceniory, change in surroundings and up to Phase two where we went to where we went to Phase two stopped me ear if you want to stop everything, yeah, so we went to Phase two. The changing surroundings was also that the Paris training location there on the barracks Hell's Barracks it was called at the time. I was at the time.

It was right next to it was on a massive camp, a big training camp, and there were lots of other

units there, lots and lots of other units there. So one of the so one of the reasons that it was kind of quite chaotic and quite a lot more, a lot tougher, i'd say, dealing with the staff I had anyway, is that not only that they were trying to train us in being the best that we could be to go to the units, they're also trying to teach us to absolutely detest and loathe anyone that wasn't like in training to be in the Paris or even anyone any soldier who wasn't wearing that cap attue was you.

You literally don't speak to them, you don't look at them. They're not they're not worthy, They're not worthy of your attention. Are we recruits? As we told this, and I kind of got it. It's like one of the one of the differences we have, one of the advantages we have. I think, well, it isn't advantage, it's that power of recruits go away through We were only trained predominantly only anyway, most of us are only trained by other Paris, so

all other units they'll be trained by anyone. So if I want to join, I don't know, let's say the Rifle's Regiment or any other regiment. I can go to a training unit. I could have one instructors from could be the Paris one instructor from the Royal Irish Regiment, one instructor. You have a mix, and I think that I think I think that shouldn't be the case because I think it. I think in most cases it kind of walks down the emotion an investment that an instructor

has in training up a recruit. That recruit could be going to any unit. Whereas if you're training up recruits so you know your unit, I think you take a bit more pride in this pilot turd goes to because what happens is if when I got the three parrot and you get some idiot come from training, the first thing you ask is who you're instructor? Who's your instructor, because you want to know who's who trained this map

it up? Or you want to go and ask that instructor what the hell happened, Like why is he through. So we we were only trained by ourselves and that work. I think that works well because we have this sense of pride, real sense of pride and elitism drilled into us, so we put extra effort into training our guys. It wouldn't work so well if you didn't really give it down or unit didn't really give it down, you know.

And and the reality is and also the instructors. I mentioned the selection process at the end of Pea Company, at the end of phase two earlier. Instructors want all the guys to pass. The want as many as the guys to pass is to come. They don't want to fail because it demonstrates how good the structor they were getting the guys to that point. You know, that doesn't mean they don't want to drop people off. They won't bin people off, you know.

failure rate, so to speak. But a lot a lot of those, you know, most of those numbers they dropped off pretty early on in Phase one and phase two because especially Phase two, it was so it was so challenging. It was literally, you know, it was there was no room forever, the smallest area was hammered. And I get why, but in that particular, you know, training team violence was always not always like a go to for fix this problem, you know, And part of the issue I had was,

like I said, I was like super nervous. I was all panicking, Like in my head, I was always panicking as I'd make mistakes, tiny things, and I would just get battered for it because you know what it's like, you make one mistake, and if you're not in the right mindset, it just creates another mistake, right, another mistake, you start overthinking, another mistake. And I was in that early on in phase two, I found out the hard

way really hard. I hated it. I hated it initially, but got there, got to the selection and managed to pass it.

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Chapters of Special Forces History. Tomorrow, I will be at an event in Hackensack, New Jersey, ninety two Kennedy Street, Hackensack, New Jersey, sponsored by a Triple A Lot Design clothing company, and I'll be there at eleven am and we're going to be talking about the book and some of the stuff in here covers Detachment A, Detachment KA, green Light, Blue Light, the Commanders in Extremist Force, some things that

haven't been written about before. So I'm excited about it and I hope to see at least some of you tomorrow morning.

know something critical. You're going back all fitness, Yeah, fitness, go back and others would just get down. Did I say about seventy percent with sound select.

know what I wanted to do. I saw a lack of options, and yeah, this is something and and it's also for sure they mismanage your own expectations, don't lie how hard things are going to be. And that has to be more the case of these days, you know where things are pretty easy. Yeah, when you go these days, they were pretty easy when I was growing up, but relatively speaking, a lot easier now.

don't have any option. But most are the units, with the exception of one I found out recently, most of the units, if not all, apart from our tank reagiment, they have the beret. But then for the ceremonial dress, they wear these like weird cap things. I say weird. They're really common, but to me they're weird and they make them look like a postman somewhat. So you just the crap I don't just stay away from the crap hats. And the other one was, which was less commonly just

non ferocious. Stay away from the non Ferocious's not they're not worth every time. Yeah, I mean, yeah, being taken on a little bit by other other We've been taken on my a few crap outs recently units and they tend to say, they tend to say, it's a bit of slammed earth. You want to meet someone else a bunch of crap outs, and I think you are too.

we're not. We don't have all these troops crazy tradition holding us back, but we were formed in nineteen forty two, and it was it was actually Churchill who called for he sort of Germans had sort of Germans had deployed paratroopers in I think forty one or forty maybe, and the Germans had actually had a horrendous casualty rate when they did it, and Churchill thought, hey, that's sound like a great idea. That's that's the reality. What happened. We

needed we need airborne, we need airbone infantry. And what they actually did was they they they basically started training, They got ass of volunteers from different units and they put together put together an everyone unit and became originally known as Commandos and then later on became the Parachute Regiment and actually went through a couple of litererations early on. But yeah, so nineteen forty two when we were formed.

there's always a lot of Americans out there. And I'm sure I jumped into them, and not in nineteen forty four, but I did it in like two thousand and nine, I think it was no yet the nine maybe, And I'm sure I jumped with one hundred and first. I jumped the young air Frahim.

we'll get out when we get out. And you know, some people aren't finally jumping because that obviously the injury rates really high. But we jump with When I jump with the US one and they was like they were gagging to get out. I don't know what's going on.

and the air steels still pretty high. You know. One of the one of the things I like to do when to go out and watch jumps and on him is spent what four hours laying down my back on the on the on the drop zone looking up and along with everyone else going steel. You don't you know they let the controlled easy descent and not the ones you're looking for. You're looking for the ones which.

it's like walking into a meat grinder. You know, you think you think you've made it, you think there's nothing else you need to prove, and you walk into the unit and you realize that you're the smallest fish in a lot of people have been there for a while,

all of these people. You all of a sudden realized I was looking up to these people nine months ago, eight months ago, nine months ago, these I was looking at these guys in thinking this is the reason I'm joining, And now you're in there with him and expected to be the same standard. And it was pretty daunting, pretty daunting. I ended up in a room, an ape Man room, where I first got put into really basic and I had a mate in there actually, who I had from training,

and I broke my hand on selection. So I had been delayed to get into the unit because I needed. After you do selection, you do like a live fire and exercise, final exercise and something else, and so I'd been delayed going on to that. So I came a few weeks later and I got and put into a room with him, and he he we were chatting with literally my first hour in there. We were chatting away and he came. A guy came into the room who looked pretty young, and I said, all right, mate. Whatever

I said to him called him mate. Whenever however he was speaking, I referred to him his mate. And he walked out on my friend ben Uh who actually went on to British s F. He said he was looking in and he was like a ghost, and he said, what are you doing? I said, what's it? He said, you called him mate? Who is he?

get through it. But it was hard and fast, you know, it was it was. It was January two thousand and one, I think when I got to the unit, and it was kind of a weird time because the British Forces at the time, our operational temple was not high. We had a few small things going on every now and again, and you know, a regiment would deploy and do some peacekeeping or something like that. The exception had been had been a there'd been an operation hostage rescue mission into.

You end up with a big pool of people who are in who are senior, who haven't actually done a lot right, and.

for two years, who want to make their mark. They want to get there the CBE or mb that they want to get the knighthood of their award from, you know, the Buckingham Palace for amazing service of the country, And how can I do that when there's no operation going on. They invent ways, they're trying to reinvent the wheel. It just becomes friend So it wasn't a pretty place to be at the time. It was difficult, but then obviously, you know the two thousand and one like I sellar Generator.

