#317. MBE for Role in Brutal Bosnia War - Wayne Ingram MBE

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0:29What was it like fighting in a war in Bosnia? That was the worst war that I've ever been to. It was just a thing you saw. The further you go into Bosnia, the more devastation you see. What did you see that you wish you hadn't seen? I heard one story. So these guys were sat on top of this hill. The village itself was then mortared. So he went down with these guys. The first thing he said, I got presented, was this baby with half his head. and the mum was in so much shock that she was cutting this baby. Oh, God. Atrocities happened there. It was very similar to the Second World War. What was it like fighting in Ireland?

1:03Ireland messed me up in time. There was no decompression. Every single day there was people being killed. What level of PTSD did you have, do you think, on a scale of 1 to 10? 10. OK. Yeah, at the end it was definitely 10. I was just this aggressive, ticking time bomb. At night, I was just, you know, just later thinking, Oh, crikey, if I'd done this, I didn't want to go back. I really didn't want to go back. So my trigger point was on the 22nd of September, 1993. A very good friend of mine got blinded up in front of me, and I had to give him first aid. I'd try and go to sleep a good week after it, and hear, see, and smell the explosion.

1:39So I still want to get to the answer here. What is PTSD like? What goes through your mind to realise that you have this?

1:56welcome to the eventful lives podcast i'm your host dodge and i'm the founder of borna sevens the world's largest sport and music festival on this podcast i speak to proper characters of all lived eventful lives do us a favor and hit that follow button and be sure to check us out on youtube instagram facebook and tiktok at dodge woodall where we've now had over 100 million views wayne welcome to the show mate dodge thank you really looking forward to this one we've been speaking for a while now and your story is fascinating so let's roll all the way back what was it like fighting in a war in Bosnia that was the worst war that I've ever been to and everybody I've spoken to all the soldiers have said exactly the same thing atrocities happened there that were just it was very similar to the Second World War and in this day and age it shouldn't happen and some of the sites i saw mate were just horrible it's interesting because the amount of military guys i've had on here over the years over the last five years everyone talks about afghan iraq um other places when we speak about bosnia the people have been to bosnia i see them their face change we had craig harrison on here who's the sniper and he spoke about bosnia in detail and i was in shock and the amount of comments in the youtube section about we were completely in shock about what went on in bosnia how can you explain to the listener out there what actually was it like what did it look like what did it feel like how long were you out there for what did you see that you wish you hadn't seen so the difference in um the difference in bosnia was it wasn't too far away you know you jumped on the jumps on the plane and before you knew it you were there um but it was just the the sights and the sounds and the smell um you you were living within this this area that had been blown up there was constant mine threats i mean before we went out there the the previous regiment i think it was probably uh actually no it was large guns it wasn't the same one as craigs they'd lost three blokes into a into a mine strike they just literally their vehicle had gone same vehicle as we had they turn around uh turn around this track and as they turn around bump the uh the device went off underneath them killed three of them so it was always that in your back of your minds but it was just the the mentality of of certain certain areas and certain people just pure, pure hatred.

4:31Yeah. Pure hatred. So, for example, we got sent down to an area. Now, it had been ethnically cleansed. I can't remember, I can't remember which group of people were in there, but it was right on the border with Croatia. So you can only, I can only imagine it was Bosnian. I think they were Bosnian. I probably put money on it, they were Bosnian. And the village had been ethnically cleansed. So the other war infracture had gone through and killed everybody. When we got there, we went into this building. And the bottom of the building was, I mean, it was like a big old house, a massive old house. And we got into the cellar and there was blood everywhere, bandages everywhere, where these people had been trying to patch themselves up.

5:25now we had to go there to because this old couple had said that they were wanting to move back into their into their family home now their family home was this this garden shed thing down the end of the garden of this where this uh this this house was we were so our troop was was told to go down it they said look you need to protect these people because the word had got out that they going to come back and the others who had done the atrocities were going to come back and kill them because we didn't have problems at all so we went down there um we we only had stay in this one building because the rest of the area hadn't been proven safe for uh for mines so the the engineers had come in cleared this area we gave them protection they cleared this area around this house and in this house uh in in house and actually in this garden and going down towards this um this wooden shack where this couple were and they came back mate it was a little old man and a little old woman they had nothing at all literally their stuff had been trashed they made the best of it they had these couple of little bags and they got down to it and I've got a real love for greens you know the greens you have on your plates for dinners and stuff like that this old boy that's all he ate was just greens and she would put the food on his plate first and then whatever was left, she would have it.

6:53And we went down. It broke our hearts. We went down. I thought, well, now we're going to do this. Gave them loads and loads of rations, ration packs and so forth, and they gave us greens. So we were quite happy taking it off, mate, but it was horrible. Yeah, there was, when we got back to, because we were down there for a few weeks together and then someone else took over from it. I think the Malaysians took over from us because, as you know, it's a multinational, front really from the peacekeeping side of life because we went overnight from being UMPA4 which was the United Nations peacekeepers to having white vehicles everything was painted white because it was United Nations to overnight say right okay guys we're now S4 stabilisation force, painting vehicles green and black again camouflage them up it was just like that overnight my god but the atrocities were still happening um i heard one story which is you know it's in the book it's um now your book by the way soldier of conscience fight it from fighting the ra to batting ptsd wayne ingram and you've got an mbe yeah that's unreal isn't it oh do you know i'll tell you about that how it come across it was just bizarre but um one part of the book talks about there was it was a an infantry battalion attached to us and they told this story of the going through this village which again had been ethnically cleansed and the village was still smoking as they'd as they'd come through so it all been happened and they found a lot of grenade pins by this which they thought was a mine shaft so they came back and reported it the engineers then went to um you know have a look at these mines or have a look at these grenade pins sorry down there um at the bottom of the mine shaft was the whole village so 20 meter mine shaft or whatever it was i can't remember the actual details of the of it but what they'd done they dropped the children dropped these babies down this mine shaft and then the children who were three four five onwards were shot in the back of the head.

