#214 Jay Cal - SAS Operator Charged with Murder

37:11My relationship with my father is probably one of the most important things in my life to date. I would not be here if it wasn't for him. I lost him. He died. Yeah, he had a difficult relationship with alcohol. and ultimately that kind of killed him. That's what it did. It killed him. It's hard to hear that. No, me too, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. I kind of get my head around it. What, 20 years later? Kind of 25 years later. But he was a kind man. He was a nice man. He wasn't a bad drunk. He just had a fucking illness, man. He just fucking couldn't fight it. We were close. We fought. I grew up a little bit older.

37:56The last time I ever saw my dad or the last conversation that we ever had was actually in Spain. What do you mean you fought? We fought physically on a couple of occasions. Physically? Yeah. And that was down to me. I'm a young guy full of ego and testosterone, wanting a bit more and all that type of stuff. Just normal, regular father-son stuff. but it did get out of hand a couple of times and it was probably my fault. He never hit me or anything, it was more just bullshit. But the last time I saw my father was actually on a beach in Spain and I'd started to look at being a Royal Marine. That was where it started to come.

38:36I was around 15 or 16 at this time. My grandfather was a Royal Marine commando in the Second World War all the way up through Sicily and Italy so it was always something that was in my mind. I'd always loved guns. I'd always loved the military. It had always been very close to my heart. I'd always wanted to do that. And my dad used to work for a company called Brown and Root, which then later turned into Kellogg's Brown and Root, I believe, KBR. So anyone that's ever fucking deployed anywhere on the planet knows what KBR facilities are. So all the dining facilities and all the logistical stuff.

39:06So he did that. He was actually involved in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. So he worked for the US government as a foreign contractor, essentially setting up the chow halls and the logistics and all that that was coming from a catering background it was that was what he did i remember very early on watching my dad come back from bryce norton um during the first golf war and in my mind as a young child i thought he was a soldier it made no difference to me that you know i didn't understand what was going on he gave me this call uh like desert dpm hat said sergeant jamie on it and i've still got it and says desert storm mission accomplished and all this sort of stuff i used to wear it and it's cool like a boonie hat type thing you know um so in my mind my dad was a soldier he wasn't he was just in and around it he went on to do um k4 and i4 which is kosovo did some stuff down there implementation force kosovo force all that sort of stuff and then later on he started to work for um civilian companies exxon mobile oil companies and onshore rigs basically but he was going all over the place like tajikistan you know uzbekistan kazakhstan all of these places mines oil all that type of stuff um so I'd kind of grown up with him thinking he was that kind of guy and so when I decided that I wanted to join the military he was like he said to me I'll never forget it and it's the best best thing that he's ever given me and I look back on it now with nothing but love and I you know I don't want to get too sentimental about it but I choose I choose to believe that he said what he said to me that day because he knew what he would do and he said to me, he goes, I was getting bitten by mosquitoes.

40:42I'm one of those dudes that just fucking, no matter where he got on, I'm the one that gets bitten. Everyone else in the room doesn't get better and I get better. And I was complaining. I was like, I keep getting better. My mosquitoes. He's like, you want to be a Royal Marine commando? You'll never make it as a Royal Marine commando. If you can't take being bitten by mosquitoes, he goes, you haven't got it in you. That's what causes big argument on the beach. So yeah, probably the most powerful sentence that anyone's ever told me. And that drove you. Fuck yeah, it did. Fuck yeah, it did. Let's backtrack a little bit.

41:10Yes, sir. What were you into as a kid? Guns. Guns? Guns. In the UK? Yeah. How'd you get into guns? I don't really know where it come from. You'd have to ask my mom. I remember. Real guns or toy guns? Toy guns. Toy guns. I never shot a real gun until I joined the military, but I was obsessed with it. Just plastic guns, water pistols, just guns. I was always playing with guns. I remember I went to Disneyland once and I bought this metal fucking, well, for PPK it was. metal like James Bond right you know the old school one oh yeah yeah and I put it in my like in my bag basically my dad was like don't take that to the airport I went with my grandma like do not take that to the airport I was like okay I did take it here I put it in the thing we're going through the scanner the alarms are going off everyone's going there it was like yeah the whole the whole thing but I used to you know it'd be cool if my mom will back this up but I used to come home from school and she was a carpenter right so I used to draw out these guns on wood on bits of plywood and I'd draw them out like to the minutest detail like you know front sights magazine wells stocks trigger guards the whole thing I'd get a picture from somewhere and I'd draw these guns out on you know with a pen and she'd cut it out with a jigsaw and I'd go out and I'd take these guns and all my mates were running around in the woods playing with these things I was obsessed with with guns for the most part of my childhood and then kind of football came in.

42:30I started playing football a bit more and I sort of got a bit older and yeah, but, but football and guns was, was, was all I ever really wanted to do. Um, which is ironic when you look at where I ended up, you know, there's, there's, there's a few things that you can look back on and be like, nah, you could kind of see that coming. And my obsession and love and passion of firearms and, you know, weapons manipulation is still there, you know, but I was doing it. I was, I was practicing high readiness when I was six and I'm not joking. I'm not high readiness, but you know I was running around with guns from a very very early age and they've always felt natural to me you know and it wasn't I want to kill people it was just like I just liked it I just wanted to play with it and maybe it was a maybe it was a sort of something to do with my old man and him being in that career and you know going out to these places like it was always something that I knew I wanted to do I always wanted to be in the military I always wanting to be a soldier.

43:26That's all I ever want since I was an early age. And I kind of got distracted for a few years and life happened and all the rest of it. Then when I lost my dad, it was like, right, boom, now's the fucking time. Let's double down on this. But going back to that conversation, when I lost my dad, it fucking broke my heart. It fucking broke me, mate. It did. And it still does now. More to the fact that I just wish that he could have seen what I did. You know, I mean, he would have been the proudest person on the planet to see me get a green beret To get into the regiment More importantly than all of that bullshit You never got to sort my daughter play football not once Never got to see it.

44:07She put on an England shirt. She She represented a country Wow three lines on her chest How old is she 15 15 years old? She's 15. She's a fucking rock star dude She's gonna be a professional footballer 100 % I've never been more confident or more sure on anything than she will be a professional footballer. She will represent her country. She'll be a lioness one day. She's phenomenal. You're a proud dad. I could, yeah. Take everything I've ever done in my career in military and swap it for that. If I could watch him watch her for five minutes, I'd swap it on. If your dad was here today? Here. here alive, if you could say anything to him and you had 30 seconds, what would you say to him?

45:05You were wrong.

45:09Look at your granddaughter. Look at her. I'd tell him I love him. I miss him.

45:19And I hope he'd be proud. I think he is. I know he would be, but like, yeah. Yeah. Sounds like you were a bit of a hellion as a kid. A bit of a? A hellion. Hellion. Got into some trouble. Yeah. Oh, yeah. When did that start? So I moved around a whole bunch. So in order to answer that question, you have to kind of go back to the beginning. You lived in India for six months. Yeah, we traveled around India. Yeah, so my mom, she's the bravest woman I've ever met. And yeah, in about 1994, 1995, I was about six. She must have been, well, early 20s. Took me out of school for six months. I thought, right, we're going to India.

46:03I'm at, cool. So six months, we traveled around India. But you have to bear in mind. She just picked up and said, we're going to India. She just picked up and left. Done. Why India? She just wanted to go traveling. Free spirit, right? She's a hippie. Which is ironic, because I'm not. But yeah. Mate, she flew out to India. No iPhone. No internet. No nothing. A Lonely Planet guide. Two backpacks. I had one, she had one. And we just went traveling around India. And I'll never forget that experience. The first couple of days we got there, there's, speaking before, there's a place in Delhi, I think it's called the Red Fork.

46:41And it's this big picture. I've never, ever had an experience of extreme poverty and desperation as i've seen there and she took me out of a fairly regular comfortable city in the uk and parachuted me not para you know what i mean into that situation she did that for a fucking reason she wanted me to see what it was like what the world is like outside of our bubble bubble which was the best thing she could have done and she she hit me hard with it straight away she was like it will never get work you will never like we had a lovely time in India, we saw all kinds of beautiful things and all kinds of, you know, incredible experiences, but straight off the bat, she was like, this is, this is what it's like.

47:22And I'll always, you know, I'll love her for that because that was, that was an eye opener. Imagine being a six-year-old child walking around, seeing children with no arms, children with no legs, poor people that are begging for their lives. Like literally you're watching people sit on the side of the road, like circling the drain, hungry as fuck. You know, like that was like oh okay cool the world isn't a nice place the world isn't all you know roses and that was good because you did it straight off the bat so everything that i saw after that was easy you know but we traveled around the whole place we spent you know most of it in went up to the himalayas we went out to the taj mahal we spent christmas in goa i was playing with gi gi joe figures that's what i got for christmas little gi joe figures you know gi joe oh yeah yeah yeah so i was like building little sand forts and all that sort of stuff yeah so that was cool so still the obsession was still there and um in terms of education I wrote a diary every single day still got them like maybe it's a paragraph maybe it's a bit more maybe put a picture in there but my reading age went through the roof I was reading Michael Crichton books so Jurassic Park um Sphere uh what else was there you know all those types of books from a very very early age so when I got back to the UK and went to school again my reading age was like a 14 year old at the age of six.

48:36I was always a reader. Um, and I could write, you know, I was writing my diary every single day. So I didn't come back academically in any worse place than any of the kids of my age. When did you start your diary? Every day when I was in India. And it's six years old. Six years old. And you still have that. Yeah, we've still got them. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, they're cool. I mean, like some of it's illegible. Some of it's complete bullshit, but it's like, it's all pictures and it's like, we stick something in or, you know, you can still, when you open up the book, you can smell it. You can smell it.

49:02You know, it's cool. you know like incense sticks and all sorts in that it's crazy i look i've not seen them for a few years i spoke to my mum before i came in i was like you still got them diaries she's like we don't have a lot i don't have a lot of stuff from my childhood we moved around a lot and a lot of it get lost in the fire so to speak but um we've still got them they're still out there and hopefully i'll show them to my daughter one day and you know but it was it was a life-changing experience it really was uh and i think it set me up for my future career i think it set me up as a person, I think it gave me a broader, more wider perspective on life to see that at such an early age.

49:36Um, it was a lot of difficult things. The first time I ever was in proximity to somebody that got killed. I remember that happening pretty, pretty vividly. We were getting off a train and transit into another train, but there are no bridges. So where is this? In India. In India. Yeah. We had to cross the platform platform to platform and they just used to go, the trains were there and they just literally just walk across the platform when there wasn't a train and cross step to the to the next one and she lifted me up she jumped up and about two people behind us crossing the the the the train track the train that we were crossing shunted like that and dragged the woman underneath it killed her outright and i remember sitting there thinking fucking hell like that's quite a surreal moment as a six seven year old six year old kid at this time my mom was great she just took me away and was like but it's hard lessons you know it's like life lessons it's like life's short and never ever take for granted what you've got and even when I'm in the UK and it feels like I've got no money or this or that or whatever like it's a lot better than being outside that fucking fort with no arms like you get me so that kind of give me a good education and I would love to do the same thing with with my kids or with my daughter um at some point you know if I have children in the future fucking damn straight we're taking them traveling I want to go and see the world, see what it is.

50:57Not to say that if you don't do that, you become insulated, but I think it just gives you a broader perspective on the world and how it is, the reality of it. But yeah, it was a crazy experience. Fucking really cool. I was speaking to her last night about it. And I think, again, there's a lot of what happened on that sort of... It's almost like a deployment. It's almost like a six-month deployment. It's like my first deployment, you know. That's kind of how I feel about it now. But I had my own rucksack. nobody carried my kit my mom would carry my kit i had a sleeping bag in there all my books everything was in there that was it and i carried it and we used to trek around the himalayas like in thailand trekking with elephants and all kinds of mad shit and i was like i carried my own fucking pack from the age of six years old and no one fucking helped me and my mom gave that to me and that's something i've carried on like i can do that you know i know what it's like when your back hurts when your feet hurt you know when you're cold hungry tired hot you know i was experiencing that from a very young age and as i look forward into my life you know i think it gave me a strength it gave me a strength that allowed me to have a certain level of self confidence that i could do that type of stuff if that makes sense so yeah super grateful for that experience when we kind of got back from india that's hold on a sleeping bag yeah so were you guys sleeping out of the bush for six months no we were staying in hostels or hotels or beach charts or whatever but like we brought my own sleeping bag my own mosquito net all that stuff we were self-sufficient you know it was a little it was a snug pack a little purple snug pack like a softy seven or whatever it was a super lightweight one i remember she lost her mind once we uh i can't remember why but we got it out on a bus and the sleep i don't want to tell you this but it's just come to my mind the sleeping bag comes in like a little compression sack right and for some reason we're taking the sleeping bag out of the compression sack and it'd fallen on the floor and when we got off the bus she was like where's the sack it had been stolen that's what happened somebody just found it because it was foreign and new so they took it and she was so upset because it was like we've had that sleeping bag sack for years you know well not years but months at this point it's been every part of our journey and now it's gone and I remember she was like kit kit equipment kit awareness I was like yeah so are you serious yeah I'm not joking mate yeah yeah sure and if you ever meet my mum and I hope you do one day like she'll she'll she'll tell you all about this and she knows more detail than I do because I was a child so she's got like an incredible level of you know insight into the whole thing but that whole experience was was great for me like and you know it was such a cool thing to do we came back from India and then she moved to Wales we were sort of um in the middle of um mid Wales so roughly a little town called Ryder which is near Bilth Wells which is in between sort of the Brecon Beacons and the Elan valley now the elan valley is particularly discussed in place which i'd find out on selection a few years later but i remember clearly all the trucks coming in and out the four tonners we call them four tonners but you know like the troop vehicles there's a lot of military presence around there it was in the woods and you know from about six to about nine ten years old it was all guns and football guns and football guns and football guns and football um but that that period there was probably the most stable happiest part of my childhood for sure um and I look back on it with nothing but fond memories.

54:12I love Wales, it's very dear to my heart. We, at some point during that period, my mother decided that she wanted to go back and get education because she didn't get the chance when she was a child, a young woman, because she was being a mum. So she went back to our hometown, Oxford, and did further education. So she got, she ended up getting a first degree in international development and politics in third world countries. So basically she went on to work for Oxfam and Save the Children and other kind of charities. Like her passport had more stamps of dodgy places than mine did at one point. She's like, you know, she's all over the place.

54:49She's a cool woman. But this is where I sort of started to rebel a little bit because, Sean, you have to realize from my perspective that I never really had a consistency. And I don't blame her for this because that was just a situation, but I never had consistency. I didn't have a mom and dad at home. I never really stayed in the same place for more than a few years I was constantly making new friends constantly putting down roots constantly having to rip them up and build again and it got to about you know 10 years old we moved back to Oxford I was like okay cool like we've had this whole experience in Wales we've been traveling we're back to my hometown like I don't know anyone like this is my hometown but I'm going to a new school I've got like a couple of people that I used to know when I was like four or whatever, but I don't have any friends there.

55:35So I built a new network of friends and I'm there, I'm happy. I was like, football was my thing now, football, football, football, football. And then she's like, right, we're going to move, we're going to move again. We're going to go down to the South Coast because that's where the university that she was studying offered the course or the next phase of her course. And I was like, fuck dude, I don't want to fucking move again, you know? so we did this whole thing back and forth i stayed with my dad for a little bit while she went down there he was in the pub he was working in the pub people that drink a lot of alcohol and working in pubs is not a good combination it wasn't really the right environment for a small child to be in i was kind of like not fending for myself because that's not fair and that's not true but i was at a lot of time where i was just like my dad was busy and i was doing my own thing so eventually she was like nah you're coming so i was like what 12 13 maybe at this point and i I did not want to move again and that's when I started to really rebel a little bit.

56:30You know, I stopped going to school, started, I was still playing football but not as much as I should and hanging around with the wrong people, girls became a thing, you know, it was like, you know, sitting in the park drinking cider was more appealing than going and playing football because I didn't have... I didn't really have anyone to tell me no, which was my biggest problem. I didn't really have a dad to be able to be like, I didn't have a dad. That sounds terrible, but he didn't grip me for it. He wasn't around much. He wasn't around much and he was doing his own thing. You know, he was abroad working or he was doing this or whatever.

57:08Um, and my mom was consumed in a pursuit of her degree. Like she's like me, she gets upset. I'm sending my daughter exactly the same. We, one thing that our bloodline has is the ability to become obsessed. when we become obsessed on something, on locking on something, there's nothing on the planet that will stop them. So she was doing that, you know, she's still young at this point. So I kind of didn't go off the rails completely, but I was definitely drifting. I was definitely drifting, and I was definitely not going to join the military. It wasn't something I was thinking about. I was too busy trying to be cool.

57:43I was too busy trying to be that guy, if that makes sense. And it was never me, do you know what I mean? I was hanging around with kids that were like fucking from rough estates. Like we were going out and, you know, it was a bit of fighting here and there and all that sort of stuff. But I was never that kid. I thought I was, but like, I was a little, but I'm not a tough guy. Fucking hell. Like some of these kids come from fucking nothing and they, you know, violent backgrounds, violent places. And, you know, there was a lot of violence around, especially in that time in my life. And, um, I kind of thought it was for me, but it wasn't.

58:15And it wasn't until I got to about 15 years old where I was offered a job. Again, talk about pivotal moments, things that changed the trajectory of your life. A friend of my mom was a tree surgeon. You have a different... It's like an arboric... Arborist. Arborist. There you go. But you know what I mean. He gave me 10 pounds. He came... I was, you know... He goes, I'm going to give you 10 quid, and that's for a train ticket tomorrow. You're going to turn up here, and I'm going to give you a job. So I left school at 15. You should leave at 16, but I left at 15. I didn't turn up. You dropped out of school at 15 years old.