I joined and then September everything changed, literally everything changed. I deployed to Ireland, Northern Ireland the end of twousand and one of the Christmas. They're the first operational tours in norm Island, and again that was winding down, so it wasn't that interesting. I mean, I don't even remember it being that exciting. I remember a little bit of trepidation going out my first patrols around the areas are in, but nothing crazy. There was nothing real kinetic going on.

Tax and things at the time in Nordon Island were directed inward to themselves as into the local populace if anything was going on, or towards the police, very little towards British troops because the Nord Island Peastie and all this had been signed and it was winding down and British troops a pulling out of there slowly. So that was all of it an anti climax. But you know, uh, nine to eleven happened and the world was changed forever, and probably allus has changed forever as well.

I don't think I really understood what it's gone all the time. I was only young. I was very naive where military was concerned and just globe du you know, global politics was concerned. And when I returned to the unit after leave, you know, like maybe a week or so later, it was it was just something different in the air. We knew we we kind of had an inkling that people are going to start deploying. We didn't

know what. We didn't know, we didn't know who, we didn't know where so just all of it happened the air and my my actual first global war and terror operation, if you like, was was matter of fact, it wasn't the global war and terror was the Iraq Vision, the Vision of Iraq in two hundred and three. That was the first related thing I did. But before that there'd be deployments into Afghanistan. Cabul marines went and two Power

went on that. But my first big big off was into yeah, the Iraq ovasion of Iraq.

going to war, Yes, go to war. And I think back and I think pretty naive that we reacting like that, like excitement, But the excitement happiness was a bit a little bit too elevated. But again we were, you know, kind of off the back of that period of nothing going on, and the prospects of nothing going on every in your career was becoming pretty pretty obvious. Sort of the trans war it was was exciting. We started we started a beat up process, you know, a pre deployment

training very early on. But that was the first sort of example there I saw of what sort of continued for a few years where our ability to our capability to train train ourselves for these other types of operations. I mean, even though the war war type, like the

Iraqi version was we kind of weren't there. We still had like our training regime and our training, our TTPs tactics, techniques and procedures and everything was geared up for Northern Ireland, Northern Island mainly, and like peacekeeping missions in Kosovo or Bosnia wherever we were, and that kind of continued on even to Afghanistan where where it just wasn't wasn't good enough. So the the Iraq training beat up was was a

lot of conventional the two company attack like stuff. We did a we did a massive defensive exercise which was we jumped in we jumped into a drop zone in in Salisbury plane which is kind of southern England, west of west of London, big open area. We dropped in there for a tender exercise, pure defensive, jumped in with a crazy amount of kit and as you always do.

I think we marched in maybe fifteen mile ten or fifteen miles through the night, through the next day and then just started digging trenches stage three as we would call them. So you're the full full war style trench to two fire to fire because say fire pits, they're not fire pits. Yeah, yeah, fire trench either side, wriglely tins, tin in the middle, earth of the top so they can standing a chemical biological editing attack, which took like two days. It was one of those have you ever done?

Have you ever done those kind of exercises?

You spend all day looking for where the engineers are with their like their digger trucks come along to help and you see them coming up the line help the different trenches and then by the time they get to your trench, maybe they helped them get out or maybe you get the guys in, put some explosives in and blow it and it almost always makes the trench worse, makes more work for you, just taves it in. Like fuck.

We did that. Did that horrific in terms of sleep deprivation, effort and and a lot of life firing in an area called Breck and Sennybridge Training Area, which is like is our main infantry sort of training area in the UK. It's in it's in Wales. Conveniently it's about half an hour from where I grew up, which is good and uh. And then we headed off to Q eight Again that was a big unknown, you know, I think we were expecting. We were definitely expecting full, full on, full scale war

fighting for us. The reality was for that is that most British units didn't didn't have that. We had some low real low level contacts, you know tics. Some units had a bit more than others. The armor was really the ones the units that had a lot, but we had very little infantry, infantry wise, and we were all pretty naive to it as well. I remember I say naive to it. We were. We were pretty wet behind the US when it came to any form of compact, you know, because none of us have done any of

it ever. And again going back to the point about the kind of people who are in command positions, almost everyone in the command positions in that unit three para had done no form of combat whatsoever. They've never been

never been shot at, never shot at anyone else. There was a handful of people who had been who had served in the Falcon Islands in ninet eighty two when the when Nigentina invaded, and they were you know, they had they had literally done the heart most hardcore, hardcore fighting, but twenty odd years before, and there were only a few of them, so their impact was very little, and we really looked up to them. But you know, those

guys were they weren't in command positions. They were like court the masters and things like this, or long engagement officers to Ellie and Ellie is what we call that. A guy who's or a girl who's gone all the way through the ranks from private all the way up, and then they basically get invited to stay on and they get converted into a commission, convert to captain and stay on. And there was a few of those, so apart from them, no one knew anything really in terms

of the realities of combat. I remember being sat in the trench and we are getting wh and I said a shell script was a trend to shell scrip maybe a couple of feet deep, and the Ramala oilfields and when we're getting artilleried, and the guy next to me was still a good friend now Tom, and he's a little bit of panic. So what we're going to do if what we're going to do if we get hit nothing, Mate, you can't do buddy, that We're going to be fucked. We're going to be fun, he said, you are. Don't

speak like that. Don't tell them, well, you know what you what you're talking about? This guy, you know the kind of reality, the reality of the situation here, and uh and that and that. You know. That was kind of an example of sort of the Navy fast forward, fast forward three four years, and it was a very different, different experience for everyone. People are very very different at that point, you know, so Iraq always a put of an anti climax rye unit. Some guys had a good

time in terms of that. Sally got you know, they they pop the channel, so to speak. I didn't really you know, got we got artillery, big deal. We had no we had no close quote or any court, my my section, my platoon anyway, no form of engagement whatsoever. The nearest we got to that was we went out on a We went out to ambush the Ford, the Ford observation officer, the Iraqi Ford observation officer was coming forward on a motorbike getting his binders out, trying to

spot where we were, and the bugger off. He was just out of range. Bugger off, and then they artillery we come in, and so we went out to ambush him. We went out one height, he didn't turn that he didn't turn up next morning, and then another plat out the next day and they shot him up and got them, but we didn't get them. As the closest we got

really a big an my Max. Which was weird because we came back from there and everyone we were treated as heroes, like, well, amazing, he did all this crazy stuff. It's like yeah, you don't want to say, you know what I mean, my parents and everyone else in the house.

border in vehicles, patrol the border. That's pretty fun because he the border area. I don't know if you've been in the border area, like the said in the rock with it on. It's it's like flat as a pancake, you know, it's it's all marsh and you've got raised roads, dirt tracks. You can see a vehicle four or five

kilometers away. You can see the dust. So if we'd spot them, spot people doing a deal on the side of the road, mainly when we got hair ass chasing after them, they see us coming, they see us coming, but it still wouldn't stop going. As a good catch, it was a bit of fun, you know, we get there and they'd chuck all the weapons and they chuck all the car there weds of cash, they chuck all the cash and we bring that back in. Sometimes we catch people and bring them in for for a question.

But it was again, it was pretty It was pretty timid, pretty timid, you know. It definitely definitely not was expected. There was what I was expecting in reality is what we got in two thousand and six on the first Afghan Tal, but that's not what happened.

