# Inside the SAS w/ SAS Operator Jay Morton

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 1 Aug 2026, 1 h 49 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73290811/jay_morton_sas_audio.mp3

Jay Morton discusses his career in the British Parachute Regiment and the Special Air Service (SAS), including deployments to Afghanistan, the challenges of SAS selection, and the realities of life in one of the world's premier special operations units. He also reflects on his transition to civilian life, climbing Mount Everest, and the lessons he's carried with him since leaving the military. https://www.instagram.com/jay__morton/?hl=en https://www.deltathreeoscar.com/ Today's Sponsors: GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Blue Chew ⬇️ https://bluechew.com/ Get 1 month free when you buy 2 of BlueChew Gold with code "HOUSECALL" For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 - Start 01:32 - Why He Joined the British Parachute Regiment 05:00 - Inside British Paratrooper Selection 10:20 - First Deployment to Afghanistan 14:17 - First Major Firefight 17:42 - Surviving Sangin Valley 22:39 - How Combat Changes You 25:19 - Coming Home from War 31:01 - The Hidden Cost of Special Operations 35:04 - Deciding to Attempt SAS Selection 37:25 - The Brutal SAS Selection Process 44:01 - Breaking His Back During Selection 48:47 - Escape & Evasion & Interrogation 52:14 - Becoming an SAS Operator 59:12 - Life Inside the SAS 1:01:24 - Hunting Taliban IED Networks 1:04:13 - HALO Jumps into Afghanistan 1:10:48 - Hunting High-Value Targets 1:13:01 - Was the Afghanistan War Worth It? 1:17:55 - Covert Deployments Around the World 1:24:30 - Leaving the SAS Behind 1:32:01 - Building a New Life After the Military 1:37:43 - Climbing Mount Everest 1:43:43 - The World's Greatest Mountains Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to the team house. I'm Jack Murphy
[0:03] Speaker 1: here with today's guest Jay Morton. Jay served in the
[0:07] Speaker 1: British Parachute Regiment and then in the Special Air Service,
[0:11] Speaker 1: multiple deployments to Iraq in Afghanistan, and today he is
[0:15] Speaker 1: an ambassador for Delta three Oscar, which we'll get into. Jay,
[0:19] Speaker 1: thank you for joining us on the show today.
[0:22] Speaker 2: Awesome, thank you for having me. Jack.
[0:24] Speaker 3: Whereabouts in the world? I here, We're in Brooklyn, amazing.
[0:28] Speaker 3: I've never been to New York. To Brooklyn's New York right.
[0:32] Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, come visit. Man, be happy
[0:36] Speaker 1: to have you here.
[0:37] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[0:38] Speaker 3: I love the US. I was recently out in Montana
[0:44] Speaker 3: in Whitefish.
[0:45] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, beautiful out there.
[0:47] Speaker 2: Yeah. San Diego, California.
[0:49] Speaker 3: I was there for the NASCAR race and then spent
[0:53] Speaker 3: some time in Laguna Beach.
[0:54] Speaker 2: But I'm going back out in August.
[0:56] Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm potentially gonna to stay over there for
[1:01] Speaker 3: the three months on my esther during winter because our
[1:05] Speaker 3: winters are pretty pretty rainy and wet over here in
[1:08] Speaker 3: the UK.
[1:09] Speaker 1: Well, it looks pretty nice where you are now.
[1:12] Speaker 2: It's beautiful.
[1:13] Speaker 3: We're midsummer and I live in a place called Bournemouth,
[1:16] Speaker 3: which is on the coast, so my apartment's pretty much
[1:20] Speaker 3: opposite the beach, which is good stuff.
[1:23] Speaker 1: That's great, So Jay, I guess we'll start at the beginning, right.
[1:29] Speaker 1: I usually ask our guests what their origin story is,
[1:33] Speaker 1: if you tell us a little bit about you know,
[1:35] Speaker 1: what your upbringing was like.
[1:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, so British born. I grew up in
[1:42] Speaker 3: a town called Preston, which, if anyone knows the football
[1:45] Speaker 3: team Manchester United, it's probably about an hour north from
[1:50] Speaker 3: Manchester United, just a small working class city. Grew up
[1:55] Speaker 3: with normal parents, mother and father, older brother, and went
[2:02] Speaker 3: to school, loved playing sport, hated school, So there was
[2:09] Speaker 3: I think I'd always wanted to go into the military.
[2:11] Speaker 3: At some stage I wanted to join the Royal Marines.
[2:14] Speaker 3: Growing up, or before that, I wanted to be a fireman.
[2:17] Speaker 3: I think as a kid full of testosterone, I was
[2:20] Speaker 3: always driven, driven or drawn to kind of dangerous jobs.
[2:25] Speaker 2: And yeah, at the time, there was a mate of.
[2:29] Speaker 3: Mine at school that we were like two of the
[2:33] Speaker 3: fittest guys in school and we're always kind of competing
[2:36] Speaker 3: and battling in sports, and he actually joined the Parastreet
[2:39] Speaker 3: Regiment when he left and went and enjoyed three Para,
[2:42] Speaker 3: which is one of the battalions, and he come back
[2:45] Speaker 3: on leave and always tell me these stories about what
[2:48] Speaker 3: he was up to, and it was mainly around shooting
[2:52] Speaker 3: guns and going out and getting pissed with the boys.
[2:55] Speaker 3: But weirdly you kind of draw into that, and I
[2:59] Speaker 3: think look back retrospectively, it's more about the teamwork and
[3:03] Speaker 3: the camaraderie ship and being part of a you know,
[3:08] Speaker 3: a shared purpose and a shared goal that you're more
[3:11] Speaker 3: drawn to. But as an eighteen year old, nineteen year
[3:14] Speaker 3: old lad, hearing stories about fighting in the town and
[3:18] Speaker 3: like getting pissed and all that kind of stuff is
[3:21] Speaker 3: what it's kind of masked as.
[3:24] Speaker 2: So, Yeah, I ended up joining in the Parachute.
[3:26] Speaker 3: Regiment age nineteen, which was a massive shock to the system.
[3:32] Speaker 3: It was probably the first time I've been away from
[3:34] Speaker 3: my hometown and traveled and went to live in a
[3:38] Speaker 3: different place in the UK and they're based in Essex
[3:41] Speaker 3: in Colchester. And yeah, shortly after, obviously we deployed to
[3:48] Speaker 3: It was kind of the back end of the Second
[3:50] Speaker 3: Gulf War and we deployed out to Iraq for three
[3:56] Speaker 3: months on a short deployment, and it was the back
[3:59] Speaker 3: end of that or that obviously you guys over across
[4:03] Speaker 3: the Pond were talking about going over into Afghanistan. And
[4:07] Speaker 3: we literally came back from that short deployment. We all
[4:12] Speaker 3: got pulled into a tent just before we flew back
[4:14] Speaker 3: and got told that the US are looking at going
[4:18] Speaker 3: into Afghanistan and there's a potential that our battle group
[4:23] Speaker 3: and battalion we're going to be the first ones to
[4:24] Speaker 3: go in two thousand and six. And we flew back,
[4:27] Speaker 3: had a short period of leave and then I think
[4:31] Speaker 3: we had, you know, three or four weeks leave. We
[4:34] Speaker 3: got pulled back in flown out to a man for
[4:36] Speaker 3: a six week training package, had like a couple of
[4:40] Speaker 3: weeks leave, and then deployed out to Afghanistan, and that
[4:42] Speaker 3: kind of kicked off the Afghanistan deployment specifically for the
[4:47] Speaker 3: UK and for you guys as well.
[4:50] Speaker 1: Just to back up a little bit, what was the
[4:54] Speaker 1: sort of selection process like to get into the parras.
[4:59] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so we run a selection process. It's in total,
[5:05] Speaker 3: the training block is six months long. So we call
[5:09] Speaker 3: that basic training. I don't know what you guys call it.
[5:12] Speaker 3: And so yeah, it's a six month long period to
[5:17] Speaker 3: take you from being a civilian, you know, an eighteen
[5:21] Speaker 3: year old scrot all the way to being a well
[5:25] Speaker 3: to join in a professional soldier in unit. Whether you
[5:27] Speaker 3: can call yourself a professional soldier at the end of
[5:29] Speaker 3: six months is debatable. And yeah, I mean the first
[5:35] Speaker 3: six weeks it's pretty much shock of capture, shave your head.
[5:41] Speaker 3: Give you a set uniform that you have to wear
[5:44] Speaker 3: every day even when you're not in military uniform. When
[5:49] Speaker 3: you're out in military uniform, it's a set of like
[5:52] Speaker 3: blue Ronhill joggers, so the kind of leggings that the
[5:58] Speaker 3: runners used to wear in like the seven tees and
[6:01] Speaker 3: a maroon jumper. And then the kind of selection process
[6:05] Speaker 3: for it. It's called Pea Company, So that's a week
[6:08] Speaker 3: long selection process and it's passing, pass or fail, and
[6:12] Speaker 3: it consists of a series of.
[6:17] Speaker 2: Tests.
[6:18] Speaker 3: So we've got the ten mileer, which is done I
[6:21] Speaker 3: think I think it's one hour and fifty I'm not
[6:24] Speaker 3: quite sure. We have a twenty miler. We have a steeplechase,
[6:28] Speaker 3: a log race, and a stretcher race, and there's other
[6:34] Speaker 3: things like the Trenasium, which is an assault course, and yeah,
[6:39] Speaker 3: you're not allowed to fail or come off one of those,
[6:44] Speaker 3: And to be honest, being nineteen years old, it was
[6:48] Speaker 3: pretty fucking hard. I played amateur rugby growing up. I
[6:53] Speaker 3: played rugby league, I played football, I played volleyball, and
[6:57] Speaker 3: kind of nothing prepares you for for military basic training
[7:03] Speaker 3: and specifically PEA company. You know, I wouldn't class myself
[7:09] Speaker 3: as being one of the fittest people there. I definitely
[7:13] Speaker 3: wasn't the weakest. I think personally, I have like an
[7:18] Speaker 3: ability to just be able to hang on and not
[7:22] Speaker 3: be the person that comes in first every time, but
[7:24] Speaker 3: never fall off anything. And I think as a soldier
[7:27] Speaker 3: in the parachute regiment, we're kind of looking for that
[7:29] Speaker 3: those people that not only can do ten miles or
[7:32] Speaker 3: twenty miles, but those people that can continuously push for
[7:36] Speaker 3: forty to fifty miles, you know, with limited amount of sleep, water, food,
[7:42] Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. So yeah, so I got
[7:46] Speaker 3: through first time, and but yeah, it was pretty hard.
[7:51] Speaker 1: And for our American listeners, if you could explain a
[7:55] Speaker 1: little bit about the history of the British paras and
[7:58] Speaker 1: sort of what their mission is, how it differs from
[8:01] Speaker 1: some of the other units like the Royal Marines.
[8:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, so our powers the equivalent of your airborne And
[8:12] Speaker 3: I'll get the dates completely wrong, but we were formed
[8:15] Speaker 3: in World War Two. I'm going to say nineteen forty two,
[8:19] Speaker 3: nineteen forty four, but I'll probably get that completely wrong.
[8:23] Speaker 2: And yeah, we were.
[8:24] Speaker 3: Formed as an airborne unit that was designed to be
[8:29] Speaker 3: dropped behind enemy lines in World War Two and cause
[8:32] Speaker 3: absolute havoc. So yeah, you know the kind of missions
[8:38] Speaker 3: that we were.
[8:40] Speaker 2: Done back then, we did just that.
[8:42] Speaker 3: You know, because an infantry unit or a mechanized unit
[8:45] Speaker 3: could be seen coming from so far out in terms
[8:50] Speaker 3: of ground sign and movement and all that kind of stuff,
[8:53] Speaker 3: they could be picked up by aircraft. An airborne unit
[8:57] Speaker 3: was simply designed to just drop either behind enemy lines
[9:00] Speaker 3: were close to and just go straight into combat. Obviously
[9:05] Speaker 3: it's not used as frequently now, but I think the
[9:09] Speaker 3: kind of ethos of the parachute regimen is still there
[9:11] Speaker 3: in terms of we train to be able to deliver
[9:14] Speaker 3: the fight at any moment's time. So even though we're
[9:19] Speaker 3: not getting dropped behind enemy lines, we still carry that
[9:22] Speaker 3: tenacity as a fighting unit into anything that we do.
[9:27] Speaker 3: Hence why you know, we were the first unit that
[9:30] Speaker 3: got picked Guard into Afghanistan in two thousand and six.
[9:35] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[9:35] Speaker 1: I will also get the dates and names completely wrong.
[9:38] Speaker 1: But as I recall, our American Airborne got our berets
[9:43] Speaker 1: from you guys. It was during World War Two, and
[9:47] Speaker 1: I think it was the British commander's wife, who was
[9:50] Speaker 1: a poet, thought the boys would look very sharp wearing
[9:53] Speaker 1: maroon berets, and so we got the maroon beret from
[9:57] Speaker 1: you guys.
[9:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome. You guys also have it as well. I noticed, yep, yep.
[10:05] Speaker 1: I So fast forward a little bit back to that
[10:10] Speaker 1: first deployment to Afghanistan. You said it was two thousand.
[10:13] Speaker 2: And six, correct, two thousand and six.
[10:16] Speaker 1: And so we talk about like the unit carrying that
[10:19] Speaker 1: tenacity with it in the combat. What was that mission
[10:23] Speaker 1: set and where were you guys deployed to in Afghanistan?
[10:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, initially Afghanistan was looked at from a
[10:32] Speaker 3: peacekeeping operation, and I don't think anyone knew that Afghanistan
[10:38] Speaker 3: was going to turn into what it turned into. And specifically,
[10:42] Speaker 3: you know, pre deployment, I was a private soldier and
[10:49] Speaker 3: you know, twenty years old, and you didn't really have
[10:53] Speaker 3: an idea of strategic position of why we were going in.
[11:00] Speaker 3: You know, from my eyes, it looked like you guys
[11:03] Speaker 3: were going in for whatever reasons, and we were just
[11:06] Speaker 3: backing you up as allies across the pond. And initially
[11:12] Speaker 3: when we deployed, it was there was obviously no fighting.
[11:18] Speaker 3: So the UK built a huge military base called Bastion.
[11:24] Speaker 3: So the US main one was was Kandahar Airfield, and
[11:27] Speaker 3: then we built one called Bastian. At the time, Bastian
[11:31] Speaker 3: hadn't been complete, it was still under construction, and we
[11:35] Speaker 3: were living in those green army six by nine or
[11:39] Speaker 3: whatever they're called tents, the campus ones that a bit
[11:41] Speaker 3: a pretty much since nineteen forty two. So we were
[11:49] Speaker 3: living in those, sleeping on camp cots, eating ten man rations.
[11:53] Speaker 3: There weren't established kitchens, and they were constructing this camp Bastion,
[11:58] Speaker 3: And I remember the first kind of week we were
[11:59] Speaker 3: out there, we were just going out for some acclimatization
[12:02] Speaker 3: runs because the heat was we were out there in
[12:05] Speaker 3: the summer, so the heat was, you know, forty fifty degrees,
[12:08] Speaker 3: but I always remember there was this fine dust everywhere
[12:12] Speaker 3: and almost like cement, and we'd be out on runs
[12:16] Speaker 3: just running through this cement dust whilst these diggers were
[12:20] Speaker 3: like building walls and Mesco bastling walls, and yeah, we
[12:24] Speaker 3: were just inhaling it like dumb twenty year old, but yeah,
[12:29] Speaker 3: it was.