58:53Yeah, 15. I didn't get a qualification, not even a basic qualification, until I was mid-30s. And the army was like, you're a sergeant now. You've got to fucking do the thing. And I was like, fine. I write a bit now. Sometimes I write a little bit. And people are like, oh, you're good at writing. I'm like, fuck knows where that came from. Because it didn't come from school. I'm not educated. I'm not stupid And I'm not unintelligent But I'm not educated Hey Seems to do alright so far But yeah He offered me that money To go and do that job And I didn't Spend it on whatever Cigarettes probably And he fucking turned up The next day He was like Hey I'll give you ten quid yesterday Come and work You're not going to go to school You need to get out of there and work And I was like Okay And I'm grateful for this guy For doing that Because he could have just been like you know give up yeah just fired me or give up on me but he didn't he goes I'm gonna give you another 10 pound and you're gonna be there tomorrow and I did I got up went on got on the train traveled to wherever the place I needed to be was got off the train walked to this thing and from that moment on I've always earned my own money I've always provided a roof over my own head and it was hard work man those I learned hard lessons there was like I was dragging so you know when they cut the branches down I wasn't able to climb with a chainsaw I didn't even use a chainsaw for the first sort of few months it was just literally just dragging putting it in the wood chipper splitting logs putting the logs on the truck just hard graft you know just manual labor from a very early age I did that for a few months with him and then somebody else took me on and was like I'm gonna give you a full-time apprenticeship basically so by the time I was 16 I was a fully qualified tree surgeon MPTC which is all the qualifications that you need so I had medium felling, large felling, small felling, aerial rescue, use of chainsaw from rope and harness, all that bullshit, maintenance of a chainsaw.

1:00:43I'd learned it all. I got all the qualifications, paid for them all myself. I had all my own equipment. I owned two chainsaws, rope, harness, silky saw, secateurs, the full thing. I was a pretty much self-employed tree surgeon at the age of 16. I did my qualifications on my 16th birthday, which by deep, unless that's the earliest you can do it. So at one point I was probably, unless somebody had done it a few minutes before me, it was probably the youngest qualified tree surgeon in the country. And that was good dude i was happy i was living in a caravan on my mate's driveway i moved out home i was living closer to work so i had to get the train all that other bullshit i just explained so i bought a caravan like 500 pounds tiny you know caravan yeah like a like an rv like an rv yeah yeah you see the movie snatch yes yeah like that one caravan with no wheels okay one had wheels you know what i'm talking about so i bought this tiny little caravan put it on my mate's driveway and i was living in there i was working every single day getting up going out hard days coming back, I look at it now, it's like fucking I was surviving on like noodles and chicken nuggets, like, you know what I mean, but it was cold, it was wet, my boss would pick me up every morning, and it didn't matter what, and I learned a valuable lesson there, it was like two things, number one, you don't go to work, you don't get paid, you don't get paid, you don't eat, I was like, cool, I can live with that, and the second one was the ability to crack on, in terms of, it did not matter to this guy that I was, he was one of three brothers, their dad has been in the forest for their entire lives, his hands were like shovels, you know, he was a tree surgeon in and out, you know, that's all he'd ever known, three boys, they're all tree surgeons now, so he was like, he was top tier at that, but he was a hard fucking man, but a lovely man, and he took me under his wing, because he, I guess he kind of knew that I needed it, but it didn't matter if it was snowing, didn't matter if it was raining, like, we're talking about getting picked up in the five o 'clock, six o 'clock in the morning, sideways rain, dark, I'm coming out of my caravan, van's there in the caravan so into the truck drive tree surgery work all day come back five six o 'clock go back eat sleep repeat did that for a couple of years in my free time probably spending it doing you know chasing girls and drinking beer like the fuck else am I supposed to be doing I'm 17 18 year old I'm just happy I'm earning money I'm earning 50 pound a day which doesn't sound a lot now but back then that was a fucking you know 250 pounds a week dude I'm only paying like 25 quid for rent on this caravan like the rest of it's mine all my own equipment's mine so like i'm living the dream to a point but it was almost like i don't know if i want to do this forever but right now it's good i was seeing my dad fairly infrequently sometimes more than others but one thing that me and my dad always had and always always always shared and the one thing that for the most part he always showed up for was taking me to see football we'd always go i'm a West Ham supporter, he's a West Ham supporter, so we'd always go for football, you know, but as I started to get older, my tolerance of bullshit, or what I would consider, you know, think, when you're a 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 year old kid, going to watch a football match and spending half the day in the pub is not a problem, but when you're 15, 16, 17, and you kind of need a little bit more, like you start to understand these things you start to recognize it a little bit and be like you know fucking hell like give me some more i need more attention i need more you know and that's kind of where that that friction started that i was talking about before so yeah so did your mom move while you were when you became when you when you when you left at 15 did your mom continue her so she stayed in she stayed where she was working and doing her degree it's probably about half an hour away so not far but yeah she stayed there doing her thing she knows me she was like I can't control this and not control it but she's a free spirit like she raised me from 16 years old so when I'm rebelling at that age there or thereabouts she's like okay as long as you're safe you're working you're you know you're providing for yourself I'm here if you need me go and do your thing go and get it out of your system And to be honest, if she hadn't have done that, it wouldn't have worked because you ain't controlling me.

1:04:54You know, not, you know, when I met, do you understand what I mean by that? Like I was away for it, you know. But yeah, yeah, then the whole thing when my dad happened and yeah, that kind of changed my life. That was the point where I was like, I ain't cutting trees no more. So your dad passed before you joined the military? Yep. Yep. About a year before. What was it that triggered? what was it that triggered you to join? That. His passing. Yeah. That conversation that we had on that beach when he told me that I couldn't was like, I didn't do it to prove him wrong. I did it to prove him right, if that makes sense.

1:05:32And it sounded a bit of a contradiction, but I just wanted to show him. I loved my dad. I fucking adored him. I worshipped him. He's a fucking superhero to me, you know? So I just wanted to give him something, you know? There you go. The proudest moment of my life, mate, was when I got my Green Beret. fuck the regiment fuck all that not fuck them but you know that Green Beret when I earned that from becoming a civilian after all the shit that I've been through in my childhood not shit but like all the stuff that I've been through to get to that point just to get to the start point in Royal Marine training let alone finish the commando course and get that Green Beret on my head for the first time was yeah I gave that Green Beret to my grandma she's still got it well she's passed away now but that Green Beret is there and same as my regimental Beret the same one they're both side by side and i remember next to my dad's ashes there was my green beret and my sandy berry and they were both there and i remember thinking yeah job done you know but um that was the truth that's why i did it i joined the marines for my dad i joined a regiment for my daughter wow but yeah that's kind of where it all started and how old were you when you joined 19 I think yeah 19 19 years old yeah and that was um again I talk a lot about setbacks that interim period of losing my dad and joining the Marines so it was like a year or so gap and I inherited a very small amount of money it wasn't an inheritance it was actually an insurance payout my dad died in Africa in Chad um from a heart attack and yeah I mean yeah you can talk about if you want, but like, yeah, a few thousand pounds, I spent that all on football, clothes, beer, and whatever the fuck I wanted, I didn't do anything useful with it, at all, but I really went into football at that point, I was going every single game, home, away, religiously, because maybe on some level it made me feel closer to him, a little bit, I think that was the one thing that we always had you know

1:07:38it's a fucking funny coincidence if we believe in coincidence I know we don't but my football team is awful Sean we never win fuck all we never win fuck all but that year 2006 we reached the cup final we're never going to win the league it's never going to happen but we might win the cup it was one thing we might win it was that year we fucking got there that year no kidding 2006 I went to Cardiff to watch us play Liverpool we lost the game but it was like that was the one thing that we always wanted to do together if that made sense it does and I got it I got to see it and you know I don't know why or how or where but it felt like yeah do you know what I mean it felt it felt like he was there and he saw it but yeah all we ever wanted to do was go to the cup final dude I got there we got there you know so yeah I'll never forget that Well, Jay, let's take a quick break.

1:08:33Yep. When we come back, we'll get into your military career. Yes, sir. Perfect.

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1:09:52All right, Jay, we're back from the break. you're getting ready to join the Royal Marines but you one thing we didn't cover is you had a setback you had an arrest so I was at a football match in Norwich of all places now Norwich you probably never heard of Norwich have you Sean I haven't for good reason not a lot happened but yeah it wasn't anything crazy there was no you know it was just a little bit of a little bit of this a little bit of that eventually the police were like yeah you're drunk you're being obnoxious whatever just football stuff I was a kid man like I just lost my dad I'm not making excuses for it it wasn't the best behavior but it wasn't serious it wasn't I wasn't you know I wasn't doing anything that bad but they did arrest me and they released me very shortly afterwards for like breach of the peace or something you know I can't remember what the charge is and bullshit like that just football stuff basically what was it a fight uh there was a bit of a fight before and then we'd gone to another pub and they were like yeah those guys and I was one of the ones that didn't manage to get away, basically.

1:10:53It was, you know, handbags. We call it handbags in the UK. It was nothing serious. You hadn't perfected your E &E strategy yet, huh? No, I had not. No, no. No, definitely not. So lessons identified. But the consequence for that was that you have to run out a year, basically. It was a conditional discharge. There was no charges brought other than the fact that it had happened, but no further charges so to speak so it was like cool happened on this date one year later it's all gone off your record completely it was a minor thing you know trivial minor stuff so my dad's died i've gone back out to spain because my dad was living in spain with my grandma and i didn't want my grandma going back out to spain on her own so i went out there and i started to started to think about the marines that kind of was a thing i was training quite a lot I was starting to run starting to get on the pull-up bar starting to lift a few weights you know just trying to you know just gradually doing it still trying to process the loss of my dad is this rocked my world I'll be honest with you um and then I came back to the UK and then the worst thing possible could have happened is I got a little bit of money and was like okay I'm back to being distracted again with football and all the rest of it so that kind of ran and then it wasn't until basically the money ran out and the season finished at the end of that cup final that I told you about.

1:12:14When the cup final finished, I was like, okay, cool. You've had a good run now. You've had like six, seven months of getting out of your system. What's next? Do I want to go back to trees? Not really. Now it's time to join the Marines. So I went back to Spain and started training for the Marines. Training hard. Started to really focus in on it. My mom was completely supportive of it. I'm her only child. I don't know how many brothers or sisters. So for her, and this was like, I think what's important to note is that when I joined the Marines, sean i joined the marines to go to afghanistan i wasn't looking for a career i wanted to go to war what year was this 2006 2006 yeah 2006 so the war was happening the war was busy i remember watching pictures of like it was a parachute regiment they were in sangin um a place where i'd go and you could see them they're all like i thought it was cool as fucking ever they were all that body armor no t-shirts all skinny because there's all they're doing is scrapping every day you know eating rations and i was like yeah that's that's that's where i want to be i want to be that guy you know so I go careers office everything's good go through the first phases a guy called Corporal Darling was his name I'll never forget it's a nice name he didn't came came up to me and he was like have you got a criminal record I was like uh no he's like what have you got and I've got a conditional discharge he's like when from and I gave him the dates he's like dude you're gonna have to wait six months before you can come back so that was the first setback really in terms of I was locked in Remember I told you about that obsession thing that I've got this weird thing where if I'm obsessed on something, I'll achieve it.

1:13:44And I was obsessed. And I'm proud of myself. And I am. I don't give myself enough credit for this. I don't want to sound like a prick. But I am proud of myself for this, Sean, because I stuck to my guns. And I was ending up picking up random jobs. I was working in this little tiny place selling ice creams to people and making coffee. Anything. Just to afford a gym membership and stay on track. And I did. And I stayed on track. and then I finally got the opportunity to turn up at Limston and the commando training center at Limston is a hell of a place it's a hell of a facility and I remember turning up on the train in a suit I'd worn that suit three times I'd want it to my dad's funeral I'd want it to a court appearance and now I was turning up to the Royal Marines in it so it felt connected to me you know the whole thing and I remember turning up with my ironing board shaved head and I was ready to go.

1:14:36I was a true believer. You know, when you, when you talk about there were kids, probably 60 or 70 of us joined that intake and you can tell the ones that aren't going to last a week. You can tell the ones that are on the fence, off the fence. I'd been fairly independent from a very early age. I'm used to hard work. I know what it's like to be cold. I know what it's like to be wet. I know what it's like to have a pack on. I've traveled, you know, so I think all of those things put me in good, good position, in good stead. And I was doing it because I wanted to do it for my dad. That was my superpower.

1:15:08When discipline goes, when motivation goes, when you're cold, wet, tired, hungry, those things are real. But obsession, obsession never left me. And it was that obsession to do that, to get that Green Beret that drove me. And I never once ever felt like this is not for me or I'm going to quit. I got another setback during training probably mid to halfway through it's a 32 week course I think about 17 or 18 weeks in um I jumped off a wall on the assault course the O course and I basically broke my foot well not basically I broke my foot um carried on for another week or so I went on an exercise and basically broke one and fractured the other one so that's what you you get back troop then essentially so you don't stay with that intake they don't kick you out but they just put you in a holding place rehabilitate you and then you have to go again that was fucking hard dude started all over no start where you left start where you left off yeah start where you left off but that was hard because it was like that was my dream gone i wanted to be an original i wanted to it doesn't mean anything but to me it meant i wanted to pass 32 weeks in one go and then i'm in this indefinite period of rehabilitation until you're better you can't go back in so i remember watching my troop go they were like six seven weeks ahead of me they passed out, you know, all those guys.

1:16:29And I remember I broke down in front of my troop sergeant, a guy called Baz Weston. He was killed in Afghanistan a few years later on. But he was like a superhero to me. He was everything that you'd imagine. A Royal Marine Sergeant should be. Short guy from Reading. He liked football too. He was a Chelsea fan. Had a big scar on his face. He was a mortarman. But he was hard on us. We got wet every single time we were in the field we got smashed to bits everyone on that camp knew that our troop 939 was he was making monsters he was turning us into commandos fucking in quick order and i look back on it at the time i was like this dude is just fucking smashing us for no reason but when i look back on it i respect him and love him so much for what he did because he fucking knew full well like you take ownership of training people these are kids off the street from all different backgrounds and he knew full well we were going to afghanistan had he been there before yep he'd done his tours yeah he'd done a bunch of tours he was a senior guy and he knew he was he's not creating camp commandos he's these guys are going to go to war and he knew that a lot of us would would see it and some of us weren't coming back and we knew that we got that feeling from the very fucking minute we stepped into that building that this is no joke like when you leave this facility you are going to go to war so we were like cool unfortunately he did get killed in afghanistan which was a fucking massive shame and it hit us all really hard but he provided, what he did was produce good commandos, good war fighting commandos, young men that were ready to go out there and fight and do the business and I look at some of the guys that I passed out of training through and they're fucking phenomenal.

1:18:08Like, you know, so much respect for the Royal Marines. What was his name? Baz Weston was his name. Sergeant Baz Weston. He got hit by an ID. directional one, if I can stand a chance. I remember actually going to, digress slightly, but where they used to fly the bodies in, back from Afghanistan, they used to land in a place called Prize Norton, which is about 10 minutes from where I lived, and they used to take the bodies straight to Oxford, up the hill, to the John Radcliffe Hospital, and that's where they used to do the examinations of the bodies and do all the necessary medical stuff before they released them to the families.

1:18:49So for years, I remember every time somebody got killed, I would go and stand on that hill because everyone would come out and they'd watch the coffins come up. And I'd watch that. I remember on R &R watching that. And I remember the mother of my child watching that. I remember my mum watching that. And we lost 450 odd people during that conflict, which doesn't sound a lot if you talk about other conflicts. But every single one of those people had a family. Every single one of those matters. and it just felt like we couldn't escape it for a long time. It was everywhere. It was consumed, everything that we did as a group and as a family.

1:19:26It was such an intense period of my life. It was mental. But Baz was a good guy. Baz gave skills to us that no doubt saved my life for sure and made us combat effective, combat-ready Marines that went out and did the business. And people talk about, you know, this generation's doubt, that generation. I'll always put it like this. My old sergeant major said it in the squadron. He was like, experience is a luxury. It's not a necessity. I think people are like, oh, these guys have got no experience. They haven't done this. They haven't done the GWOP. So what? Nobody had any experience when we went to Afghanistan.

1:20:03Nobody had any experience when we went to the Falklands or wherever we've been. Like, it's okay. The training works. Believe in the process. Trust the system. And if you've got good instructors and this is again what I'm trying to carry forward if you've got good instructors that have been there that have got the right reasons about them they will give you the information that you need to survive you might get unlucky but you know if you stick to the process you don't have to have done 20 tours or you know that mission or this hostage rescue or whatever it is to be a good soldier or a good operator or good anything like trust the process trust the training and it annoys me slightly when people look down at this next generation of guys and go oh yeah they've got no experience so what you know instead of instead of saying that to them Why don't we gas them up?

1:20:42Because I'll tell you what's going to happen in a few years' time when we were old men sat on our sofas and couches at homes with our families. These young men that we're quick to criticise and go, oh, they're not as tough as we are. They're going to be the ones out there losing their lives. They're going to be the ones out there sacrificing. So the next generation is super important to me. But he was the one, the first one that really sort of made me think about that. I got back into training. So I finally got back into my troop and I passed out. and it was the fucking proudest moment of my life, it really was.