Operation Herrick four. Actually there'd been three operations before in but the three before basically establishing our base, which was Camp Bastion, it was called HERK four was the first time that combat troops had been sent in and that was that was that was three Power battle group. So it was our battalion for three power of which probably five hundred six hundred powers with a few if you

had added on to that, and then a battlegroup. The rest of the battle group was to support as is like two thousands strong, so logistics, engineers, you know, all the usual that would come along, medics and and specialist signals, coms, guys and all that. That was also pretty much an unknown going in. I remember I remember there was a there was an interview with a politician at the time, I forget his name. And he'd said that he hopes that he hopes that the operation would go without a

shot being fired, is what he said. And the mission was to go in and basically go and take control of not to take control, but have a presence in key areas in in Hellman Province, so to basically lay the lay the ground for reconstruction, provincial reconstruction where it was needed, and to stay the lights like local government

and minimize Taliban minimized Taliban influence in those areas. So he said, not shot being fired, and then six months later that we've done over a million or a million rounds. I think he got it way wrong. You got it way wrong. Yeah, we went. I mean that was our beat up training for that was in Oman. Now by that point, I mean, you know, I said, Iraq had been the two tours there being pretty much an anti climax,

but didn't take it away from the pack. And now we were used to deploying what the operator, what you have deploying operations is like different mindset of switch switches. The different expectations you'd have, don't have any expectations. Anything gets thrown from the type accommodation you're going to be in to how often you see that accommodation to the how much water you're going to be getting, so the weapons systems you're going to be using, and that was

no difference with with Afghanistan. But the difference was that there was a definite difference in the beat up training. And that is because I think the history of of Afghanistan is so different. Like you know, the Brits have been beaten up pretty badly in Afghanistan before Russia got smashed pretty recently relatively beginning of that point in Afghanistan before. It's not a it's not a place to be trifled with. And it was a great book. There is a great

book called The Bear Went Over the Mountain. Yeah, I was, yeah, it's it's it's interviews with Russian commanders from the seventies and eighties and they're trying to understand basically after action reviews, but a whole book of it and where they went wrong. Why why the Mudji had Dean? We were just to just do them over and and you know, in summary,

because the Muddia had Dean. The people of Afghanistan mainly who are part of the Jahadeen and now the Taliman they're pretty savvy, like they know how to they know how to fight, they know to fight the foreigners, and I think we knew that. So the beat of training going in was very different. We spent The last thing we did was we spent three weeks in Oman, and by that point I was with the sniper platoons, so I'd gone to the sniper patuone in two and four

and so within within three powers only. The way, yeah, the way it works with our snipers is you can get badged, so you can you can be invited to go and attempt the sniper course. The selection if it's not a selection selection for the unit, but the sniper course we come back to the unit, you may get invited to go into the into the sniper of platoon.

And the way the snipers work is we will very rarely operate as a platoon, but we will go and put one or two snipers to different sub units, different teams, different different sections, different companies to support whatever they're doing. So in oh Man, that's very much where we where we focused our training. It was on you know, shooting in those kind of conditions, and we'd also been graced with quad bikes, you know, like ATVs, so we were trying to get trying to work out how best to

use it. We haven't asked those It's kind of just been chucked as you know, like you get the big operation staff, lots of money gets thrown in and often you get a lot of kids. Think what we're going to do with this. We got given a bunch of cord bikes and did a lot of training with those, and and then and then, and then, and then deployed afghan Definitely a different feeling went out there than it was to Iraq. The first time we went to Iraq for the war. It just seemed more serious if we

just everyone just seemed very serious. Was like like we knew ship was going to go down, but you didn't quite know why. And again, I think it's just down there the history of that place. I mean you said you were in Helmand, Yeah, yeah, the first time when I was in Helmand.

in with the local, the local the local leader. It was actually we were actually based out the US based there. There was the US space and in that US but I can't remember the US unit was the U s were there. There was also a unit of our Special Boat Service so SBS our specially one of our special forces units, and then a company of Paris went in there, myself included. We went into a bit of patrolling around the town. But the people were like they didn't have

a clue where we were there. They didn't understand what was going on, you know. They hadn't just been a war where we were going in to rescue them from something being the enemy kind of. We just we weren't there one day and then the next day we were. From that perspective, I remember getting asked by the Turf getting asked if we were Russians by a lad in the town you know, we weren't greeting positively, we were

greeting negatively. For the first four or five weeks. That was kind of what it was, just bedding in, getting a field of things. And then after that, I think once the Taliban got a handle on us and kind of where we looked like we were going to be settling into then they then they kicked off. And I remember the first again, up to that point, it's the

other six two thousand and six. Now you know, we've done Iraq to the Iraq invasion, then Iraq again, two Power being out to Macedonia, one Power of Sierra Leo, and all these things had happened, so I mean pockets of little things going on. But even up to that point, the thought of having a firefighter contact was like wow.

If you knew someone that being in the contact was like wow, that guy got shot out and he shot back like it was it was literally like it was like a there was like a mythical beast, these people. It was so rare at that point. And then I remember the first the first contact happened. It was a big battle that happened in an area cause now and I can't remember I wasn't on that op on that mission, but I remember the guys come back and it was a company up and our snipers came back in off

that and they were just so happy. I mean they were just sweat and dust and just they looked fucked. They looked like wrecked, like they just done one hundred miles, you know. And the reality was they just tasted their first experience of you know, and hours long, hours long battle in forty fifty degree heat in Afghanistan, in finding an enemy that know exactly where all the rabbit runs on hide and they don't weigh uniform. They look like just like the locals. Yeah, all the tricks in the book.

And and that was the first one, and then after it was just carried on, you know, they started everywhere, the Taliban started hitting, hitting everywhere. Obviously the most famous one is one of the most famous is the Sang Sanging Manley Sanging district where the I think where we eventually left years later and the US Marines came in maybe eight I think I was ten Marines came in, so you know, you guys have been there as well.

But it was the the tempo of contacts with the enemy was like nothing I ever I ever expected, no one expected. It was just through that. It was crazy. It's crazy.

the batam and the realities. I don't that's a bit odd, But in summary, it was to It was to gain and hold ground and minimize influence in these key areas so that we could so we could bolster the key leaders, the local leaders basically both the local governments and in areas where we wanted to do some reconstruction or improve education, improve civil services and all that, then we could do

that down the line. That was our mission anyway, So we ended up going to I think we had five or six five or six locations sang in KSh now is that a bunch of different places, and we we bid off a bit more and we could chew. Really we spread tooth in. I think, well, we know we spread tooth in because what what what resulted, what ended up happening was instead of being able to get into a position, get into a compound. Most of the time we would take over like civil buildings, like the civil center.

I said, takeover. We'd go in there with the police is blessing, local local leaders, blessing, go in there, and we would. The aim would be to saturate in the areas. But when the Taliban started attacking back, we didn't have the troops saturate in the area because we'd already taken on too many places. We had too few troops dot were around to do any kind of saturation. Now it just became pure fighting just to survive, basically survive and keep it, keep a handle on these areas, very limited

to get any supplies in or you know. I ended up in a I ended up for two months in a place called Maskala, and it's known as the Siege

of Mazkala. It's been a few things written and produced about it, documentaries, And for two months, you couldn't get in, and you couldn't get out, and you know, we we were down to our last rounds of ammunition, we were down to our last like our last supplies of food and and by the time I got out of that place, the rest of three Powers already back in the UK because they couldn't the RAF wouldn't fly in because if they tried to fly in, they get an airframe shot down.

It's just complete lockdown in that position. That's kind of the worst of it. It was kind of the most famous example of that. Yeah, it wasn't it was it was it was. It was life changing, like the genuine life changing, you know that that was the calla example. I mean, we we get hit five, six, seven, eight times a day, and sometimes it would be five or ten minutes, a five or ten minute contact battle. Other times it'd be our hour plus every day, all day,

every day. And and it was the same in Sang, you know, in Sanging and Sang in DC, they're quite uly there where they had the ability to get out the gate. There was a bit of there was a bit of dead not dead ground. There was like a buffer zone of open area between the compound walls. So to speak. And the green zone. Now, when I say the green zone, I don't mean like iraquens. I mean green zone is in green area where when we can hide, because obviously the green zone is known by a lot

of people who like serving Iraq as safe area. Green zone in Afghanistan to us means a totally different thing. It means like foliage. It means river foliage, you know, ditches and irrigation. And they sang and get out out in patrol and go out and do fighting patrols and things. But they would experience the same thing like every time they go out, they get smashed. They probably get smashed way out, they get smashed away back in, they get

smashed from the compound. And the casually rate for that that tour across the battle group was like one in ten was pretty pretty pretty high in a ten day in a ten day period. In the first ten days I was in masse Kaala, we took fifty five casualties in that ten days. Now a big proportion of that and there was only eight eight of us, but we also had Afghan forces in there. There were maybe twenty

or thirty of those. So between them and as eighty eight fifty odd fifty old casualties three down in ten days. It's just carnage. Yeah, it was. It was pretty it was pretty heavy, but there was nothing to tal about out lockdown in that compound. They could they could literally get to the walls like if you were to, if you were to, if you're doing like a war bit of war training, a bit of war gaming, and you had a map of the town of ms Kaala and you were asked to, hey, pick the spot on there

you which would be most difficult to defend. You picked the district center because like impossible defender, that's exactly where we were and we hadn't chosen it, like we hadn't chosen it. So some months before the the Afghans have been in there and one of our one of our our path Finder Platoon unit, which is one of our Elite, which is one of our early reconnaissance units called Pathfinders.