9:10And they went through the whole village until the very last bodies found on top of the pile of bodies was the village elders. So the village elders saw that every single member of that village had been definitely cleansed, had been killed. My God. Definitely cleansed. So just explain to me here. Like, we're going, it was Yugoslavia, and it got broke into, what, Serbia, Croatia? like what why why would people taking villages out i think i think it would be like um i live in the southwest as you do so let's just say it would be weymouth wasn't happy about dorchester yeah so the guys from weymouth would then go across the over the over the ridgeway to dorchester and kill as many people as possible and then come back because they wanted Weymouth to expand in there.

10:07They wanted Weymouth people around. And that's the sort of mentality. That's the grassroots of it, really. There was just pure hatred. I mean, as you say, people talk about Northern Ireland. They talk about Iraq. They talk about Afghanistan, especially Afghanistan, because we did lose quite a lot of people there, and it's still quite raw. but Bosnia was by far the worst worst war that I've I've seen so we we went back in 97 yeah and our job was as I said stabilization force so that then we were digging up the mass graves or identifying digging up mass graves digging up just explain that digging up a mass graves it's just so so could you imagine if this happened so imagine there was a mass grave in say Bournemouth yeah right the whole place would be cordoned off there would be there would be barriers going up there would be forensic people there anyway we turned up to where this where this mass grave was reported me and a brother called Toby Marston Toby was a top really nice officer and so we sat there and we oversaw this this mound where this mass grave was and I still can't believe to this day that this happened and I was there you'd have school children walking with their little satchels on their backs, or walking to school mate they were so immune to this and you had a digger there a big military digger and you had two old guys walking around with a big pole the pole was about six foot long and what they'd do they'd go and hammer this pole into the ground there was no laser technology no no lidar nothing like that they'd go and hammer this pole into the ground then sniff the pole bring the pole out move it four foot five foot hammer it in again sniff the pole and this went on sniff the pole so they sniffed the pole because which i didn't realize until they actually started digging up the bodies a masquerade has this has this distinct smell as you can imagine so that's like i don't know what it's like to smell a dead body but if you smell a dead sheep if you're walking somewhere, it pen and inks, doesn't it?

12:25You can smell it half a mile away. Is it a different smell to a dead body? So it happens. So a couple of years after I'd come back from Bosnia, I was on the beach in Portland with my two boys and we were kicking over rocks looking for crabs. Now the black gunge that you get underneath a rock sometimes is all the sediment or the horrible dead matter. is exactly the smell of a masquerade. Bloody hell. Mate, and it just, it smacked me. And the boys were going, you all right, Dad? I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm good. Yeah, I did. So that was it. So they'd go around hammered this pole and sniff. And all of a sudden they'd turn around and say, yeah, okay, it's here.

13:06So, you know, I think the bodies are supposed to be six foot down because of predators and because of disease and so forth. These were only about three foot down. So this young lad who was the engineer, the dig driver, took his first shovel fall out no problem still, second shovel fall and it was the bodyguard and now it's the soldiers, pardon me the soldiers were all laid down so they said just right okay come in and have a look at this and some of the bags had been opened and they were like waxwork figures, some had massive trauma to their face that's how they got killed, some really were just skeletons so So it was like, yeah, okay.

13:50So they started to excavate these bodies. But underneath the bodies were the village. And the reason they did that is because we couldn't believe it afterwards. There was the children, the parents, and everything. They put the bodies of the soldiers on top so that they would always be on top of that village. That was the mentality you had to try and get your head around. What year are we talking here when the soldiers kick it off? Early 90s? Yeah, yeah. So it started in 93. I said it started in 92. The guys went out in 93. I didn't go on the first tour because I was in Belfast at the time. Literally, as the guys went out, we was all the pencils then to go to Belfast, which was a nasty tour.

14:37But they came back, and they came back changed men. It's always a thing. You always hear that story when you go away, that the soldier never comes back the same. These guys never came back the same. I mean, there were reports that one of the guys was going to get in trouble. He was going to lose his job as a soldier. Why? He sat on a hill. So we used to be reconnaissance. So our job in the reconnaissance units we were was up to 150 kilometres forward and report on the long war. So the stuff that we saw would happen like two or three days later. So we'd look at a movement of vehicles, and they'd try and work out, all the buffers would work out, and say, okay, it's going to go this way because of the terrain.

15:21So if we whack it in four days' time or two days' time, we can do it there. So these guys were sat on top of this hill watching this village. The village itself was then mortared from the hills by one of the opposing forces. And they report in and said, look, you know, we've got civilians down there being killed and so forth. And we were told, I say we, the guy and his troop were told, do not go in. Because if it went in, you had the whole part then of just, you could have escalated the war. Because if the British Army had gone in, and I don't know which one it is, I do know which one it is, but just say they turned around and said, oh, well, the British Army are helping then.

16:08They're choosing sides. Yeah, okay. He's choosing sides. so he sat there and they said do not go in do not go in so he went down with his guys and started picking up and the first thing he said I got presented was this baby with half his head and the mum was in so much shock that she was cuddling this baby and gave the baby to him and that was the thing you were dealing with how long were you out there for? so I've done three tours in there I think it's two of us six months actually no I'm a bit where you got a bit of a short term because I didn't do six months on the last one because I came back early.

16:44But the last one was in 2003. So 10 years after the war had started. And in 2003, I didn't want to go back. Yeah, okay. I really didn't want to go back. What was the worst one of the lot for you? The first one? Yeah. First of all, just because everything was a massive shock. It was just a massive shock. Yeah, okay. And then you realise what you're going to go back to. What are you... Did you have the fear for your own life at all when you were out there? No. No. No, no, no. The only time I've ever feared for my life was in Belfast. But the other times, no, mate, it was just the thing you saw. Yeah.