1:21:14I remember the last test you do is a 30 miler across Dartmoor and it's like the culmination of 32 weeks. You do the commando test and the last thing is you stop and then you go over this bridge and when you go over this bridge, you get given your green beret and it's the first time you can put it on your head and it's the whole thing. It's like this isn't just 32 weeks or 40 weeks of training for me. This is 19 years. This is nine, this is going back, playing with guns when I was a kid. Everything I ever did for my dad, it was all in this one moment, you know. And there was a lad in my troop, in my section, called Luke, and he'd lost his brother.

1:21:52And we stopped, and I saw him, and he had a tear coming down his face. I said, what's wrong? And he goes, oh, I wish my brother was here to see this. And I said, dude, I wish my fucking dad was here to see this. And I remember that, I'll never, ever forget it. and we sorted ourselves out wiped our faces down fucking tucked up pouches in you know let's go we crossed the bridge and again i was like i'm quite emotional at this point i start there's a corporal called luke carey he was a particularly professional diligent corporal um but he was hard as fucking nails hard as woodpecker's lips you know and uh he's like why are you crying i said i'm just proud he goes bootnecks don't cry and he was like and they me a wink and that was it you know I mean I was like there you go so uh that was a really really big moment for me it was something I'll always look back on is probably one of the proudest bar the birth of my daughter probably the best moment of my life bar none um so there I was queen beret training's done and there's no pomp or ceremony about it when they tell you where you're going there's there's a bunch of different commando units okay so there's four five commando 40 commando and 4-2 commando those were the fighting commando units at the time 4-2 and 4-5 were deploying shortly afterwards real quick what did your mom think she knew exactly what it meant to me and she was fully supportive of it she knew she knew that i was chasing a dream that's all i ever wanted to be since i was a small kid i always wanted to be a soldier and now I was you know and she was proud of it and she's done 11 deployments my daughter's done 10 deployments I don't I count my deployments as their deployments they've done the same thing they've been through every single piece of that never once has my mum ever done anything other than support me and back me and gas me up and and have me you know have my back like never did she say don't do it never did she say you sure you know she always always always supported it because she knew deep down that's what I wanted to do that's love you know it's unconditional love and support and that's you know that's what she gave me and again she's such an incredible woman I was like you know if you're telling me I can do it I can do it I'm not my dad's not gonna tell me to do it in fact he told me I couldn't do it she went the other way so it must be hard for her It must've been, especially in that sort of timeframe between 2008 to 2012.

1:24:20It was like every week we were losing people. Man. Every week. And they were coming right up the road, right up the street. My hometown was where they took the bodies. And I remember it was on my... We'll get into the second deployment, because that's the most important one for me. But the second deployment, I remember coming back on R &R. I had a 10-day period in the UK. And for five of those days, I would go and stand on that hill and watch people come up. Man. With a brand new baby in my hand, you know. She was two weeks old when I deployed. So like... She was two weeks old. Yeah. On the second deployment, yeah.

1:24:57But we can, you know, I've got to cover some stuff on the first one before I get to the second one. But the second one I really do want to get into because I think that's... To me, that was the most life-changing deployment I've done. and nothing I've ever done in Special Forces comes anything close to the carnage and the war that that 2010 Sangan deployment had, because that was fucking total war. That was real, that was raw, and it was every fucking day, and we lost a lot of people. My company suffered a one in three casualty rate, one in three, imagine that, that's dead or very seriously injured, like limbs, eyes, testicles, fucking you name it.

1:25:35We lost a lot in that deployment. And nothing I've ever done comes anywhere near that. But that first deployment was, it was different. It was a slightly slower tempo because it was a winter deployment. Where was it? Sangin. So I went to Sangin in Helmand province. And we got called on to the landing before we just finished training. Everyone's gasped, you know, where are we going? Where are we going? Who's going to four or five? who's going to 4-2 and it's just like said my name is like yeah 4-5 commando and i was like out yes yes we're going finally you know i'm not here to be a camp commander i want to go to war and they told me so i go up to 4-5 commando which is right at the top of scotland in the middle of nowhere solid unit it's like it's a war fighting unit great pedigree loads of stuff from the forklowns and you name it four or five commandos been there and it's got a reputation for being a hard unit a warfighting unit so i was gassed i was so excited to go there and uh we did the whole pre-deployment training and it was we're in that kind of crossover now sean and you'll understand this where it went from like early sort of afghan days sort of 2005-6 up it was a lot of firefights and gunfights and then it kind of pivoted to ieds and it went real quick um not to say that the gunfights weren't still happening but the IEDs went through the roof so we were very aware that that was that was what was coming that was what was waiting for us and um my company got split up some guys went down to um fob gibraltar down in helman province and we went to sangin district now sangin for those you're probably aware of it sangin was the epicenter of the helman conflict we lost more troops in sangin than anywhere else by a fucking disproportionate amount it was like It was urban, it was rural, it was everything in between, and it was dangerous.

1:27:29Really, really dangerous place to be, especially during that time frame. But for young Marines, it was like, yes, that's where I want to go, you know? Because I was naive and I was stupid, and I'd never felt the blast of an ID. I'd never seen someone get shot or bled out. I'd never seen it. I didn't know, but I wanted it, you know? That naivety was a superpower, but it was also foolish. But you grow and you learn. but yeah that was where i really cut my teeth the soldiering was hard there sean we lived in a patrol base mate there was no there was no electric for six months people talk about it you know there's no electric in there there was no shower in there the toilets was a metal a metal you know oil can with a seat over it that's what we had we lived on rations for six months like legit when it rained the compound that we had occupied because we'd fortified the roof so much with sandbags and guns and all kinds of other shit would start to collapse like we walked around we did sanger patrols so like you know there's four or five static positions for security so if you weren't manning those for 24 hours you were on patrol for 24 hours for six months so you would do four and a half hours of you know stagging on century and then you would have three hours rest you do that for 24 hours and then you would go on patrol and we've got in multiples of like 12 guys maybe and the amount of kit that we had to carry electric you know um countermeasures like the ecms they're fucking heavy the batteries the link i was a mini me gunner the metal detectors spare metal detectors spare batteries back back breaking pain mate there's like hard hard soldiering and then you come back and live in a in a mud hut essentially that's what what it was for for six months all the while you're working in a minefield every single time you step out of that gate you're effectively in a minefield and the enemy was never anywhere to be seen but they'd smash you from anywhere and then we'd smash them back and then we'd go back and that was what it was it was just that for six months it was the first time i ever engaged anybody was on that deployment it was the first time i got blown up by a suicide bomb was on that deployment dealt with casualties on that deployment it all happened but it was quite steady tempo if that makes sense unlike the next deployment where it was just straight off the bat fucking full cent but i did learn a lot what was your first engagement um it's actually quite a funny story i shouldn't say but it's quite fun so we were given a warning basically that there was a suicide bomber um on a motorbike dressed in black shaved head and there was two of them and we were told to stop anyone that looked fit that description Now you've been to Afghanistan.

1:30:07That's not uncommon. The shaved head's a little bit rare, but apart from that, you see that shit all the time. So it's very difficult. But I remember I was on a sentry position overlooking this big dust bowl. It was probably about six, 700 meters open area. And we had a patrol, a satellite patrol that had gone off. And this motorbike blew through an Afghan checkpoint across this open ground. And someone had fired a pen flare, you know, the little pen flares. We had an escalation process. So it was like pen flare warning shot lethal force etc so the guy on the bottom sang had done that whole thing he fired the pen flare fired a warning shot and this dude was driving across and it was the right people so i'm up there with a mini me so it's like a saw right so i'm like fuck it like a belt fed machine it's a fucking belt fed machine gun yeah and i was good with it that was my weapon system like i'm pretty good at dishing out the shit with a belt fed weapon system and that was my gun and i knew what to do with it so i'm out bub-bum bub-bum and i see it's like something out of a film, like, you just see the rounds coming up, all this dust, the dust bowl coming up, all this dust would go, and then the bike would keep going, and I'm like, fuck, dude, I'm not even hitting this, dude, I'm like, so I, I unloaded the belt, it was a 50, 50 round belt, and you can just see, it was like something out of a cartoon, it was like, every time the rounds would hit the ground, and the dust would come up, the bike would come out of the end of it, and I'm like, I must, I'm there, so I'm not leading it, I'm trying, I can't be missing, that's, there's no chance I'm not hit this, and it drives off, goes through the thing, and I'm like, fuck, like, this is my moment, like, I've been waiting for this, not waiting for it, but like, this is, this is what I've been preparing for, I'm training for this, you know, and I fucking missed the dudes, I didn't fucking get them, so I'm like, I'm fucking embarrassed, my patrol, or the other half of the patrol comes in, and they're all laughing, they're like, fucking hell, what the fuck were you doing on that Sanger with that machine gun, and I'm like, fucking hell, dude, I'm trying to hit, this is like 400 meters, a moving target, it's not an easy shot, but I have got a belt-fed weapon that I do know how to use, and I'm like, fuck, dude, I don't know, I was like, I was leading it, I had it on my sight, it was on iron sides but i was like i had it i just can't believe that i'm sorry he goes no we did see some blood when they came through this little gate there's a little entrance where the bike went he's like yeah there's there's blood there like you might have got something it wasn't until that night we went out and did a patrol um overwatch patrol for these convoys that used to come in and uh we just have to basically pick it the line it was a pain in the ass but we had to go and do it like six hours just sat on a roof sometime and the uh the a and a commander came up and he was like yeah you you killed two two taliban commanders is that what do you mean is that yeah they turned up at the local mosque and they'd been fucking riddled all up the side and on the legs fair play to the dude on the bike he kept going but like yeah we got him I got him and uh it felt like a bit of a weird one for me because I was like you expect to see the results of that does that make sense I know exactly do you know what I mean by that I know exactly what you mean it's a weird one what caliber was it I'm just curious 556 see that's something we learned when in what I think it was 2006 is we would be hitting guys and we wouldn't realize that we were hitting them because the velocity and the round, the green tip rounds, the armor piercing rounds would just fly through them.

1:33:06And then you would see them, and they had the little bitty pinholes. Yep. It's not what you think. And then we started stacking our magazines and doing two green tip, 177 grain, two green tip, 177 grain. And once we switched to 77 grain, a whole other ball game. Yeah. But, you know, it's interesting that it took so long for those lessons learned to kind of percolate throughout all of the military. I had no idea. All of it. Yep. And it's like nobody was communicating that. No. We shouldn't have been using green tip. No. We weren't fighting guys with body armor. No. and um so actually i think we were doing 277s and one green tip that way we could punch through a car easier but so how long was it until you found out that you had killed him that night it was that night yeah yeah which for me it was more a sense of relief i'll be honest like i don't i don't attach much um certainly no empathy for them um but it was kind of a bit of it was anticlimactic in a weird way, but it was more relief that the guys in the rest of my platoon didn't think I was no good with that machine gun.

1:34:28It was like, I fucking told you, I knew I did. And they're like, yeah, no, good effort. But yeah, it was a bit of a surreal moment. They're like, yeah, they went to the mosque and they bled out. And I was like, okay, cool. I'll take it. But it didn't feel real because I didn't, I didn't, later on in my career. You didn't see it. Didn't see it. Didn't feel it. Now I've been as close as you and me are multiple times with live engagements. That's a different fucking feeling. You can fucking see the rounds rip through a human being that way. But like in this case, it was distance. I don't know if you've ever read that book on killing.

1:35:03If you ever read it, it's about proximity. A lot of it isn't in the different natures and types. It's like artillery guys and mortar guys don't, don't bat an eyelid. But if you're this close, it's slightly different. That came later. There was a couple of other engagements I had on that deployment. I dropped a couple of people that were engaging us or maneuvering around us. But again, the rules of engagement were very strict and professional. It was like we had an escalation process. Now, I don't want to talk about this too much, but what I will say is that coin theory shit about winning the population to win the war and courageous restraint, it cost people's lives because it was not understood and it was not employed, and you're fighting an enemy that does not give a fuck.

1:35:48So whoever came up with that, well done, because I think they've got blood on their hands, in my opinion, because what you did was you restricted a bunch of young Marines, paratroopers, infantrymen from all over the coalition, and you put this stuff in their head, which caused them to have doubt, which then caused them to lose their lives, and I'll stand by that. It slows the decision-making process. It slows the decision-making process, and we'll talk about this later on, but you cannot put doubt in people's minds. You've got to trust people to make the right decision. Like the commando training center is exemplary as a center of excellence for producing professional soldiers.

1:36:26Do not, do not start to limit them or put their hands behind their backs and send them into these situations with that doubt in the back of their head that if they do something wrong, they're going to go to prison. This is some, some real stuff and we'll talk about it later, but this is some real bullshit that needs to be addressed because it costs people's lives. you know it was a hard tour um it was a long tour it was the first time i got blown up with a suicide bomber on that one it was right towards the end of it we were coming down i don't do you ever go to fob jackson in sangha did you ever make it up there no so there's this bridge basically i won't bore you with the details but we were on a long patrol we were coming back and it was towards the end usually we're very good at keeping distances between people but this kid walked out he must have been 13 14 i walked past him i walked right past him and he looked like um he looked like he was some sort of disability.

1:37:17He didn't look full ticket, if you know what I mean. And I kind of watched him walk past, and I remember it going bang behind me. And I'm going to be honest with you, the first thing I thought was fucking, and I'm glad that whatever it is, I'm glad it wasn't me. That's my first thought, and I don't care what anyone said. I've suffered with this for a long time. I've been in a bunch of IED blasts now. I've been blowing up the suicide bombers on three occasions, four or five IED blasts in close proximity, and it took me a long time to get over the fact that the first thing I ever thought was, fucking, oh, I'm glad it's not me.

1:37:47And I hate that. I hate that about me. I hate that I felt like that. You know, but it was. I'll be honest. It's how I felt. Luckily, we were all right. The suicide vest was of a shit quality. It did more damage to him than it did to anyone else. But we took some fragmentation and some injuries, but nothing catastrophic. everyone walking wounded for the most part. I mean, a lot of times they would use people with disabilities for that. Oh, yeah. Of the three times I've been blown up with suicide bombers, I think they're all under the age of 15. Yeah, I remember in 2005 they would line bicycle tires with explosives and have a kid ride up and try to blow it.

1:38:37when you're dealing with an enemy that's got that mentality it's so so difficult especially when your hands are tied especially when your hands are tied you know like as my career progressed the proximity between me and enemy forces is a fucking hard line for me like you'll get a warning if there's time and it's appropriate but if you come within proximity of me in those situations then you can stand by because i know what's coming i don't need to be blown up again to to learn those lessons, and this is what I'm talking about, you have to transfer experience, hard-earned experience, into learning, you know, and sometimes that takes a little bit of adjustment in the mindset and the mentality that you had, or have, but yeah, I certainly learned a lot, that was a good deployment for me, a good deployment in terms of learning my trade, cutting my teeth, so to speak, and I got back from that, and I just wanted more, I wanted more, I wanted more of it, I loved it, I was like, that's exactly where I'm supposed to be.

1:39:39Right at the end of the deployment, a guy called Steph Moran, who was our SART major at the time, put out a thing for recce troop, recce troop in the Marines, especially 4-5 recce, is considered to be like the top level, you know, of Marines. There was a course, normally you have to go and do some horrific two-week, like pre-course to get on it, but because we were deployed, he was like, do you want to go to recce treatment? I was like, yes, sir. And he was like, okay, cool. He goes, I'm going to put your name forward. I'd had a good deployment. I'd worked hard. I was a good Marine, all the rest of it.

1:40:10So I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to just put you on the course. So I came home from that deployment. I had about six weeks off leave, post-operational tour leave. And I spent all of that training. I did not, I didn't go to Thailand. I didn't do any of the other stuff that everyone else was doing. I just trained and trained and trained because I wanted to be a recce operator and I just ran and I ran and I lifted and I ran and I lifted and I just kept doing that until it got to the point where I was ready to go on the recce course and it was probably about midway through I came back one weekend I disappeared and I got my mom came back and staying with my mom at the time and she's like have you spoke to you girl my girlfriend at the time, I was like, no, I've not spoken to her, she goes, you need to speak to her, I said, why, she's not pregnant, is she, she just looked at me and she went, speak to her, and I was like, so I speak to her and she's like, I'm pregnant, so I was like, well that fucking changes things a little bit, you know, but it didn't, and again, I regret this about myself, because I just absorbed it and dealt with it, if I was as good a father as I was a Marine, I'd be perfect.

1:41:23But I wasn't. I was a better Marine than I was a father. And quite frankly, it came as a fucking shock. We did the whole thing. We were like, okay, cool. Let's make this work. Let's build a family, all the rest of it. My whole time, I'm like, I need to get to record troop. I need to deploy. I need to deploy. The war's still going. The bodies are still coming up the hill. I need to be back out there. And then right towards the end of the course, they were like, right, we need volunteers. And you know what it's like, Sean, nobody volunteers for anything in the military. Nothing good happens for it.

1:41:54But what's it for? Who wants to go to 40 commando and deploy? Boom. I do. Cool. There you go. 40 commando. You're going to go and deploy. Let's backtrack for a minute. What's the recce platoon? So the recce platoon, yes. Yes and no. It's not primarily snipers. It's, well, not exclusively snipers. It's half snipers, half recce operators. So the recce operator course covers all kinds of thing prom. um op so observation post subsurface you know not so much technical stuff as it is probably these days it was very sort of rural digging in like green army field soldiering high levels of physical fitness small team tactics um operating in front of the main commando units to set up lines of departure we did a lot of work with ropes and aerial access to to to you know cliff faces etc commando stuff basically like they are the epitome and it's all run by um raw marine mountain leaders and i don't know if you've ever come across royal marine mountain leaders but it's a nine month course and i would argue that it's probably the hardest course in the british military even more so than selection wow it's ridiculously hard um they spend months in norway they spend months climbing they go to scotland they do mountain training the bergens are op bergens so they've got, they're heavy.