[12:29] Speaker 2: It was soft posture.
[12:31] Speaker 3: And we actually took two forty sevens into a town
[12:36] Speaker 3: called Gesch and landed just outside and we put a
[12:42] Speaker 3: patrolling through the town and nothing happened.
[12:45] Speaker 2: It was reasonably pleasant and friendly.
[12:48] Speaker 3: I actually remember there was an old man that was
[12:53] Speaker 3: selling ice cream on the side of the street and
[12:55] Speaker 3: he actually made me a mister whippy. And I was
[12:57] Speaker 3: stood on one knee with my GPMG facing all arcs
[13:02] Speaker 3: making sure the bad guys didn't come, and he just
[13:04] Speaker 3: walked up to me and passed me this ice cream.
[13:09] Speaker 3: I like to say, lad, you think I should eat this?
[13:12] Speaker 3: Or is just like poisoned to what? And I ate
[13:15] Speaker 3: it in the end. But but yeah, I mean that
[13:17] Speaker 3: goes back to Afghanistan. You know, It's like I think,
[13:21] Speaker 3: deep down probably you know, regardless of what happens there,
[13:24] Speaker 3: I'm sure they're a friendly, welcoming group of people with
[13:29] Speaker 3: a solid culture. I mean they're stone women as well,
[13:31] Speaker 3: but I'm sure there's there's other good sides of their culture.
[13:36] Speaker 2: And then.
[13:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, we were in Gosh for a week or two
[13:40] Speaker 3: weeks and then we got deployed. In fact, we were
[13:44] Speaker 3: our role was CQ.
[13:46] Speaker 2: Not cqb.
[13:49] Speaker 3: Q RF, so Quick Reaction Force whilst we were in
[13:52] Speaker 3: the camp and at this stage we'd move to proper
[13:55] Speaker 3: accommodation I think, No, we hadn't. Were still the in
[13:59] Speaker 3: the tent and our patrols unit were OUTE. So our
[14:03] Speaker 3: kind of brigade or our battalion WRECKI force were out
[14:06] Speaker 3: in vehicles the old school limis, so the old land
[14:10] Speaker 3: rover defenders that had a fifty calor a GPMG on
[14:14] Speaker 3: the back and a GPMG on the front. And they'd
[14:18] Speaker 3: been hitting a contact and one of the vehicles had
[14:23] Speaker 3: been hit by an RPG and they'd extracted from the
[14:25] Speaker 3: vehicle and were you seeking cover somewhere And they put
[14:29] Speaker 3: a call out to the Quick Reaction Force and it
[14:31] Speaker 3: was myself and my company, so a company we got
[14:36] Speaker 3: task for the job, jumped on two h forty seven
[14:38] Speaker 3: lifters and landed in the middle of this farmers fielding Nawzad.
[14:46] Speaker 3: And this is probably about three weeks into being in theater,
[14:50] Speaker 3: and we all ran off the back of this helly
[14:52] Speaker 3: and ran towards this wall, and I literally remember as
[14:56] Speaker 3: the Helles were lifting, you could hear the crack and
[14:59] Speaker 3: thump of rounds flying over our head. And obviously that
[15:02] Speaker 3: got louder as the hell he lifted. And I remember
[15:04] Speaker 3: just looking to the lads to the left and right.
[15:07] Speaker 3: I mean, we're all just burst out in laughter with
[15:10] Speaker 3: that kind of you know, that laughing in the face
[15:12] Speaker 3: of adversity kind of thing. We we had no intention
[15:17] Speaker 3: or idea that this operation was going to go noisy,
[15:20] Speaker 3: let alone Afghanistan.
[15:21] Speaker 2: Afghanistan was going to go noisy.
[15:25] Speaker 3: And yeah, that turned into a probably a seven to
[15:31] Speaker 3: nine hour contact of I was trying to fight forward
[15:35] Speaker 3: to get to this women. At one stage, one of
[15:39] Speaker 3: the one of the sections in my platoon when left
[15:46] Speaker 3: flanking on a on a position on a compound, and
[15:50] Speaker 3: I always remember prig Pol was the section commander, and
[15:55] Speaker 3: he literally turned around to his team and when if
[15:58] Speaker 3: you've got wife or kids, stay here, the rest of
[16:00] Speaker 3: you come with me, and he took the guy's left flanking.
[16:03] Speaker 3: And yeah, they they obviously went round engaged in with
[16:09] Speaker 3: the threat where needed, and yeah, it was it was
[16:14] Speaker 3: an interesting one.
[16:15] Speaker 1: It was.
[16:15] Speaker 2: It was a long day.
[16:16] Speaker 3: There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and
[16:21] Speaker 3: we flew back in and and.
[16:22] Speaker 2: That was pretty much it.
[16:23] Speaker 3: That kind of launched into into that Afghanistan two thousand
[16:27] Speaker 3: and six conflict of a lot of those style firefights.
[16:33] Speaker 3: You know, it was pre Ied era, so it was
[16:37] Speaker 3: pretty much going out and just getting into scraps every day.
[16:40] Speaker 1: This is like one of those firefights with the Taliban
[16:43] Speaker 1: or just sort of like trying to encircle you, going
[16:45] Speaker 1: around the hedgerows and things like that, and sporadic fire
[16:49] Speaker 1: all day.
[16:51] Speaker 3: You'll know yourself track. It's like, you know, ninety five
[16:53] Speaker 3: percent at the time, you don't even see the enemy.
[16:55] Speaker 3: You just hear them. You very rarely see them. I'd
[17:00] Speaker 3: imagine it's the same as if an enemy force came
[17:03] Speaker 3: from a different country to my hometown. It's like, I
[17:06] Speaker 3: know all the ins and outs, the nuts and crannies,
[17:08] Speaker 3: the ditches, the back alleys, you know everything. You're not
[17:12] Speaker 3: trying to close with and kill these people that are
[17:15] Speaker 3: in your town.
[17:16] Speaker 2: It's like you're just trying to get them out.
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[18:37] Speaker 1: of like winding down the tail end of that deployment.
[18:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that was that was pretty wild time.
[18:46] Speaker 3: It was after that we went to sang In Valley,
[18:52] Speaker 3: and I mean, for anyone listening that deployed and went
[18:55] Speaker 3: to sang In Valley, we landed to so the Fob Jackson,
[19:03] Speaker 3: which was actually one of our boys, Damian Jackson. We'd
[19:10] Speaker 3: actually been tasked to go out to the Governor's building
[19:13] Speaker 3: to support the governor because he was getting death threats
[19:18] Speaker 3: from the Taliban. I seem to remember about him sexually
[19:23] Speaker 3: abusing kids. Probably true, but at that time, you obviously
[19:30] Speaker 3: you have to support the government. So we went out
[19:34] Speaker 3: and set up shopping the governor's house which is now
[19:40] Speaker 3: obviously not now but turned into Fob Jackson. And at
[19:44] Speaker 3: the time it was this building and next to it
[19:47] Speaker 3: was this orchard with this other kind of weird building.
[19:50] Speaker 3: And we were there for about three or four days,
[19:53] Speaker 3: and there was a river that went down the middle
[19:55] Speaker 3: of it, and we used to wash in the river,
[19:57] Speaker 3: and we put like positions all around the area. So
[20:01] Speaker 3: we had three hundred and sixty three hundred and sixty
[20:04] Speaker 3: degree defense And yeah, I always remember kind of probably
[20:10] Speaker 3: about four or five days into it, so we were
[20:13] Speaker 3: actually a while we were in afghanist at the same
[20:16] Speaker 3: time I.
[20:17] Speaker 1: Was there two thousand and four into two thousand and five.
[20:22] Speaker 1: That winner.
[20:23] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there were wild times, weren't they. Sometimes
[20:27] Speaker 3: I'm like jogging them memories.
[20:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, we were.
[20:31] Speaker 3: We dug like a shell scrape in this orchard, and
[20:34] Speaker 3: our position just looked onto a wall and it was
[20:36] Speaker 3: like a six foot wall, maybe a little bit less,
[20:40] Speaker 3: you know, like the thick mud walls. And I always
[20:44] Speaker 3: remember because the icon Chatter and the the J two
[20:49] Speaker 3: would suggest that they were going to attack from this
[20:51] Speaker 3: this wall one night and they said they were just
[20:53] Speaker 3: going to flood the place with fighters and send them
[20:55] Speaker 3: over this send them over this six foot wall.
[20:59] Speaker 2: And all night we were literally probably.
[21:04] Speaker 3: Fifteen meters away from this wall, maybe less, and we
[21:07] Speaker 3: just sat in the shell scrape, staring at this wall
[21:09] Speaker 3: like eyes eyes on stalk, like literally match sticks in
[21:13] Speaker 3: our eyes. Just I remember like a couple of the
[21:15] Speaker 3: lad smoked cigarettes and like I was like, give me
[21:18] Speaker 3: one of these cigarettes. I need to I need to smoke.
[21:21] Speaker 3: None of us slept the whole night thinking that we
[21:23] Speaker 3: were just going to get flooded with Taliban. But nothing happened,
[21:28] Speaker 3: but probably around four or five days into it, we'd
[21:32] Speaker 3: built like the positions up a little bit more, and
[21:35] Speaker 3: we'd ran out of sandbags to build the positions up,
[21:37] Speaker 3: so we were building them up with big cardboard boxes
[21:41] Speaker 3: and just filling it with dirt and dust and hoping
[21:44] Speaker 3: that that would catch around. And I was actually on
[21:47] Speaker 3: top of this rooftop looking out onto if anyone's been there,
[21:51] Speaker 3: that's listening, So it was trying to think where it was.
[21:56] Speaker 3: It kind of looked so it was I'm trying to
[22:00] Speaker 3: remember the Cardinal. I don't think I can. I think
[22:02] Speaker 3: it's to the south of.
[22:03] Speaker 2: The west, kind of looked away from the bizarre and
[22:07] Speaker 2: the town area and into kind of the bush. And
[22:10] Speaker 2: I was on the side that was on the opposite
[22:12] Speaker 2: side of the Governor's building with the river running down it.
[22:15] Speaker 2: And I always remember this car drove past and it
[22:18] Speaker 2: had like three or four heavies in it and they
[22:19] Speaker 2: had the windows down and they were just staring up
[22:22] Speaker 2: at this position. I I just remember thinking, that's that's
[22:26] Speaker 2: not you know, they're not friendly.
[22:28] Speaker 3: And probably about an hour later, we literally got hit
[22:32] Speaker 3: three hundred and sixty degrees like all around the fob
[22:35] Speaker 3: machine gun aka RPG one bat shells.
[22:41] Speaker 2: And that kind of that was it.
[22:44] Speaker 3: Then it kind of kicked off in Sanging and we
[22:48] Speaker 3: pretty much stayed in Sanging for the for the duration
[22:51] Speaker 3: of the the six month tour that we did. And yeah,
[22:55] Speaker 3: I mean there's a million stories to come out of
[22:58] Speaker 3: just that one that on that one location. I'm sure
[23:03] Speaker 3: for a lot of people that served in Sanging listening,
[23:05] Speaker 3: it was it was a hell hole and you would
[23:09] Speaker 3: go out most days and most days you'd end up
[23:13] Speaker 3: in a scrap and you'd be calling a tens, you know,
[23:17] Speaker 3: your guys, a tens, which were phenomenal. And we had
[23:21] Speaker 3: apatche helicopters from the UK and from the US as well,
[23:24] Speaker 3: which were also you know, a godsend. If you heard
[23:26] Speaker 3: that thing in the sky, you were pretty much free
[23:29] Speaker 3: to roam wherever you wanted to go. But as soon
[23:31] Speaker 3: as you went off station, just all hell broke loose.
[23:35] Speaker 3: But yeah, it was it was an interesting time being
[23:37] Speaker 3: twenty years old. I turned twenty one over there, and
[23:41] Speaker 3: yeah it was.
[23:42] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[23:42] Speaker 3: I mean we could probably talk well podcasts just about
[23:45] Speaker 3: being in Sanging if I'm being honest, Joe.
[23:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's one of those sounds like
[23:48] Speaker 1: one of those formative experiences like you were also learning
[23:51] Speaker 1: your job as you went, you know, like actually becoming
[23:54] Speaker 1: a professional soldier.
[23:55] Speaker 3: I think, yeah, one hundred percent, it's becoming a man
[24:00] Speaker 3: as well.
[24:01] Speaker 2: Right, it's.
[24:03] Speaker 3: You cross that path of of boy to manhood and
[24:08] Speaker 3: specifically becoming a professional soldier. Like you said, it's you
[24:12] Speaker 3: get into to prove yourself in in combat. Whether you
[24:16] Speaker 3: like that or not. It's the arena that you chose
[24:18] Speaker 3: to show up in. And also I always look back
[24:22] Speaker 3: at it with with with good memories. I think you
[24:27] Speaker 3: learn a lot in those type of situations. You develop
[24:31] Speaker 3: a lot. It's a bigger growth than any any state
[24:35] Speaker 3: university would would get you. And it also it's something
[24:40] Speaker 3: that you'll never take away, you know that. I think
[24:43] Speaker 3: as men personally, and I don't know what your views
[24:45] Speaker 3: are on this, but I think as men were we've
[24:49] Speaker 3: been at war since the moment that we've walked out
[24:52] Speaker 3: of caves. I think it's so inherent for us, and
[24:55] Speaker 3: we can we can imagine all we want that we're
[24:58] Speaker 3: going to live in this super peaceful world, but we
[24:59] Speaker 3: can and see by modern press that that's just that's
[25:03] Speaker 3: never going to happen. It's a it's a dream to
[25:05] Speaker 3: think that the human race is going to get on
[25:08] Speaker 3: with with with it with each.
[25:09] Speaker 2: Other on Earth.
[25:11] Speaker 3: So it's like for you to go out and actually
[25:14] Speaker 3: do that as a man, I think there's something there's
[25:16] Speaker 3: something in that that's quite quite special.
[25:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also crossing over that threshold where you're doing
[25:23] Speaker 1: something now that could get you killed, and also if
[25:26] Speaker 1: you don't do your job, you could get somebody else killed.
[25:29] Speaker 1: And I think that tends to mature people very quickly.
[25:33] Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent.
[25:34] Speaker 3: And and actually, like how amazing is it is it
[25:38] Speaker 3: that you've worked in a team that does that that
[25:41] Speaker 3: you have to you know, whether you're a medic, whether
[25:44] Speaker 3: you're a shooter or whatever, it's like you've been part
[25:46] Speaker 3: of an integral team and a key part of that
[25:49] Speaker 3: small team that you know, if something doesn't go right
[25:55] Speaker 3: or if you make a mistake, not only may you die,
[25:58] Speaker 3: the consequences are that real. Not only may you die,
[26:02] Speaker 3: but someone else may die. And that person's could be
[26:06] Speaker 3: a father, that person could be a husband or whatever.
[26:09] Speaker 3: It's with those real consequences become kind of and those
[26:13] Speaker 3: real responsibility comes a lot of like self growth and
[26:17] Speaker 3: self actualization.
[26:20] Speaker 1: And what was it like coming off of that deployment
[26:22] Speaker 1: and redeploying back home.
[26:27] Speaker 3: So we I mean we'd gone to Cypress for a
[26:34] Speaker 3: period of decompression and so it was three days decompression.