17:22There was a guy who used to walk around. We used to have this troop house called Red Dragon. The Welsh had been there before us and named it Red Dragon. So we couldn't change it. It's like a ship. You don't change the name. But there was a guy there and we told him, do not, do not interact with him. he's a war criminal at some point we will grab him so we went out on patrol so in our little teams you split it down so the the troop leader is with the senior corporal at the time I was a senior corporal and you have the troop sergeant with the junior corporal so they can keep an eye on each other so we went out and patrol me and the troop leader came back and our troop sergeant it's what I call Mick House was still on the balcony having an argument with this bloke the stroitzy killer they called him because he had he had an ak-47 on the ak-47 he had etched into it all the people that he killed and they were going to get we were going to grab him one day but we were told do not interrupt him oh mitt was there arguing with him shouting and he's shouting up to him and i got back and uh the uh trickleer said oh crikey go with him here we go so i walked in and i and i knew mitt i've known mitt a long time so i thought oh here we go what's going on here i've gone in mate and they both disappeared i was like what is happening gone in and they both sat down having a beer because he was just interacting with him yeah and he got him he got him to the point where he said okay and yet and i saw you're good guys this guy went off to his to his home and our area was safe again it was like a tinderbox it could have happened at any time yeah weird how would you explain what it looks like bosnia looks like is Is it like, I'm just trying to visualise what it looks like as a country.

19:08It's beautiful. Okay. It's absolutely beautiful. Is it like, you know, you go to Croatia today. Is it like? Yeah, so we'd all start in Croatia. We'd all start down in Split and then go up a country from there. So we'd fly into Split and then we'd go up. And it's weird because as you go up, the further you go into Bosnia, the more devastation you see. like you'd see burnt out tanks at the side of the road or in fields. Buildings would, you know, they'd be a pot mark and then all of a sudden they'd just be completely collapsed and so forth. Weird. Bosnia is now a great, great place. It's beautiful.

19:49I've heard it stunning, yeah. It's a green, picturesque. Yeah, I mean, like I said, when I went back in 2003. Why did you go in 2003 when everything finished? When did the war start and finish? So the war, if I remember correctly, the 99, no, sorry, apologise, 96, 97 is when the actual, so right, okay, you lot, stop fighting. Yeah. We're now going to be peacekeepers. Why did you go back in 2003? Because it was still a stabilisation force. Right, okay. They still had troops there. So the camp we went back to was a camp called Banyaluka. they called it the was it the metal factory but there was loads on there mate there was us the Americans Canadians there was the Dutch Italians so we were just part of this multi national peacekeeping force.

20:48Who was the sharpest out of all those countries? Us. 100 % 100 % yeah okay 100 % so for example I love the Americans I've stood toe to toe with Americans and they are they're nice guys but they are over the top. So in 2003 I went back and I met a little Bosnian boy called Stefan which I'll tell you about him in a minute but in the build up to Stefan needed some operations. How old was Stefan? So Stefan at the time was four. How did you meet him? So I was given an area called Lattazi to look after. Lattazi was a municipality in Bosnia. It was like a little town. So in 2003, we keep on going back to 2003.

21:42When England won the World Cup. Hey, mate, what a great Johnny Wilkinson. Throw that in there. It's what they always say, oh, England's never won anything. Yes, we have. We have. The World Cup. Do you know what, just going off the tangent a bit there, people forget that Johnny Wilkinson got that drop goal, but he used his opposite foot He used his weaker foot for the drop gold. No one talks about his using his weaker foot. Phenomenal. Anyway, let's go back. I'm just thinking about Johnny, mate. Yeah. Same. That's the only thing we can hold on to, isn't it? Oh, Johnny. If I'd be gay, Johnny. But, sorry, in 2003, so we were given this area to look after, and they said, right, can you collect weapons?

22:23Go out and collect as many weapons as possible. and we said yeah and i'm gonna say to all mate you go to say you're us and knock on dodge's door yeah dodge can i have some uh some weapons please and you say either say go away or you say oh here we go and give me the oldest hunting rifle the oldest air rifle ever and keep all your good ones yeah now that comes into our house so i said okay and i'm gonna store so i tried to meet the chief of police chief of police was the most elusive man ever whenever i met him he'd always make excuses He's a really nice guy, but he just didn't want to speak to me.

22:57I was. Chief of police in Latarzy. No, no, no. Or the Bosnian. Okay. Yeah. So what you have to remember is that Wayne Ingram steps in there, but Wayne Ingram is the 24th soldier that he's seen in the last 10 years. So Wayne Ingram is not going to get anything from him. And he's sick and tired of it, bless him. So one day I said to him, right, I'm going to be at 10 o 'clock. now i always turn up early anyway so at nine o 'clock i turned up turned then walked into the police station mate he's seen me at the back door he's then made a beeline out the back door so i've given chase jumped over the counter and it was like a scene from monty python as i've run past him i've run after him thinking yeah i'm going to catch him tripped over the back step of the um the back door and um not being like any james bond i fell over I rolled into this ball of dust in the car park as he's speeding out the pack missed him but I could hear a couple of people laughing and one was the Minister of Defence the other one was a guy called Milos and they said look okay do you want a coffee?

24:07so I thought right okay I've lost one option but let's have a word with the Minister of Defence and we started speaking and he said to me have you seen this? and he showed me this picture of Stefan now Stefan was a little boy who had been born with a severe facial deformity, had been born with a facial cleft. There's pictures in there, actually, the first picture. That picture's on the back. I don't know if people can see that on the camera there, but... That's him. That's the first time I met him. That is a serious deformity across his face, isn't it? Yeah, so he'd been born with that facial cleft, and over the years, they'd just left him.