1:43:12But unlike selection, so on my selection course, 220 people started and we roughly finished with 20. 15 people might start that MLs course and probably 13 people will pass because it's a course. They want you to pass, if that makes sense. Whereas selection, they don't give a shit if you pass or not until the end. So although it's harder and longer in aspects, it's easier to pass because they want you to be there, if that makes sense. does that kind of forgiving yeah it's more forgiving it is more forgiving yeah whereas selection isn't it's very cut and dry um but you're talking about the best field green army soldiers that i've ever seen or worked with from any country bar none like these guys are impressive so they're like the corporals and the sergeants then underneath that you've got all the recce guys sorry the sniper guys and then you've got the recce operators so recce operators natural progression is to be a mountain leader so that was my next step but i never went that way i went on the selection route itself so it's a small platoon maybe 30 guys there or thereabouts but they are the top one percent in that in that that unit they're the fittest they've got the best skill set you know we spend a lot of time doing map reading navigation military knowledge you name it we were all over it but these are like your true believers if you will like everybody in that platoon or that troop really wants to be there and have had to have gone through some selection courses inside of the Marines to get there.

1:44:37So for me, I thought I was like, I thought I was like SEAL Team 6, you know what I mean? It's like we're recce operators, like slightly different kit. Whenever we walked around camp, everyone was like, oh, they're the recce guys. Like, it felt good, you know? It felt like, it felt like we were in a good spot. And what was good about that troop is that every single individual there was all pulling in the same direction. Like, you know what it's like in a company, you might be in a company with a hundred people, like some people it's like a nine to five for them, for these guys, every single guy in that troop was, you know, dialed in, so when we were about to receive orders for the second deployment, it was like, we're going to be doing some cool shit, we're a recce troop, right, we must be doing, like, driving around in the desert, and advance to ambushes, and all this cool stuff, negative, they were like, you're going back to Sangin, you're going back to a patrol base, and it's just regular stuff, so I was like, dude, why the fuck have I just put myself through all this bullshit to get here, to do a different job and now I'm just doing the same fucking job that I was doing a year ago and literally you could see from the patrol base that I was in you could see my old patrol base which was a good thing for me because I had ground knowledge I had experience of the terrain but things had taken a shift 2008-2009 I think we lost nine guys on that deployment nine nine raw marine commandos died on that deployment um which is nine too many and it fucking affected all of us but what happened in And the second deployment was this, yeah, no joke.

1:45:59It was a fucking no joke summer tour. So when we got into that patrol base, the guys that we'd taken from over were the rifles, infantry unit. When they'd got there, they'd written all of the names of the guys in the sections. One section, two section, you know, HQ. And when we got there, half of those names had aligned through them. they'd all been, they'd fucking got smashed to bits in those patrol bases, they were getting killed regularly, when we got there you could just see in their eyes the relief that this is done, and they were going home, and we were going out on familiarization patrols where like they would take us and show us the thing, and you could just see that there was just a nervousness, they were not broken because their infantry and their fucking, but they were hurt, and they were suffering so I already knew okay cool this is not going to be like the last one and sure as hell within a few days of being there we started to take casualties and it pretty much ramped up from there the first one we took was a guy called Jace we were building fortifying or rebuilding a position on the roof in the day questionable but we had to I was behind the GMG you know automatic grenade launcher thing.

1:47:13So I'm behind that 40 mic mic. We're just sighting it in, building the sandbags, just about to come off and go back down at sort of last light. And I just hear one round. And I hear a scream. And then I hear a man down. And I'm like, fuck. And then it was like, medic. So what happened, again, this is super fortunate. Basically what had happened is that people People say he was the only guy in that troop that wore side plates. The only fucking dude. It hit the top of his side plate and then ricocheted up underneath his tricep and blew him off the roof. He survived, he came back. He went back to Camp Bastion for a few weeks and then got back in the fight.

1:47:57And I look back at that now and I'm like, that's fucking hardcore. I didn't get shot like that off a roof by a sniper. And then two, three weeks later you're back on patrol. Like, that's commando. that's what being a commando is about but unfortunately for the guys that had engaged my mate they didn't realize that i was still up there because there was a cam net and i was underneath the cam net so i'm just like that cool rack it and fucking start sending it with this 40 mic mic and i fucking every firing point every position that could have been there i was just sending it one two shot boom boom boom boom boom good mate and uh after about a box and a half the troop commander came up and he's like remember courageous restraint courageous restraint i'm at yeah roger i pd the firing point which they are they're likely firing points suppression of enemy likely firing points is doctrinal that's what you're supposed to do so we did and then there was a whole gunfight that went on they started to attack the uh our patrol base for multiple firing points the second patrol base down the road they started getting smashed this whole thing on for about an hour and uh we'd only been there a few days this was like within the first week and I'm up on the roof getting it.

1:49:07I'm just fucking sending it, you know? And everyone else is. The patrol base has become a porcupine. Barrels everywhere, you know, just sending it. And eventually, this is funny, eventually the Kazovac came in, right? So the Kazovac's come in. Everyone's new in theatre, so we're all still trying to figure it out and all the rest of it. So they drive these vehicles down because you couldn't put a helicopter where we were. There was no place safe to land it, so you'd have to do it by road, then get in the helicopter. So the SART major and everyone else comes back in these vehicles. we call them jackals and they come driving down the hill and you know into the patrol base and as soon as they get in a patrol base you know only do you have the dispensers of flares you know for the foss smoke so they can smoke somehow he pressed the wrong button he disarmed it or armed it whatever he'd done but he fired out foss all over the patrol base so you've got this scene right i'm on the roof in just a pair of shorts and body armor everyone's shooting everything everywhere there's a dude down there who's a casualty the cavalry comes and then fosses the entire patrol base like this is a small patrol base okay and i'm in the cabinet's on fire like everything's going on and my mate who ended up being in the squadron a different squadron to me but he went on selection as well this is his first deployment he's like belly crawling up to me with another box of ammunition and i looked at him and i was like i told you it was going to be like this he looked at me goes i don't like it and i was like i know and we carried on sending it but i'll never forget that like the whole everyone's just it was good it was good because it was like bang all right fellas reality check this is what it's going to be like and it didn't slow down it really didn't and um yeah it wasn't it wasn't that long after that the um our troop sergeant guy called lee he got hit again this is quite another funny story they went out to patrol a place called cemetery hill they went out um got caught out on a forward facing slope and got ambushed um and he was pinned down he got shot through the face shot through the arm shot through the leg um and was basically in the open and couldn't move um and the guys were trying to get to him it wasn't my half's patrol day i was back in the patrol base on century um but i was the dead you know designated quad driver so it was my responsibility to go and pick up this casualty so i go tearing out the gate on this quad troop commanders that screaming at me to stop that and slow down and do the metal detector thing and i'm like that let's go do you know what i mean and eventually I did stop and we got there and we had a litter on the back of the quad trailer and I drove up to the collection point and they put they put him on a stretcher and then they put that stretcher on the back of the trailer on top of another stretcher does that make sense so it's not what you should be doing and obviously they're like jay go so I'm at copy so I'm now fucking driving this quad as fast as I can I remember going over this bump like that and thinking oh shit I forgot there's there's a casualty on the back it's my troop sergeant and he's like a gnarly old dude, do you know what I mean?

1:51:53And I stopped, slammed the brakes on and looked round and he stood vertically at this point, he's fallen off, he's bumped off the thing, he stood vertically, still strapped to the litter, ankles, thighs and chairs. He just stood there looking at me going, you dickhead, slow down. And I was like, fuck yeah, I was embarrassed, I was sorry, I was like, fuck, I'm so sorry mate, like please, and the medic's on the floor and it's just a whole fucking shit show and uh he was like you did more damage to me throwing me off the back of that quad than that geezer with the pkm did no i was i never left i felt we've we've addressed this afterwards because i did feel really bad for a long time but um yeah that's funny and um i mean this deployment you did you experienced 160 gunfights in three months am i correct no 160 gunfights in one day on election day that was in one 24-hour period our company group and satellite and call signs 160 contacts recorded in one day the elections one day one day which sounds impossible but it wasn't and we were handed so when holy shit the back end of that tour sean we handed over to the u.s marine corps and when that three seven combat team combat team three seven or three five i can't remember which one it was but when the u.s marine corps came in those boys were not fucking playing games and it was good to see because they were like we ain't doing courageous restraint we're doing fucking extreme violence and we were like fuck yeah um but yeah that 160 recorded contacts within a 24-hour period on election day so the right at the back it was literally the last thing that we did on deployment it was they were having local elections and it was the first time that they had local elections in sangin for since the taliban took over i imagine um how do you even have enough ammo for that it was everywhere all day just all different there was probably about five or six platoons on the ground plus the patrol base itself plus the the main fob and it was just all day just sporadic all day were you getting resupplied so we were out in a field so check this out right so they put recce platoon out as a blocking force so we were like 400 meters away from the actual main patrol base itself and again when people talk about what it means to serve and what it means to serve the United States of America.

1:54:09And the bond that I've got, we fucking told them, dude, we said, do not go in that compound. We went out together. There's a US Marine Corps patrol and our patrol. Our job was to literally go out and provide a blocking service or a blocking screening service. And we fucking told them, do not fucking go. Badger 10, don't go in that compound. It's a known firing point. It's fucking rigged. Do not go there. And they were like, we got orders, brother. And I was like, do your thing. and they went out there and sure as fuck they fucking got blown up dude there was like fucking two dead i think and three or four lost limbs and initially we were just helping out on the kazavac i'll never forget it was just like an endless supply of just fucking people just coming back on stretches and we were just taking just doing what we could like i fucking carried marines off the battlefield and they fucking come and got me when i really needed it on multiple occasions like that us flag when i had the fucking privilege of wearing that to The war means the world to me, Sean.

1:55:03And I'd fucking die for that as soon as I'd die for my flag, you know? But those young lads, mate, they were fucking... Those young lads. I was one too. You know, that was a fucking hard day. That was just the morning. That was before the whole thing fucking got going. I'll never forget it as well. We're in these cornfields and these blocking positions. And it was like, you just see like twos and threes. The whole platoon had just been fucking decimated. It was like an IED went off. Killed a bunch of dudes. Then the fucking Kazovac, the guys that went in to get them, they got fucking blown up.

1:55:30then all hell broke loose and it was just like once we'd started to ferry the stretchers back we went back to man our positions and it was like something out of jurassic park i mean you see these cornfields and it was just like you could see the leaves moving you know and we're on the guns like i need to like something's getting shot in a minute i'm scared do you know what i mean and uh a squad would come out or two or three guys and just be like have you seen like you know this guy or that platoon and we're like where the have you been bro and he's like your guys are back there and he's like okay cool and they just run out 10 minutes later there'd be like a lone marine just coming out the fucking cornfield you're like i don't know what the fuck's going on over there but this is not a good spot for him to be in and uh yeah we just fucking hunkered down that was the first time i've got properly mortared as well like people talk about oh you know i watched i think you'll find a generational difference between gee what guys that didn't do conventional tours and guys that did do conventional tours like I know the difference between being mortared and properly being mortared like in front of you like 50 meters 60 meters which is fucking close for an 81 or whatever they're using then one comes behind you you're like okay cool we're being bracketed the next one's fucking coming into our position and sure as fuck we're in this field getting mortared and it's like that's no joke like we're in a fucking field there is no cover and troop sergeant's like fucking dig in and we're like what what is this the fucking you know what i mean is this iwo jima like i didn't think war fucking fighting was like this do you know what i mean this was not what we were fucking used to doing so sure as fuck we dug shell scrapes and i've got some great pictures of it all the boys in shell scrapes and we fucking dug shell scrapes and then we started getting more what do you mean shell scrapes like a like a small hole in the ground to lie into basically just below subsurface so that if it does detonate it goes at ground level and you're just underneath it the The first ones we did were quite shallow, but when we started to get incoming, accurate mortar fire, we were like, oh shit, we need to fucking dig these in a bit deeper.

1:57:23And I'll never forget, like, me and this guy Gaz, we were sat in this shell scraped line in there just laughing. Like, we're going home in two days. The election day, this whole day that I'm talking about, was literally the last thing that we did. And it was like, I cannot fucking believe after six months we're in this fucking hole in this field getting fucking mortared. It's like, come on, do you know what I mean? This is no joke. But I'll remember it again goes back to the thing of respecting the US military. We had a Cowboy call sign it was it was a Cobra and a Huey pair and they were fucking smashing the mortar point and We're in this shell scraping this cornfield Just fucking hunkered down getting mortared and this fucking helicopter comes over with his partner and they're just fucking strafing just like But rockets 12.7 millimeter rockets or whatever they are fucking 30 mic mic whatever they got on there and the fucking shells are landing all around And we're just laughing at each other at this point.

1:58:14We're just like, fuck me, dude. Like, this is fucking cool. But it's not cool, if you know what I mean. It's like, but we liked it. We're Marines. This is what we're supposed to be doing, you know? But yeah, if it weren't for those dudes turning up that day, fuck knows what would have happened. But that was the end of a really, really severe tour. And I'll tell you what the worst thing, you know, the worst thing for us, mate, was that every single time an IED went off, it was a fucking good chance it was somebody you knew, you know? Like, that radio never fucking, in 80 days, I think it was like something like 82 days or whatever it was.

1:58:43We lost 14 people. Um, and they were all the same guys. We knew everybody. We're a recce troupe, you know, we knew everyone. And it was like, you, you hear the fucking blast, man. They're so close. You feel it. You're that fucking awful sound. And you're just like, okay, cool. And then the radio is like, yeah, contact ID. And then it's like the state of the casualties, like what, what tier they are. You hear the miss reports coming on and it's like, you just listen out for that zap number. You're like, I know a guy in six troop. and you're just like, you're just listening for that zap number. You're just listening for that fucking name and just being like, is it him?

1:59:16And it might not affect you that day because it might not be somebody, but then you see a guy in the corner of the patrol base and he's just fucking in floods of tears because that was his best mate, you know? That was his fucking mate. So, yeah, we were fucking, we were surrounded, man. We were fucking in a bad spot. and it was heartbreaking to watch and feel and listen to it and that fucking radio never stopped, man. It never stopped. And I just wanted to go home. Before I deployed, my door was two weeks old. Two weeks old. I remember just as we got to Camp Bastion, before we flew out to that patrol base, there were two guys that were from 4-5 Commando that had done exactly what I did.

2:00:00and they went to 40 Commando 2 and I remember, I didn't even know these guys man and we were sat eating our fucking lunch doing the pre-deployment training that you do in theatre like zeroing weapons and fucking all this bullshit getting briefs and all this fucking stuff ROE briefs, whatever and there was just three of us in this like, basically in this like fucking shell of a compound having lunch and it was like, oh I was at 4-5 and I was like, oh fuck, I was at 4-5 and there was three of us I'm the only one that came home they fucking both died you know it's like fuck brand new baby two weeks old like the writing's on the wall i'm like i'm not coming back from this deployment i'd given up i knew it was coming like i'm not a super religious man sure but every time i left that fucking patrol base i prayed because it doesn't matter how good you are we were getting fucking ripped apart and it was fucking dangerous and it was scary and i was fucking scared i was scared for six months and then it's like One of the most significant things that's ever happened to me in my military career is I was about from me to that wall away when an IED blast went off my troop commander, lost both his legs on an arm.

2:01:09I was the first guy to get to him. And there's a protocol for this. You're supposed to do the metal detector shit and go up to it and make sure there's no. I just fucking ran straight to him and just started putting tourniquets on him. And I was just like, I remember his eyes. I was up at his head. Tom, the medic was working on him. I was just holding him. I had a flashlight on. It was early on in the morning. It was a fucking 400 meter patrol Sean, we were at 400 meters, do you know what we were doing? Do you know what they made us do? They made us like a fucking hand out of radio. He lost both his legs and an arm to hand out a fucking wind up radio to a local that we thought was friendly.

2:01:42Hearts and minds they said. So we go out at fucking five o 'clock in the morning near pitch back in a fucking minefield and he loses his arms and legs for a fucking radio you know. I was so angry mate, I was so fucking angry. and I remember looking at him and I remember him trying to close his eyes and I said, John, just fucking look at me and I put this fucking flashlight on his face and I'm just like, do not fucking close your eyes, do not fucking close your eyes and we got him out and he's still, he's like fucking incredible, he's got kids, he's got a fucking life, he's a fucking incredible kayaker, he's represented his country in that, He's got this fucking incredible story.

2:02:25He goes around the country motivating people. Like, what a fucking hero. What a fucking rock star. But I'll never forgive them for putting us in those positions. Because it's like, we know this is bullshit. Why the fuck are we going out there, you know? And, yeah. That there made me fucking angry. I was like, nah. I'm coming back. Like, a lot of people went the other way. Most people left the Marines after that deployment. I didn't. maybe there's something fucking wrong with me but i was like nah i'm fucking joining the special forces i want to be fucking part of that and one of the main reasons for that was halfway through because we were getting smashed the squadron the regiment squadron d squadron sent a guy out to our position to give us fire support to bring the assets the you know so he embedded himself with our troop and this guy was like an older guy super wiry northern you know not what you'd expect a regiment guy to look like but fuck me he was the most impressive fucking person I'd ever met he was like a fucking superstar you don't come across regiment guys especially not if you're in the marines it's not something that you don't operate together and he came into those patrol bases and he wore the same fucking kit that we wore with no airs and graces you'd be like he's a sergeant in the in the fucking regiment and i'm up i'm a marine two ic of a troop and i'm doing like lists for who has to go on century and he's like what time do you want me on and i'm like what like you don't have to do this he's like no put me on there two to three two two o 'clock in the morning he's out there in the fucking century position doing it came on every patrol he's like give me some link give me a battery and i was like fucking hell he did not need to do that he did not have to do that but i was like that's the gold standard that's the fucking epitome of what i think a fucking regiment guy should be like.