They were basically driving past one of a better expression in the desert, high on the high ground, looking into Mysakala, just doing some reconnaissance and at the time there was a there's a contact on on the Afghans were getting the Afghan police were getting hammered by by the Taliman and they went into support. They were in support, got in there into the compound and then couldn't get out

because of the delay of the land. You know, you could you could walk a Taliman fighter could walk to the wall and not be seen, you know, and you can have a sentry up here, high up and not be seen because it was just it was is the center of a very very dense, very dense built up area. They got in and then they struggled to get out,

and we put a battle group up in. So the whole battle group did an operation just to create a safe path through the town so we could take the path finders out and replace them with a Danish unit, which we did as on that as on that put that that was just crazy as well. Taliban did not want us to get in there. We put the Danish in. Then the Danish got stuck and and they took a lot of casualties, and they also had a sniper threat

at the time. There was a Taliban sniper who was being pretty effective taking people out headshots within the within the compounds.

They were part of our battle group. They were supporting us like additional numbers and they were stuck in there. So we were going into basically battlefield casually replacements and they had no sniper capability either. So we went in there. Danish ripped out. We went in and it was a helicopter desk, one of the last helicopters that came in dropped us off, and I remember it was it was nighttime.

Got shown this at the room were sitting in. We were going to be sleeping in myself and Jared is my oppose name we were sat next to the option room and just a cacophony of noise just outside kicked off. Knew it was a contact, but it was just it was loud and it seemed like it was coming from everywhere. You know, when you're in the building inside the room, when you hear a contact on it, it sounds like it's everywhere anyway because of the acoustics, and we went

grabbed the weapons, were running outside. We didn't have a clue of the layout of the compound, didn't know anything. We literally just landed and we went bolting outside and it was literally all four sides of the place was just erupting. Everyone's getting the talent. IAM were bumping all four sites and it's a complex attack. It was you know,

multiple multiple flanks, multiple weapons systems. You had you know, small arms who had rockets, who had Chinese rockets, and RPG's going down and so we just grabbed the first bit of high ground we could and just start and started shooting and what we could. And it was wild you had because you had the British in there, who you know, we were pretty squared away as in professional soldiers like Paris, but you also had the Afghan forces in there, who were you know, they may think they

were a professional, but they were like crazy. There's one guy who we learned this. You could easily spot him, this, this policeman. You could easily spot him in a contact at night because whichever the sanger he was in was with the one where all the sparks were flying from. Because the a K forty seven you had had a bed barrel, so you would fire the you would fire it anyway. Sparks everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean

why not you can't couldn't get a replacement in there. Yeah, but you know that that uh that yeah, that first night was just that shit. And that's how it went on for the entire thing, like a proper batter's from the fire. And the thing is with that is we've been in I've been in loads of stuff up to that point. That tour that was like I went into

was the car in augant. I'd landed in Afghan in March, so I was pretty seasoned by that point in terms of, you know, facing the enemy, and that was just took it up a whole a whole other level. And it's it's also a different ballgame when you were really restricted

what you can do tactically. We didn't have the manpower to even get out the gate, because if we've tried to get out the gate, we'd only have maybe a section or sort of get out unless we took everyone from the from the from the compounds out, and that means we'd be giving the compounds up to the Taliban. We weren't. That wasn't my mission. We had to hold it. They couldn't go out of the gate. It was literally

just defend. That's all we could do. And because they could get to the walls, you know, you one day you'd be getting a small out attack from a couple of flanks, now that they'd be getting grenades torunover of the wall from the mosque, which was just to buy the rub bub. At this point, it was pretty it was pretty frantic. It wasn't a nice position to be in.

It's different dealing with stuff like that when you've got lots of tap options at your disposal, when you are pretty much at the behest of what the enemy wants to do that day. Is pushing a different mindset, completely different mindset. And also we didn't know when we were leave it. There was no you know, there was no there's no indication of when we were leave it whatsoever. And I don't know if you know anything about that siege. But what ended up happening was our a combination of

negotiations with our officer in command. There a guy called Adam Jowett, Major Adam Jowet. At the time, he was discussing with a local leader who started coming in on behalf of the Taliman to try and sort of bring an into the carnage because the town was just getting trashed. There was no civilians there at this point. It was

just it was just Taliman. Apart from what there was one civilian guy, and he was an old dude, mad as a box of frogs, walk a stick, blind as a bat, and he would he was living outside the town, still live inside of the town at some point, but every day he would walk in feeling his way up a wall, regardless of what was going on, what firefights, but anything was going on. If feelers were at the wall, you get to it. At the shop, do whatever you need to do in the shop. He wasn't selling to

anyone because there was no one to buy anything. What everyone's doing the shop maybe getting supplies whatever, and then he would like man hand himself back out blinders about every day and he was the only cingling that would come in. What happened is the Adam and then outside of that, the back in Bastion, there was more senior conversations going on with senior senior Taliban and senior parts

of the British military to negotiate a ceasefire. And the ceasefire happened, and the Taliban organized local transport for us, so you know, local Jingly trucks, cattle trucks, Afghan cattle trucks completely afgand drivers. And one morning a bunch of trucks turned up that's don't don't and just before dawn and we jumped onto those trucks and the Taliban extracted us into the desert where a bunch of Cheriks were waiting for us. She's nice of them. It's just so

so surreal. Yeah, at the time, didn't anything, but you know too, you you you the stories of oh yeah, the you know, the the enemy allowed us to leave and save us. They did sort of kind of got us out. They like Second World War stuff or Korea or somewhere else. It's not two thousand and six Afghanistan, Like, that's what happened. And when we were actually when we came back, when we came back in, we were told so we finally got the CAMBASTIONI we were we were

brought together and told you won't this didn't happen. You want to talk about this? Yeah, yeah, And we didn't, you know, even even even a lot of guys in three paras didn't know about it until much later. And the first I saw that it would be sort of become public was on Wikipedia nine.

he he led as well that he was. He was a perfect CEO at the time, and but I'd like to ask him, you know what, like why do we go in all those positions? I can't imagine it was his decision. I'd like to think it wasn't his decision, you know. I think you'd like to think it was higher up. But I think if we consolidate, if your point, naw, Dave, if we consolidated on a few, like half the number

of positions, you know, that's six months. But then I don't know, it could have been could have been time pressure, could have been just get they do as much as much as we can, as quick as we can, and we'll deal with it. And it just didn't go on like that because that really set the tempope for the rest of the operation.

lip service to the training. If you're doing all the training you're giving, especially on the medical fund, you do the basics, you do what you're supposed to do, but it's no like emotional investment in it and all the lessons you learn from the previous carnage operation mission you know, War Falklands in our case, or Gulf One. You know, they'd not carry forward when the operations aren't temper wasn't high. So we had come back and thought, shit, yeah, we need to pay like we need to up our game

with medical training for example, first day training. We are upper game with other things, basic things, and and we were trying to So we came back, we got we got asked, some of us got asked to go and be part of the pre deployment training for the what would be the third unit going out there, because obviously we left the unit already can be, which is the Marines or battle group. You guys to go on advising these things. And and I went on as I did

two stints on that two different places. I went and trained and was part of training for a company, an infantry company from a different unit, a different regiment. And I also went down to the a sniper training unit elsewhere the sniper training unit. They wouldn't they wouldn't believe what our webs what the weapon system was capable of is an album they three which is three three eight, like a. I think we were telling them it's capable

of much more. What the pamphlet tells you. By the way I can go further differences is you know, it's fine, but the the company, infantry company was much more more frustrating. You know, we were told literally told when by the permanent staff are doing instruckt and like, don't scare them, don't don't because the other thing is it's these are different kinds of units. There's an advantage for having us action process. Yeah, right, Anyone who arguments different argue argues different.