[26:40] Speaker 2: They fueled it with alcohol, which.
[26:44] Speaker 1: A great idea.
[26:46] Speaker 3: There's a good thing and a bad thing because we
[26:48] Speaker 3: got to decompress. But it's actually a funny story because
[26:53] Speaker 3: so literally, I think the first night you get there,
[26:57] Speaker 3: you get they stick a barbecue one for you and
[27:02] Speaker 3: it was like unlimited booze. They make this this barbecues
[27:07] Speaker 3: and it was the first one that the British Army
[27:09] Speaker 3: had done, so I think they just thought that booze
[27:11] Speaker 3: was the answer.
[27:12] Speaker 2: Everyone got absolutely battered.
[27:14] Speaker 3: And I remember we'd have the barbecue, desserts were out
[27:20] Speaker 3: and there've been like a couple of like drinks, nothing heavy,
[27:24] Speaker 3: and like a couple of cans had flown over.
[27:27] Speaker 2: Some people have got hit in the face.
[27:29] Speaker 3: I remember being stood at the dessert section helping myself
[27:33] Speaker 3: to a Army issued black currant cheesecake and I just
[27:39] Speaker 3: kind of turning around and there was like fucking cans flying,
[27:43] Speaker 3: drinks flying, food flying like left.
[27:45] Speaker 2: And I was like where the fuck has this come from.
[27:49] Speaker 3: I remember just grabbing like handfuls of dessert and like
[27:52] Speaker 3: launching it into the crowd, and the next minute and
[27:56] Speaker 3: throwing it, and the next minute people are grabbing tables
[27:59] Speaker 3: and chairs and it was absolute carnage, like literally erupted.
[28:05] Speaker 2: I remember it being on It was on YouTube in.
[28:07] Speaker 3: The early days, and like one of the lads is
[28:11] Speaker 3: like naked wrapped around with like the Saint George's flag.
[28:14] Speaker 2: There's Union Jack's everywhere, and.
[28:17] Speaker 3: It was fucking carnage, mate, And like the med center
[28:20] Speaker 3: where the doctor was I think the doctor was also hammered.
[28:24] Speaker 3: There was a queue of about eleven blokes outside with
[28:27] Speaker 3: like eyes hanging off and like broken noses, teeth hanging out.
[28:32] Speaker 2: It was.
[28:35] Speaker 3: So yeah, I think we fully got to decompress, and
[28:40] Speaker 3: the next day they just put like water squats on
[28:42] Speaker 3: and but yeah, I mean, like to get to the
[28:46] Speaker 3: serious point of coming back from from from a theater
[28:49] Speaker 3: like that, I mean personally, like I I mean I
[28:55] Speaker 3: felt fine. I mean I was probably you know, there
[28:59] Speaker 3: was death the I mean PTSD and stuff like that
[29:03] Speaker 3: was never spoken about back then, even kind of exposure
[29:07] Speaker 3: to trauma and what that that can do. And you know,
[29:12] Speaker 3: personally for me, you know, I was I didn't suffer
[29:17] Speaker 3: with it coming back from that that deployment, but I
[29:21] Speaker 3: always remember the guys got back into Colchester and I
[29:26] Speaker 3: actually had a girlfriend at the time, so I jumped
[29:28] Speaker 3: on a train and went straight back to see her,
[29:31] Speaker 3: and the lad stayed in the block. I don't know
[29:34] Speaker 3: if you call it the block, but the army camp
[29:36] Speaker 3: and obviously got on the booze again and I spoke
[29:40] Speaker 3: to them the next day and literally every window in
[29:43] Speaker 3: the block got smashed, and like you talk about, you know,
[29:49] Speaker 3: like equally the next day that the sergeant major just said, lads,
[29:54] Speaker 3: as long as you replace all the windows, nothing will
[29:56] Speaker 3: be said, like don't stress it, because.
[29:59] Speaker 2: Equally, I think as a there's a.
[30:03] Speaker 3: There's a what's the word, there's a way that our
[30:08] Speaker 3: body processes what we've just been through and done, and
[30:11] Speaker 3: whether that's anger, aggression, whether that's and to do that
[30:15] Speaker 3: with your whole team in that kind of setting, whether
[30:18] Speaker 3: it's throwing cans at each other or cake or like
[30:21] Speaker 3: smashing windows, I think there's a process that your body
[30:24] Speaker 3: goes through to release or whatever it is that it's
[30:27] Speaker 3: that it's storing, and that's how it came out. Now,
[30:32] Speaker 3: obviously you see the obvious, and you probably saw this
[30:35] Speaker 3: as well, Jack. You know, lads go straight on self
[30:40] Speaker 3: destruct mode and they stay on the piss the whole
[30:44] Speaker 3: the whole leave and get into fights and all that
[30:47] Speaker 3: kind of stuff. And in fact, on the two weeks
[30:50] Speaker 3: off that we got from the six month deployment, in
[30:54] Speaker 3: the middle of it, I'd actually come back and ended
[30:58] Speaker 3: up getting arrested whilst I was I was drunk just
[31:03] Speaker 3: for being a complete idiot, if I'm being honest. But
[31:05] Speaker 3: I think there's this like whether it's an anger inside
[31:08] Speaker 3: or like we've been doing this and do you know
[31:12] Speaker 3: what I mean, It's like there's a there's a feeling
[31:14] Speaker 3: inside that unless you've kind of experienced that level of combat,
[31:18] Speaker 3: you'll never kind of be able to relate to.
[31:22] Speaker 2: But we'd come back and ended up again alcohol fueled.
[31:27] Speaker 3: But yeah, just we were shouting and all sorts of stuff,
[31:32] Speaker 3: and my friend got like ces gassed in the face
[31:34] Speaker 3: and he's got thrown in the cell for a night.
[31:36] Speaker 3: But but yeah, apart from that was great. I came back.
[31:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to turn it off.
[31:44] Speaker 1: Isn't it. I mean, you're going one hundred miles an
[31:47] Speaker 1: hour and then suddenly you're back home. You're in the
[31:49] Speaker 1: UK in this case, and it sounds like you probably
[31:52] Speaker 1: hadn't gone into even a training cycle yet. You're just
[31:55] Speaker 1: sort of like refitting, getting ready for the next thing.
[31:58] Speaker 1: And so the guys are sitting in the bears board
[32:00] Speaker 1: out of their minds and yeah, they get into the
[32:04] Speaker 1: booze and this is this is what ends up happening.
[32:08] Speaker 3: Yeah, it's completely that, and it's you know, I've had
[32:12] Speaker 3: at times where I've struggled in the past, more so
[32:15] Speaker 3: during during my Special Forces career, coming back off operations,
[32:19] Speaker 3: and you can logically, when you're out of it, you
[32:23] Speaker 3: can logically look at it and see what happened. It
[32:26] Speaker 3: was a very kinetic time working all hours. Your body's
[32:32] Speaker 3: stressed anyway because you're working night shifts. But then you
[32:36] Speaker 3: know the job that we were doing. We were going
[32:37] Speaker 3: out on day operations and night operations. Plus we had
[32:40] Speaker 3: to provide training for the Afghan force that we were
[32:44] Speaker 3: that we were training, and it was just a busy,
[32:48] Speaker 3: kinetic period.
[32:51] Speaker 2: I didn't get any decompression.
[32:53] Speaker 3: I literally told that I was going to fly back
[32:57] Speaker 3: on a C seventeen and be back in the UK
[32:59] Speaker 3: within twenty four hours. And I went from being on
[33:01] Speaker 3: the ground, being on the ground on a job doing
[33:05] Speaker 3: the handover to the next squadron handing my weapons systems
[33:08] Speaker 3: in jumping on a plane and being back in the
[33:10] Speaker 3: UK within twenty four hours.
[33:11] Speaker 2: And that's that's where I struggled because.
[33:16] Speaker 3: My body, brain, nervous system, whatever you want to call
[33:19] Speaker 3: it was just like where the fuck is going on?
[33:20] Speaker 3: It by like you're on a train, like like what
[33:25] Speaker 3: is what is going on? But again, you know, you
[33:29] Speaker 3: don't realize when you're in it because the education is
[33:32] Speaker 3: not there, the awareness wasn't there. We didn't really know
[33:35] Speaker 3: what it was, so you kind of just had to
[33:38] Speaker 3: live with it. And for me, it was it was drinking,
[33:42] Speaker 3: you know, I albeit not a crazy amount. I mean
[33:48] Speaker 3: we all used to drink when we were younger, but
[33:51] Speaker 3: it'd be the only thing that made me feel normal
[33:53] Speaker 3: again within a very short period of time. It kind
[33:56] Speaker 3: of dissipated within two weeks. But for those two weeks,
[34:00] Speaker 3: you know, the feeling that I had inside was like this,
[34:03] Speaker 3: I don't know, it's like an energy here or like
[34:05] Speaker 3: a you know, a feeling here, and it was it
[34:08] Speaker 3: was kind of hard to like settle back into normal life.
[34:11] Speaker 3: But the only thing that could kind of normalize that
[34:14] Speaker 3: was just drinking. So I just drank and then I
[34:18] Speaker 3: just noticed the feeling lift and myself start to feel
[34:22] Speaker 3: normal whatever you want, a class as normal. And then
[34:26] Speaker 3: two weeks I just I felt just like I usually do.
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[36:02] Speaker 1: apply see site for details. So you're back. You're back
[36:07] Speaker 1: from deployment. Did you deploy again with the paras or like,
[36:11] Speaker 1: when did the sas start to come into your thought process?
[36:15] Speaker 3: So deployed again in two thousand and eight, back out
[36:18] Speaker 3: to Afghanistan.
[36:20] Speaker 2: It was a quieter deployment.
[36:24] Speaker 3: The main battlegroup was two Powers, so that the second
[36:28] Speaker 3: battalion of the Parachute Regiment and they kind of took
[36:33] Speaker 3: the brunt of the main kind of fighting battalion within
[36:36] Speaker 3: that operation. Ourselves, we were based out of calf We
[36:39] Speaker 3: just provided QRF and we did some of the kind
[36:44] Speaker 3: of jobs. It was quite interesting, quite an interesting operation,
[36:49] Speaker 3: but again not as connectic as the one that we
[36:52] Speaker 3: had in two thousand and six. And then it was
[36:57] Speaker 3: towards the back end of that two thousand and eight
[37:01] Speaker 3: operation when I started.
[37:03] Speaker 2: Thinking about joining the Special Forces.
[37:08] Speaker 3: And you always get you always get a few members
[37:12] Speaker 3: that have been on selection and failed and found their
[37:16] Speaker 3: way back to the battalion and would always talk about
[37:22] Speaker 3: the stories about being on selection and what it's like.
[37:25] Speaker 3: And if I'm being honest, I was around twenty three
[37:28] Speaker 3: years old. I thought I was too young to an
[37:32] Speaker 3: experience to go on selection. The average age was like
[37:36] Speaker 3: twenty six twenty seven. And it was a platoon sergeant
[37:40] Speaker 3: then at the time called Dan Jarvi, who was this
[37:43] Speaker 3: Scottish jock from Dundee who was hard as woodpecker's lips
[37:49] Speaker 3: and yeah, just an excellent man, an amazing soldier, was
[37:56] Speaker 3: opportunity sergeant and I was his driver. In the back
[38:00] Speaker 3: end of that two thousand and eight or and he
[38:03] Speaker 3: just kept saying, you know, j going selection, and I
[38:09] Speaker 3: just you know, would say excuses like too young, and
[38:13] Speaker 3: maybe I'll go and join the brigade Rereky Force and
[38:15] Speaker 3: do that for some time and then then go on selection.
[38:19] Speaker 3: And he just kept saying, just go on selection, going selection.
[38:21] Speaker 3: And so I applied to go on selection when I
[38:24] Speaker 3: came back from that deployment. And then yeah, it was
[38:30] Speaker 3: two thousand and nine in summer when when I went
[38:36] Speaker 3: on Special Forces selection, So twenty four years twenty four
[38:40] Speaker 3: years old, and yeah that's six months, so a six
[38:44] Speaker 3: month selection period and yeah, broken into certain phases. So
[38:51] Speaker 3: the Hills phase would be the navigational testing phase, carrying
[38:56] Speaker 3: big packs over you know, retraining in the Welsh Mountains,
[39:01] Speaker 3: so it'd be over over the Welsh Mountains, big packs
[39:04] Speaker 3: navigating through you know, twenty thirty kilometers of ground per day,
[39:10] Speaker 3: and then we go out to the jungles of Brunei
[39:12] Speaker 3: and train out there for six weeks where we deploy
[39:15] Speaker 3: for fully tactical for four weeks, and that's considered the
[39:19] Speaker 3: pinnacle of Special Forces selection where if you get the
[39:24] Speaker 3: pass or the fail from that to fail post jungle
[39:31] Speaker 3: training or jungle phase is pretty it's an anomaly. Once
[39:36] Speaker 3: you pretty much get the tick in the box for
[39:39] Speaker 3: the jungle, you're pretty much in albeit you're not a
[39:42] Speaker 3: badge desef operator at that time.
[39:44] Speaker 1: The jungle is where you guys really like focus on
[39:47] Speaker 1: the patrolling skills, right and those like troop leading procedures
[39:50] Speaker 1: and that sort of thing.
[39:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if you look at areas in the
[39:56] Speaker 3: world that are difficult to operate, you've got the Arctic
[40:00] Speaker 3: the jungle is two of the most difficult places to
[40:04] Speaker 3: operate as a soldier. If we just take the jungle,
[40:09] Speaker 3: you know, simply just living or operating or living just
[40:14] Speaker 3: doing the basics is is pretty pretty difficult. You've got
[40:19] Speaker 3: one hundred percent humidity and you know, thirty forty degree
[40:22] Speaker 3: heat on a daily You're wearing full kit, full belt
[40:27] Speaker 3: kit with you know, live live AMMO scales of you
[40:32] Speaker 3: know your self, you know yourself six mags of bandalier
[40:37] Speaker 3: plus you know water, you know, shovels, messings, five days rations.
[40:46] Speaker 3: You think of the amount of water that you need
[40:48] Speaker 3: to drink in a day, you're carrying probably around seven
[40:50] Speaker 3: liters of water.
[40:51] Speaker 2: That's seven kilograms.
[40:54] Speaker 3: Or sixteen pounds if you're in the US of Water,
[41:02] Speaker 3: and then or your patrol kit, so or your sleep
[41:05] Speaker 3: kit you're sleeping bags. Especially patrol kit. We had a
[41:09] Speaker 3: radio which was just a massive block of wood which
[41:12] Speaker 3: was heavy and didn't actually transceiver or or transmit. So yeah,
[41:20] Speaker 3: I mean, you're it's pretty pretty difficult to do anything.
[41:26] Speaker 3: I mean, you take navigation through the jungle. All the
[41:30] Speaker 3: maps were produced thirty years ago. If that were produced
[41:35] Speaker 3: on you know, on a very basic thought process of
[41:39] Speaker 3: what the ground looks like underneath the canopy, So it's
[41:44] Speaker 3: a difficult thing to navigate through the jungle. You're kind
[41:47] Speaker 3: of navigating on ridge lines only. And you know, if
[41:51] Speaker 3: you think the jungle's flat, think again, it's very very
[41:55] Speaker 3: kind of.
[41:57] Speaker 2: Contoured.