2:04:11And he actually, it's quite a nice story. He gave me a recruitment brief in the main patrol base back in Sangin. And it was for Hereford. And typically, Royal Marines don't go to Hereford. They go to Poole, the SBS. So they don't go to the SES, they go to SBS. Typically, not always. But I always wanted to join the regiment. I'd always been fascinated by the regiment since I watched the VHS copy of the Iranian embassy siege from my dad, actually, when I was about 10 years old. That was the first time I'd ever re-seen it. And I I was like, what the fuck? The dude's on the balcony with the gas masks.

2:04:39I was like, whatever that is, I want that. But it's the first time I've ever met one in the flesh, and he's a fucking rock star, you know? And he gave me the recruitment brief, and I remember I went back to my chew on my accommodation. I packed a Bergen with 55 pounds, which is test weight, and I did a CFT, which is an eight miler, basically, just perimetered the thing. Just kept doing that and doing that. From that moment on, I was like, I'm going on selection. And I've heard somebody else say this, and it must be a fairly common thing, but i remember sitting one night on one of those century positions and it was super late and i hear two 47s go into the green zone and you know what 47 sounds like and i was like well that's not us and that's our ao so what the is it and then all hell breaks loose you had a gun ship going and all kinds of and then two three hours two two 47s come in and they fly away and i was like got back off and i was like yeah that's one of the squadrons gone and done a an offensive action on a target just for everybody listening 47s are dual rotor helicopters yeah the shinics the ch-47s you know the big fat ones you know with the with the double thing sorry yeah but yeah so i was like okay these people are getting after it do you know what i felt in that deployment when they're fucking helpless i felt helpless i was like it's fucking wandering around in my feels fucking watching people get blown enough it's like i wanted to affect it and the only place that i could affect it was what it felt like was to was to go on selection and join the squadron how did you adjust your mindset from the from the beginning of that deployment to the end to deal with all that?

2:06:06I didn't deal with it. I just boxed it up. Just fucking compartmentalised it. That's all I could do. And it wasn't... Ten years down my line, it fucking blew up. I got blown up again. Another suicide bomber in there. I was actually with... With C Squadron at the time. From the unit. Yeah, from the unit, yeah. I was attached to them for a year. And I remember getting blown up one night. side of a building and watching my whole team basically just get fucking whole building went on top of them and I was fucking for sure everyone was dead. Turns out that everyone survived. It was one of those fucking Pulp Fiction moments, you know?

2:06:44I'm going to talk about that in a bit more detail later, but like that, that blew the lid off the fucking box basically. Like that, after that I just unraveled, slowly but surely unraveled to the point of

2:06:59yeah, to a fucking dark place. But for 10 years, I just didn't look. Forgot about it. Just carried on. Just keep going. One more deployment. One more deployment. One more deployment. Just keep putting it in the box. Put it in the box. Put it in the box. Box gets full. Box breaks. I broke. But, yeah, to answer your question, I didn't deal with it. I just fucking carried on. What else got to do? I kept running. I kept running because I knew if I stopped and looked back, I wouldn't fucking, I'd never stop, never start again, you know? I came back from that deployment and it's like...

2:07:41Even, even coming back on R &R, man, I went back to the, the main patrol base and a dear friend of mine who I was in training with, a recruit, we were recruits together, a guy called Rian, everyone calls him Twiggy, a dead skinny guy, he was a machine gunner, he was a fucking, you know what I mean, a good machine gunner. I remember our patrol base, You had to go back to the big base because that's where the helicopters were and that's how you flew back and went on R &R So I was out of my patrol base and into the big base Relieved as fuck four months into the deployment Handed in all the fucking necessary equipment.

2:08:12I've just got basic ammunition my rifle About to fly and in 24 hours, I'm home in the UK with my brand new daughter that I've fucking spent two weeks with right And they go out on patrol and we sat in the sort of chow hall which was a tent and the first one goes off boom and you're like yeah that's a fucking IED and then everyone's up, QRF are out the fucking whole place is going and we're on R &R so we've not really got a job to do at this point and I was with a couple of other guys and we were like fuck it let's get our body armour on and get on the wall everyone's on the wall now, everyone's shooting from the wall we're trying to provide fire support about a couple of minutes later boom, second one goes off this was a joint patrol, US Marine Corps and guys from Charlie Company and they went out first IED struck command wire they waited for the guys to come in and try and recover the casualties and then they fucking pulled the next one so we lost two guys that day a US Marine and a guy called Jonathan Crooks and initially we started fighting from the wall like dude I'm going home in fucking 24 hours I'm on the wall now fighting and then it was like we need fucking people to help bring the casualties in and I again I feel guilty for it I was like I hope it's not fucking Twiggy.

2:09:22And I knew it wasn't, because I could hear his fucking machine gun go, and I was like, yeah, he's all right. He's fucking sending it. So I'm like, fuck yeah. And then we go to the back gate, and we're just carrying the bodies. We're just carrying these fucking dudes back into the med bay, basically, where they're getting treated. And there's four or five different casualties, different categories of categories. You've got ones that are clearly... Shit. No longer with us, and then other guys that are all fucking fragged up and all the rest of it. And I remember clearly... and I still can't get my fucking head around this.

2:09:53Like, we put the guys in stretchers and in the bags, and the fucking dude in the med center, I don't know what his problem was, but he's like, they've got to go on head first, and I'm like, dude, it don't fucking matter. And he's like, they've got to go on head first. That's the way the helicopters are set up to deal with casualties. And I'm like, I fucking get it. I know, but it doesn't make a difference. Do you understand what I'm saying? and he's like they've got and i'm fucking this fucking i'm i don't know what what i don't know what fucking what ends the head and what's not the fucking head you know what i mean how the fuck am i supposed to do you know i mean when i open the fucking i have this fucking to and throw and we and we put the guys on on the put the guys on the fucking helicopter everyone goes away go and sit back down and they're like r &r flights coming in in two hours and you're like now what the fuck do you do 24 hours later i'm at fucking brys norton with a brand new baby in my fucking i'm like i was not ready i was not ready to be a fucking dad i was not ready to deal with that i just wasn't ready and i fucking isolated myself because the only place i felt like i could have any control was being on operation which is a weird one because i was helpless there if that makes sense but it was a it was a it was a pain that i knew do you know i mean it became home it became home it became what I knew it was so intense for me that I gravitated towards it it was easier to be a fucking marine in that field than it was to try and learn how to be a dad I've got no template on how to be a dad how the fuck do I know how to do that you know what I mean you're talking to me about washing machines right how the fuck do I care if the washing machine's not broken we've got to go grocery shopping the fuck like that's where I'm at with it I didn't fuck I was on uncapable or incapable of acting like a fucking normal human bin because my brain was not there it was in that fucking field and it took years to fucking on to sort that out you know and I'm not anything I'm ever over it but I'm at peace with it now to a point.

2:12:04But that deployment there... Was your mind... Did you have any emotional connection to your daughter after experiencing that?

2:12:23Other than the fact I loved her. Not really. And I hate myself. I do. It was really hard to build that bond. I was a shitty fucking dad for a long time. I just didn't know how to do it. If I was as fucking good a dad as I was an operator, I'd be fucking perfect. But I wasn't, and I'm not. That fucking young girl did 10 deployments. 10 fucking deployments she did. And I look at her now, and I'm so fucking proud of her. I'm so impressed. She's got such grace and kindness about her. I look at her. yeah and that's why when you know that's why when some of the stuff that's happened to me recently I look at it and I'm like you know what fuck you for putting me in this position for her you know she deserves better than that she does you know there's still a piece of me in that field there's a piece of my soul that will never come out of that fucking field and I'm sorry for her that she had to miss that but I hope you know she sees this and grows up I did that for her I put I want to protect her you know and she was fucking she kept me going dude all right do you want to mention her name no for some reasons that we've talked about before i understand that yeah what changed when did you start your bond with your daughter it took a couple of years took a couple of years to start to build back up.

2:13:55Did you feel guilt? Yeah, still do. A lot.

2:14:03You know, it's... For guys like us, there's a prescription, right? It's like, there's the problem, there's the solution. When it comes to emotional stuff and, you know, that, I don't have a template. I don't have a reference point. I don't know what being a good dad looks like. not to say I didn't have a good dad I just didn't really have that in my life I just hope pray that one day she'll grow up and go okay cool, that's what my dad was about that's why he was there, that's why I missed the birthday, that's why I missed the football match the Christmas, whatever it might be because I felt like I was trying to do something good I was trying to make sense of a fucking hopeless chaotic situation and the only thing I could do to stop myself from drowning was go back to war because it's the only thing I knew.

2:14:53And it's just, yeah, it's a shame that she's had to do that. But I just, and I think, you know, she's, her mother's fantastic with her. Like she's, I've never had any problems with my mother, my daughter's mother in terms of like when I'm away, I always know that home's being taken care of. And I'll always be fucking grateful to those women for that, you know. My daughter's mother is a fucking exceptional mother and she's had to deal with a shit ton. It can't be easy. watching your daughter with her father on R &R, staring at fucking bodies coming up the hill. And I was there for every one of them when I was on R &R.

2:15:33That's a fucking intense place to be. And she's fucking ridden that storm. And I want to say this, and I want that hundreds, thousands of families have been through that from the British Army. So when people say we didn't fight this or we do that, that fucking upsets me, Sean, because we fucking paid in blood in those fields. and we fought side by side with the US military and we'll always continue to do that. And if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be here. And if it wasn't for, you know, the support and the coalition and the brotherhood that British and US soldiers have, I wouldn't be here. And I fucking damn sure know a lot of other people wouldn't too, you know.

2:16:11But there's a lot of families, you know, the Afghan generation has fucking paid a heavy, heavy price. and they don't get enough credit. Everyone wants to see Special Forces dudes with night vision and panavision doing fucking fast roping and all the sexy stuff. I'm here for it. I fucking love that shit, trust me. But what about that fucking young Marine who got shot off a wall? What about him? They deserve more credit. I'm going to be honest with you right now. Nothing I did in Special Forces was anything like as dangerous as that. Imagine going on a 10-hour patrol in the day with no assets. No fucking dedicated JTAC.

2:16:48No ISR. No Gucci weapon systems. No night vision. No tactical advantage. And fucking back-breaking fucking loads in 45-degree heat for six months in a minefield with a shitty ROE and fucking no experience for the most part. That's harder. Those guys deserve more credit. All right, it's not sexy. Everyone wants to know about the big fucking mesh and all the cool shit. But what about those fucking dudes, you know? So I try and talk to that more because it's like. I think about that all the time. You do? I do. And I remember I interviewed this guy, a friend of mine, Cody Alford. Yeah. He was a Marine.

2:17:29Yeah. Is he a dude with a tail on his neck? Is that him? He's got tattoos everywhere. That's the dude. I do know the dude, yeah. I don't know him, but I know what you mean. But when he described his experience in Fallujah, very similar. And I think he would say the same thing that you just said about conventional guys. And they don't get enough credit. No. And they don't get the recognition that they deserve. And they have it harder than everybody. Fuck yeah, they do. With less gear, with less training. Everything. Yeah, man. I see some of these guys now and I'm just like... I'm so fucking proud of them.

2:18:15I am. I'm so fucking proud of them. Such strength those guys had, you know? You're looking at 19-year-old kids dealing with that shit. And that deployment isn't the end of it. You've got to go and live 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years after that, you know? And nothing. Nothing, nothing can take that away. And people who go, you were all Marines, you joined to go to war. Fuck yeah, we did. And we did a fucking good job at doing it. And we were fucking impressive. But there is a price to it. There is a consequence to it, you know. Most guys left after that deployment. I didn't. And I'm glad I didn't. Because if I had, then I probably would have ended up taking my own life like my friend did.

2:19:03and a bunch of other people I know. Because that's what happened, Sean. They stay in those fields and they don't ever deal with it. And then all of a sudden they just put their uniforms on, put their medals on, and they fucking hang themselves. Is that what your friend did? Yeah. Ash. He did that. Yeah. There's too many of them, man. This fucking feels like one a week at some point. These fucking guys aren't getting no support, bro. I know. They're just fucking not getting enough support. and it's is that the first friend that you lost a suicide the first one that I allowed myself to feel any pain for you that makes sense I've lost a bunch and again it goes back to the same patrol base like mentality it was like it might not be somebody that I know well but I know somebody that does and it echoes through our community like it reverberates and they're fucking still doing it dude they're fucking they're still doing it i can kill themselves and it's like fuck i don't i don't know how to get my head around that you know it's like me and my best friend who were my best friend was way closer to ash than i was but we were all recruits together and it fucking nearly killed him because he felt guilty about it he was phoning him that day they We were fine.

2:20:26Everything was all good. Checking up on him. Everything's good. He goes home, puts his uniform on, puts his medals on, puts his beret on, hangs himself in the garage. That nearly fucking killed my friend. You know? I'm sorry. Me too. I'm sorry. But that's the reality of it. You know? And I don't know what to say. I don't know. We went to his grave not long ago. His sons are... How the fuck do you explain that? How do I have that conversation, you know? It's fucking difficult. Those young Marines deserve more credit, I think. You know, they deserve more. They deserve more support from our government, from our veterans minister, from all of it.

2:21:21That war's not done. Still going. So they're just fighting it in their own heads now, you know? But it's across the board, isn't it? It's not just us. It's not just the Marines. It's not just the Brits or the Americans or Swedes or, you know, Norwegians or the Danish or the Estonians or everyone else that paid into that thing. I mean, obviously the Brits and the Americans, Canadians. It's everybody that had to experience that. It's everyone that experienced it. Not just the fucking cool guys with Panavision and fucking Blackhawks, you know? I think we should do better. And we should pay more credit to these guys because it's fucking real.

2:21:57That's my opinion on it. Thank you for saying that. Don't thank me, Sean. I thank them, you know. That deployment galvanized me. It didn't break me at the time. It's not broken me now. It fucking set a foundation of solid concrete that I built a fucking mansion on. You understand? Like, I fucking wanted it. It didn't deter me. It motivated me. I was like, no, I'm never going to fucking feel helpless again. Next time, it's on my terms. I'm coming to your house at night. I'm going to be in your fucking bedroom and you're not going to have a clue that I'm there. That's the kind of mentality that I took from it.

2:22:39I don't know if that's a positive thing. A psychiatrist would probably go, yeah, we need a fucking chat. But it worked for me. That's what I did. I put it all in a fucking box and was like, cool. I'm going to use that for fuel. I'm going to use that for motivation. That's my reactor, you know? and that's why I decided to go on selection. I wanted to have an impact and effect and I think it's very important that this is said. UKSF's primary objective, as far as I read it and we were briefed, in Afghanistan was to provide security and to fucking stop these people killing British troops. I've been in those fields, I know what it's like so now I'm motivated for it we were trying to protect the British Army every single one of those guys in those squadrons knew somebody in the Marines knew somebody in the parachute regiment was affected by it they're watching their mates get killed, mutilated you know we fucking wanted to have an effect that's what we did we had an effect and we were professional as fuck when we did it and it was such a cool thing to be a part of because it really did feel like we were making a difference there you know so when I see all this bullshit these fucking allegations unfounded about this and that question and professionalism, it fucking upsets me, Sean.

2:23:57I saw nothing but professionalism. I saw nothing but dedicated professionals doing the right thing for the right reasons. And it's disgusting how people are trying to turn that and make that look like it's something else because it wasn't that, you know? But again, yeah, that's something digressed slightly, but yeah, I think that does need to be said and that was a massive motivator for me there's a difference between revenge and retribution isn't there revenge is is revenge retribution is the rightful and lawful you know action towards something that's been done it's not revenge it's retribution that's the difference and we were out there in the squadrons trying to do what we could to protect those fucking guys in the patrol bases.

2:24:48That 19-year-old, we're trying to fucking do whatever we can, and yes, we are going to bring all the fucking toys to the party, all our gunships, all our fucking sexy night vision, all of our fucking ISR assets, our jets, our dogs, our charges, our experience. Fuck yeah, we are, and we're coming for you. We're coming to get you, you know? And that was the only thing that kept me sane. That's how I dealt with it. I doubled down. I didn't go the other way, you know. But, yeah. I talk a lot about that 2010 tour on this because it fucking affected me more than anything else I've ever done. And it changed my life.

2:25:29And it still does. I told John, the guy who stepped on the ID, that I was coming on here, and I said, can I mention you? And he said, yeah. He said he's fucking proud. He does speaking engagements. He goes on to country. My friend bumped into him randomly. He said he mentioned me by name. That's my proudest military achievement. Playing a small part in saving that man's life that day. No one's ever taken that away from me. How's he doing? He's fucking thriving. He's doing really, really well. I think he's representing Great Britain in kayaking. He's a mad kayaker. I'll show you afterwards, mate.

2:26:08He's such an incredible fucking dude. Positive. he's got kids since that happened wow yeah he's living life to the full man i'm not i'm not a good person man well i could be better but like i made every mistake a guy my age can make probably more than once and there's a lot of shit i've done in my life i'm not proud of but i'm proud of that you know i'm proud of that there's a person out there that's living there's a person out there that's a father there's a person out there that's enjoying their life and i had a very very small part to play in that and i like to remind myself of that sometimes when i feel a bit shit or you know whatever because i think you know war's fucking ugly but that was a good thing right yeah you know but yeah after that tour it was full steam ahead then it was just fucking deployment deployment selection deployment deployment deployment deployment deployment and that carried on for 10 years how was it getting into selection

2:27:22for me i came back off that deployment and most people would have been like did you just chill out and bond with your daughter i didn't i pick a fucking rucksack on and went to the brecon beacons and climbed up a mountain that's what i did to get away from it i didn't deal with it and i ran away from trying to be a dad because I didn't understand it. But what I did know I had to do was fucking move from A to B with weight on my back because that's all I wanted. Again, I became obsessed with passing selection and I threw everything to the side because the only thing that mattered was getting back out there.