24:39And unbenign to me, Milosh, who I met there, was his dad. Yeah. I said, look, can you help? We can get the operation done in France, but the operation was 30 ,000 euros, a merely showing a pittance. I said, well, I'll see what I can do. Didn't realise the enormity of what I was about to take. I went back to camp, spoke to a guy called James Farrar, who was my squadron leader at the time. He was a major, really, really nice guy, amazing guy. He said, okay, leave it with me. He then had to go to Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier and so forth. And he came back a couple of days later and said, yeah, you can do it.

25:11However, just be careful. This is, you know, there's a chance of being a gargantuan task. no chance that's what i said to him mate 13 years later um i didn't realize at the time he had to have five operations so i put the wheels in motion i contacted all these different celebrities and expecting the money to get pouring in because only you can ask for uh you show a picture of a child i got the picture of stephan photocopped it sent to all these different celebrities and i got one reply and that was from david beckham really yeah just in e-sentiment mate, absolutely, absolutely respect. So David turned around and said, look, thank you.

25:51Unfortunately, I can't help this time because I get asked for so many charitable events. I nominate four each year. My four have been nominated, but if you need any help in the future, let me know. He was the only one who got back to me. So I dug my heels in. I thought, right, I don't need you a lot. So I organised this football match. And we had a football match. It was the Brits against the post-war infractions. So there was the Serbs, Muslims, Croats, all on the same team. Mate, I was put in goal to cut down... Did it kick off? No, no, no. No, you know, it was completely the opposite. So that's why I organised it, because I thought to myself, right, let's organise this so that we have all the post-war infractions joined together for a good cause.

26:35And they did that. We've raised€6 ,000. I was put in goal to cut down the penalty count because being an extra rugby player. um we then did a like some other adventure i saw by the collie on your ear there your left ear so we do position i used to fly um so i started off on the uh in full back went on the wing ended up in back row back row yeah chopping people down i loved it yeah i bet yeah the best of best of both worlds yeah mate yeah fast and and getting stuck into the road good i loved it missed it because you know my ankle injury anyway um so what happened what happened with the boy then you've Basically, you've gone there and you've said, right, I'm going to support you.

27:14I'm going to do everything I can to get an operation for you. When did you first meet him? So I met him two weeks afterwards, and that was the picture that you just showed. Yeah. So that was two weeks after. After the operation? No, no, no, no. Okay. After I met Milos. When was this? So that was in 2003. Okay, and that was when you first saw him. First saw him. And then his dad was like, he needs an operation. Did he not breathe properly? Well, we didn't realise that Stefan only had, he only had one airway so it had his mouth he probably formed a nose he also had three holes in his skull so at some stage he would have died he would have contracted some sort of disease meningitis or so forth and died from it so I approached a guy I approached Great Ormond Street Hospital because everybody knows about Great Ormond Street and after a good 15-20 minutes trying to convince him I was telling the truth I was phoning him in Bosnia and so forth they put me in touch with a guy called David Dunaway, David Dunaway is now Professor David Dunaway CBE worked on Harley Street, so David said to me okay I think I can do something but however I want to do a I want to know the I want to see a scan of it so we had to get a scan done which again is the most bizarre thing ever mate honestly we rocked up at this place to have this scan done and we walked into this house because the scanner was in this apartment.

28:38We walked in there. There was a bloke sat in the desk. He went, hello. I said, we're here to... We'd already booked it. I said, we're here to arrange this scan. He said, yeah, no, I'm sorry. He said, go downstairs. I said, the engineer will meet you. So we walked downstairs. And this is when I showed how much of a coward I am. Got downstairs, mate. The door opened and the same bloke walked out. This time, instead of wearing just a suit jacket, he's got a white coat on. Hello. How may I help you? I was like, but I've just seen you. I was like, yeah, we're here for a scan. He said, yeah, no problem story.

29:09He said, the scanner's broken at the moment. He said, but the engineer's in there. Walked to him, took his white coat off, put his brown one on and started hammering it. I was like, all right. Anyway, 20 minutes later, he came out. He says, yeah, the scanner's ready now. So I then said, okay, yeah, time distance shielding. Took my laps for a coffee, 14 miles away behind a lead wall. What was it like fighting in the RRA? What was it like fighting in Ireland, Northern Ireland? My island messed me up big time. Okay. And it's messed a lot of people up. Because there was no decompression. You go to Iraq, you know, and everything's different.

29:44You go to Bosnia, everything's different. You go to Ireland, you're in the same, you know, you're on the same British street. Yeah. The shops are the same. The cars drive the same. The only difference is that the number plates are different. There's red phone boxes. Telephone, yeah, everything is exactly the same. It looks the same. so you you you spend a good six months build-up training because they don't just decide one day i mean there are occasions when it happens but predominantly they don't just decide that you are going to go to uh an area tomorrow and go fight a war it's a build-up training so you get pencils in for it so you start training you get your fitness up you get your weapon handling up and then you start having the intelligence reports and when we were going to belfast in 93 it was it was everything there was you know there was people being killed troops being attacked troops being blown up and you think okay so it's a fair so you get told everything's gonna happen to you and then you go out there and it does happen to you every single day better contact it was just bizarre so i've been to south armar a couple years before on the border country and that big things went off big bombs went off but it didn't happen all the time yeah but in belfast it happened all the time and you're talking you're not just talking 15 coffee jars like improvised hand grenades, shoots and car bombs.

31:02You're talking violence as well, street violence. So everybody sees the British Army out there. They've seen the videos of it and you're lined up and you're batting shields and there's petrol bombs going off. Yeah, that is. What they don't see is the other stuff that gets thrown at you and at night time like roof slates, frisbees, they're horrible. so you can't see them coming and they throw them like frisbees and you know if you get swacked in the side of your head or you get whacked anywhere that it hurts so yes it was just a constant constant um what were you actually doing out there so you all go out there as a foot soldier so your main job in the in the army is is as as an infantry soldier but then you specialize in different trade so i i went into the rac or an armor core and i i started from big tanks so i started off on chieftains then went to challengers that's showing my age now and i was gonna so while you're firing this tank it's fantastic you know you're lobbing 120 millimeter round down range and seeing things blowing up it's fantastic but then it's the mundane stuff so if you would go and exercise you'd spend two or three weeks stuck in a in a wood somewhere you do a quick attack and then go back to a different wood and sit there for two or three more days.