He's talking about non and they do argue differently. The units who don't have a selection process don't want to bleed. Having a selection process is better. The reality is having a selection process means you end up with on average, more resilient, more capable people than than the unit that doesn't. Obviously his exceptions to that rule.

the people around me, and I trust the unit. A part of so you went enemy were softly softly build the discuminants. Yeah, exactly. It was softly softly and it was It was over a couple of weeks, this particular part we were on with them, and it was coming towards the end of the beat of training, and they

were just doing really basic things wrong. Like the officers would there'd be a battle going on, and this is training, be a battle going on, and the officers would they'd want to consult the map and they get behind like a land Rovere, a soft skin vehicle to consult the map. Because for twenty years they could do that in training and hide behind a soft skin vehicle as if that's

going to stop around. They look at the map and we come over and go, guys, you can't you know, if you do this out there, you're literally gonna you're dead. It's not gonna stop stop it, and went on and no one was listening. And they got to the they got to the last day and and stood up with the British expressions. We ripped a new asshole into them and just told them, you guys need to start switching on. You're not paying any attention. You're not listening to what

we're saying. Part of the problem was as well, is that the powers, the Powers in the UK, we're not that popular amongst other units for a bunch for a bunch of different reasons, right, and it's unfounded reasons.

you're going to get shut up. And if your drills and skills aren't good enough as a team, as a unit, or as an individual, you're probably going to get injured or get someone injured or killed. It's going to happen. It took, you know, it took a couple of couple of couple of tours for everyone to realize, Hey, it is actually like they said it was. It's it's it is that crazy.

on the ground, not bad at all. But the reality for me in terms of career, my my career progression promotion to being a rapid, crazy rapid normally to be to become a section commander, you know, running the running the team of eight, you looking at eight years maybe average of about eight years to get to that position at that point, I did it within three or four and not I say I did it. Wasn't aiming for it. I just ended up as a you know, running run

of my own when see me at that point. And then I became a sergeant within eight and a sergeant normally like eleven twelve years, and it was it was too quick, you know, I was. I cut my teeth in terms of combat, if you like. But I still I still was dealing with that sort of confidence issue, I believe it or not, in terms of handling guys, commanding guys. And it was almost to do with like a status thing, social status thing. One of the one

of the things that happened. I don't know what happens you're side of the pond, but when I first joined three PARA, if you got promoted, then you would move units sub units. So if you if you got promoted, you'd move from at least move platoons. You go from this platoon to that platoon. You're supposed to go from company to companies. You go from a company strength ross

like one hundred and forty, you'd move companies. And the reason being is is that you're not all of a sudden being put into a leadership position within your peer group because group stilly peer group, a stilly friends, the stilly fuck.

belief in myself there. You can say, there's not much, there's not much else can give you a bigger, bigger confidence boosters going out doing something tasty, even if one off. If the people out there, I've only ever done one one bit of combat they've been in, but the being they've done it as if they did well with the team, they've respected, they got through the chief the mission that

is like that is literally can be life changing. That that oh sixth though, is basically what the t meet I am now just you know, outgoing sell a confident guy. I was totally different before and I managed over time to pull that into and and help me with the command element, just confidence command. You know, it wasn't it was not that I was week a week commander, but I it was almost like a poster syndrome. You know, it's just like so quick I just gone through the

rank so quick. I was sitting around, you know, I was the equivalent ranked to people I was again looking up to when I was in training in some cases I was the same rank as people who would take me through training.

on pre deployment stuff for other people. Uh and then two that a night the start of that the start of that year was a leadership course for me, which was do my course for quality myself to get promoted to sergeant. So that would be from a sniper's perspective, that would qualify me to lead, the lead, the lead, the be the sniper commander. Basically I did that. I did that and that earlier and earlier in the year, and then deployed out Afghan. Now, the second Afghan tour

for me was very much different than first. It was quite good, the whole the whole of three I said, what was quite good, the whole of three part. We deployed out to Canada heart at that point and that was a bit of a culture shock. That's the first time I'd ever been on a big accoump with us A Canadians, like one of these huge camps like the Canadians hockey. You guys must have been that.

But the the ops we were doing, we were doing strike ups, so strike ups for High Valley targets in southern Afghanistan mainly, so you would spend two or three days in camp. What was the name of the camp camp not Camp Suitor com It was called uh in camp. Then the mission would come up and either a company

of US would go out on the mission. And the mission could be the whole unit, but there's rare the whole The mission could be like a day out snatch and grab, like out out of the Allies, drop in to dropping to just outside the village, running grab the target, getting out, and it was it was never it was always capture like mainly capture and capture. A kill was quite rare. But then we'll be in, get them and get out and or sometimes the mission would be two

or three weeks. It would go and be to support a US unit like a background area or or a British unit elsewhere, or to put a faint in for an s F attack going in somewhere. You know. So we did that for the six months there and that was that was really really good. You know, we had guys doing work, doing work with the CIA on a couple of on a couple of missions down near the

down in the Pakistan border. I think you know, it was just interesting, varied, varied, varied missions, which I really enjoyed, really enjoyed, gives you different incld. We had some really good results as well, and we also got to do some of the tasty stuff we did in a six top. We're going and like I said, we're going to boasts

a two para. We're out there at that time in Helm and doing a kind of equivalent tour we don't know six and they were doing some real real doing some real tasty places, and we went into a couple of their sports and bolted them and basically got to get given a bit of a rest and going and do us going to some areas they weren't able to reach purely because of resources and and and then the state of the troops. Basically, you know, we were we were fresher and I had some great results in there.

That was the first time actually I came across a Taliban fight away uniform, as in it wasn't police uniform, was his own, his uniform.

So we had guys who go off to one Power part of Special Forces Support Group, they come back and it's just that's the that's to make sure that you don't have skill fay in any particular area because you've got a Special Force Support Group one Power, and you know, you do very little conventional stuff. You do a lot of s F orientedst training wise and mission wise and so and so we chopping ch between to make sure the skills aren't lost. And you and you and you

and you share knowledge between the units as well. So that was quite anod that point, But it was, yeah, it was good, it was it was it was refreshing to have such specific, defined, team bound missions not like you have a six months.

side for sure. And like I said, we had a lot of we had a lot of great results, like tangible results. You get feed One of the advantages of doing your missions like that is because because intelligence is so much more, you're closer to the you're sort of closer to the source of intelligence, right, You're closer to the agencies. It was really on on on top of where the intelligence has come from and what it can mean.

And so we'd often get feedback. So if we captured the killed someone brought him in, we'd often get feedback a couple of weeks later, like that guy you brought in or that guy you shot, he was actually such and such commander, actually such and such, and you like, awesome. You don't get that in normal, normal operations, you know, you just you just because he very rarely returning a dead guy to two to the agencies, especially like in Musekala when sangin. You know, you haven't got time or

the inclination to do it. The guy is standing out there and they're gonna and his friends are going to sweep them up.