2:27:51The only thing that mattered to me was getting a seat on that helicopter. And I told you about that helicopter that went in. I wanted to be on that helicopter more than anything. and I don't, I'm not proud of that, but that's what I had to do, that's why I'm not fucking hanging up in a garage somewhere with my medals on, that's what I did, but Selection was, anybody that sits there and goes, Selection wasn't that bad, this is fucking bullshit, this line is hard, it's very, very hard, but one thing I did have was the ability to know that I will never ever quit that was you know i mean i'm not quitting on this so you're gonna have to pull me off or tell me i'm not good enough but i'm not quitting and i think that kind of mindset that mentality that burn the ship's mentality that we talk about i was obsessed there was no going back i'm not going back into that patrol base i'm not going back in that field this is what i need to do to get to where i need to be and you have to understand sean that during those deployment times do you know how much money a marine makes do you know how much money a marine makes a month in those deployments have a guess a month a month in sang and you know how much they pay you for dealing with all that four thousand usd less than that one thousand six hundred pounds one thousand six hundred which is about two and a half yeah two thousand two hundred dollars a month that's what we get paid now i come back and i'm trying to raise a family trying i've got fucking washing machines to buy.

2:29:22You understand? Like, I have to go on selection. I have to pass. My wage doubles. You understand? Like, that's a motivator. Like, it didn't come from a lot. It's important to me that I'm trying to give my daughter a better life. You know, that's what I'm trying to do. More opportunity. You know, a better standard of living. That fucking motivated me for sure. I'm not going to quit in the jungle because I'm a little bit hot or a little bit tired. There's too much at stake, you know, way too much at stake. What was the sentiment of the citizens in the UK while this was all going on? At the time, Sean, the whole country was behind it.

2:30:08Help for Heroes was a big charity, people were behind it, everyone was pro-forces, supporting everyone, and, you know, it felt like everyone was in the same situation together. But then the war stopped and everything went quiet, which is when we need it. Arguably, we need it more now. We need more of it now than we did then, you know? And it's all good for people to whether Help for Heroes band or, you know, go and do an expedition to Everest. Good. You should be doing shit like that. But at the same time, you need to do more. And it needs to happen. You know, it needs to happen now. Like, we need to do more as a...

2:30:44I'm a civilian. I'm a civilian now. Do you understand? I'm trying to do what I can to train the next generation. I don't have a lot of money. If I was a millionaire, Sean, I'd fucking give as much money as I could to charity, but I ain't. What I can do is I can train the next generation. That's what I'm trying to do. That's how I like to give back. But again, it's not about money or anything like that, but we do need to do more. We need to recognize it. That war's not done, and it's not cool and trendy to be pro-troops, pro-Afghanistan generation. It's an old war. It's a very British mentality, isn't it?

2:31:14But I think, I think we need to do more because everyone wanted to fucking jump on a bandwagon a few years ago. And now you never see anything about it. There are good people out there doing good things. There are plenty of good charities out there. And you know, there's a lot, there is a lot, but it's not enough. And it's, you know, it's generally the community serving the community, if that makes sense. Yes, it does. Do you understand what I mean by that? Yes. Yeah. It's a shame. I mean, it sounds like the people.

2:31:45I want to help, but, you know, as we discussed at the beginning, and we'll get into more detail, at the end, the government's doing the opposite. They're making it worse. They're making it harder for us. Yeah. Let's take a quick break. Sure.

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2:32:44All right, Jay, we're back from the break. We're getting into Tier 1 operations. Yeah. So, yeah, I went on selection 2012.

2:32:56As soon as I'd completed selection, it was like the perfect thing for me. Finished on like a Friday. Belt, beret, end of the process. couldn't have been prouder. Honestly, it was such a... It felt... Some kids wanted to grow up and be an astronaut. Some guys want to be soccer players or play in the NFL or be a quarterback, whatever it might be. I just wanted to be in a regiment. From a very early age, I was aware of it and it was always seen as the pinnacle, in my opinion. And I think there's something to be said for achieving a lifetime goal at the age of 24. It's great, but then when that wears off you're like oh what do i do you know there was a little bit of that but it wasn't an anti-climax at all i finished i then went out to um the states the first time i've been to the states and to flew into la and then went down to el centro um and did a bunch of jumping out there because we we couldn't finish the jumps course in the uk because of the weather's fucking shit so we went out to um oh you had to go to california yeah we do that quite often i've Probably done maybe, I don't know, 20, 20, 30-odd trips to California.

2:34:07Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. They're jumping. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Real quick, I actually do have a question. Go. We don't have to go into SAS training and all of that. Yeah. But I do want to ask, I mean, with that deployment that you just described, you know, 180 contacts in one day. Yeah. did they know you were a part of that yeah you make it's a very good question sean it was interesting because when we turned up on selection that sort of generation of guys the the cadre that we call them ds the directing staff who are obviously you know paid up members of the regiment hereford and paul um that oversee the selection process they've all got a wealth of knowledge and experience and they I look up to them like gods still do all super impressive guys um and they're there to do a job they're there to select people to get into their they're the gatekeepers of this regiment and what it's about you know and they're looking at everything from you know skill set to character but it was only a little bit further on a couple of years actually down the line when I was speaking to one of them as a friend they're no longer an instructor now they're friends you know the people in the same squadrons or whatever and they said they were very wary of our generation because they knew that we'd been in the fucking mixer and they we'd done stuff that they hadn't done you know i think if you got to the i think if you missed that conventional period not to discredit anything that they'd have done but we we never we weren't kicking in doors in baghdad in 06 that wasn't our that wasn't our war you know but you're now dealing with a bunch of guys that have got serious decorations guys have done serious operational deployments that have been in gunfights that have been blown up that have dealt with all of that stuff as marines paratroopers infanteers like we're not green soldiers we're we're we're we're not blooded but we're professional and we're experienced so although they still have to treat you a certain way on selection because it's selection they were very um cautious that The guys that they were training were serious dudes and they've done some serious shit and they were respectful for that.

2:36:29They were? They were. They were respectful for it, yeah. What did you mean when you said they were weary? As in wary, as in like they didn't want to. What often happens on courses is, and I've seen this myself, the people that are in that unit don't look down on people that aren't in that unit. But it's like, well, we've done this, we've done that. But it wasn't too much of that. if that makes sense, they were like, you can't treat people like shit because these people have fucking done a lot, you know, and they've been around and it just wouldn't, it wouldn't have been right. So they were, they were cautious that they didn't want to be disrespectful.

2:37:05They've still got to be the way that they are and the line has to be towed and the standard is the standard, but they were still, you know, aware that you need to treat these guys with respect because some of them have given a shit ton to their country. Some of them have been through a hell of a lot of stuff. And just because that guy might not fit the mold or pass the standard, don't disrespect them to the point where it's like belittling them or undervaluing their previous experiences. And I think they navigated it quite well, if I'm honest. I think they did. I mean, it's almost... I mean, there are not many people on the planet that have experienced war.

2:37:52And out of the people that have experienced war, there is a small, small fraction of those that have experienced what you just described. And so, I mean, even though the experience is radically different, they could have treated you with a ton of respect or it could have become a jealousy issue.

2:38:28Yeah. An inferior complex. Yeah, there is a little bit. There was, I wouldn't say a little bit of that creeping in, but there were certainly some people that just didn't acknowledge it or didn't want to acknowledge it because that wasn't their situation. That wasn't their war. Because you had done more. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. That you being humble. Well. This is me telling the fucking truth. I think I'd done quite a bit. I'd done my part, I think. I don't know how. See, it's a weird one for me, Sean. And I know it sounds like, I still don't feel like I did anything. And I still don't. Like people will look at my career or, you know, you could do a bullet point on the, you know, my resume and the CV and all the rest of it.

2:39:12But it's still, I still, there's still like an emptiness to it as in like, it didn't feel like I actually did anything, if that makes sense. It was like, I was there and it all happened, but it doesn't feel like that. But it's experience. Yeah. It's experience that carries you to the next level. Absolutely. 100%. And having been in that experience. Yep. Nobody's been in that fucking experience.

2:39:35Yeah. I mean, I think it helped me. It gave me confidence. There was, when I checked in, I felt like, and again, this might sound arrogant, but I felt like I could sit at the table with any one of them, depending on, you know, my squadron had just done a hostage rescue. that first four weeks of their deployment. They knocked out a hostage rescue and were cooking on gas. We're talking about guys that had done multiple, you know, Afghans, Iraq. So you're talking about some serious operators that have done some serious stuff and are highly professional. But I still felt like I could sit at the table with them because ultimately we're all serving.

2:40:22we're all trying to do the right thing we're all part of our nation's military and I feel like although I missed out on the big mish maybe or I hadn't you know I wasn't on that 06 tour in Baghdad when you know this or that or I didn't do the hospital but I felt like what I had done was enough in my opinion I felt like it was it validated me and I think that was a good thing and it's a hard line to tread without coming across as a know-it-all or arrogant, but I did feel like, and I saw it later on in my career, I definitely did. When we started doing more conventional stuff on the flop, big offensives into places like Sinjar in Iraq and all kinds of places like that, the guys that had done it, you could tell, were comfortable operating at reach.

2:41:11you know i've heard people before it's like you know being in a small team and in the day and no gun shit that's not a big deal to me i'm used to that shit like i walk around in a fucking field and sang in for eight hours with a fucking you know 100 pounds on my back and a belt-fed machine gun i'm good like i've been i've lived that you know so to me i never really felt like that and it was interesting to me to watch people that hadn't done that although they were very senior now and you know in big command positions you look around and you're like you're not comfortable with this you're not you're not this is new to you isn't it there's no there's no night vision now dude there's no there's no ac 130 up there there's no you know there's no qrf you know there's all this stuff it's i think it helped me because i was used to not having it um so it was interesting to me when you see those guys that are like very specific skill set extremely experienced very very professional really good at what they did but they hadn't done that you know they hadn't done that thing and you know i know the difference between having more what's fired at me and being moored i know the difference between you know when rounds are close or when you're under contact like there's a difference you know firefights generally don't last that long in tier one operations and they're not always careful i say but if you do it right it should be one way for the most part you know or it should be very short-lived you've got so much so much to bring to bear and so much you know skill and talent there that we generally get used to winning all i'd ever known was losing i'd all i all i ever did before we got to the regiment was be on the receiving end of stuff you know so I'm comfortable with that.

2:42:56I'm comfortable in that situation. And I think that kind of, um, helped me. I think it definitely did. I think it was definitely a good thing. Um, but I do, I do think that, you know, that conventional side of life is important. I think like it pays out when you do a very, if you do a generalist role, like, you know, crew serve weapons. I can operate a 50 cal. I can operate a GMG. I can be a JTAC. I can do this, I can do that. I'm not saying I can do everything, but I'm comfortable doing things that aren't just assault and building at night with night vision on. We didn't have night vision. I'm asking because even, I only had six years in the SEAL team, actually a little less than that.

2:43:41And even as a young guy, before 9-11 happened, there was obviously a long stretch in between Vietnam and 9-11 where there was very few things. There was Columbia, there was Panama, Somalia. There was very few people that participated in that. And so what happened, and I'll probably get blasted for saying this, but I don't care because it's the fucking truth, is my generation. When I joined the SEAL teams, I was 18, or went to BUDS, I was 18. I showed up at, I think, 19. And the war had kicked off already, the very beginning of it. And so you got guys that are coming right out of buds, going straight to war, and it created this kind of, like I said, inferior complex.

2:44:34Yeah. And instead of embracing the younger generation that's getting that experience and that's able to pass it on, it demoralized a lot of guys. Yeah. Because they would not acknowledge what you've done. Yeah. And then it became the one-up game. Yeah, I hate that. And a lot of the good guys left because of that. And the guys that had no experience just kept rising through the ranks, and it just created this fucking rot inside of the SEAL teams. And now you have, and I'm not saying everybody, I'm not saying everybody, but you have brass at the very top who have never done a fucking thing, never been on an operation.

2:45:24They've commanded operations from the talk. Yeah. They haven't been there. familiar Sean and then and then they judge you and then they put you under investigation and they want to know about how the op went down it's almost it's almost it's not almost it is they are fucking working against you because they never had those experiences and they feel inferior because they are yeah no you're bang on mate you make a good point and I think it's something that I've seen before it, like I said to you before, didn't I? I said, experience is a luxury. It's not a necessity. Um, but there's definitely an element of command that if they don't have it, they'll lean into it when they need something or when they want an opinion on something, but then they'll sort of shy away from it a little bit.

2:46:18And it's almost like you become punished because you've got experience or you're over experienced or you're overqualified or, you know, these types of things. It's like everyone's entitled to an opinion. but when it comes to a lot of what we do experience is useful and it should be tapped into and i do think that you don't see it too much on the sort of non-commission level but when you've got you know especially certain certain elements of the officer type you know the officer class if you will like i think they find that quite difficult especially the you know in conventional, conventional forms.

2:46:54It's not that noticeable, but when you get into a higher, higher levels, like. I'm now putting forward a tack plan based off experience, based off having done this for over a decade at this point, you know, on my last deployment, or, you know, I'm coming up with a course of action in order to effectively execute an operation and yet the points that you're bringing back to me are nonsense. And you're just showing your inexperience there. Now it's fine that you haven't done all the stuff that other guys have done. but I think it would be very naive sometimes to not tap into that and listen to it.

2:47:29You might outrank me, but you definitely haven't done this as much as I have, and it might pay for you to listen to what we're saying, not just me, but the collective, because what we're saying is experience-based. We're not making this shit up. That's important. If there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and we're trying to select the right way, then just because you haven't done it or seen it doesn't mean it's not going to work. Does that make sense? And I think especially certain types of officers, depending on the personality, they want control of it and it wants to be their idea and it has to be done their way.

2:48:01And that's fine if it's the right way and it's the good option, or if it isn't, then you're going to get challenged on it. But then there's almost this like, well, I'm in charge type mentality. And it's like, it's quite frustrating. It's quite frustrating. Well, it's detrimental to the country as well. Yeah, it's detrimental to the output. You have, for your country and for my country, You have this wealth of knowledge and all this experience, and then they become demoralized because of the inferior complex, and they leave. And when they leave, you lose all of that experience that could be passed on to the next generation.

2:48:41A hundred percent. Which lessens our capabilities, which it's sad. It's frustrating. It's a fucking bureaucracy that needs to change. And so anybody that's listening to this from UK government, American government, any government, anybody who wants to have an effective military, you need that experience. I mean, I could go on forever. I mean, we interviewed Captain Brad Geary, who was an amazing human being. Yeah. Dallas Alexander, you know, the Canadian soft guy that was on the sniper team that took a 2.1 mile fucking shot. It was the world record shot. Yeah. And they kicked him out. They kicked him off the fucking team.

2:49:30Some bullshit. World record sniper kill. Yeah. And they just took that experience and brushed it off. Yep. Nobody in the world is taking a shot like that. No, it's a one of one, one of one. And that experience is gone. Yeah. I felt that. I felt that towards the end. Yeah. There was a few things that happened in my career that I got punished for that. I was like, what the fuck are we talking about? Like, this is bullshit. This is like minor things, right? Like, do you want me to be good at being an operator? Do you want me to be effective on the battlefield? Do you want me to have, you know, the ability to change something?

2:50:13Do you want me to provide solutions to problems? Do you want me to go and be effective and do my job? But if you do, then you have to know that it comes with the whole package. You know, the reason that I'm able to do that is because of these things. So if, you know, for example, I mean, slightly digress, but like, yeah, no shit, I'm fucking drinking too much. no shit I'm probably spending too much time you know doing whatever or maybe maybe I'm not you know maybe I should have had a bit more respect for somebody or shouldn't have said that but like if you want me to be if you employed me to be this person you've selected me because of the character traits that I've got and my ability to be effective on the battlefield but you can't have it both ways like do you want me to be a camp commando or do you want me to be a commando which one do you want because they very seldomly link up the best operators that I know and have worked with and seen like none of those are those squeaky clean white knight types and those types of characters very seldomly have the experience to back it i don't believe in white knights i think everybody's got something going on at some point um but those that try and take the moral high ground on stuff or you know give us a cultural review or this or that or try and pull like the moral high ground it's like we're out there trying to have an impact we're out there trying to have an effect on the enemy.

2:51:30That's what the British Army is for. That's what any army is for. It doesn't matter what unit you're at. It's about having an effect against the enemy. And I think it's worse in peacetime. I think in peacetime, the army doesn't know what to do with itself. So it just creates bullshit. It's all this, or it's that, or it's trivial stuff. Don't wear those shoes. You've got to wear that. Shave your face. That's how they hide behind the inexperience. That's what they do. A good leader will take that experience from their subordinates. They'll embrace it. They'll utilize it. They'll acknowledge it. Yep.

2:52:04And then become a phenomenal leader. Yep. But the ego gets in the way. You took the word out of my mouth, and it's something that I definitely have learned to come to terms with and something that I was fucking not aware of. Ego management. Ego management would be my number one thing. that I would say to a new guy checking into a squadron, I'd say, you need to manage that shit because it will fucking take you down a path that you don't want to go down. And if you're not even aware of it, I haven't got an ego. Dude, we've all got egos. We've all got one. Male, female, doesn't make a difference.