32:17I got really bored. I wanted to do proper soldiering. So I did the, I went on a French commando course. A French commando course. French commando course, yeah, with the, obviously with the French army. I loved it. Was it? Oh, it was fantastic. Well, explain to me what a French commando course is like. So a lot of fitness. Was it brutal? Oh, mate, I mean, we're talking the 80s, so we're talking the end of the 80s. and it was, they were brutal. Like I said, they had a thing called trapeze and traneze, traneze, where it's jumping from high onto different things. And I remember this one bloke, because they were all young lads going through their commando training.

32:58This one bloke wouldn't do it, mate, so they threw him off. Literally 12 feet straight on the ground, broke his arm. Off you go. It was hard. The final exercise was supposed to be 90km over three days. 90km on your back? No, 90 kilometres. Oh, kilometres, clicks. Yeah, you had your weight on your back. I can't remember. You know, your bergen, your fighting, webbing and so forth, and your helmets and weapons. You had the famast or rifle. And you'd have to walk 90 k's. It was in the Black Mountains, so it was literally up and down mountains all the time. But then map reading was shocking. The officers map reading was shocking.

33:32We had to go and intervene because we were, you know, the only trained soldiers there. The rest of the crew were recruits. And we said to this bloke, look, we've just walked up and down this hill three times i went to the guy called um craig arnold i didn't know he was like you're going wrong look there's a reservoir that's the hill we've just walked up and down this three times oh yeah thank you so we ended up doing about 120k isn't it um but that was a really good so i got i got the i got the bug of being a soldier again so then i um volunteered to go out to um belfast and it was when i was in belfast the ninth 12 lances which is a formation reconnaissance unit which was proper, proper soldiering.

34:10Said, look, do you want to come and join us? So I jumped at the chance and spent the rest of my, spent 15 years with them. The rest of the time was with the 2RTR. It was wonderful. So everybody has, yeah, the soldier element to them. So when you go out to Ireland, be it South Armour or wherever it is in Northern Ireland at that time when soldiers were there, you went out as a foot soldier. So we were patrolling. Tell me the vibe, what it was like as a foot soldier. Are you getting abused? Are you getting spat at? you're getting shouted at. They don't want you there. No. They literally, the locals do not want you to be on their streets.

34:44No. You could step across the Crumbling Road. So there was two areas that we had, three areas that we had. So we had the Shankill, which was predominantly Protestant, and across the road to the Ardoin, which was a staunch Catholic area. Yeah. And we had Ligonier, which was a mixture of both. Now the other guys had the New Lodge, again, staunch Catholic. You could patrol out your camp, out of Gerber, which is long gone. It's now houses, I think. And you go across through the Shankill, where there'd be people outside the door, offering new cups of tea, patting you on your back. You know, you've got red, white, and blue kerbstones.

35:25And then you go into the Catholic side where you've got your green, yellow, and orange, and you'd be spat at. People wouldn't talk to you. this just sums up the hatred

35:42a very good friend of mine got blinded up in front of me and I had to give him first aid to staunch all the burns and the bleeding and so forth and it was when I was done that I'd used my water bottle to staunch all the to put all the burns and so forth and I said to this other lady it was a little old lady, could have been anybody's nan leaning over the fence and I said to her can you get me some water please and she went, F off, I hope he dies.

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36:37Pure hatred. But the older I get, the more I could sort of understand it, it would be the same, mate, as if we had the Irish Army patrol on our streets, stopping you, stopping you. I totally get it. I totally get it. And I didn't see it at the top, but now I do. Who are we to be there? Yeah. Who are we to stop them from their daily activity? And you can understand the hatred. It's only weird. It's only as I get older that you think about it. You look back and think, why were we put there? Like the amount of military I've had on here going, why were we put into Afghan? Why on earth did I go to Iraq?

37:15Why did I end up in Bosnia? We were just told, so we went. It's only when people reflect, they look back and go, that was wrong on every level. Absolutely. On every single level. Yeah, absolutely. It was just that. We spoke earlier before you come on and you were like, we spoke about PTSD. Yeah. What level of PTSD did you have, do you think, on a scale of 1 to 10? 10. Okay. Yeah, at the end it was definitely 10. When did that kick in? Because if you were a soldier for how many years were you a soldier for in the end? 18 years before. I was medically discharged. I was injured. When were you discharged?

37:56I was discharged in 2004. Okay. And why? like a breamit. So I injured my ankle. So on the one Friday afternoon, I was due to play, I've been playing loads and loads of rugby. On the Friday afternoon, I was going to do a quick presentation on the Saturday morning for some young cadets. And it was raining. And I walked across, walked out of my house, walked down to where the vehicle was. And I slipped on the grass, broke my leg in six places. I was like, on my ankle, massive, massive break. I went back home, excuse me, and I said to my friend I've got to twist my ankle, I don't think so so we found the ambulance, yeah I pinned some plates fitted into the ankle I was in plaster for 8 weeks, before that I was probably the fittest I've ever been mate, so then I decided the day that I got out of my plaster, I went for a 5 mile run I got to about 2 miles and I was just in tears the pain was just, you know, stabbing pain, I had to walk but did all the bones again, so it didn't heal properly and what I did, I injured myself when I was in Bosnia.