But because the public sentiment towards what we were doing out there started to shift slightly, Like the publics the public, the public's appetite over here for accepting casualties and deaths on a daily basis was really starting to die down, starting to dwndle, you know, a bit like this support for ukrain Is at the minute, it's like it's on the diet dying down. So it makes it really hard to the appetite of risk becomes less. And that tour was it was much less conventional and much less sort

of small lands attacks from the Taliban. What the Taliban realized early on having a six and seven, so from the first instance of British troops getting out there is like, hey, we may not be able to combat them like this. We're not doing very well. We're getting slaughtered. So they started switching to the tactics over to IDs in direct attacks, much like happened in Iraq and happens elsewhere. And that's

what that's what it was like eleven. They would they would tend to initiate contacts with small lambs if they were going to have a prolonged contact with small arms, they'd be quite far away, like minimal risks themselves, but it almost always been in direct in direct attacks from sort of an ID or something else, multiply I D's or something else. And and because of that lack of that less appetitite for risk that the British military had out there, it actually restricted us a lot in terms

of what we could do technically. You know. So there were things like there was a rule that you weren't allowed to go and putting up put any for of mission in any form of patrol, any form of any action in which was less than twelve people. Now I'm a sniper, like twelve people is a fucking nightmare. Yeah, you know, we're doing that. And and so that immediately restricture ability to move super silently, to move without being seen, to move without being heard, you know, unless you've got

twelve ninjas or twelve snipers. No, no, disrespectable last snipers. But like with the snipers, and we trained that way for a reason. We're just better at doing that kind of stuff than other people. It makes it really problematic, and again it provides more opportunity to be anyway to attack. And then you couple that with the ramp up in

protective equipment that we had to wear. You know, we were really lumbered down with these massive, massive which is normal now, but these massive front plate, massive back plate. Our helmets had changed. So on the first you know, we went out in twousand and six, we be on like airborne helmets which were very light weight turns and ten.

We couldn't do that in terms of six. The reality was because because of the way the Taliban could move so light when they're dished ashes, right, they've got they've got a few pouches with the mags in the AK forty seven. They don't need much water because they lived there.

They'd like a customer climate. What we would end up doing a lot of the time on our offensive operations is when we get dropped in, so we jump off the hellies and we would take our armor off and we would case shit and even then, but the end the armor was really light anyway. It was like a flack jacket for one of a better word. And then a small chest plate you know, maybe I don't know, eight inches by four inch, maybe nine inches by four inches in shape cover your heart and on your back

to cover your heart from the rear. We would ditch those and just put in a pile and we were going with nobody armor, and we'd have a helmet and we clip into our webon because we could move faster. And to us, the advantage to be able to move fast out with the disadvantage you have no armor, less likely to get short if you can get shot, if you can move quick. You know, if you can move quick as you had fast Forward eleven, you wouldn't be allowed to take your armor off. It was like nope,

not allowed to do it. No helmet off. And and as as snipers, the kind of equipment issued, you couldn't even get into a decent fire position or like a prone fire position because of the armor would really chest up. The helmet would hit in the back of your arm. On the push forward. You couldn't get your help to look through the scope. Just a nightmare. Again, these I think these are just I don't know if you guys experienced the same thing or your your guys experience the

same thing. You know, it's very frustrating, but how do you explain to the mother or father dead of a dead kid that you know less armors better right when maybe you know, I went into a I went into an inquest after the first tour when we came back,

an inquest to a couple of guys who died. They'd been a direct hit with the water and they were just peppered, obviously, and the mother was and one of the and she asked of the Ministry of Defense representative is like, why can't why aren't you able to issue body arm that covers the entire body? You know, like, I know the answer to that. The answer is obvious to anyone who's rationally thought, but not to the mother of dead kids, you know, you know what I mean.

So it really really hampered things, which ultimately I think is you know, one of the reasons that our footprint was a lot smaller. You know, you can put loads of troops in the area, footment is a lot smaller. The Taliban have more confidence, loads of ice star assets up. You know, we had loads of eyes on the ground and things, but very you need boots on the ground to have any form of influence, and in reality on those county surgery operations. As you guys know, one part

of it is killing the enemy. The second part of it is winning over the locals demonstrate why we are here, right, you know, you got over and you need boots on the ground to do that and safe boots on the ground, and it was difficult for us to do it. Plus Afghana stand in the winter is miserable.

getting promoted up to the ranks because hisnates high up, he's got mates, and this guy is actually useless to get promoted, it's sort of to validate. Hey, this guy's being externally audited if you like. Right, it's last, that's what it is. I didn't have to do that because the operation, because the operational temper what I was doing, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't go anywhere, which I'm glad of because I would have missed the fear of missing out with extreme for any of these

any of these operations. But I knew I was going to have to do well because they wanted me to. They be in the career. People in the unit wanted me to go to Sandhurst as an instructor and instruct young officers, so bringing young officers up, and that's quite a prestigious posting. Like you go there, if you get you get you get told to go to Sandhurst if your career projection is high, like you're going to go all the way, You're going to be a regimental sergeant

major of one of the units. Basically they think that's the case. It's not guaranteed, but you've got to Sanders to do that. And I didn't. I didn't want to go to Sandurst. I want to go to Brecon Brecon Lets I mentioned earlier in Wales as well, how infantry

battles school. It's cold, it's miserable, it's horrible. It's where you it's where you send soldiers to go to learn how to be tacticians, how to think under pressure, how to perform under pressure physically and mentally, in one of the most disgusting places in the UK, you know, in terms of environment and weather and terrain, midwhales, glorious country. I wanted to go there because Sanders was. You know, you're teaching a lot of drill, You're teaching a lot

of You're teaching basically new recruits. All the officers out they build their boots, polish their boots, and I'm in the uniform. You don't know all the other stuff like teaching them tactics and all the rest of it. But I only wanted to teach that stuff, and I only wanted to teach it to the actual guy who's actually you know, young guys like I was, who were not officers, who were the guys who make everything work, you know.

But they didn't want me to do that. So we had a full and I ended up leaving after after this the third tour, and I think I'm a bit about that. I mean, I wouldn't be you know, I told you guys if it wasn't But yeah, that's that's that's what I'm there. The the I became, I got pretty bitter about it because I sort of I'd not put up a fight about anything. I'd done everything that

was asked to be up to that point. But my, my, my, my operational tempo throughout my career, I've been high non stop, you know, from two thousand and one, that first Northern Island tour all the way through twenty and eleven, non stop. My feet hadn't touched the ground, and I'd performed well, not grumbled about anything. And then the one thing I asked for and they said no, and I got very upset, very bit, very quickly. But the thing is at that time is that we knew that three Power knew that

we weren't going back to Afghanistan. It was that was the end of it for us, because it was all dying off and the rotations we weren't on that roster. It was like another four or five rotations to go and were we weren't going to be on it, so

and there was nothing else on the horizon. So the prospect of staying in and basically being you know, like one of those old grumpy guys that had been there when I turned up to hadn't tell them one, we've done nothing, you know, or bitter because they were in the Falklands and had done nothing since they were angry about that. You know, the prospect of being that and being basically a camp soldier, you know, a barrack soldier was was not exciting. And this circuit was kicking off

at the time. You know, I think Dave you mentioned you were a contractor. So time since six actually since two thousand and six for us from three Power. Once people had done what they wanted to do and satisfy themselves with combat in the military, a lot of the guys after six Talk and three Power, they left and they went onto the circuit because the circuit in Iraq with booming, you know, private securities with booming since one, two or three sorry onwards, was booming, and there's a

lot of money to be made. So those guys went and I did the same thing after after two thousand and eleven out there earned a lot of money. That was the plan. Earn a lot of money and so we get to do cool things. We're just getting paid more I did. It wasn't quite as wasn't I was looking at through rose tinted spectacles.

ramal and in place. So that's a bit weird. And flash fast forward to that would have been twenty twenty eleven, late twenty eleven. I started there and the Iraq hadn't changed much for the better since we went in in thousand and three. That's a bit of a common theme and other places. Right, definitely hasn't changed much. But then Iraq's a pretty a particular place. It's not I don't know it's a it's an odd it's an odd place. It's almost like they don't want to evolve that much.

I don't think I think they're quite happy the way it is.

You know, by that point, they they were just they were just saying the words that they you know, and we knew that someone o were Taliban. We knew there was all he knew. They were playing both sides and they knew we knew, and we couldn't learning about it. And the reality is they knew we're going to leave, and they just they just march in time. They just they just plodded along until until the Taliban come back. And it's a real they said it stuck between a

rock and a hard place, right. They know the Taliban's in the coming, they know we're there. We know they don't want us to like the Taliban or help. We don't want them to help the Taliban. But so they had to be seen to be helping us while not pissing off the Taliban, right because we're going to be gone, so and and back to the you know. The point that brought this up is that it doesn't impact their lives that much. Who's in charge. They still get the tender.