2:52:40But if you're not aware of it and you don't keep it in check, then it's going to be a problem. And my ego management was non-existent for a long time. And I wasn't arrogant. I wasn't um I try not to be arrogant I was very sure of myself but it gets to a point where you realize that you are capable you realize that you do have that experience you realize that you are quite you know able to you know you're able to do a whole bunch of different skill sets you you get comfortable with it and at that point there that's when you really need to keep it in check because it can be quite easy to let that run away with you and then you can come across as arrogant or overhyped or all these things.

2:53:23And I think ego management is something that I've definitely learned the hard way through, and I'm still not perfect. Far from it, I'm just trying to manage it a little bit better these days. Well, I think you're doing a damn good job. I mean, at the beginning of this, you were hesitant to talk about these types of experiences, and I'm the one that's pressing you, and I'm the one that's pulling it out of you. I know you don't want to talk about this shit, but it's important. Yeah. It is important. You know, like I said to you before, Sean, like I'm no, people will look at it. I'm no fucking poster boy, dude.

2:53:56I've fucked up so much stuff in my career. I fucked up loads of stuff professionally, emotionally. Yeah. What's the biggest fuck up you think you've done? That's a good question.

2:54:17That is a good question. I think I got carried away in the life and the status of being that guy for a little bit longer than I should have. I think I went for a period of being over the moon to have been in the squadron and the first six months two years was the best start I could have got lots of deployments lots of gunfights lots of everything and it was all good and then I think I kind of got a little bit comfortable with that and rested on my laurels a little bit and I think I spent probably between two years to probably about four or five years not being as professional as I could be because I was always at the standard that I needed to be.

2:55:12And I wasn't trying to really get that 1 % out, really trying to squeeze it. And it's not to say that I was lazy or complacent because I was fucking far from lazy and complacent, but I was probably a bit more interested in driving a nice car or having a nice watch or a pretty girlfriend than I probably was about making sure that my fucking CQB was the best it could be or my jumping was the best it could be. My CQB was good enough. My jumping was good enough. That kind of good enough mentality, I think I had that for too long. And then when I really did ramp it up, it was because I decided not to drink alcohol for a thousand days.

2:55:49I decided one day that's it, I've had enough. It makes me feel like shit, I don't want to live that life anymore. I need to make some changes. I'm hurting people. It's having a detrimental effect on my career and making bad decisions. I was a fucking loose cannon for a while in the squadron for sure. And no matter how good you are, how effective you are, you still got to be in harmony with the group. And I don't think I was necessarily. I think I was, I think I had a mentality of I'm fucking doing it my way because that's the only way I know. And I think I should have slowed down a little bit on that.

2:56:32And just, yeah, I mean, I got in fucking, I was reduced in rank once. I had a couple of three-month warnings. Like, I was a handful. And I got to the point, and this is not making excuses, but I just didn't want to fucking listen to people anymore. Listen to people that I knew to be less experienced or of a different mindset to me. and I should have been more accommodating to that. And I should have had more emotional intelligence to be able to navigate that better. Where it was like, if you didn't agree with my philosophy or my ethics, I suppose, then it was a kind of a fuck you type mentality.

2:57:13That didn't serve me well. I don't regret anything I've ever done in the military. I don't. And when I look back retrospectively, yeah I could have done some stuff differently but I also know that's part of who I am and why I did it and if I hadn't have done those things or behaved in certain ways or you know been reckless maybe um then I wouldn't be the person I am today and I'm good with the person I am today you know we've talked a lot about stuff that's happened in the past but you know bottom line is I can look myself in a mirror and I'm far from fucking perfect dude you know if I practice what I preached I'd be perfect, but I don't.

2:57:53I'm human, and I'm trying to relearn how to be an actual human being. I'm not an operator anymore. It's a difficult thing to do. So I'm more in touch with that, if that makes sense. I'm more connected to my own process and to my own sort of emotions, if you will. But for a very long time, I was just trying to be that dude, you know, and it didn't really serve me. Did you come to a realization that you needed to change? Yeah. What triggered that?

2:58:25If you want me to be honest, I've got a pistol in my mouth a couple of times and that fucking changed my life. It got to a point after a bunch of deployments, a whole bunch of shit had happened. Yeah, my grandma, I lost my grandma, Matt got killed, close family friend got killed in a weird accident, I fucking watched a helicopter crash, being fucking blown up, the whole box just, and I was just at the lowest point I'd ever been. and it was almost like the one thing, the one thing that I had that kept me, kept me going, had stopped working. The deployments, the combat, all that shit was what kept me alive and I started to become immune to it.

2:59:11I just didn't fucking feel anything and I didn't look forward to anything.

2:59:20and I didn't really see a way out of it if I'm honest and it just seemed hopeless for a long time and I fought it and I fought it and I fought it and then one day I nearly gave up fighting it And I didn't, thank God.

2:59:43But that sobers you up pretty fucking quickly. Because that was ready to go. I remember at Clear As Day, I was at the end of a range. I'd just been, I'd been punished for some bullshit at work. Like, fucking, doesn't even, doesn't even grant a conversation with you. It doesn't even warrant it. But I'd basically been told that, you know, promotion prospects were fucking zero. You know, I was probably looking to get out of the squadron. I didn't feel valued. I was made to feel like shit, basically. And I was fucking heartbroken about it. And I was like, well, if I can't do this, the one thing I dedicated my entire life to, the only thing the only thing um so I really truly loved at that point it felt like it was all gone it was all been thrown away um

3:00:48so I nearly fucking did it I nearly went there on two occasions two times you had a pistol in your mouth yeah whatnot once it was in my mouth yeah once was in my mouth and once was just sat lap both loaded made ready one in the chamber both times in the same situation once the first time I got a phone call that was the closest time I think which time was that the first time was that in the mouth uh yeah you got a phone call while you had a gun in your mouth yeah I'd play with it huh who called you he was a good friend of mine at the time he later went on to betray me um there was a girl involved um i'd come off the range i was going back to my house i was gonna drink like i did a lot to feel something I was like, you know what?

3:01:49I don't want to keep fucking doing this. So I'm sat there, I'm in the car. Closed up the range, signed the book, about to go and hand the guns in. And I just did it, I just fucking made it ready. Put it underneath my chin, felt that. Put it down a little bit, thought about it.

3:02:14Put it in my mouth. Thought about it. I didn't have the fucking balls to do it. I wanted to. I fucking wanted to, you know. And yeah, I got to get the phone call. What time are we shooting tomorrow? You want to come to the range? Cool. I'll see you in the morning. We have to fight another day, right? Stay in the fight. I don't know what would have happened if that phone call hadn't come. I'd like to sit there and tell you that I would have talked myself down. I don't know if I would have or not. Maybe.

3:02:59Yeah, I was dealing with a fucking lot of shit and I was dealing with it really, really badly. And I was throwing alcohol at the problem. And the one thing that made me feel good about myself was my job. And my job was no longer making me feel good about myself. So at that point there, I'm like, fuck, what is the point? What is the fucking point in all of this? You know? You know, it's interesting. You had mentioned earlier that you don't have a strong relationship with God.

3:03:27There's no atheists in a trench, I know that. What do you think that was? I mean the timing. You think that was a coincidence? Of that phone call? No. I don't think so. What do you think it was? I don't know. I don't know. It's a very difficult one to... This is a conversation I've not even had with myself for a very long time, so if I'm stumbling three. You have to apologize. I don't know why that happened that day the way it did, but it did. I don't believe in coincidences. And the more I look at it, the more there must have been, there has to be, you know, things happen for a reason, don't they?

3:04:14You don't always understand it or even acknowledge it or recognize it sometimes. The timing of that is a miracle. It's a fucking nothing short of a miracle, mate.

3:04:32That came from up there. Came from somewhere below. It brought you here today. I would not be fucking sat here if that phone didn't ring. That's a fucking fact. You know, and what you're about to get into, you know, after we get through your SAS career. It brought you to this point. You're the one that's supposed to fucking do this. You're the one that has the courage to have the voice to stand up for all of your teammates, all the people that passed, everything that's going on, all the investigations. Brought you here. It feels like it's for something. It really does. and who knows what else is to come yeah who knows brother i said before it feels it feels like for the first time in a long time there is no black cloud on the horizon and i feel truly free i'm a little hurt as they say but i'm a lot more free than i was you know and i think sometimes you have to fight through you know and i think to myself how lucky and how fortunate I am to have good people around me, people that help me.

3:05:48And if I can, in some small, insignificant way, help somebody else or do something that has a positive effect on our community or an individual, then that's worth staying in the fight for. That's worth going up. That's a hill I will die on, you know. What was the gentleman's name that called you? Ben. Does he know? No. No, he doesn't.

3:06:23He does now. Now he does, yeah. Do you think you'll have a conversation with him? No, never. No.

3:06:35No, I don't think I will. I I probably should, but... Ego management, right? That's right. We just fucking talked about it, didn't we? He fucking hurt me, dude. He also saved you. Yeah, he did. Indirectly. Indirectly, for sure, yeah.

3:06:59It's funny, isn't it, how things go like that? Yeah. We were fucking super tired at the time, man. I was like, fucking hell. Yeah, that was just, you know, I feel like I was one thing away from fucking breaking, you know, at all times. I felt like that for a long period of time. And then when they took, it felt like they took it away from me. They took the one thing that fucking gave me purpose. And I felt lonely. And I felt fucking scared. And I didn't know what to do.

3:07:37and I just didn't want to fucking be there anymore. I didn't want to be there. You know, I don't know what happened between you and Ben and I don't want to go into it,

3:07:50but I can tell you one thing that I've learned in life. You want to be free, you have to learn forgiveness because it probably affects you a lot more than it affects him.

3:08:02and when you let that shit go it's gone

3:08:08i need to work on that that's something that i'm you know i don't know what it is i've got a very unique capability to be able to shot people out of my life that have been close to me in a fucking heartbeat we all have that yeah oh i'm well class at it. I'm a pro at that. And I look back at relationships and friendships and people. I don't know whether it's because I moved around quite a bit. I did move around quite a lot. I don't know whether it's because, fuck, is it because I'm an only child? Is it because I fucking went to a whole bunch of different schools? But my ability to detach emotionally from something regardless of whether it's after five minutes five years or whatever i can do that very very quickly and capable and it's a fucking toxic trick that i've got and i hate it about myself because i can do it and it's it's it's running away it's fucking being a coward is what it is i won't deal with it i'll just fucking block it deal with it later move on and it's fucking hurt, it hurts people.

3:09:21And I fucking don't like that about myself. It's necessary to be able to do that. I learnt to fucking do that really well because that was the only thing that I could do to cope, you know. Like, I don't have time to deal with that, you know. It's like when John got hit, it goes back to that, doesn't it? I came back into the patrol base, I washed the blood out of the quad and I went and sat on that Sanger, over watching the exact position that it happened and I remember feeling that I can't, I can't fucking, I can't stop and I remember looking and watching, it's a very fucking dark thing when you can see a pack of wild fucking dogs up there and you know what they're doing and you know why they're fucking there and you see people up there, you know, picking stuff up.

3:10:22Like, that's within fucking minutes of this happening. Certainly within an hour. Like, that was my reality. There ain't no fucking time for this. You ain't got time to sit there and cry. You ain't got to sit there and fucking mourn. Like, I don't give a fuck about people's feelings sometimes because

3:10:43that was a coping mechanism emotion was not a fucking good thing i'm a fucking quite an emotional person but i'm either one or the other it's like no emotion completely indifferent or i'm all in you you know and i fucking hate that about myself i do um but at the same time it's been a fucking necessary tool, you know, like, we're going out on patrol tomorrow, that's what we're doing, you know, and that's fine until you're not going out on patrol anymore, and now you've got to fucking deal with it, you know, and again, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to improve, man, that's all I'm trying to do, and I'm trying to be a fucking better person, I'm trying to learn how to be a human being, I've not been a fucking human being for the best bar 20 years.

3:11:34I've been a fucking warrior. That's what I've been doing. But that's not, that's, that's not an excuse. That's not an excuse to be a shitty dad. That's not an excuse to be a shitty boyfriend. It's not good enough. You have a fucking, it's not good enough. I've got high standards, but when it comes to emotional stuff or empathy or people's feelings, I need to be better. I know that. I recognize it, but it's fucking not easy, dude. It's a hard, hard thing to do. But you are right Forgiveness is fucking important I don't pay it too much mind If I'm honest I'm kind of dealt with it Mentally I think I've gotten over it And got past it

3:12:18I hope you call them Or text them Or write them Or email them Doesn't mean you gotta be buddies with them But then you could put it behind you, truly put it behind you. It serves as a reminder to me. You're right. I should. Maybe. I will. I can't promise what I'll do. But what I can do for you is I promise that I'll think about that. And I'll let you know. Please do. I will. I will. So let's talk about checking into the unit. Yeah. So two weeks after I finish, I get my beret Go to America, I start jumping Everything's good I check into the squadron I turn up, arrive in the middle of the night Squadron's out They're on a job So I go The storeman picks me up There's four of us Four of us checked into my squadron for my course All in different troops So I got air troop which I fucking didn't really want initially I'll be honest with you because I fucking had a horrific time on my basic jumps course and I was like I don't really want to start getting into this like fucking freefall stuff and all the rest of it but they were like you're going on air trips I was like cool I fucking guess I better go on freefall you know but I checked in went into the building we're in Kandahar at the time and I was fucking blown away from day one I was in love with that job, that place, that fucking, it felt like I'd landed, it felt like finally that I was where I needed to be, you know, the guys came back in the next day, and it's a weird fucking sensation, because I want to say nobody spoke to you, because you're the new guy, or nobody did that, but that's not the case, everyone was so fucking good to me, like, and they were like that, because they knew that they had to be, we were going on operations, regularly, we were out most nights day vi's night vi's detention operations raid you name it we were fucking going in all directions and new guys were on everything you know so i had a lot of time to fucking gain respect and gain trust and that's exactly what i tried to do and yeah i was just fucking impressed by the what was most impressive actually was the was the how slick that whole operation was everybody knew what was going on but nobody was asking any questions if that makes sense, everyone just knew, but I was always made to feel welcome, it was like, you know that old saying, there's no such thing as a stupid question, it genuinely did feel like that, and I just had so many people to look around and learn from, it was just, it was just an incredibly intense experience, and I think you gain trust quite quickly in an operational environment, once people knew that I was a professional, and I was there for the right reasons, people like you, you know, you start to feel part of it and once I felt part of it and felt loved and felt part of the team which happened pretty quickly I felt head over heels in love with the whole thing I didn't want to do anything for the rest of my life it was just there was a long period of my time if you could have just left me in that that compound in Kandahar just hitting targets every night going to the gym I would have been fucking I would have done that for the rest of my life you know I I was actually happy.

3:15:40For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be. There was nowhere else that I needed to go and chase. I was exactly doing what I was supposed to be doing, and I'm surrounded by people that all felt and did exactly the same thing as me. One of the first guys that I met the morning after the night that I arrived, we had a bunch of welcoming briefs, basically. Chris Craig had sat me down. He was running the Partner Force at the time, and he told me everything about the Partner Force, how it works, what his job was, where I would fit in, you know, do's and don'ts, things that make them work well, things that don't make them work well.

3:16:18And it was just so impressive to me. You know, all of the team leaders were fucking rock stars to me. You know, I looked up at those guys, still do for the most part, for most of them, like they were gods. You know, I was just like, wow, like there are levels to this stuff. I'd come from a fairly high level of soldiering, but when I got to this position and these guys, I was like, okay, There are levels here that I didn't even know fucking existed, you know, and it was just a pleasure to be around. It was a happy time in my life, you know. Come back from that first deployment, we'd done a whole bunch of cool shit, you know.

3:16:50Loads of VIs, fucking loads of gunfights. It was good. It was so, so impressive to see the level of professionalism and efficiency being executed by so many people. not just the guys on the ground but the special forces support group the marines and paras on the cordon the helicopter pilots the targeteers the signalers fuck dude even the cooks even the chefs man the whole thing was just well oiled and it was a strange feeling because you're now sat in a one-man air-conditioned room with wi-fi hot showers three square meals a day good gym secure location no century very little id risk like i was like thank fuck for that this is exactly what i wanted it was exactly it was everything that i thought it would be and more

3:17:45and i just wanted to be good i just wanted to be as best as i could and i think i did that for a little while and then i got comfortable after a couple of years and then i kind of didn't stop trying i just stopped trying so hard you know i just let it roll then do you think it do you think the fact that there's nowhere else to go. There's no level up. You're at the pinnacle, correct? That's the problem. That was a problem that I suffered with because it was like, well, what the fuck else do I do now? I'm 24 years old. I've fucking got my dream job. It's not a job. It's a fucking way of life. And I kind of, not took my foot off the gas a little bit, but I kind of enjoyed it a little bit too much than I did, you know, I was drinking too much, going out, fucking, you know, chasing girls and trying to be that fucking dude, man, and it just, it just didn't really, I thought I had it, I thought I had everything that I could ever want, you know, I'm 25 years old, 24 years old, whatever, driving around in a fucking fancy BMW, I've got fucking multiple Rolexes, I look fucking in good shape, but all that, all that shit and all that stuff that I thought would make me happy didn't make me happy.

3:18:55It didn't, it was poison, it was fucking toxic, you know, and it took me a long time to fucking realize that, a long time. So, you know, if I was to look back on that career, I would just say just have a bit more, I should have been more humble with it, I think, a bit more humility, and a bit more intelligence when it comes to diet, and I don't mean fucking carbs and fats. I mean everything that you consume is diet, the music that you listen to, the people that you hang around with, the decisions you make, the drinks you have, the drinks you don't have, the clubs you go to, the ones you don't, the time you go to the range, the time you don't.