[41:59] Speaker 3: So you've got to stick to the ridge lines because
[42:00] Speaker 3: it's the only thing that doesn't have a million trees
[42:03] Speaker 3: and wildlife and fauna and flora flaorna and for whatever
[42:07] Speaker 3: the word is on it. And then you're navigating on
[42:11] Speaker 3: a map that's thirty years old with all that kit,
[42:13] Speaker 3: So it's difficult. Plus the fact that it's fully tactical
[42:17] Speaker 3: from the moment that you go in there in the jungle,
[42:19] Speaker 3: to the moment that you leave. So if you want
[42:22] Speaker 3: to go for a piss, you're going with a buddy.
[42:24] Speaker 2: Buddy.
[42:25] Speaker 3: If you want to go to the toilet, if you
[42:26] Speaker 3: want to go and wash or filly water bottle up,
[42:28] Speaker 3: it's buddy buddy. If you're cooking, one of your cooks,
[42:31] Speaker 3: the other stands there with his weapon making sure you
[42:34] Speaker 3: don't get attacked.
[42:37] Speaker 2: And yeah, it's it's it's difficult there.
[42:43] Speaker 3: They're looking for if you've got what you've you know,
[42:46] Speaker 3: if you've got the skills and the resilience and the mindset,
[42:52] Speaker 3: and if your face fits within a Special Forces fighting
[42:58] Speaker 3: squadron or a team and you're tested on general soldiering,
[43:07] Speaker 3: live firing kind of receiving missions and carrying them out,
[43:14] Speaker 3: and yeah, it's it's tough.
[43:17] Speaker 2: But I actually enjoyed the jungle. It was it was
[43:23] Speaker 2: I felt like it was.
[43:26] Speaker 3: Just a good place to showcase soldiering skills and I
[43:33] Speaker 3: felt like, I, I think, away from all the noise
[43:37] Speaker 3: of you know, and it's like jacking a normal Green
[43:42] Speaker 3: Army unit. There's a lot of noise of wanting to
[43:44] Speaker 3: go on the piss, like girls or training or whatever
[43:50] Speaker 3: it is, and you know, without all that noise and
[43:53] Speaker 3: all you had to worry about every day was you
[43:56] Speaker 3: your buddies, eating, drinking, making sure your weapons clean, making
[44:00] Speaker 3: sure your parang was clean, showing up and doing the
[44:04] Speaker 3: best that you can do every day. It's like when
[44:06] Speaker 3: you simplify it to that, it's take all the noise
[44:10] Speaker 3: of modern day life out.
[44:11] Speaker 2: It's I don't know about you. I tend to thrive
[44:15] Speaker 2: in that.
[44:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, this was what you signed up for, really.
[44:21] Speaker 3: Yeah, completely to be a professional soldier and to showcase
[44:26] Speaker 3: what you can do and sure if you're capable of
[44:29] Speaker 3: be in the Special Forces.
[44:30] Speaker 2: Was it was fun?
[44:32] Speaker 1: And then what were the additional phases that come after
[44:36] Speaker 1: the jungle?
[44:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, so straight after that you come back and you
[44:41] Speaker 3: get told whether your pass or fail and the majority
[44:46] Speaker 3: of the people.
[44:48] Speaker 2: So we start with around.
[44:49] Speaker 3: One hundred and fifty applicants at the starter selection Hills
[44:52] Speaker 3: phase might get rid of half, if not seventy of those.
[44:57] Speaker 3: So on a healthy select you want to be going
[45:00] Speaker 3: into the jungle with around fifty applicants. Sometimes it could
[45:05] Speaker 3: be thirty, just depends on what that year has been like.
[45:10] Speaker 3: So you come out of the jungle and you've probably
[45:13] Speaker 3: got anything from ten to twenty applicants, so huge attrition rates.
[45:19] Speaker 3: And then you go into kind of the continuation phases
[45:22] Speaker 3: of it. So there's a period called surveillance of reconnaissance,
[45:25] Speaker 3: which is your kind of traditional surveillance and reconnaissance, so
[45:30] Speaker 3: observation posts, so bush hides, subsurface observation posts. I think
[45:38] Speaker 3: that lasts for about three weeks. There's probably a week
[45:41] Speaker 3: of training, and then or a week and a half
[45:43] Speaker 3: of training, then a deployment task where you break down
[45:46] Speaker 3: into teams and going but a subsurface or a bush
[45:51] Speaker 3: hiding somewhere. And actually at the time, at the back
[45:56] Speaker 3: end of the jungle phase, literally on the final attack,
[46:02] Speaker 3: I'd picked up the heaviest bloke that was on selection,
[46:09] Speaker 3: an officer that went to serving the SBS, an ex
[46:13] Speaker 3: rugby player. He was a big old boy with a
[46:16] Speaker 3: fat head, and he'd gone down as a role play
[46:21] Speaker 3: casualty on the final attack, right next to me. So
[46:27] Speaker 3: obviously I dropped everything, you know, not dropped everything, but
[46:30] Speaker 3: ran straight towards him, grabbed him and proceeded to throw
[46:34] Speaker 3: him onto my back, and at which point my back popped,
[46:38] Speaker 3: and you know, having just spent five and a half
[46:42] Speaker 3: six weeks in the jungle carrying a massive bergen your
[46:47] Speaker 3: back kind of arches like this as opposed to like that,
[46:50] Speaker 3: and yeah, my back popped and damaged the disk, and
[46:54] Speaker 3: meant that, you know, in that stupidity moment of being
[46:58] Speaker 3: a twenty four year old kind of thirsty parachute regiment
[47:04] Speaker 3: soldier wanted to be in the Special Forces, I just
[47:06] Speaker 3: disregarded any the fact was in severe pain and not
[47:12] Speaker 3: wanting to not wanting to come off, and wanted to
[47:15] Speaker 3: complete selection with the lads that I was on it,
[47:17] Speaker 3: and not wanting to come off and go into medical
[47:20] Speaker 3: rehab and come back on selection again. So I gritted
[47:24] Speaker 3: my teeth and cracked on, which meant that surveillance of
[47:26] Speaker 3: reconnaissance with a full size O P burg and with
[47:31] Speaker 3: all your chicken wire and tools and camera kit, you know,
[47:36] Speaker 3: huge two hundred or six hundred lenses, the big bird
[47:40] Speaker 3: spotting ones and all that kit, meant that I had
[47:45] Speaker 3: a bigger rocksack for surveillance of reconnaissance than I did
[47:48] Speaker 3: in the in the jungle. Plus the fact that it
[47:52] Speaker 3: was in Hereford and it was probably around October time
[47:57] Speaker 3: and pissing down with rain, so that trying to insert
[48:01] Speaker 3: into a farmer's field to put a bush hide or
[48:04] Speaker 3: a subsurface ope. With all that kind of kit, you're
[48:07] Speaker 3: slipping all over the place and probably causing you back
[48:09] Speaker 3: more damage than good. And actually we'd we'd spend the
[48:13] Speaker 3: whole night trying to get into this position. And everyone
[48:16] Speaker 3: wants to do a bush hide, because obviously with a
[48:19] Speaker 3: bush hide, all you do is you go into a
[48:20] Speaker 3: big thick bush, you cut it out and create create
[48:23] Speaker 3: an observation poster and ope in the bush. No one
[48:26] Speaker 3: wants to dig a subsurface ope because it takes all
[48:29] Speaker 3: night to dig a massive hole and then you live
[48:31] Speaker 3: in it for the rest of the rest of the week.
[48:34] Speaker 3: And the sun came up in the morning, we thought
[48:38] Speaker 3: we had this amazing bush hide. And one of the
[48:41] Speaker 3: instructors we come directing staff, he was he was a character,
[48:47] Speaker 3: and he stood over us and he's just.
[48:49] Speaker 2: Like, what the fuck is this?
[48:52] Speaker 3: And he looked around and it was like, we're all
[48:54] Speaker 3: soaking where, we've all got all this camera equipment out
[48:57] Speaker 3: and we're literally just lead leading a load of like
[49:00] Speaker 3: nettles and thorns. So he kind of give us the
[49:06] Speaker 3: give us the day in daylight.
[49:09] Speaker 2: To dig a subsurface op. So we dug this probably.
[49:17] Speaker 3: Two foot by five foot hole in the ground, went
[49:23] Speaker 3: down probably a meter, cammed it up and lived in
[49:28] Speaker 3: it for the rest of the for the rest of
[49:30] Speaker 3: the week, seven days, and we had two guys observing
[49:36] Speaker 3: the objective, which was an old farm building. We had
[49:39] Speaker 3: one guy on rest or cooking and then one guy
[49:42] Speaker 3: on rear century And needless to say that for the
[49:46] Speaker 3: majority of the time most of us were asleep. It
[49:51] Speaker 3: kind of works in our favor because like it kept
[49:53] Speaker 3: the elements off as and it was pretty warm. But yeah,
[49:57] Speaker 3: so you do you do surveillance and reconnaissance, and then
[50:01] Speaker 3: you do counter terrorism, so we train in you know,
[50:05] Speaker 3: CQB and global domestic counter terrorism.
[50:10] Speaker 2: That's I think four weeks. And then.
[50:14] Speaker 3: Escaping evasion so resistance to interrogation, which is what it's
[50:18] Speaker 3: called now we'll see it.
[50:20] Speaker 2: Where you go on the run for a week.
[50:22] Speaker 3: You get twenty four our hours of food so twenty
[50:26] Speaker 3: four our rations, limited kit and equipment, limited navigational aids,
[50:32] Speaker 3: and you have to get from through a series of
[50:36] Speaker 3: checkpoints until you reach the final checkpoint, at which point
[50:42] Speaker 3: you are taking captive and interrogated for thirty six hours.
[50:47] Speaker 3: And I think at that point, you you know, there's
[50:51] Speaker 3: nothing really that they can throw at you that's going
[50:53] Speaker 3: to pull you off selection, so you're kind of still
[50:57] Speaker 3: trying to do the best best you can, but your
[51:01] Speaker 3: head's in it and all be at thirty six hours
[51:04] Speaker 3: of interrogation sounds pretty hellish. At that point, you're you're
[51:10] Speaker 3: just you're getting through it and surviving it. And you know,
[51:16] Speaker 3: if anyone's done any kind of mocker interrogation cereals you
[51:22] Speaker 3: just got to ask for food and ask for warm clothes,
[51:24] Speaker 3: and ask for new shoes, and pray that they don't
[51:27] Speaker 3: beat you up, and ask for coffee and stuff, and
[51:30] Speaker 3: the more you ask for, the more you get. So yeah,
[51:35] Speaker 3: so obviously you're pretty pretty tired and knackered by the
[51:40] Speaker 3: end of that.
[51:40] Speaker 2: And in interrogation, if anyone doesn't know.
[51:43] Speaker 3: You're either in a stress position or being interrogated for
[51:45] Speaker 3: that thirty six hours. So standard two stress positions everyone
[51:49] Speaker 3: probably knows them, is stood leaning against a wall or
[51:53] Speaker 3: sat cross legged with your hands above your hands on
[51:55] Speaker 3: your head. So either you're doing that with you know,
[52:00] Speaker 3: some cultural music in the background being played or specific
[52:05] Speaker 3: to whatever theater or operating in, or you're having coffee
[52:10] Speaker 3: thrown in your face or being asked where your parents live.
[52:14] Speaker 3: So it was good to get that one out of
[52:18] Speaker 3: the way and get some sleep. And then the final
[52:21] Speaker 3: phases is parachuting, so just heho parachuting to Special Forces
[52:28] Speaker 3: standard and at that level you kind of come back
[52:30] Speaker 3: and we've done our parachuting out in the States, so
[52:33] Speaker 3: we went over to California and trained at an air
[52:36] Speaker 3: base called El Centro, and yeah, you come back from
[52:42] Speaker 3: that and pretty much you've got a week in camp
[52:45] Speaker 3: just doing regular stuff, and you have a badging Day parade,
[52:50] Speaker 3: which is at the clock tower. You get your sandy
[52:54] Speaker 3: color beret and your blue stable belt, you take the picture,
[52:59] Speaker 3: and then the next day turn up at the squadron
[53:02] Speaker 3: as a new blade. And then you kind of realized
[53:07] Speaker 3: that selection was nothing. And you know that for the
[53:12] Speaker 3: last six weeks you thought you were an SAS soldier
[53:15] Speaker 3: and you're at the bottom of the food chain and
[53:18] Speaker 3: you're go and pick up the bacon butties and the
[53:20] Speaker 3: tearns in the morning and do all the shit jobs
[53:24] Speaker 3: as any new bloke does.
[53:26] Speaker 1: What was it like being a new guy showing up
[53:28] Speaker 1: at your squadron. What were some of the other guys
[53:31] Speaker 1: like that you were working with.
[53:34] Speaker 3: It's interesting because my troupe was at the time a
[53:39] Speaker 3: little bit older. So there's some guys in the late thirties,
[53:43] Speaker 3: and there was one guy that had come up two
[53:46] Speaker 3: years before me, and then before that was probably about
[53:49] Speaker 3: four or five years.
[53:50] Speaker 2: So it was a senior senior team.
[53:53] Speaker 3: And if I'm being honest, no one really gives a fuck,
[53:56] Speaker 3: as in, everyone's just cracking on doing what they need
[54:02] Speaker 3: to do. No one stops, and you know, people will
[54:05] Speaker 3: be like, oh right, mate, I'm whoever. But I think
[54:09] Speaker 3: at a time and it's probably changed now, there's no
[54:12] Speaker 3: one really to just take you aside and go, you know, mate,
[54:16] Speaker 3: this is the this is what's going on, like you
[54:18] Speaker 3: know this is you know, you've got a room and
[54:21] Speaker 3: the TL at the time, the team leader was he
[54:25] Speaker 3: gave you a little bit of insight, but it was
[54:27] Speaker 3: almost like you just turned up on day one and
[54:29] Speaker 3: were expected to know what weapons system you're fire in,
[54:33] Speaker 3: how to zero it, and you know, you just had
[54:37] Speaker 3: to ask questions and kind of almost try and blend
[54:41] Speaker 3: in and just copy what the lads were doing. Albeit
[54:44] Speaker 3: I don't like to do that myself.
[54:46] Speaker 2: Now.
[54:46] Speaker 3: If there's a new guy, I like to take him
[54:48] Speaker 3: under my wing and make sure that he feels welcome
[54:50] Speaker 3: and introduce him to everyone and make sure that he
[54:52] Speaker 3: knows what he's doing, because you know, I turned up.
[54:55] Speaker 3: I was twenty four years old. It's a pretty daunting
[54:56] Speaker 3: place to turn up to, an essays Sabers Squadron and
[55:00] Speaker 3: then find out all your.
[55:02] Speaker 2: Teammates are in the late thirties.
[55:05] Speaker 3: And all some pretty like big units as well.
[55:10] Speaker 2: So yeah, I think it was just that era of that.
[55:15] Speaker 3: That's how men did it, you know, you just turned
[55:17] Speaker 3: up and cracked on kind of thing.
[55:21] Speaker 1: So yeah, and that timeframe, I imagine a lot of these
[55:25] Speaker 1: guys were pretty salty, like they'd been in Iraq doing
[55:28] Speaker 1: raids and all kinds of counter terrorism work.