This is away from like Cabull, away from lash Gagark and there in the sticks, the farmers, the rural areas, you know, the the bed win. Their life's the same when it's British all patrolling all the Taliban. You know, their life's the same, I think for the most part, and probably it's more probably they would perceive it as more structured and predictable and understandable under the Taliban because that's what they've known for longer. They understand sharia law

and all the other things. They know them better than in no ways, they played a long game, right. Yeah, it's kind of it's not frustrating to talk about like this because I don't want to make it sound like what was the point of any of it? You know, it's it's but it kind of it puts it into perspective, and you see them when you when you leave like that, and ignoring the evacuation what three four what was it now?

Four years ago? It puts into perspective when they move so easily back under the Taliban, just carry on his normal job and it's just like, take take out the leader, put this leader in this structure, government structure, and it's fine. They don't change anything.

by their expectations they're totally fine. Right. It's like the tribe in the Amazon who don't have smartphones, right, they don't have bricks and they don't have bicycles, they don't bother because that's how they live and they're quite act me. They don't know any different. Even when you introduce something different than they're not, they don't like it. Still the same, it's kind of the same, and the standards are very different.

Same with you know again Afghanistan. As you pointed out there, what is right and what is wrong is different based on your perspective and when you're understanding and what the culture is built on foundationally historic.

I do. I do service delivery for for government government customers Startcom's company, which is interesting in itself, yeah itself, And it's also strange because I was never a comms guy. When I was in kind of can't work out, I ended up in a sackcoms company. But you know, I'm here and I'm enjoying it. But yeah, my day job, but that is very much an enabler for Hate Shower. You know, and have a few other things I do want to say, which is sort of you know, veteran oriented.

But yes, what I do. I think, like you guys are trying, I try and do an episode a week at least at least.

time not smooth. It took asis and for a bunch of different things. I learned a lot of stuff along the way, and I got pretty pretty low mentally, like as low as you'd want to get mentally, or as you wouldn't you wouldn't want to get ment And I didn't want other people to go through the same thing basically. But at the time, I've been listening to a very popular podcast by mister Rogan, and like you guys, you know, interviewing.

When you're listening to someone interview people from different walks of life and backgrounds and countries and perspectives, and you kind of you tend to pick something up from each one a little bit of information knowledge, and I think it arms you a little bit. It's sort of great, the tidbits that can help you unexpected time in life. So I basically wanted to communicate what I'd learned. I wanted to avoid my old friends and people I don't

know behind me going through the same situation. I've gone through, little things like stuff I learned about the circuit, stuff I learned about mental health, stuff I learned about, you know, getting by in the civilian world generally. And so I started the podcast up for that reason. Basically, chat to people, have a conversation with people I'm interested in, and I committed to myself. I started that with all I mentioned a guy earlier called Jarrett. It was my sniper buddy.

He did the first ten episodes with me and started up with the commitment that if I'm going to interview people and they're gonna have these conversations about these subjects and be you an open book otherwise, his point was doing it, I've got everything's going to be out there and be honest about my own experiences and when I think about things. And so that's why I did it, to try and communicate useful information to people. But I

was sounded like a preacher. You know, if I walked into three power, so I started the podcast in twenty eighteen, if I walk into three power Lie three power line, three power barracks, for example, and said, hey, guys, if you tried meditation, I get beating up, I get kicked

up back. Then beating up, kicked off can't never come back because it's go on about as if you bring it up in a conversation, in a in a decent contact with someone else who's of a similar background, totally fine as an example, Yeah, you know, you know the score. That's why try and get information to people that is useful basically, but it's got it's gone into something much

more than that. You know, he's brought us about. So you know, one of the reasons I know about team houses from one of your patriots, guy called Coke, who's a British guy, and he's he's also he's also one of my patrons, and and I find that, you know, if I understand started my podcast, I wouldn't be just introduced duced to you guys and having these conversations with you guys and learning about learning about what you do

and your side of the pond. And also I think it's huge value in spending time talking, actually active listening to talking, because there's so much that I pro even you know, the questions you fired at me today, there's so much that it makes me process and I will continue thinking about the next couple of days about what I think about things and why I think them, you know, which I think it's an invaluable thing that most people

don't get to do these days. How often do we get to sit down and talk actually talked to someone who listened to someone for an hour or two hours at a time. No one does it.

I understand it. But the but the worst thing in the world when you're literally is to be isolated, like I was talking about, you're isolated. Who's fucking horrific. I never want to go through that again. And the real is that we've got the buddy buddy system. We've got mutual support everywhere. There are people within our networks who we know or don't know, who have been through the same thing. I can offer advice. They're ahead of us on the track, they've been through the ship, you know,

and they can help you. But if they don't know about it, they can't. And even with the distance, you know, with the best, with the best, we'll step up for each other, whether we know each other.

I don't know if you've heard of him, but I know he's working with a few of your Special Forces units are there, and he is basically one of the world leading researcher on on newer end of chronology, so brain hormones adjusting newer end of chronology to combat the symptoms of PTSD. So we're right now, all the main focus on reducing symptoms of PTSD, in preventing PTSD is all on psychology and the sort of the physical side

of it. The physiological side of it's missed. So what Mark has found is that so let's talk about preparing,

let's talk about reducing the likelihood of developing PTSD. So what Mark, what Mark does with a bunch of s F units in the USA, and I know he's been engaged with cutle of SF units back here, is creatively supplementing guys and girls as it literally supplements which produce certain brain hormones which are susceptible to getting drastically impacted in like blast injuries, not blasting, but in blast in

repeated trauma, repeated battles. So that layer upon there, so s F units SF guys operators who are doing a lot of work. He ministers these hormones which are naturally got them in your body anyway, so when they do go into a contact, go into an extreme situation and come out and survive the other side, get them back in checks the baseline for the hormones bumps up again

what's what's what is deficient? And then it basically drastically produces his likelihood of developing post from It's amazing, Yeah, like incredible because because it just you, you've got the resiliency you can build in people like that just through training and your rigorous training and physical and mental and then this additional element, the physicological element, is incredible, and

you can do the same with treatment of PDSD. So there's a there's an actually it's an amazing American documentary film called I think it's called Quiet Explosions. Mark Gordon features in it. There's a there's green beret features in it, as a US Navy lady features in it, and an American football player, and all these people exhibit the symptoms

of PTSD and they've all basically got traumatic brain injuries. Now, the interesting thing is that three of them, so there's four of them, three of them have got traumatic brain injuries from blast or concussion. So obviously the American football player, you've got the you've got the Green Beret who was basically getting his head blowing out by preaching preaching charters. The Navy lady has got the same symptoms. She's got a qut PTSD, but she has never been around weapons systems,

She's never been a blast anything of this. The Navy lady was raped and she was raided on the service vessel, but the trauma of the rape produced exactly the same

symptoms and traumatic brain injuries everyone else. Now these people have been treated with again supplementation, new endocrinology, neuroendo chronological supplementation, checking which hormers are deficient, bumping them up and then seeing which, yes, the symptoms remain after that based on the physiological side, and then implement the psychological treatment if needs be so because after this point it's kind of like this physiological side has been completely ignored intentially, so

how do you get into that or the PTSD. So a point on that is, you know, there is this I don't know about over there, but here there is a definite some So some guys and girls who have PTSD, they can they can sort of fall victim to the victim mentality and kind of be their own barrier to improve it, or they can misunderstand that it doesn't it's not necessarily a chronic condition. I think that's changing slowly, but it needs to be much much so.

are serving female officers in the pairs. How much fitter do they have to be than the soldiers. Is fitness for the pair of officers comparable to sas officers?

the fitness is the same. And then officer fitness levels comparable to SAS officer no different again I'm generalizing here, but different because the SAS selection fitness levels are so much higher requirement than what they are with the with the powers, I say, physical, so much higher. The biggest barrier to get into SF we hear special forces of your selection wise is you know you liked to getting injured. It's almost like you, yeah, you like to get an injured.