39:00Tripped over on patrol and it was really painful. So I did my boot up. So I knew I was a true sergeant, but I didn't want to say anything. Jumped into the vehicle one day to do some tests and I whacked the ankle again and it stays, it was black and blue. I went to, they sent me to Shipovo, which was a field hospital and they operated and removed the pins and plates. then went back to Hedley Court did some rehabilitation there broke it again so they said well there's nothing we can do we can amputate it and I said well the pain was just immense I said well is that going to help with the pain and this colonel said well it may or it may not you might have phantom pain I said well there's no point amputating the lick then so thankfully I left it because I got discharged in December 2004 joined the amulet service in January 2005 So when did PTSD kick in?

39:54I always had PTSD. So my trigger point was on the 22nd of September, 1993. In Bosnia? No, in Belfast. In Belfast. I volunteered to go out on patrol. You never volunteered to go out on patrol. But that morning, for some reason, I changed all my medical kit. I swapped it for a brand new medical kit. I don't know why. I called it six cents. I had the day off, and then in the evening I said, I'll come out here for patrol, into the Ardoin. Unheard of. you know you don't do that because it was so bad um i went out on patrol and i um was brought onto an area called etna drive just as the device went off and it was a big bang mark 15 coffee jar right at the um the feet of my friend jamie and uh so i gave him sprinting to him gave him life-saving first aid not life-saving first aid i saw that he's you know he's he's trauma to him and so forth.

40:51And because I didn't deal with the problem there and then, I'd try to go to sleep a good week after it and hear, see and smell the explosion. And I was told afterwards that at that stage the trap door closed. Because in the 90s you couldn't say anything. If you'd said anything, you were weak. And the noughties. And the tens. It's only the last five years, blokes were really speaking up. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I couldn't say anything because I didn't want to, you know, I was just... It's a sign of weakness, isn't it? Yeah. Always like on the rugby field, you wouldn't say you've got an injury.

41:25It's a sign of weakness. You just crack on. You get on with it. Absolutely. Yeah. I want to know what PTSD actually feels like, smells like. What goes through your mind to realise that you have this? I think you know you've got a problem. I knew I had a problem. I was just this aggressive ticking time bomb. Yeah. I got the main punch first after questions later, Ingram. Mate, do you know, I make an apology to my friends in the back there saying, look, you know, it was me, but it wasn't me. Because I just, because I felt so weak inside, because I felt a failure inside. I'm six foot two, 15 and a half stone.

42:08The only way I can, you know, how can a six foot two, 15 and a half stone bloke cry? So the only way I can do is, right, okay, let's be over aggressive you know let's be over over aggressive let's fight let's let's prove to people that i'm not a wimp and that's how i get around it you know it cost me my first wife my first wife thankfully um trace and i are still very very good friends because she you know she knows but i just wanted to be away from the family i'd you know if you'd said to me okay we got this war happening happy days i first put my hand up because that was my comfort zone my comfort zone was with the guys my comfort zone was on the rugby pitch where you could show the aggression and I could prove to myself I was a man.

42:55Legalised violence Legalised violence and then of course I then had all these problems going to Mass Graves sat there eating sandwiches while they're digging up people while there's kiddies underneath there and stuff like that I then went to join the Amulet Service as a technician. And I was based at Weymouth and I was seeing my fair share of naughty jobs, to be honest. And then very, very quickly I became paramedic and qualified for the motorcycle. So I was sent to all the worst case jobs. And I got the name Shipman because everybody I was going to was dying. It was shocking. As in Harold? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

43:36But at the time, you could, at the time, it's not like the ambulance service now. The ambulance service now just does not stop and it's not just doorstep, it's across the whole board. They're out from, say if they shift from 7 to 7, they're out at 7 o 'clock in the morning, 20 past 7 and a half, they check the vehicle if they're lucky, and then they don't get back in until they have their meal breaks. Mate, it's unreal. It's unreal. I've got a friend who's left the ambulance service now, and she was traumatised every single day. She'd see her trauma every day. She was the first one at car crashes.

44:08She was the first one where a tree's landed on a kid. like you can't how do you deal with that i was like how much are you getting paid in my mind i'm going how much what's your salary she's like oh 27 grand i'm like 27 grand and you're seeing all this and having to deal with this no wonder she said she spent god knows how long she's in there she's all right take me out of here i'm done i'm done this is i can't handle this anymore a lot of them go to massive respect massive respect to anyone in the ambulance service so so for example This was the sort of job I was doing on the motorbike. You were all sent to the worst case scenario.

44:43Because you'd get there as quick as. Get there as quick as. I don't know why, but for some reason they took the bikes off us in Dorset. But that was another reason I went back to Iraq. But I was down in Bridport at the time on standby. So if the crews go out, they'd send the bike down there. So it's a first response if any of it was down there. then they sent me to uh line regis on standby and it was from line regis i was sent to an area on the south coast um obviously i won't say it because of patient confidentiality but i was sent to an area there um for a child cardiac arrest all right so this 14 13 year old had come back from school and she'd been a little sod and her mum and dad had said okay you've been naughty at school i'm taking your phone off you yeah because he said well if you did that i'm gonna hang myself get up to your room so she went up to her room put a little rope around her neck and was going to pretend to hang herself and shout for her mum so she gave her phone tripped and hung herself so i get there the mum uh a mum that have gone upstairs hold and we haven't heard from her and found this girl she'd been down she'd been she'd been in cardiac arrest for well over 10-15 minutes before the parents found her it took me another seven minutes to get there so there's no chance to bring this girl back mate so i was upstairs on my own waiting for a crew to arrive the crew arrived 15 10 10 15 minutes later but for 10 15 minutes i'm on my own doing basic life support on this little 13 year old girl while both parents are stood next to me screaming and crying and you cannot you cannot tell people they're not you can't replicate the noise that a parent makes when they know that their child is dead they knew their child was dead but they were just hoping hope against hope that i was going to survive and these are the sort of things i do i'd then go back and yeah and at night time just yeah just later i think oh crikey if i'd done this you know for well you couldn't but maybe if i'd done that it wasn't going to make a blind bit of difference and then one morning i woke up with chest pain uh three o 'clock in the morning i had this pain in my chest which did my side of my neck running down my arm was like i'm having a heart attack went downstairs did everything we tell people not to so it's that camera in there if you have a heart attack if you have chest pain phone for the ambulance yeah i didn't i went downstairs because i was embarrassed i took some strong painkillers i took some codeine took some paracetamol took an aspirin waiting for the pain to go next day i was in the car on the response car so at lunchtime i went home and did an ecg myself and it said inferior infarct suspected which is you know which is potentially could be a heart attack so my my blood pressure was just sky high it's getting worse and worse and worse and then i was driving to work one day just started crying uh over to um swanage because i used to every now and then you'd have to work from you'd have to work on the vehicle just to keep your skills up and see how there's a truck i was driving there, just burst into tears.