[55:32] Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's probably part of it, right, is like
[55:35] Speaker 3: you turn up and at the time I've done you know,
[55:38] Speaker 3: two Afghan tours that were pretty heavy. But these lads
[55:42] Speaker 3: have been out on you know, on TF TF Night
[55:47] Speaker 3: or TF Black or whatever it was, and you know
[55:50] Speaker 3: they've all seen some stuff and they're all bonded by
[55:53] Speaker 3: that and teammates and all that kind of stuff. So
[55:55] Speaker 3: you throw in some young twenty four year old and yeah,
[56:00] Speaker 3: they're not interested in you. Just at that moment, it's
[56:02] Speaker 3: like you've you've got to earn your gravy and you've
[56:04] Speaker 3: got to earn your your place in that team because
[56:08] Speaker 3: you're surrounded by a bunch of alphas and they're not
[56:10] Speaker 3: going to look at you until you prove.
[56:12] Speaker 2: Why they should look at you.
[56:14] Speaker 1: How did you go about that?
[56:19] Speaker 2: I mean the same way you.
[56:20] Speaker 3: Go about anything, right, Like I I I like being
[56:25] Speaker 3: a soldier and all you've got to do is do
[56:30] Speaker 3: you best.
[56:30] Speaker 2: You know.
[56:32] Speaker 3: Luckily for me like that, the guy that had been
[56:35] Speaker 3: in for two years prior to me, he was kind
[56:39] Speaker 3: of mates with all that side, but he was still
[56:41] Speaker 3: trying to like come to like chat to me and
[56:45] Speaker 3: stuff like that. And if I'm being honest, like the
[56:47] Speaker 3: first six months, you're kind of on your own. It's
[56:49] Speaker 3: like you're volunteering for everything.
[56:51] Speaker 2: You know.
[56:52] Speaker 3: If you get to the end of the brief and
[56:55] Speaker 3: all the lads live in town and you're going you're
[56:57] Speaker 3: going on the range that day, then you just go right,
[56:59] Speaker 3: I'll grab the I'm in the cookhouse in the morning,
[57:02] Speaker 3: so I'll grab all the all the lunches and coffee
[57:05] Speaker 3: and stuff.
[57:06] Speaker 2: And then you offer, you know, don't want a coffee
[57:08] Speaker 2: whilst you're driving up.
[57:09] Speaker 3: It's like you just make you just show that you're
[57:13] Speaker 3: a valuable asset to that team in as many ways
[57:15] Speaker 3: that you can. And if you do that and you
[57:21] Speaker 3: don't you avoid making any fuck ups, and you show
[57:24] Speaker 3: them that you know you're a valuable asset and that
[57:27] Speaker 3: you're capable of being in that that team, then you
[57:30] Speaker 3: know they all come around to it. And slowly but
[57:33] Speaker 3: surely they all they all did. And as actually it's
[57:36] Speaker 3: quite funny. As we deployed out to Norway because I
[57:40] Speaker 3: went into mountain troops, so extra extreme cold weather warfare
[57:46] Speaker 3: was part of our remit. And one of the team
[57:50] Speaker 3: members I won't say any names, but uh, he's a
[57:54] Speaker 3: he's a big old boy, like covering in tattoos, involved
[57:58] Speaker 3: in like football, who are going to them.
[58:00] Speaker 2: And all that kind of stuff.
[58:02] Speaker 3: And I got teamed up with him in as a
[58:05] Speaker 3: as a tent buddy.
[58:08] Speaker 2: But yeah, it's interested. He was. He was.
[58:12] Speaker 3: He was sadly ended up being r T L and
[58:14] Speaker 3: I became really close to him in the end. But
[58:17] Speaker 3: it's like your first your first trip away with with
[58:23] Speaker 3: the lads in Norway and it's just me and him
[58:25] Speaker 3: in a tent at night, trying to like cook and stuff,
[58:30] Speaker 3: and let's just say conversation was limited. I don't think
[58:33] Speaker 3: he wanted to speak to me. But but yeah, all that,
[58:39] Speaker 3: as soon as you kind of blend in with the
[58:41] Speaker 3: team and they realized that you're you're a good asset,
[58:45] Speaker 3: then all that changes and then you replace them, right,
[58:48] Speaker 3: you become in that position that you're now the senior
[58:51] Speaker 3: person and and you get a chance to do it differently.
[58:56] Speaker 2: And for me, it was like all the new lads
[58:58] Speaker 2: that ever came up.
[58:59] Speaker 3: Even to this day, if someone's there, it's like I
[59:02] Speaker 3: think probably because I never had it like that. It's
[59:06] Speaker 3: it's important to take them under your wing, regardless of
[59:09] Speaker 3: how good or shit they are.
[59:11] Speaker 2: As a soldier.
[59:12] Speaker 3: It's it's imperative because you know, you don't necessarily get
[59:16] Speaker 3: a soldier that turns up that's incredible, that can tick
[59:19] Speaker 3: every box and that's that's amazing at what they do.
[59:22] Speaker 2: It's like in the Special Forces, it's it's.
[59:25] Speaker 3: A diverse unit and every soldier's got a different background,
[59:29] Speaker 3: a different upbringing, a different skill set. And that's the
[59:32] Speaker 3: beauty of the Special Forces is that we train hard,
[59:35] Speaker 3: and we become professional soldiers at what we do from
[59:38] Speaker 3: that point on. But you know, if someone's a medic,
[59:42] Speaker 3: if someone's an r MP, if someone's a you know,
[59:46] Speaker 3: a vehicle mechanic or whatever, it's like they bring a
[59:48] Speaker 3: skill set that's valuable to that unit and doesn't necessarily
[59:53] Speaker 3: mean that day one there this perfect soldier, but there's
[59:56] Speaker 3: a chance there that that person could be molded into
[59:59] Speaker 3: a you know, an amazing soldier in the future, and
[1:00:01] Speaker 3: it's your job and responsibility to do that as a
[1:00:04] Speaker 3: senior member of that team.
[1:00:06] Speaker 1: And so lucky you are getting to be assigned to
[1:00:11] Speaker 1: a cold weather team, which I'm sure was a lot
[1:00:14] Speaker 1: of fun. What was sort of did your troop have
[1:00:18] Speaker 1: like a deployment schedule? Was there something that they were
[1:00:20] Speaker 1: looking to kind of like work up to.
[1:00:24] Speaker 3: Yeah, So, so the Special Forces itself rotates on a
[1:00:30] Speaker 3: two year schedule. So as a as a Saber squadron,
[1:00:33] Speaker 3: you're generally on either operations.
[1:00:38] Speaker 2: You've got a UK role or you're.
[1:00:41] Speaker 3: On you know, operations around the world, and if you're
[1:00:44] Speaker 3: not on any of those, then in between it's just training.
[1:00:48] Speaker 3: And then there's also a training whast you're in that
[1:00:50] Speaker 3: but yeah, I mean Afghanistan was still the flavor of
[1:00:55] Speaker 3: the month when I joined, So that was the deployment
[1:00:59] Speaker 3: whilst I was in, and then you know, it's it's
[1:01:03] Speaker 3: it's a it's a very busy life. It's it's a
[1:01:07] Speaker 3: lot of time away from home. It's a lot of
[1:01:10] Speaker 3: time out your bed, it's a lot of time spent
[1:01:14] Speaker 3: training and drilling and different scenarios and different places.
[1:01:19] Speaker 2: And it was, you know, the best thing I've ever done,
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: do you know what I mean?
[1:01:26] Speaker 3: Genuinely had an amazing career and being someone who joined
[1:01:31] Speaker 3: when I was twenty four, I left when I was
[1:01:32] Speaker 3: thirty four, like for those years like to do that,
[1:01:37] Speaker 3: It's like I wouldn't if I had the choice.
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: I do it all again in a heartbeat.
[1:01:42] Speaker 1: And you're still obviously a young guy, but you're also single,
[1:01:46] Speaker 1: no kids, and I'm sure that helped.
[1:01:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. You know, some people managed to.
[1:01:56] Speaker 3: Form a relationship and keep a relationship whilst they're serving,
[1:01:58] Speaker 3: but it's it's difficult. I always said I wouldn't want
[1:02:03] Speaker 3: kids whilst I'm in because you just don't get to
[1:02:05] Speaker 3: see them grow up. And I know by speaking to
[1:02:08] Speaker 3: some of my friends that are stealing or looking at
[1:02:11] Speaker 3: getting out now that you know they missed out a
[1:02:14] Speaker 3: massive chunk of their kids' lives growing up just because
[1:02:19] Speaker 3: they're away on six month deployment. They're away even whilst
[1:02:23] Speaker 3: we're in the UK, it's likely deployed to different parts
[1:02:26] Speaker 3: of the UK, around the world, training and different roles.
[1:02:29] Speaker 3: So yeah, definitely being single and not married and no
[1:02:34] Speaker 3: kids helps for sure.
[1:02:36] Speaker 1: And so what was it like when you guys got
[1:02:38] Speaker 1: to Afghanistan. I'm guessing this was like twenty ten or so.
[1:02:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, this would have been twenty ten, twenty twenty ten,
[1:02:49] Speaker 3: twenty twelve, might have even been twenty eleven, twenty thirteen.
[1:02:55] Speaker 2: Different. I think by that time.
[1:03:00] Speaker 3: You've definitely seen this phase change of you know, like
[1:03:04] Speaker 3: in two thousand and six, we didn't see one ied.
[1:03:08] Speaker 2: It was all.
[1:03:11] Speaker 3: I'll shoot guns at you, you shoot guns back at us.
[1:03:13] Speaker 3: And then you've definitely seen this this shift now of
[1:03:18] Speaker 3: advanced technology within IDs, or at least not advanced technology,
[1:03:22] Speaker 3: but advanced tactics in terms of where they placed the
[1:03:25] Speaker 3: place them, how they funneled you into areas, and you know,
[1:03:30] Speaker 3: you're starting to see these IDs that you couldn't pick
[1:03:34] Speaker 3: up with metal detection and all that kind of stuff, reduced.
[1:03:40] Speaker 2: Metal or whatever they were called the they were called.
[1:03:44] Speaker 3: Which you know, I mean, it was a pretty dark
[1:03:47] Speaker 3: side of Afghanistan up and being honest that that whole
[1:03:49] Speaker 3: ied warfare game. I was pretty lucky to steer way
[1:03:56] Speaker 3: away from that and never really experienced tea mates getting
[1:04:02] Speaker 3: hit by them more, but obviously that they were all
[1:04:05] Speaker 3: around us at the time, and in fact, during one
[1:04:10] Speaker 3: of the deployments on whilst I was in the SAS,
[1:04:15] Speaker 3: we literally specifically just went after a whole i AD
[1:04:18] Speaker 3: network and took it down whilst I was working there,
[1:04:21] Speaker 3: which significantly reduced the amount of Ied attacks that were
[1:04:25] Speaker 3: being carried out on our own rural marines that were
[1:04:28] Speaker 3: based in the same area at the same time, and
[1:04:30] Speaker 3: probably had a knock on effect for US troops at
[1:04:32] Speaker 3: the same time. So probably one of our prouder moments
[1:04:35] Speaker 3: of operational deployment that we that we were a part of.
[1:04:39] Speaker 3: But yeah, we'd I mean luckily our operations were mainly
[1:04:45] Speaker 3: carried out in the darkness of night, very limited day
[1:04:50] Speaker 3: operations specifically because at night time we hold the upper hand.
[1:04:54] Speaker 3: We have mvgs, we've got you know, helicopters and different sy.
[1:05:00] Speaker 1: Mostly helicopter insertions, I guess.
[1:05:03] Speaker 3: Yeah, helicopters, a lot of walkings, so yeah, I mean
[1:05:09] Speaker 3: we trialed around with some parachute operations as well, which
[1:05:12] Speaker 3: were which were more kind of to prove prove the
[1:05:15] Speaker 3: point that we do less less about the actual objective.
[1:05:20] Speaker 1: So like some like some soft targets to show that
[1:05:22] Speaker 1: this is possible.
[1:05:24] Speaker 3: Yeah, like Strike Despike kind of stuff. But I mean still,
[1:05:30] Speaker 3: I mean, jumping into Afghanistan as a hole completely different
[1:05:33] Speaker 3: from jumping into the West coast of America.
[1:05:37] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I've heard stories where the American
[1:05:41] Speaker 1: side special ops guys have they messed around with it
[1:05:44] Speaker 1: or looked at it, but they're like, our squadron is
[1:05:47] Speaker 1: going to get spread out over this whole valley because
[1:05:49] Speaker 1: there's so much wind.
[1:05:51] Speaker 3: Yeah, and like you've got to take in the human
[1:05:54] Speaker 3: element of it as well. And albeit we were proficient
[1:05:58] Speaker 3: in in in free fall and halo heho at that time,
[1:06:04] Speaker 3: it was never like when we carried out the Afghan jumps,
[1:06:08] Speaker 3: we weren't specifically looking into it as as as we
[1:06:14] Speaker 3: weren't as specialist as we should have been for that
[1:06:16] Speaker 3: level of jump. The air troop lads are always going
[1:06:20] Speaker 3: to be skilled enough to do it, but to then
[1:06:23] Speaker 3: expect a full squadron to land, you know, on that
[1:06:27] Speaker 3: on that drop zone, you know, within a solid group,
[1:06:32] Speaker 3: and it's a big ask for you know, forty you know,
[1:06:36] Speaker 3: thirty to forty soldiers. Some of the lads don't even
[1:06:38] Speaker 3: like it. Some of them aren't even good at it.
[1:06:41] Speaker 3: That's that's just a given, you know, you get we
[1:06:43] Speaker 3: can't be good at everything, and that's kind of what
[1:06:48] Speaker 3: those jumps proved.
[1:06:49] Speaker 2: But actually at the time.
[1:06:52] Speaker 3: We we started to put non air troop guys on
[1:06:57] Speaker 3: on on the hap See course, so we start to
[1:07:00] Speaker 3: get them free fall trained and myself I was literally
[1:07:05] Speaker 3: on that first course, so as a mountain troop operate, Yeah,
[1:07:09] Speaker 3: I was on the first course, the first HALO HEH
[1:07:13] Speaker 3: course out in the in the States, which which was
[1:07:17] Speaker 3: great and now you know, I think every every badged
[1:07:20] Speaker 3: operator is is free fall trained.
[1:07:23] Speaker 2: But actually coming.