You can get to it. You get to a point where you only need to be so fit to pass all the selection tests, but your body needs to be literally strong enough not get hammered and develop a stress fracture or roll an ankle or break a bone. You know. But no, they're different, not they're not comparable officer in the powers and they're not far apart.

had some tails above them. The reason that they were so challenging to fight is because you were fighting them on the wrong tur And again I alluded to some of the restrictions that we had in as earlier we had to we were much heavier to move around.

They were there fight for Taliman. Yeah, just different different place.

his wall in the White House for some time. But uh, Tootle I think the Tootle was he was one of those commanders who, outside of an operation grown you you would strike he was average, just another officer. And if we had another office at the same time, it was

pretty much quite disliked to his junior to Tootle. But you get when operations and missions like this happen, exceptional things go on, you get unexpectedly, you get these like heroes emerged from from from the group of whatever, from the organization and the unexpected to become the perfect person at the perfect time for the perfect operation. And Tootles that for that time. And interestingly with Tootle, his his his regimental sergeant major, he's like right hand Maham was

also not liked well too. It was like that his RSM was not liked all before thatand and six tour not like as in despised. However, the pair of them together on that tour, they were perfect. The personalities were perfect. The way Tootle commanded was perfect, The way the RSM was was just perfect. What was going on? Like anyone else, think it had been very different Ketle the fish, we would have more casualties, more deaths, we would have achieve what we did but they were perfect. So two lights

on that. Yeah, he was our rommel Sally.

we were extracting. We went very helicopters to come in and I thought I spotted it, So maybe eight hundred meters away, nine meters away, I thought I spotted, but we would call a dicker. I thought I spotted a local or remember the Taliban given signals the mirror, basically signaling where we were or something's gone on to other to the Talleman, other people. I wasn't a hundred percent.

I was pretty sure he was signaling this was a person, you know, a fighting age male, but on the younger on the younger side, i'd say maybe twelve thirteen years old. And I reported this because I was there, and I reported. I say reported back. I was talking because the team were behind me. I was talking it back. And the commander of the other team that was where it wasn't a sniper team. The other team that was that was with us, tok to shoot topally, to shoot the guy

and shoot the king. I should say, well, I said, no, he was. He was senior to me, but he wasn't my director sharing the command. And I said, that's the situation, Soley's referring to. I said no to that. I wasn't a hundred percent you know. And but I've killed him got away with it. Yeah, that's the right thing to do. No, would I be sitting here you were talking about with Dave at the start. I would absolutely something I'd absolutely regret. So it's the wrong. It was the wrong. It would

have been the wrong decision to do it. No question was did I ever see anyone else doing anything of that? No, I didn't. I didn't see anyone else doing anything like that. So refuse refusing in order to shoot someone, it's pretty rare. It's pretty rare to receive an order to shoot someone like, yeah, very I've been told it once and I've given the order once.

generalizing you. So someone's going to pull me apart for let's say I'm more criminal, I haven't got the fortune ie Alpha in front of me. But it was kind of the most relaxed version. It was really rare for that to be issued. I was on it for most of the time in Afghanistan. In the places I was at, the units were to answer the question. No. For the most part, they're not fair. They really hamper us in

terms of what we can and can't do. There were some For most of the most of the guys and girls in Afghanistan on the second and third tour, most of them were on a rule of engagement said that even if you saw a Taliman fighter with a weapon in his hand, clearly identified as a Talaman fighter with a weapon in his hand, you wouldn't be able to shoot him. You were not allowed to do it. You had to wait till that weapon was point at you.

Then you had to go through a certain procedure before he couldn't pull the trigger on him, which is just crazy. It's great and I understand I understand the reasons for having the rows like this, but that it was a legacy follower or carryover from Northern Ireland Card Alpha for us as we call that rule of engagements from Lord Island. So no, they weren't fair. But the problem is you've

got to mitigate for idiots. You got to mitigate for people who are trigger happy, and you've got to mitigate for people who don't understand the rules engagement or don't have the brain process in power to be able to quickly think through those engaged whether they're right or wrong, because they engage themselves. If they don't know when, they kind of can't pull the trigger. But it is frustrating for those for the majority of us who were quite capable of doing it.

from being OCS for six months. They'll come back and they'd have a big service, they get presented the key to the city and all of these formalities and the recognition. And when we come back, we didn't have any of that. And the ash was actually very different from me again because I came back late later than everyone else. Three parad already been back. I was stuck in my Sicala. Came back a few weeks later and I got picked up by a minibus in a commercial airport because we

came back in on. So no, I don't think we rode anything at all, and I think it's a mistake. I think we owed anything. Should Does that mean that the public shouldn't feel obligated to obligated to be demonstrating gratitude. Maybe yeah, I think the public should be obligated to do it, or even consider it not demonstrated. But actually think, okay, if people do a job and they are they are

worthy of our admiration. You know, regardless of what you think of regardless of what you think of what the military is doing in X, y's at different place, being at Israel, be that Ukraine and the moment, be at sea, be it anywhere else. That's only a small part of it. The reality is that without the military, which have a country in your military, without your military, then your country would not exist and a stronger country would take it or when you would not be living in a life

you live now. Yeah.

veteran here you'll get prioritized. Now, okay, in health services you can be you know, you go for your book, a doctor's appointment, then you can self identify as a veteran if you want, and it can prioritize you. So that's good, but it's nothing like you guys have got

over there. But I think that's a cultural difference mainly mainly, but also probably a lack of appetite in spending money where there's no tangible and if it for the ruling party, you know, I think you could say, hey, do this thing, you will convert directly the votes for you. Then they don't do it. But in reality they can't. They can't predict that.

you know. I've got so I mentioned Nordon Island earlier, and that's so that Sully you're talking about is the Duwell patron you And I think I've mentioned to him before about the potential of interviewing a Northern Ireland like a Northern Ireland terrorist reformed terrorist, and he's pointing me towards a Northern Irish terrorist who killed a bunch of people, and it's especial remorse and you know, wrote to the

family and apologized. I do know, I think that I've got room in me for remorse and regret in terms of those kind of things. Now interviewing someone who killed them of mine, I don't know, I don't know about that. I mean, I don't know about that, probably probably.

at the Oxford Union. Yeah, I've seen yeah, yeah, So he's going to talk there about problems with our interventionalist foreign policy and things like this. But he's been He claims that he saw war crimes were committed by the Sas when he was serving with them in Baghdad, when he was out there with them in whatever it was three or four. Maybe I interviewed him twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen, back when my views on things are very different.

Then again, this is the advantages of talking to people long form. I think you form opinions much quicker, like I probably would have waited till I was seventy or eight years old to formed the opinions I old now. But in that conversation he he with him, he claimed that,

and we locked horns on this. He claimed that in the in the British military, you could in Afghanistan just killed someone, but anyone just go and kill a civilian then you get away with it and there'll be no reprimand for it, which is absolute nonsense and it's it's

it's nonsense in any unit. I think there's a there's a chain of command of disciplinary proceidure for a reason, and we get rules of engagement drilled into us for a reason, and we go through all the I don't know what here we have the over here we have these like virtual training systems where you will be sat there in a with a late a weapon but if ires lazy as and you'll watch a you know, a scenario and fold in front of you really complicated scenario

and it basically it gives you a scenario where should you shoot the person or should you not? Is it within our area? If it's not. It's really complex. You go through all the mental mathematics in your head you got to go through to do it. Where we do that to ensure that we don't go killing people, we shouldn't go kill him and Ben thought differently or things differently. Now it was interesting with Ben Griffin is and I

highly recommend him as a guest. Actually interesting with Ben is He's now no longer a member of Messans for Peace. He now relaxes doing a very simple yet rewarding job on an island off the course of Scotland. He's still very much up for conversations. He's coming back in so we can We're going to revisit that conversation. I'm interested to go back and listen to see where my own opinions has changed. Yeah, that's interesting, guy.

him up. One para. Weird, just odd odd odd people do odd things with broomsticks on the weekend when no one's looking.