47:48I just couldn't stop it. That's when they found out that they said, okay, went to hospital. Oh, it's funny, I went to this, went to the ambulance station, my mate said to me, what's the matter? He said, you look rubbish. I said, I've got a bit of chest pain. Did an ECG, inferior, in fact suspected. We then got a call to a woman with chest pains. We went, I'm saying to this woman, because she'd held onto it for about three or four hours. I went, you shouldn't have done that. You should have done that. And he's looking at me and says, say you hypocrite got to the hospital showed the cardiologist my ecg he went yep okay i can understand why you brought her in i said that's mine he went my bloody hell we're gonna admit it so they took me to dolce and it transpired i was a retained fireman at the time as well so the the fire brigade after the test it proved it was nothing it was proved it was stress so you've gone from military to ambulance to fire yeah everything you've done you've seen trauma yeah so i still want to get to the answer here what is ptsd like um so it's like having this this big well the only i can describe it is having this like this big black cloud over you all the time you you you constantly for me for me it was constantly feeling a failure i could i could look back at the things I'd done, but it wasn't good enough.

49:05I wasn't a proper man, which is silly, because now I know you are. Everybody has problems. You could have all the money in the world, but potentially you could still have problems behind those closed doors. You never know what happens behind those closed doors. But for me, I had this massive, massive black cloud over me. nothing was ever good I was always trying to prove myself to people So when you say you have a black cloud over you what is that feeling like? What is that emotion? What are you waking up feeling? What are you going to bed feeling? What are you thinking throughout the day? It's not the fact of you wake up feeling feeling sometimes you don't wake up with the weight of the world weight of the world on your shoulders

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50:30but it's there and it could be a certain thing like say um i'd see um we're watching tv and the girls would watch something or something about a war would pop up and i literally i'd have you know they'd bring me back to it and i'd have tears my eyes on and i'd be hiding it i'd make an excuse to start start sneezing and then you go you why are you crying get a grip of yourself You're constantly battling yourself to try and prove that you are this man. You are this man that you want your father to think of you as. Yeah. It was horrible. It was horrible. And I did this thing called EMDR. I can never remember what it's called.

51:15It's eye desensitization or something. Desensitization. Yeah. And this woman, it was Fabio, it actually linked me up to it. so the fire brigade at the time the fire brigade and the ambulance service were completely completely different their mentality towards it the ambulance service i think is completely different now i'm not sure because i've been there for years but for example i i was working in africa uh on a gold one and i'd come home after six weeks and during three weeks i'd work a shift in the ambulance service on the car um and one day i was on the car i was on the car i was on the phone to car and my wife and the uh control phoned and they said right just let you know we've got this rta coming in on the beach road we think it's a fatality you're gonna be the first one there okay so i got there and it was an rta you know it's a an rta this guy being mashed up rta road traffic uh road traffic accident okay they called it road traffic collision now but uh yeah this guy been really mashed up so i then had to wait for the fire bea to come and cut him out of the car while they're taking the other woman away.

52:18So I sat there doing my paperwork at the side of the road. And control, I said, yep, we're going to phone for the duty officer. Duty officer's going to come over to speak to you. I said, yeah, no problems. Duty officer came over from Bournemouth, actually. And Adrian said to me, oh, if I'd known it was you, he said, I wouldn't have bothered coming. And that was their mentality. Because I'd seen it, and because I'd seen it loads, I was like, hey. But I think it's changed now. I don't know. I think it has. But at the time, it wasn't in place. where at the end of it, at the end of each job with a fire brigade, you'd have a round circle behind the back of the vehicle.

52:51Say, right, okay, let's talk about this. Is everybody okay? Let's go back in there. A couple of days later, you'd be trimmed. They'd speak to you. Are you okay? The fire brigade, at the time it was Dorset Fire and Rescue, well, it's Dorset and Wiltshire now, were very, very good. And it was them who put me off, put me outside this EMDR. and then after a series of about 8 or 10 sessions it transpired that the trigger point for me was the 22nd of September 1993 that's when it happened 22nd of September for me is just a horrible date because that happened like I said to you and it was 6 cents that's why I went out but the 22nd of September 2009 I'd just finished on the ambulance I'd worked four nights handed over to another guy called Wayne my brother and I were chalk and cheese it was a lovely lovely guy but unfortunately he went down the drug route lived in London started smoking weed and then went to hard drugs unfortunately ended up going inside a few times 22nd of September I got called four hours later after I'd been asleep just letting you know your brother's been picked up cardiac arrest he had overdosed so that was the date so that date for me mate it's just it's like a horrible black date but ptsd now it's okay now now i've still got it you're never going to lose you're never going to leave and lose ptsd you're always going to have the problems but now i can now i can adjust things i've got a good strong family behind me i don't have the bouts of anger and that was the thing you had the bouts of anger because for me, I felt, I always say for me, because I think people are the same.