[1:07:24] Speaker 3: Back from being qualified as as as HALO, i'd literally
[1:07:32] Speaker 3: just done the course and then we deployed that on
[1:07:33] Speaker 3: that on that job and I got picked to jump
[1:07:36] Speaker 3: in with the the air troopers as the first stick
[1:07:40] Speaker 3: on the black Light DS to mark the DZ for
[1:07:43] Speaker 3: the rest of the squadron, and there was only six
[1:07:47] Speaker 3: of us that jumped. And yeah, needless to say that
[1:07:51] Speaker 3: that didn't go all too great. It was complete red
[1:07:56] Speaker 3: I looms so zero moon state. He struggle to see
[1:08:00] Speaker 3: a hand in front of your face. And yeah, we
[1:08:05] Speaker 3: we we dropped out, had a bit of a split
[1:08:09] Speaker 3: in the sky for whatever reason. And I had actually
[1:08:14] Speaker 3: never jumped onto a d Z that was being marked
[1:08:16] Speaker 3: by a strobe from from the drone from the Reaper,
[1:08:20] Speaker 3: and we'd I mean, yeah, we we kind of felt
[1:08:27] Speaker 3: that there was a way stronger wind that pushed us back,
[1:08:32] Speaker 3: that pushed us way beyond the drop zone. And by
[1:08:37] Speaker 3: the time we'd realize that we we were going a
[1:08:40] Speaker 3: little bit too fast and we'd gone past the strobe
[1:08:44] Speaker 3: that was getting emitted from the the Reaper of the Predaco,
[1:08:47] Speaker 3: which one by the time we turned back into wind,
[1:08:51] Speaker 3: we weren't really penetrating. So we ended up landing a
[1:08:54] Speaker 3: can cana half away from from the designated drop zone
[1:08:59] Speaker 3: mark where the DZ and then brought the rest of
[1:09:02] Speaker 3: the squadron in. But like I said, you know, you
[1:09:04] Speaker 3: expect you know, thirty to forty you know, HEHO qualified
[1:09:10] Speaker 3: operators to land on a tea in red a loom
[1:09:14] Speaker 3: state in Afghanistan. It's like you're having a laugh, and like,
[1:09:20] Speaker 3: especially with the conditions that we jumped in, it was
[1:09:23] Speaker 3: tricky for us as trained free full operators to land
[1:09:26] Speaker 3: on the in the right spot. And yeah, people landed,
[1:09:32] Speaker 3: you know, not everyone. The majority of the lads landed
[1:09:34] Speaker 3: within that area, but there was some that were all
[1:09:37] Speaker 3: over all over the place. So I mean, again, you know,
[1:09:40] Speaker 3: you learn from from these kind of situations. And I
[1:09:45] Speaker 3: know that what that meant was obviously everyone getting trained
[1:09:50] Speaker 3: in freefall, and then specifically squadrons looked at how we
[1:09:53] Speaker 3: get proficient at being free full operators considering looking at
[1:09:58] Speaker 3: the look at the operational theater that we're in or
[1:10:02] Speaker 3: that we were going into. You know, if helicopters aren't
[1:10:06] Speaker 3: an option for certain weapons systems, parachuting in is still
[1:10:10] Speaker 3: a very you know, credible option.
[1:10:13] Speaker 2: So yeah, that's the kind of direction that it went.
[1:10:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, I's going to ask, so did was the conclusion
[1:10:20] Speaker 1: that airborne operations like this aren't really feasible in Afghanistan
[1:10:25] Speaker 1: or more that like we need to elevate the level
[1:10:27] Speaker 1: of training that we put the guys through to get
[1:10:29] Speaker 1: more proficient at it.
[1:10:33] Speaker 3: I think, I think airborne operations are totally feasible, and
[1:10:41] Speaker 3: just I think the level of training needs to be
[1:10:44] Speaker 3: increased so that you minimize kind of the jump compromising
[1:10:54] Speaker 3: the actual operation. So for example, for a hostage rescue,
[1:10:59] Speaker 3: that's like a perfect method of infill, right because for
[1:11:04] Speaker 3: obvious reasons. So yeah, I mean that that was the
[1:11:09] Speaker 3: kind of the fallout of that piece was that we
[1:11:12] Speaker 3: need to be way more skilled. But again, a great
[1:11:16] Speaker 3: one to run out and to test and see how
[1:11:18] Speaker 3: it goes.
[1:11:19] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:11:19] Speaker 1: Absolutely. And another thing I want to ask, were you
[1:11:25] Speaker 1: guys operating mostly around Hellman Province at this time?
[1:11:29] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we we actually operated within all of Afghanistan,
[1:11:35] Speaker 3: So yeah, so yeah, the whole, the whole of the area.
[1:11:41] Speaker 3: I mean there wasn't that there's no other UK. I
[1:11:44] Speaker 3: mean we had the SBS out there at the same time,
[1:11:46] Speaker 3: but yeah, we were pretty much the whole of the
[1:11:48] Speaker 3: Afghan battle battle area. I mean Helmand was the hot spot,
[1:11:53] Speaker 3: but Kandar as well, but yeah, all over pretty much.
[1:11:59] Speaker 1: And you mentioned going after a ied network where the
[1:12:04] Speaker 1: other targets, like high value targets getting called up. You know,
[1:12:07] Speaker 1: kind of like around the entire country.
[1:12:09] Speaker 3: It sounds like, yeah, so, I mean the main battle
[1:12:13] Speaker 3: group of the main objective was was HVTS, so high
[1:12:17] Speaker 3: value targets, and then yeah, you kind of had like
[1:12:22] Speaker 3: a load of smaller teams that would work with Afghan
[1:12:27] Speaker 3: National Special Forces units. Smaller teams dotted over around the
[1:12:33] Speaker 3: AO that would carry out like training training roles, but
[1:12:37] Speaker 3: also have an operational side to them where you're trying
[1:12:41] Speaker 3: to hand over the responsibility to the to the Afghans.
[1:12:45] Speaker 3: You know, they can at some point take over and
[1:12:47] Speaker 3: start doing detention operations within their own battle space.
[1:12:52] Speaker 1: Well, you guys were doing unilateral operations mostly, but you're
[1:12:56] Speaker 1: you're saying you had other elements that were doing what
[1:12:58] Speaker 1: we call foreign internal defense.
[1:13:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, same thing. So, yeah, like an S triplet
[1:13:07] Speaker 3: similar to that. So small team of three would go
[1:13:10] Speaker 3: and embed themselves with a local strike team and train them,
[1:13:15] Speaker 3: develop them, fund them. Obviously, the bigger picture would be
[1:13:20] Speaker 3: that someday we would, you know, give Afghanistan back to
[1:13:24] Speaker 3: a government that would be able to stand up and
[1:13:27] Speaker 3: provide some sort of democracy and freedom for the Afghan people,
[1:13:33] Speaker 3: and these small training teams would stand up and be
[1:13:37] Speaker 3: the special forces, of the elite units of that providing
[1:13:41] Speaker 3: protection and all that kind of stuff to the people.
[1:13:45] Speaker 3: Obviously didn't go that way, but that was the objective.
[1:13:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask, you know, what was
[1:13:50] Speaker 1: sort of your perception as you know, you go on
[1:13:54] Speaker 1: these deployments to Afghanistan. Of course, you know, yeah, rolling
[1:13:58] Speaker 1: up an ied network is a tangible win for any unit,
[1:14:05] Speaker 1: But did you have any thoughts or observations about how
[1:14:08] Speaker 1: like the larger war was going in Afghanistan?
[1:14:13] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was always in the back of
[1:14:15] Speaker 3: your head, even like in those early days in two
[1:14:16] Speaker 3: thousand and six. It was almost like I remember having
[1:14:20] Speaker 3: those conversations with the lads and just going like what
[1:14:22] Speaker 3: we're actually here for, Like what's what's the objective?
[1:14:26] Speaker 2: But again, look, it's hard to a couple of things.
[1:14:30] Speaker 3: It's like, it's hard for us to be able to
[1:14:34] Speaker 3: it's hard for us to put today's thinking on something
[1:14:40] Speaker 3: that happened twenty years ago. And I think this is
[1:14:43] Speaker 3: like a flow of modern society right now. Is we're
[1:14:47] Speaker 3: trying to we're trying to almost say, right two hundred
[1:14:51] Speaker 3: years ago, when life was completely different and neighbors were
[1:14:55] Speaker 3: probably killing each other, over a loaf of bread or
[1:14:58] Speaker 3: something like that. Let's put today thinking on that and
[1:15:01] Speaker 3: just because you know that person said this or like
[1:15:05] Speaker 3: had that or whatever, it's like, now we should you know,
[1:15:08] Speaker 3: completely disregard amount of human existence. It's like the same
[1:15:12] Speaker 3: thing with Afghanistan. It's like we can quite easily fall
[1:15:15] Speaker 3: into a trap now when we've got this free, like
[1:15:19] Speaker 3: abundant world of like you know, you want anything and
[1:15:23] Speaker 3: you get it, and like, you know, we've all got
[1:15:26] Speaker 3: money and we've all got like freedom to be able
[1:15:28] Speaker 3: to have ideas and thoughts, to be able to say, right,
[1:15:32] Speaker 3: going down too Afghanistan is the wrong thing to do.
[1:15:35] Speaker 3: That's like you can retrospectively look at it and say,
[1:15:39] Speaker 3: you know, maybe you know, maybe we should have reconsidered
[1:15:42] Speaker 3: going into Afghanistan. Maybe you know, what were the real
[1:15:46] Speaker 3: legitimate reasons for going into it. But like I you know,
[1:15:52] Speaker 3: I don't think that anyone sat in any of those
[1:15:54] Speaker 3: high political war rooms and when you know, let's go
[1:15:59] Speaker 3: in here for for ships and giggles.
[1:16:01] Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
[1:16:02] Speaker 3: It was like there was some serious reasons why we
[1:16:05] Speaker 3: went in there in the first place. And as a
[1:16:07] Speaker 3: soldier on the ground, you know, Afghanistan is a barbaric place.
[1:16:13] Speaker 3: It's not a place where pride flags can be flown
[1:16:18] Speaker 3: or women have the same lights as what they do here.
[1:16:22] Speaker 3: It's barbaric. Women still get stoned to death. You know,
[1:16:27] Speaker 3: women can't show any any any skin, right, not even
[1:16:31] Speaker 3: their eyes. And not only that, right, but they can't
[1:16:38] Speaker 3: even see them. You know, I'm gonna going around to
[1:16:41] Speaker 3: like Afghan houses. I was doing some rogue stuff whilst
[1:16:45] Speaker 3: I was in that go around, like the houses with
[1:16:48] Speaker 3: the interpreter, and like all the women had likely stood
[1:16:50] Speaker 3: at the door staring at you, but they're all covered,
[1:16:52] Speaker 3: like their eyes are covered everything, gloves on their hands,
[1:16:56] Speaker 3: like nothing can be shown. And like, you know, tell
[1:16:59] Speaker 3: me that that's not oppression. And not only that, but
[1:17:02] Speaker 3: they can't see another human. And for that short space
[1:17:05] Speaker 3: of time that we were deployed in Afghanistan, did you
[1:17:09] Speaker 3: start to see university schools? Kabul became Western? You know,
[1:17:15] Speaker 3: women in Kabul went from being fully covered up to whearing,
[1:17:18] Speaker 3: you know, just a hijab or just the scarf. And
[1:17:23] Speaker 3: you know, you started to see early signs that Afghanistan
[1:17:27] Speaker 3: was a more peaceful place to live. And if you
[1:17:30] Speaker 3: ask the interpreters or people that live there when it
[1:17:33] Speaker 3: wasn't ruled by the Taliban.
[1:17:34] Speaker 2: That that's the case, do you know what I mean?
[1:17:37] Speaker 3: And now it's gone back to rule under the Taliban,
[1:17:43] Speaker 3: it's gone back to the old school ways.
[1:17:46] Speaker 2: That was as well.
[1:17:48] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think also it's maybe worth pointing out that
[1:17:53] Speaker 1: no one really expected or thought that we're going to
[1:17:56] Speaker 1: be in Afghanistan for what did it ended up being
[1:17:59] Speaker 1: like twenty two years? You know? I think one of
[1:18:03] Speaker 1: the criticisms actually of the war is that every commander
[1:18:05] Speaker 1: came in and thought we were eight months away from victory,
[1:18:09] Speaker 1: and we did that over and over and over again,
[1:18:13] Speaker 1: especially after after we killed Bin Laden in twenty eleven.
[1:18:16] Speaker 1: I mean, who thought that we would be there for
[1:18:18] Speaker 1: another decade? That's pretty crazy, you know. Like now again
[1:18:22] Speaker 1: in retrospect, as we sit here today looking back on it,
[1:18:25] Speaker 1: it's like, what were we doing one.
[1:18:29] Speaker 3: Hundred percent if you look at again retrospectively, like the
[1:18:32] Speaker 3: amount of money that we spend as two nations and
[1:18:37] Speaker 3: what do we actually achieve within there? Like if anything,
[1:18:42] Speaker 3: we stirred the hornet's nest. But again, like it's just
[1:18:47] Speaker 3: the way the world, and you learn the lessons from
[1:18:51] Speaker 3: you learn the biggest lessons from the biggest mistakes, and
[1:18:56] Speaker 3: and we get now the privilege because we still live
[1:18:59] Speaker 3: in a free world to to decide what the next
[1:19:02] Speaker 3: twenty or the next forty, the next fifty looks like.
[1:19:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, when I was reading through your bio, it mentioned
[1:19:10] Speaker 1: you also got involved in like the Clindestine side of
[1:19:13] Speaker 1: the job as your career progressed.
[1:19:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you mean by clandestine?
[1:19:21] Speaker 1: Sorry, I think you said it said that you did
[1:19:24] Speaker 1: like two covert deployments.
[1:19:27] Speaker 2: That's right.
[1:19:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, probably three and then yeah, they're just obviously
[1:19:34] Speaker 3: countries that you can't talk about the deployment. But yeah, again,
[1:19:40] Speaker 3: like super interesting stuff to see that part of the job.
[1:19:47] Speaker 2: And it was kind of about the time.
[1:19:48] Speaker 3: That that Afghanistan had started coming to an end for
[1:19:52] Speaker 3: US anyway, And yeah, it's interesting. I mean you look
[1:19:57] Speaker 3: at the battlespace now in the world and how that shifted.
[1:20:00] Speaker 3: And you've obviously got what's going on in Israel, Gaza,
[1:20:05] Speaker 3: Palestine and Iran and the wider countries Lebanon and every
[1:20:12] Speaker 3: involved country and state, and then you've got you know,
[1:20:15] Speaker 3: the Ukraine and Russia thing and how that looks it's
[1:20:19] Speaker 3: it's an interesting space right now, and I think it
[1:20:23] Speaker 3: brings a lot of uncertainty just because there's there's bigger
[1:20:28] Speaker 3: powers that be, there's bigger nations at being known, really
[1:20:33] Speaker 3: knows what the outcome is.
[1:20:34] Speaker 2: Going to be.
[1:20:36] Speaker 1: Was that sort of your job on those deployments like
[1:20:38] Speaker 1: confirm or deny, you know, a WRECKI of assorts to
[1:20:41] Speaker 1: go out there and you know, be the eyes and
[1:20:43] Speaker 1: ears for the British government.
[1:20:46] Speaker 3: A little bit, yeah, a little bit of reporting, a
[1:20:50] Speaker 3: lot of it's a little bit of just like this, uh,
[1:20:54] Speaker 3: this kind of military entrepreneurial ship of just go to
[1:20:59] Speaker 3: a different place and set something up and just see
[1:21:02] Speaker 3: what see what's there. Whether there's always going to be
[1:21:05] Speaker 3: an element of reporting in everything that we do, but
[1:21:08] Speaker 3: it's it's a little bit of a little bit more
[1:21:10] Speaker 3: of just right, this is your job, this is the team.
[1:21:14] Speaker 3: Go over there and just see what you can make happen,
[1:21:16] Speaker 3: like make some connections, build some stuff, find some people
[1:21:19] Speaker 3: to train and report back.
[1:21:24] Speaker 1: And was that something that you enjoyed by comparison to
[1:21:28] Speaker 1: I imagine this is like a singleton mission or maybe
[1:21:30] Speaker 1: you go out and two's but did you enjoy being
[1:21:33] Speaker 1: away from your troop and doing this type of work.
[1:21:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's I don't get me wrong. Being
[1:21:40] Speaker 3: in a squadrons good. You've got a smaller role, not
[1:21:43] Speaker 3: necessarily a smaller role, but you've got a more defined role.
[1:21:48] Speaker 3: You know, your job that evening might be to be
[1:21:53] Speaker 3: a sniper on the high ground if that's your job.