54:38When I speak to people, they all say exactly the same that they went through and done exactly the same. But for me, I was just this aggressive, ticking time bomb. Punch first, ask questions later, and it's not a great place to be because your friends can't trust you because they don't know which Ingram's going to turn up. is it going to be in a nice way or is it going to be the arsy way and you know and it could just happen just like that just click of a finger why did you get your mbe so i got the mbe for all my fundraising stuff so the stephan thing ended up going over 13 years i ended up being raising over 160 grand for him to have the five operations so i mentioned david dunaway initially david dunaway is the is the surgeon is a cranial facial surgeon from harley street who completed the five operations on Stefan and never once took a single penny for his services.

55:38But it was all done privately. So Stefan had his five operations. That was good. I raised 60-odd ground when I was in Africa by cycling 24 hours to build an orphanage. I said, I cycled, mate. I got 24 people to each cycle an hour apiece on gym bikes. But again, it was a multinational thing. so I got all the Mauritanians and everybody else involved as well. So it was not just expats, it was local nationals as well. I spent a week surviving in a life raft on Portland Harbour, which I was trying to raise, because everything I'd done has always been for children outside the country. So I wanted to pay back to the kiddies in the UK.

56:19So I spent a week surviving in a life raft in Portland Harbour. I entered with 24 hours of food and 1.5 litres of water. and it was also to conduct so it was the raise money for Great Ormond Street but it was also to conduct experiments for Portsmouth Harbour, I would say Portsmouth University into how the body coped and the survival situation of my life because they'd never had anybody do it which was good so it was just the stuff for that really and then since then unfortunately in 2019 I was firmly my feet were firmly put into the shoes of what Stefan and Stefan's parents, Slava and Milos, went through when Stefan had his operation.

57:01Our daughter, Freya, at the time was 12, nearly 13, was diagnosed with scoliosis. Scoliosis was a severe curvature of the spine. We didn't know she had it. She was pain-free. At age, she used to get herself dressed. She used to behave herself and the rest of it. So we never knew it. It was only one morning she was lent over the coffee bar. I said, come on, sit up. We noticed the curvature. so jump forward six months this msg had an operation to insert two detaining rods into her back and i said to at the time babes i will raise money for scoliosis awareness because it's far there's loads of people out there and is we don't really know much about it yeah so what i'm doing is i'm all my royalties from uh soldier of conscience yeah are being donated to scoliosis support and research so they can find out why this happens.

57:53So I was in the woods. So we have this woods over in Moulton that we do well-being for. It's a great place. It's a real comfort zone for people, you know, all through the Japanese forestry, Shinrin, Yoko and all that. People love it. And I received this email from I can never remember who it is. It's not the, it's part of the government. Home office. I think it was home office. Said to her, look, can you open this? And I thought, no, that's rubbish. So I put it in the junk. That was on the Friday afternoon, saying goodbye to all the students. Monday morning, some more students were turning up.

58:27And I was like, I wonder what this is. So I looked through and I saw it. I was like, click, clicked open. And it said, you know, Her Majesty the Queen would be honoured to present you with the NBA should you wish to accept it. I was like, yes, please. But they sent it through there because usually they post it to you. But because it was, because it came through, during COVID or just post-COVID, all the ways of change, that was all done by email. Amazing. What a feeling. Oh, it was amazing. So when did you get your medal? Where were you? In Dorset. So what I did is at the time you were told that you could take three people with you.

59:07So it was my wife, Cara, and the two girls, Fran and Lily. So, of course, the girls were looking at all new dresses, shoes. It cost me a fortune, but it was worth it. Unfortunately, because of COVID, they then put restrictions on you and one person. So the girls were rightly disappointed. So I went, okay. So I spoke to the law lieutenant, and he said, I'll give it to you. So I went to the law lieutenant and had the MBE presented with him. Amazing. Oh, mate, honestly, just... Massive respect to get an MBE. It's fantastic. Amazing. Imagine having those letters after your name. Yeah, it's nice. It's special, isn't it?

59:44I think so. It means a lot to me. How are you today? Good. Are you happy? Yeah, really happy. I mean, don't get me wrong. There are other days. You know, sometimes cars say, your glass is half full. But I'm in a far better place than what I was. I mean, we've got these things planned for the future. I mean, since the books come out, crikey, I've had a big spread in a national tabloid. Been on TV a few times. and got some more interviews to come. You've invited me on, which I'm really, really grateful for. I'm, yeah, amazing what you've done. What an amazing human being you are. Especially this lad here.

1:00:27Like, that is unreal. He's good. My God, look. So he's now 27. Yeah. He plays in a folk band all around Bosnia. Yeah. He plays the synthesizer, the accordion, works in a... What's his name? Stefan Savick. Stefan Savick. Massive shout out to Stefan if you're watching. You've got one good man who's looked after you. He's a top man, honestly. Amazing. The family from day one have made me feel like their own. Amazing. It's great, honestly. Wayne, I've really enjoyed this. Absolutely. Really, really enjoyed this. Where can people find this book? Just type in Soldier of Conscious and it'll come up everywhere on Amazon.

1:00:58Yeah, well, at the moment, I've just had a thing through that Amazon run out of books. So Pen and Sword is the publishers. Pen and Sword, they can definitely buy the book there. And I've spoken to Pen and Sword, so come on, pull your finger out. they're going to send some more to Amazon but so it's on there but on Amazon it's on Kindle yeah lovely so they've just done that mate so yeah so those are the two places anyone out there go and check it out definitely go and get this book people and it all goes the royalties are all given to Scoliosis Support and Research amazing and children's charities amazing Wayne really enjoyed this mate Wayne Ingham MBE have some of that mate you're a top man thanks Dodger good man nice one cheers Wayne that was good mate hi guys I really hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

1:01:43Can you do us a favor and leave us a review as it massively helps us grow the show? Cheers, guys.

1:01:54Your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot. The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background, finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk and drafting fixes for you. Vanta is the platform used by over 16 ,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com.