[1:21:56] Speaker 3: Your job might be to be a ladder man. Your
[1:21:58] Speaker 3: job might be to just be in a team. It's
[1:22:03] Speaker 3: it's pretty pretty linear and binary. I think when you
[1:22:08] Speaker 3: go out on those smaller jobs and tasks, it's a
[1:22:12] Speaker 3: little bit more creative.
[1:22:13] Speaker 2: You don't have specific role.
[1:22:16] Speaker 3: You're working there as a team trying to figure out
[1:22:19] Speaker 3: what it is that you know, where can you have
[1:22:22] Speaker 3: an effect or how can you how can you make
[1:22:26] Speaker 3: this situation better?
[1:22:28] Speaker 2: Or do you know what I mean. It's it's a
[1:22:30] Speaker 2: way more interesting job role than just.
[1:22:35] Speaker 1: It's all it's on your shoulders and you have to
[1:22:38] Speaker 1: come up with creative solutions.
[1:22:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah. And again some of
[1:22:44] Speaker 2: that can be.
[1:22:47] Speaker 3: Traditionally very boring and it's not as exciting as what
[1:22:50] Speaker 3: what people see it as. And some of it can
[1:22:53] Speaker 3: be can be fun and you can do some you
[1:22:55] Speaker 3: can get yourself into what some wacky situations and the
[1:22:58] Speaker 3: stuff that know no one, no one gets to do
[1:23:03] Speaker 3: in the world. So yeah, it's it's it's.
[1:23:06] Speaker 1: Interesting are I know you can't mention any like places
[1:23:10] Speaker 1: or dates or anything, but can you mention any of
[1:23:12] Speaker 1: these wacky experiences?
[1:23:18] Speaker 3: I mean, uh, less on an operational standpoint, but you
[1:23:26] Speaker 3: know you're a team in the middle of like some
[1:23:29] Speaker 3: country where there's a war happening and living in a
[1:23:32] Speaker 3: safe house and you know you'd be a going out
[1:23:37] Speaker 3: and having fun, drinking beers and sometimes getting into a
[1:23:43] Speaker 3: little bit of mischief and stuff, and it's like that
[1:23:46] Speaker 3: kind of vibe.
[1:23:48] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like being on the set of Star Wars
[1:23:51] Speaker 1: or something.
[1:23:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, like just it's good fun. You know, you like
[1:23:56] Speaker 2: work hard.
[1:23:56] Speaker 3: You try and you try and find things that you
[1:23:59] Speaker 3: can do or build things, and you know that there's a.
[1:24:05] Speaker 2: How should I how should I put this?
[1:24:08] Speaker 3: You know without obviously, when you've got the whole squadron,
[1:24:11] Speaker 3: it's very formal, official, and then when you're in these
[1:24:16] Speaker 3: small teams, it's it's a lot more relaxed. You know,
[1:24:19] Speaker 3: you fires in the evening, sundowners, barbecues, like it's you know,
[1:24:25] Speaker 3: working with other agencies and working with other nationalities as well,
[1:24:31] Speaker 3: and yeah, driving around in places that you shouldn't be
[1:24:35] Speaker 3: and seeing some things that you shouldn't necessarily see or
[1:24:40] Speaker 3: being part of, and it's just, yeah, it's a very
[1:24:43] Speaker 3: interesting side of the job for sure, if you get there.
[1:24:46] Speaker 2: If you get that again, it could be very boring.
[1:24:49] Speaker 1: And what was that sort of like the tail end
[1:24:51] Speaker 1: of your time at the essay assert.
[1:24:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so kind of the last four years.
[1:24:59] Speaker 2: And then yeah, and then.
[1:25:02] Speaker 3: I'd i'd actually we send guys away in the Mountain
[1:25:06] Speaker 3: Troops to we send two guys every four years, I
[1:25:10] Speaker 3: think it is to go and train in.
[1:25:13] Speaker 2: In Germany to be a mountain guide.
[1:25:16] Speaker 3: So i'd i'd managed to get myself on that course,
[1:25:23] Speaker 3: so you have to learn German that the whole course
[1:25:25] Speaker 3: is done in German. And and yeah, you go out
[1:25:31] Speaker 3: to Bavaria and live in the Alps for two years.
[1:25:36] Speaker 3: So i'd done that, and you know, it was kind
[1:25:39] Speaker 3: of being in the Alps for that period of time
[1:25:42] Speaker 3: and you know, seeing something different that wasn't just soldiering.
[1:25:50] Speaker 2: Kind of like shifted my outlook on stuff.
[1:25:55] Speaker 3: And before I was very much pcifically a green soldier
[1:26:02] Speaker 3: and wanted to stay in the Special Force and all
[1:26:05] Speaker 3: that kind of stuff and progress my career, and having
[1:26:07] Speaker 3: gone and done that just opened my eyes to a
[1:26:09] Speaker 3: completely different way of life, or a different way of living.
[1:26:13] Speaker 3: And it was actually when I come back from that tour,
[1:26:17] Speaker 3: we deployed on one of those operations and I deployed out.
[1:26:22] Speaker 3: I'd actually spent three months in a in an OPS
[1:26:26] Speaker 3: room somewhere in the middle of summer, and I used
[1:26:32] Speaker 3: to just come out of this ops room.
[1:26:33] Speaker 2: I was, I was the team leader in the ops room.
[1:26:35] Speaker 3: And you'd go in about five in the morning and
[1:26:37] Speaker 3: come out at about seven thirty at night, and it
[1:26:41] Speaker 3: was like sunny during the day. And I remember coming
[1:26:43] Speaker 3: out and I stood out. I stood somewhere as one
[1:26:46] Speaker 3: of the lads to walk past me, and it's just like, yay,
[1:26:48] Speaker 3: you are right. I was just like staring at the sun,
[1:26:50] Speaker 3: just trying to get some vitamin D because I've just
[1:26:52] Speaker 3: been staring at screen for like the last eight hours
[1:26:56] Speaker 3: or something.
[1:26:58] Speaker 2: And then I deployed out and the the lads were just.
[1:27:01] Speaker 3: Like I think. I think I knew straight away at
[1:27:04] Speaker 3: that point that my my career was going to change.
[1:27:08] Speaker 3: And you know, there probably wasn't long before I had
[1:27:11] Speaker 3: to leave the Special Forces.
[1:27:13] Speaker 2: And go and do go and do what I wanted
[1:27:15] Speaker 2: to do.
[1:27:17] Speaker 3: So yeah, it was pretty much four years when getting
[1:27:19] Speaker 3: getting back from that course, and then there was a
[1:27:22] Speaker 3: few reasons of why I decided to leave. It was
[1:27:25] Speaker 3: mainly because of that seeing a different way of life.
[1:27:27] Speaker 3: And I think the longer you're in the Special Forces,
[1:27:30] Speaker 3: it's like the job can be quite monotonous. It's you know,
[1:27:34] Speaker 3: you're doing the same thing day and day out, albeit
[1:27:37] Speaker 3: at this variety, but it becomes very much, it becomes
[1:27:42] Speaker 3: very it can be can be very saving. And then
[1:27:47] Speaker 3: you know, I'd always joined joined to be a soldier,
[1:27:53] Speaker 3: and the longer that you stay in, the more you
[1:27:55] Speaker 3: just end up sat behind a desk, which ultimately we
[1:27:57] Speaker 3: all do it some stage, but I think at that
[1:27:59] Speaker 3: time I felt like I if I left at the
[1:28:02] Speaker 3: age of thirty four, then I'd still have a good
[1:28:05] Speaker 3: run of life or setting something up outside. And sure, yeah,
[1:28:09] Speaker 3: there was a few things. There was a little bit
[1:28:12] Speaker 3: of like structuring of the regimen and people getting in
[1:28:16] Speaker 3: charge in positions that potentially shouldn't be in those positions.
[1:28:21] Speaker 3: There was like a few funnels that kind of led
[1:28:24] Speaker 3: me to just to led me to leave.
[1:28:28] Speaker 1: And when it was that class you took in the Alps,
[1:28:32] Speaker 1: was like that you fell in love with mountaineering or
[1:28:36] Speaker 1: was it more like that you fell in love with
[1:28:38] Speaker 1: way of life in the Alps and the civilian life
[1:28:42] Speaker 1: out there?
[1:28:43] Speaker 2: Probably both?
[1:28:44] Speaker 3: Yeah, probably probably first taste of freedom Jack, gotcha?
[1:28:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, you know what I mean, like real freedom, like.
[1:28:54] Speaker 3: I've been not driving back to camp on a Sunday
[1:28:57] Speaker 3: night for the tenth weekend in a row.
[1:29:01] Speaker 2: But also also the beauty.
[1:29:03] Speaker 3: And awe of mountaineering and the mountains and something different adventure.
[1:29:08] Speaker 3: And I think I'd always been hardwired for adventure just
[1:29:12] Speaker 3: the reason that I joined the military.
[1:29:14] Speaker 2: It was, you know, it was it was something.
[1:29:19] Speaker 3: That that's always kind of been something that I've always
[1:29:23] Speaker 3: been drawn to.
[1:29:24] Speaker 2: So to do it in the arts was amazing.
[1:29:27] Speaker 1: And I mean it sounds like you were ready and
[1:29:30] Speaker 1: made the right decision at the right time in your life.
[1:29:33] Speaker 1: But was that transition out of the military still a
[1:29:36] Speaker 1: challenge for you?
[1:29:39] Speaker 2: Yes? And no.
[1:29:40] Speaker 3: I think I think I had a plan when I left,
[1:29:44] Speaker 3: and I started working for an outdoor for a clothing
[1:29:48] Speaker 3: brand that was set up by two sbs Special Boat
[1:29:50] Speaker 3: Squadron guys. Oh are you talking about the Yeah they're great,
[1:29:57] Speaker 3: yeah sick. Yeah they got they're based out in it. Yeah,
[1:30:01] Speaker 3: they're doing really well now. But I started working with
[1:30:04] Speaker 3: those guys when I get out, when I when I left,
[1:30:07] Speaker 3: So don't get me wrong, there was like periods where
[1:30:12] Speaker 3: i'd left and I was like sat in a flat
[1:30:15] Speaker 3: in London, that's where I lived at the time, and
[1:30:20] Speaker 3: and you're just like you're like day five into not
[1:30:23] Speaker 3: really knowing what you're doing.
[1:30:24] Speaker 2: And I sat in the flat just like.
[1:30:30] Speaker 3: Okay, because at the time through dark like the guys
[1:30:34] Speaker 3: had just kicked it off. I mean when I joined them,
[1:30:37] Speaker 3: they they just designed three garments, so it wasn't like
[1:30:42] Speaker 3: there was loads of work to do. So you were
[1:30:45] Speaker 3: kind of just like sat there thinking like all right,
[1:30:47] Speaker 3: what we're going to do today. But then I think
[1:30:52] Speaker 3: I don't know about you, Jack. I think like that
[1:30:55] Speaker 3: whole getting out process isn't just like within the first
[1:31:00] Speaker 3: week or two weeks or three weeks if you leave it.
[1:31:03] Speaker 3: It's a process of years of like this shedding of
[1:31:09] Speaker 3: like the skin that you built up within the military
[1:31:13] Speaker 3: to you like now becoming like a civilian and like
[1:31:18] Speaker 3: doing civilian things and like softening up emotionally and all
[1:31:23] Speaker 3: those kind of things. It's it's like a shift over
[1:31:28] Speaker 3: you like every year. I noticed different things. I think
[1:31:31] Speaker 3: when I first came out, I very much thought I
[1:31:35] Speaker 3: was still Jay the Special Forces soldier, and I probably
[1:31:39] Speaker 3: did for like two or three years. And it was
[1:31:42] Speaker 3: an ego thing, do you know what I mean. It
[1:31:44] Speaker 3: was like I'd be like the fucking guy, I don't
[1:31:46] Speaker 3: know who I am in the in the back of
[1:31:50] Speaker 3: your head, that's what you were kind of thinking. And
[1:31:53] Speaker 3: it took me a long time to you know, to
[1:31:57] Speaker 3: like shed that skin. And you know, there's it was
[1:32:01] Speaker 3: an amazing career and you know, it's still such a
[1:32:05] Speaker 3: big part of my life now in everything that I do,
[1:32:08] Speaker 3: because you'll never be able to take away those fourteen
[1:32:11] Speaker 3: years of military service.
[1:32:14] Speaker 2: But it kind of doesn't define me now. So many
[1:32:18] Speaker 2: other things do that.
[1:32:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, no, that's absolutely true. And I mean
[1:32:26] Speaker 1: you spend your young adult life in the military, and
[1:32:29] Speaker 1: it's normal to go with what you know. I guess
[1:32:32] Speaker 1: you could say until you earn a different way of life.
[1:32:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, completely.
[1:32:38] Speaker 3: And you know, going back to the big you know,
[1:32:43] Speaker 3: two things, like the big thing that was was that
[1:32:47] Speaker 3: drew me to leave. Leave was was freedom was having
[1:32:51] Speaker 3: autonomy over your life and your decisions and all that
[1:32:54] Speaker 3: kind of stuff. And I can't remember this, I think
[1:33:00] Speaker 3: that I was going to say, but yeah, freedom.
[1:33:03] Speaker 1: I and so, I mean that is pretty great that
[1:33:06] Speaker 1: you got a job working with true darc right out
[1:33:10] Speaker 1: the gate. What what is kind of like your civilian
[1:33:14] Speaker 1: life and career sort of progressed over the last couple
[1:33:16] Speaker 1: of years. What does that look like.
[1:33:19] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's been a lot of trial and error.
[1:33:25] Speaker 3: I I still like to keep my foot into the
[1:33:29] Speaker 3: veteran community and in.
[1:33:32] Speaker 2: The military community.
[1:33:33] Speaker 3: Like I think we spoke about before, Like I worked
[1:33:36] Speaker 3: with this brand Delta thrie Oscar helping them as an
[1:33:40] Speaker 3: ambassador but also developing their military line of product. So
[1:33:49] Speaker 3: for example that that they produce, they've got this really
[1:33:54] Speaker 3: cool patent that so that that their main company D
[1:33:58] Speaker 3: three zero has this got this shock resistant or shock
[1:34:03] Speaker 3: absorbing product that's flexible so you wack it with the hammer,
[1:34:07] Speaker 3: it goes all hard. And they're in kind of extreme
[1:34:11] Speaker 3: sports skiing, motorbikeing, biking, all that kind of stuff, mountain biking,
[1:34:18] Speaker 3: and they've now got don't three Oscar, which is their
[1:34:20] Speaker 3: military line of products.
[1:34:22] Speaker 2: So they've got a.
[1:34:24] Speaker 3: A plate that goes behind a ballistic plate that if
[1:34:27] Speaker 3: your ballistic plate gets hit, it reduces the chance of
[1:34:30] Speaker 3: blunt blunt force trauma, dissipates the energy of the round
[1:34:34] Speaker 3: and reduces the chance of you know, broken bones and
[1:34:36] Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. They've got some pretty cool
[1:34:39] Speaker 3: helmet mounts, sorry, helmet pads that reduce the chance of
[1:34:46] Speaker 3: shock and reduce the chances of TBIs and brain injuries.
[1:34:52] Speaker 3: So like, I still like to keep my foot into
[1:34:55] Speaker 3: the military kind of side of things. On a I
[1:34:58] Speaker 3: work with a veterans organization doing some stuff for those guys.
[1:35:02] Speaker 3: And then my kind of day job is I've got
[1:35:04] Speaker 3: a company that runs premium adventure travel for mainly high
[1:35:12] Speaker 3: net worth clients, so pretty much anything it doesn't have
[1:35:17] Speaker 3: to be adventure travel. For example, I just had a
[1:35:21] Speaker 3: lady climb Mount Kenya and go in Safari in Kenya.
[1:35:27] Speaker 3: I'm flying out to Monaco to talk to someone about
[1:35:29] Speaker 3: climbing Everest next week, so it's quite diverse.
[1:35:35] Speaker 2: And then I do.
[1:35:39] Speaker 3: So I work for all I'm a partner in a
[1:35:43] Speaker 3: company called Houdares Group, which provides special forces corporate training
[1:35:50] Speaker 3: and experiences. So we have a lot of companies come
[1:35:54] Speaker 3: to us for specific training to kind of make their
[1:36:02] Speaker 3: teams better, or it could just be a company that
[1:36:06] Speaker 3: wants to run like a one or two day Special
[1:36:10] Speaker 3: Forces style experience package. So yeah, quite quite diverse, but
[1:36:15] Speaker 3: still kind of keeps the old skill set.
[1:36:18] Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, yeah, you keep your hands on a
[1:36:20] Speaker 1: lot of this stuff.
[1:36:22] Speaker 3: I only started shooting guns again recently when I went
[1:36:25] Speaker 3: went back out to the States because albeit we have
[1:36:29] Speaker 3: guns in America, in the UK, we don't have them
[1:36:32] Speaker 3: the same as you guys, which is unfortunate. So it
[1:36:37] Speaker 3: was good when I was in Montana, we went down
[1:36:39] Speaker 3: to a range there and got to shoot some ails
[1:36:41] Speaker 3: and glocks.
[1:36:43] Speaker 1: And you're still mountaineering, You're still working as a mountain guide.
[1:36:47] Speaker 2: Yeah, still still mountaineering.
[1:36:48] Speaker 3: Loads out to the Alps this year out in September,
[1:36:54] Speaker 3: still doing a lot of that stuff. Still have a
[1:36:56] Speaker 3: lot of projects that I'm working on for myself, like
[1:37:01] Speaker 3: out next year to Dinali and Alaska, potentially K two
[1:37:06] Speaker 3: in in in Pakistan, and then yeah, just still trying
[1:37:12] Speaker 3: to do things that keep.
[1:37:15] Speaker 2: The old excitement. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[1:37:20] Speaker 1: And tell people where they can go to find these
[1:37:23] Speaker 1: different services that you offer, whether it's Delta, Delta three Oscar,
[1:37:28] Speaker 1: or the corporate training or the adventure travel. Where can
[1:37:32] Speaker 1: people go to find that stuff?
[1:37:34] Speaker 3: I mean Instagram is the main platform, Like either on
[1:37:38] Speaker 3: my page, Juble, Underscore Morton, Concept Expeditions on Instagram, you
[1:37:44] Speaker 3: can email us if you're interested in doing anything either
[1:37:47] Speaker 3: one on one group trips or experiences. And that's just
[1:37:51] Speaker 3: in for Concept Expeditions dot com. And then yeah, check
[1:37:55] Speaker 3: out Delta three Oscar obviously their website, they're at their
[1:37:58] Speaker 3: social media all that kind of stuff. And yeah, it'd
[1:38:02] Speaker 3: be good to speak to some of the guys that
[1:38:04] Speaker 3: listened and always came for a chat.
[1:38:08] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. Anything else that you'd like to talk about,
[1:38:12] Speaker 1: anything that you know, I didn't ask during this interview
[1:38:14] Speaker 1: that you'd really like to get into, not.
[1:38:18] Speaker 3: That I can think of, Jack, I mean, I'd love
[1:38:19] Speaker 3: to read your book at some stage.
[1:38:22] Speaker 2: I just see the background there.
[1:38:23] Speaker 1: Oh yeah the novel. Yeah that came out in June. Yeah,
[1:38:28] Speaker 1: it's a fun read.
[1:38:29] Speaker 2: I hope good stuff. Good stuff.
[1:38:33] Speaker 1: And likewise, if you come through New York, please let
[1:38:36] Speaker 1: us know.
[1:38:37] Speaker 2: Let's see cigars and.
[1:38:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah we can't. We don't. We don't really have
[1:38:43] Speaker 1: the thing with guns. We sort of have that same
[1:38:46] Speaker 1: problem here in New York City. You're not going to
[1:38:48] Speaker 1: do too much shooting around here, but you might have
[1:38:52] Speaker 1: to go upstate. You have something. Dates question, What was
[1:38:56] Speaker 1: it like going, uh, summoning Everest.
[1:39:02] Speaker 3: Yeah, so first summited in twenty seventeen, and.
[1:39:09] Speaker 2: It was, I mean, the journey to it was.
[1:39:13] Speaker 3: We tried to climb the mountain before that called Manisley,
[1:39:17] Speaker 3: which is the eighth highest. It was the first time
[1:39:19] Speaker 3: I'd ever climbed an attitude mountain. And I think, being
[1:39:28] Speaker 3: like a Special Forces soldier, you think you can do anything,
[1:39:32] Speaker 3: but out issued like as a different story in that.
[1:39:37] Speaker 3: And so to climb in eight thousand meter peak you
[1:39:40] Speaker 3: need three six weeks. And I'd arranged to go out
[1:39:45] Speaker 3: with this guy called John, who was an ex SAS
[1:39:49] Speaker 3: soldier who is now older, been successful in business, and
[1:39:53] Speaker 3: last minute John told me that he couldn't go out
[1:39:56] Speaker 3: for the six weeks, but he could go and do
[1:39:58] Speaker 3: three weeks.
[1:39:59] Speaker 2: So I was like, mate, don't about it. It's a mountain,
[1:40:01] Speaker 2: we'll crack it or whatever. And then.
[1:40:04] Speaker 3: So I went off and you know, did whatever for
[1:40:08] Speaker 3: three weeks and then we met in Nepal. Obviously, this
[1:40:12] Speaker 3: was the first time that I'd ever been exposed to
[1:40:15] Speaker 3: altitude at that at that height, and we skip the
[1:40:22] Speaker 3: normal base camp trek, which is ten days for Mansleu
[1:40:27] Speaker 3: similar or probably less about eight to nine days similar
[1:40:30] Speaker 3: to the Everest one. And if if you look at altitude,
[1:40:34] Speaker 3: so the body can ad just probably around every five
[1:40:39] Speaker 3: hundred meters, and what happens is you go a little
[1:40:44] Speaker 3: bit higher, triggers the body to produce more red blood cells,
[1:40:47] Speaker 3: you can carry oxygen around the body more proficiently.
[1:40:51] Speaker 2: So we kind of rush this mountain and float.
[1:40:55] Speaker 3: You know, John wanted to helen concentrate into base camp
[1:40:58] Speaker 3: and then we just had to go for the summer bush.
[1:41:01] Speaker 3: We got stuck at camp turing a huge snowstorm and
[1:41:06] Speaker 3: there was probably around a foot of snow outside the tents,
[1:41:08] Speaker 3: and we got stuck in these tents with these German
[1:41:11] Speaker 3: guys that I, funnily enough knew from my time out
[1:41:14] Speaker 3: in Germany. There were military guys from the KSK and
[1:41:19] Speaker 3: they were the only ones with tents because they funnily enough,
[1:41:22] Speaker 3: we're trying to do like an unsupported expedition and they
[1:41:25] Speaker 3: were going up at when everyone was coming off the
[1:41:26] Speaker 3: mountain because our tents were had a camp higher up,
[1:41:30] Speaker 3: and we're stuck in these tents with all these these
[1:41:33] Speaker 3: Germans and like we you know, we were running out
[1:41:37] Speaker 3: of food and John looks like he's going to die
[1:41:39] Speaker 3: because he's probably got you know, altitude sickness, and he's
[1:41:44] Speaker 3: knocking on the door of cerebral edema. And then we
[1:41:48] Speaker 3: obviously the snow clear and we cracked. We decided to
[1:41:51] Speaker 3: crack onto the summit and obviously a lot of fresh snow,
[1:41:55] Speaker 3: cold temperatures slopes around, you know, thirty four to thirty
[1:41:59] Speaker 3: seven degrees, it's like prime avalanche terrain. And anyway, we
[1:42:04] Speaker 3: ended up just below Camp four, just narrowly missing a
[1:42:10] Speaker 3: huge slab avalanche, at which point we turned around, came
[1:42:14] Speaker 3: back down and both survived coming back down.
[1:42:19] Speaker 2: So then we went out to Everest. Everest seemed like
[1:42:21] Speaker 2: a bit of a breeze.
[1:42:22] Speaker 3: We gave ourselves the amount of time, so eight weeks
[1:42:26] Speaker 3: we acclimatized properly. And actually the when we got up
[1:42:31] Speaker 3: to Camp four, which is the final camp, it's called
[1:42:33] Speaker 3: the South coll to Ad eight thousand meters, there was
[1:42:36] Speaker 3: a huge storm, like a windstorm that was whipping through
[1:42:40] Speaker 3: the coal and there was a load of teams turning
[1:42:45] Speaker 3: around and coming back down, and there was teams that
[1:42:47] Speaker 3: had stayed there twenty four hours and they were considering
[1:42:50] Speaker 3: going up that night or turning back around, and we
[1:42:52] Speaker 3: decided to take a punt on it and went for
[1:42:54] Speaker 3: the summit bush.
[1:42:56] Speaker 2: And the wind dropped down halfway up, and it was.
[1:43:01] Speaker 3: Actually a beautiful day, clear blue sky, perfect conditions. But
[1:43:05] Speaker 3: because of this storm, no one else had gone for
[1:43:07] Speaker 3: the summit push. There was probably I passed probably four
[1:43:10] Speaker 3: people on the way up. As I got to the summit,
[1:43:14] Speaker 3: we had one sherper. Two of them had turned around.
[1:43:17] Speaker 3: The idea was John would climb with two, I climber
[1:43:19] Speaker 3: with one. So John was climbing with a sherpa a
[1:43:21] Speaker 3: little bit for a little bit behind me. I was
[1:43:23] Speaker 3: just on my own and there was no one on
[1:43:26] Speaker 3: the route. Literally passed four people on the way up,
[1:43:31] Speaker 3: and when I got to the summit there was two
[1:43:34] Speaker 3: Korean climbers getting the picture, and I rushed over to
[1:43:38] Speaker 3: them and was like, guys, can you take a picture,
[1:43:40] Speaker 3: pulled out my squadron flag with the emblem on and
[1:43:43] Speaker 3: they took a picture and got off the summit, and
[1:43:46] Speaker 3: that was the only picture that I had of the
[1:43:48] Speaker 3: squadron flag and it came out blurry. So I was
[1:43:53] Speaker 3: literally stood on the summit of Everest on my own,
[1:43:57] Speaker 3: no sherpers, like no other climbers, and it was pretty surreal.
[1:44:02] Speaker 2: I remember thinking, you know, how do.
[1:44:05] Speaker 3: You make the most of like being on being the
[1:44:07] Speaker 3: highest man in the world at this point, And I
[1:44:11] Speaker 3: don't think there is a way. It's like, you're just
[1:44:14] Speaker 3: excited to be on there. And John came up a
[1:44:16] Speaker 3: little bit after and we got some good pictures and
[1:44:20] Speaker 3: got off the mountain. But yeah, it's a pretty special mountain.
[1:44:24] Speaker 3: Obviously it's changed over the years. When up again in
[1:44:27] Speaker 3: twenty nineteen and you started to see the crowds build.
[1:44:32] Speaker 3: I was up on there in twenty twenty three, but
[1:44:34] Speaker 3: on the up to Camp three, but again you're seeing
[1:44:38] Speaker 3: massive swaths of people now going there. I think, you know,
[1:44:42] Speaker 3: everything's becoming more accessible and people want to push themselves
[1:44:45] Speaker 3: more and get an Instagram picture in more wackier places
[1:44:50] Speaker 3: than Everest is just one of those places.
[1:44:53] Speaker 1: Everest is obviously the highest, but I was as a
[1:44:57] Speaker 1: mountain guide a venture travel Guide. What are some like
[1:45:01] Speaker 1: lesser known mountain ranges that are just as beautiful that
[1:45:04] Speaker 1: you would recommend to people.
[1:45:08] Speaker 2: I mean, I'd recommend the Himalayas.
[1:45:10] Speaker 3: Yeah, e risk is obviously super busy, but you can
[1:45:14] Speaker 3: get up to there's some pretty beautiful like six and
[1:45:17] Speaker 3: a half thousand meter six five hundred meter peaks to climb.
[1:45:23] Speaker 3: The Pool's beautiful, Like there's literally the Himalayas is the
[1:45:27] Speaker 3: biggest mountain range in the world. It's like phenomenal even
[1:45:30] Speaker 3: just to go and see it and experience it, and
[1:45:32] Speaker 3: even if you hike up to five thousand meters on
[1:45:35] Speaker 3: one of the passes, it's a size and scale that
[1:45:39] Speaker 3: you will never experience anywhere else in the world. Obviously,
[1:45:43] Speaker 3: the Alps on my doorsteps amazing, super busy, though you
[1:45:48] Speaker 3: can get some quieter places, but in the summer it's
[1:45:51] Speaker 3: really busy. Scotland like epic, epic place, and be prepared
[1:45:58] Speaker 3: for insanely harsh winters where you will see every single
[1:46:02] Speaker 3: season known to man, and you'll be absolutely drenched for
[1:46:06] Speaker 3: the whole duration of whatever it.
[1:46:08] Speaker 2: Is that you're going to do. Where else.
[1:46:13] Speaker 3: I've not done that much in America. I'd love to
[1:46:15] Speaker 3: like I'm going to spend more time in America over
[1:46:17] Speaker 3: the winter. Pata Gourney is obviously beautiful, insane, very desolate,
[1:46:25] Speaker 3: very isolated, not that busy even just to go there,
[1:46:29] Speaker 3: and Trek is absolutely beautiful. So yeah, there's there's lots
[1:46:33] Speaker 3: of lots of amazing places around the world to go.
[1:46:38] Speaker 1: Next floor, Absolutely well, Jay, thank you for taking the
[1:46:44] Speaker 1: time to do this interview and sharing your story with us.
[1:46:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, appreciate it. Jack, thanks for thanks for the thanks
[1:46:51] Speaker 3: for having me on.
[1:46:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, any final thoughts before we get going today.
[1:46:56] Speaker 2: Good, appreciate it. Appreciate you guys.
[1:46:59] Speaker 1: Thank you, and thank you everyone who joined us and
[1:47:02] Speaker 1: watched the show today, and we'll see you again next week. Hey, guys,
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[1:47:43] Speaker 1: fun stuff in there as well. If you go and
[1:47:46] Speaker 1: check it out, we send it out just once a week.
[1:47:47] Speaker 1: We don't want to spam you guys. It's just a
[1:47:50] Speaker 1: kind of roll up of all of our content on
[1:47:52] Speaker 1: a weekly basis. You can find our newsletter at teamhouse
[1:47:56] Speaker 1: podcast dot kit dot com slash join again. The website
[1:48:01] Speaker 1: for that is teamhouse podcast, dot kit dot com slash
[1:48:05] Speaker 1: join So we hope to see you there. The link
[1:48:08] Speaker 1: will be down the description

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