3:19:35My diet wasn't good. On the outside, it looked like I had it all. On the inside, I was fucking just hollow. And it was just about deployments. For a long time, it was just about how many fucking bombs can I drop, how many fucking bad guys can I get, you know, how many fucking jumps can I do, how quick can I put a charge on a door, like, that was it, that was, you know, that was the only thing that I fucking valued, that was the only thing that mattered, and that's all good and well, but it does wear off, and when it does, you need to have something else, you know, I don't like the person I was back then, I don't, I feel like I was a fucking good soldier, a good operator, but I was a fucking shitty dad, I wasn't there, not always, because I, there were times where I was too preoccupied in my own existence than I was, and I should have done more.

3:20:42I missed out on a lot of those years, I think, by being too consumed in my own fucking height, man. That's what it was. I was too fucking, too consumed in it and I'm drinking the Kool-Aid too much, you know. And I don't know if that's just part of growing up or what it is. And I see it now, I see it in the young guys. Not young guys, but the guys that have come through. They do the first two years where they're like panicking that they're not at the standard. Then they get comfortable and then they take the foot off the gas and all of a sudden it becomes more about all the other bullshit than it does about being a fucking good dude and a good soldier it's a weird one i think it's because i mean people that are as driven as you are or anybody that operates at that level i mean where does the drive go where does the drive go when there's no next step yeah there's nothing left to work for.

3:21:34All you can do is, and I'm not saying this lightly when I say all you can do, but is work on perfecting your craft more. And so when you reach the pinnacle of whatever you're doing, I think there's an aspect to everybody that becomes boring. And then you you have to reinvent because the drive never goes away. Yeah. It doesn't. I think for me it was. It becomes confusing. Confusing is exactly what I was about to say. It comes, it's very difficult to see the wood from the trees. You know, I was, I didn't see it. Now when I look back retrospectively, it's easy to go, oh, fucking hell. Of course, if your diet was shit, if your input is shit, the output is going to be shit, right?

3:22:33But when you're in it, it's very difficult. And I was very confused about what priorities were. It was like a boom or bust period of my life. Everything was disposable. Life was disposable. Relationships were disposable. I was living to go on deployments. I was coming back from deployment just to get ready to work up on the next cycle to go again. And when that stopped working, and it stopped making me feel good about myself, it's like you become dependent on this drug, this fucking thing, this chemical reaction that you get to doing that job. When that wears off, you channel it in other ways.

3:23:19You channel it in other ways. I used to drink a lot. to feel something, not to drown out the pain or to numb myself or any of that. It was just to feel something, you know, I'd just become indifferent. It was like nothing really fucking mad. And it was depressing, man. It was fucking dark. And I didn't really care what people thought. If I didn't like someone's opinion, I'd tell them, you know, I wasn't a fucking decent person for a long time. And I wasn't that bad, but I was pretty fucking far from being the person that I want to be at that point. I think that sort of middle period of my life or my military career, I was an exceptional soldier, but I was a fucking shitty dude, I think.

3:24:13And I might be being a bit harsh on myself, but I definitely do things a little bit differently. So when you asked me what my biggest fuck up was, was not managing my ego and not channeling my drive and taking things for granted and not prioritizing the right things. I think that was what I did. Sounds like you found it now. I'm trying. I'm trying, Sean. I'm fucking trying real hard, mate, to be better. And I get dragged back there sometimes. Well, just talking to you before the interview, I mean, it sounds like you're really trying to figure out how to be a better father for your daughter. I'm trying.

3:24:54That's all there is left to do now. There's no selection courses. There's no more operations. There's no more, it's gone. It's not there. And I'm just trying to build and be better. And it's fucking hard. It's the one thing I don't know how to do. and I'm trying to navigate it the best I can and it's fucking hard and it makes it even harder when I'm trying to shield her from all this fucking bullshit in the newspapers and all this sort of you know all these types of things these people that don't care about me don't care about my family and I'm trying to rebuild that and I want her to see stuff like this one of the reasons that I do this or I put stuff on my Instagram account is because I want her to know who I am and I want her to see all of it.

3:25:39And I want her to know exactly what it is that I've been doing and why I've been doing it, you know? And she hopefully when she grows up as a young woman, we'll see that and she'll go, I'm not perfect, but I fucking love her to death, you know? And I hope she sees that. I think she will. I hope she will. I pray. All I need to do now is just that, you know, that's the only thing left to achieve. Is there anything you would say to her right now? I love her. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the fucking birthdays and Christmases.

3:26:17And I'm proud. I'm so fucking proud of her, man. She's gorgeous. Smart. She's a fucking athlete, you know? And I just look at her and I just think, that's why I didn't press that trigger that's why I did it and I'm ashamed of myself for almost being that fucking selfish because I was selfish for a long time and it fucking breaks my heart it does but I'm still in the fight and I'm not fucking stopping I'm going to try and keep going and improve and be better. I'm going to fuck it up again. I know I am at some point. It's natural. I'm not perfect. I just want to be better. You know? So I'd say that.

3:27:14I'm sorry and I'm proud. You're off to a damn good start. Let's talk about your first operation, kinetic operation, NSAS in Afghanistan. I remember it very clearly. we was uh i was in salt three different assault teams but my job was basically to run out if there were any um we call them squirters but essentially that's people for people that don't know that's people that run away when the helicopters land move to fighting positions or try and escape capture or whatever it might be so we were runner runner control call it runner control squirt control whatever you want to call it and i remember getting out of the back of the CH-47 and running towards target.

3:27:58When those birds landed, we were on the X. And for those that don't understand what on the X means, it means we were landing on the target and running straight to where our assault positions were. And we were locking down the compound and, you know, whatever the enemy decided to do then we were going to have our say. But I remember getting off in the first, I wasn't even out of the brownout and I can hear suppressed rounds being fired. And this was in seconds of me being boots on the ground for the first time. I walk out of the brownout, still a bit more of a gunfight going on just up above where my position was, probably about 50 metres in front of me.

3:28:33And I fan out like we do in the jungle, there's a very specific drill that you do in the jungle. And that's what I'm going back on my jungle training and the guy behind me just like basically grabbed me and just like, stay in the line. And I was like, oh, okay, cool, don't fan out, basically. I was like, oh, things are slightly different here. I move to my position, step over a dude, he's got a long barrel weapon system. face down, he'd been brassed up, there was another gunfight going on in another compound around the corner, and I basically just went to the position I was supposed to be in, and awaited further fucking direction basically, there were no runners, that guy didn't get the chance to run, he was trying to fight, he'd fired some rounds, I didn't hear that as I landed because of the fucking brownout and the rotor wash, but he'd engaged the task force on infill, as they were coming out, and as he went down, the lead guy just dropped him in place, and that was the first real time, and I don't mind saying this, that was the first real time I was like up close to a dude, this is not Afghanistan 2010, where they're ghosts, and you don't often get to see them, I mean I'd seen plenty of dead bodies before, but not guys that are armed and ready to fight there and then, do you know what I mean, that was the proximity of what it was, was completely new to me, in that, you know, I'd been in a lot of gun fights till then and you know I've made a lot of engagements I say a lot half a dozen or so live engagements with people that I know for a fact I've hit but it was all at range whereas this was fucking super close and I was like that's kind of what I was looking for you know I was like yeah we've landed this is exactly where I'm supposed to be and again everyone's just so calm about it everyone's just like yeah like he shot us we shot him back that's just the way it does business and i know that sounds super basic like of course that's what you're there to do but it's when you see it for the first time you're like ah fuck this is fucking this is cool this is cool like this is this is why i went through this whole process to get to this situation to get that seat on that helicopter and then you're into like sse and i don't really want doing and I'm like it was a strange one because I was like we're doing SSE so SSE for those that don't know is basically making sure that we get all of the right information you know whether it's documents hard drives USBs anything that we can take off target that will then feed into the target in cycle so it's a super important job and it's down to the new guys basically because it's hard work and I look around and helmets off dudes got helmets off assault weapon you know rifles are just lent against the wall dudes are smoking talking all the new guys are running around like crazy trying to bag everything up and all the rest of it and I'm like how have we gone from being super hyper professional to being like standing around smoking with the helmets off I was like do you understand what I'm saying it was like it was a bit of a strange experience but that was just what feeling out the squadron was like and then you just you get used to like i'm like trying to pull century and pull guard and i'm like you don't need to do that is that why is that gunship up there and i'm like oh oh okay do you understand so it was a bit of a shift in that way but yeah that was the first within literally within seconds of stepping off the bird shots were fired enemy engaged gunned up i was like yeah that's exactly what it's supposed to be And it just carried on.

3:31:54It just carried on like that. Do you remember the far, the first time that you killed somebody for close range? Yeah, I do. Yeah. It was on a, um, nighttime vehicle interdiction. Uh, we were hitting the narco. So the, basically they were taking heroin, heroin, uh, opium and all kinds of other shit from Helmand province down to the border in Pakistan. And then they were swapping it for guns and then bringing those guns back up to use against the British army. So we were just smashing those as best we could. We were doing them day and night. uh it was a dog actually that that fucking saved me on this occasion we got off so there's there's multiple birds but the bird that i was on was in charge of again runner control basically so we had to stop a bird and then a bird that would essentially anyone that ran we would then vector towards that and then the 47s at the back would be the the sort of assault force that would then go up and clear the vehicle so i was like on you know what's the word reserve basically but these guys had run out they were gunned up um and they'd gone off into the desert bird goes down it was on a on the 60s so the black hawks american crews um and i get off my team leaders just like that and i'm at cool so you see this sparkle so it's like this ir pulse in the desert which the drones have captured this guy running and maneuvering away so they're vectoring me towards this location but it's not specific to the point where it's like i know exactly where this dude is it's a general area um and it was all sort of shrubs and bushes and i'm just sort of closing down i've got a couple of guys behind me the dog handler's there and it's a bush about sort of this high and i'm i'm coming around and i'm starting to clear it i'm starting to clear it and all of a sudden the dog comes from my position over to the right and goes right across my front and hits the bush on the left and he fucking locks on to this dude and i can see him straight away that he's got he's got the gun in one hand and he's got a fucking dog on the other arm and I just swing around and it's almost as if we had that that it was like I'm not going to say it was super professional I was like holy fuck like I nearly just got lit up there I need to slow down it was it was more shock and panic than it was anything else but we're pretty much as close as we are now and I don't remember a sight picture I don't remember anything I just put a late bread laser on his chest and dumped four five six rounds into it and that was it and i'm just like hell like thank god for that dog you know anything kind of those were those were dicey those vi's were dicey especially when you're closing down with people in those situations because they've got the drop on you for the most part obviously we've got night vision all the dogs and all the tools to get it but it only takes one burst you know but that is close that is proximity like Like, you can see the dude, like, from me to you.

3:34:37And it was like, yeah, over and done with. No one bats an eyelid. No one's like, well done, or you're right. It's just like, yeah, one time ZKIA. Weapons found. Search him, take a picture, DNA, gone. That's it, on to the next operation. Like, yeah, surreal. But I'm not going to say it didn't feel good. I was indifferent to it. There was no emotional attachment to it whatsoever. It was like, that's exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. It wasn't like, I didn't feel good about it. I didn't feel bad about it. I didn't feel anything about it, really, if I'm honest with you. It was like, well, if you're going to smuggle drugs and kill British soldiers and then you're going to run around the desert with a gun in your hand, then what the fuck do you expect, you know?

3:35:17You bought a ticket, you voted. That's the outcome. Did you feel a sense of accomplishment? Yeah, 100%. I felt like I was proud of myself because I did what I was supposed to do, you know? And it wasn't an ego thing. It wasn't like, yeah, I've done this, I've done that. It was just like, oh good, I reacted the way that I'm supposed to react and I didn't hesitate and I did exactly what was supposed to happen and the end result was right. This guy would have fucking killed me if I'd have given him the chance. I learned some lessons to it. Slow the fuck down. Like, be careful, be a bit more cautious.

3:35:48I did feel bulletproof for a long time. I did have that sense of, I've done two tours of sanging. Like, that carried me on for a long time. I was like, I can't die. I'm bombproof. I'm literally bombproof. If I've been blown up a bunch of times, shot a bunch of times, like I thought I was fucking indestructible. And that was a little bit of an early warning there just to be like, Jay, just fucking chill out a little bit. Hold your horses because it only takes one round, right? And they don't have to be surgical. The application of violence that we do in those squadrons is surgical application. And it's extremely detailed in terms of the level of proficiency and the application of it.

3:36:28It's hyper-professional. Whereas these guys don't need to be like that. They're just one round, two round here, there. And you don't, you know, I've learned that lesson before the hard way. It doesn't matter if you're the best operator in the world. It doesn't matter if you're the best Royal Marine in the world. If you step on something or you move two inches to the left or two inches to the right, you don't get the chance to be good. You're just going to get, you're going to get hurt. So that was a gentle reminder to myself there that you're not indestructible and always fucking clear your corner, right?

3:36:54So yeah, it was a strange one, a bit surreal. I'm grateful for the dog. Grateful for the dog handler. But yeah, I learned a lot of lessons on that. But yeah, I don't feel any empathy for it, man. What were you guys doing in North Africa? So I was on a small team, six-man team. We were operating at Richland. People talk about our med time when I was there was like 24 hours. There was nobody else there. But I flew into the airport on a British Airways flight. and we were gathering information we were working out which militias that we could potentially look to use partner forces for for further operations down the line we were trying to find and recover potential chemical weapons that had been left after the fall of the regime we were on a fact finding mission essentially we were just it was a low vis operation no camouflage everything that we needed was already there they'd taken it out there so you didn't fly into country with guns you didn't fly in with nods you didn't it was all there and when I flew in it was on a British Airways flight and it was all good for about 10 days and then the country imploded two militias one from the east one from the west that just basically went to war with each other and everyone fled the country.

3:38:21What year is this? 2014. Yeah, 2014. I think if I'm right, we are probably, if not the only team that's ever had to deny a safe house in time, like in situ, like real time. We got rolled up by pure luck, bad luck, depending on how you look at it. basically our compound was situated in the middle of a long road about a kilometer in length and on one side of the road you had one militia on the other side of the road you had another militia and they were just going at it but they were going at it with everything from grad rockets to zsu 234s i've never seen weapons like that you know that was that was all out scrapping and we just happened by pure bad luck to have a safe house in the middle of that location it wasn't targeted at us, it wasn't something that they knew about, but half the team are in, you know, the other side of the country doing a meeting three hours away, and I'm in the safe house with one other guy, one other operator, a signaller, a pool boy called Ali, who's a local national, and another sort of expat guy who's probably late 60s, early 70s, that we used to employ to like fucking paint stuff and you know odd jobs basically he was a brit um so we've got this mix match of people inside of this inside of this house when all this is going off and it started off quite quite gentle that's you know just a bit of gunfire here and there it was wasn't it wasn't normal but it wasn't anything to be worried about but then throughout the day it just ramped up and up and up and uh the guys were racing back as far as they can as fast as they can to come and help us out basically it's a fucking funny story like we're dressed as diplomats now these safe houses you know what they're like they're supposed to be low low vis but after each team comes in they're like oh we need this now we need that and now we need this so basically before you know it you've got a room full of machine guns and suppressors you've got dems charges you've got maps you've got fucking secret equipment you know there's a whole bunch of shit in there that we cannot afford to let be stolen or give to the enemy, you know, so it wasn't that low vis at this point, and I'll never forget this, there was like an armoured personnel carrier that was like sat, there was an outer gate and an inner gate, and it was sat at the outer gate, and we made the phone call back to HQ in Hereford, and we were like, this is on top, there were rounds hitting the building at this point, it's like, what do you want us to do, and they're like, well, don't do the destruction plan yet just wait out and see if it goes away and we were like thanks that's great advice like give me an asset and they were like oh we haven't got any assets so it's like you just just ride it out the team's on the way back and then they're like is the are the rounds in and around your position and i'm like that holding up the phone like yeah you can hear them smashing the side of our building said that well okay cool speak with the guy who's the team leader and on your call if you need to do the destruction plan do the destruction plan the destruction plan was a fucking chisel a metal tin with some fuel and a lighter that was it completely we learned so many lessons there we got it completely wrong but there was a whole bunch of equipment there secret equipment secret terminals computers never mind all the fucking machine guns like i'm trying to be we're trying to pretend we're diplomats sean right so i've got a fucking double-breasted a jacket on, do you know what I mean?

3:41:48And a shirt and I'm pretending I'm a diplomat. I'm covered in tattoos and there's a room full of machine guns. Like you make that make sense. It's not a good look, is it? And we don't want them people coming into the house to find that because they're going to think we're up to no good. Um, so they breach, they breach the outer wall and now it's like, okay, cool. We need to start, we need to start this destruction because there's, there's one more gate basically. And if they get into that gate, they're into our compound. worst case they'll kill you then it's like a sliding scale back up there's like the best case is they'll steal everything in the house they'll fucking probably capture you and hopefully give you across to you know some sort of friendly unit maybe they'll maybe they'll fucking hurt you a bit maybe they won't or they'll sell you to you know some extremist group you don't even know who these dudes are they're all high they're all fucking full of adrenaline they've got a bunch of dudes that are clearly military with a bunch of you know military equipment in a house it's yeah it was a very dicey situation there was the teams driving back as quickly as they can and then we were like we've got to do the destruction plan so it's funny you've got like the pool boy ali the pool boy with a chisel doesn't speak a word of english smashing up like top secret hard drives and all this sort of stuff and we're trying to like work out what's got a serial number on it what can we leave what can't we leave the the guy next to me he's like on the loudspeaker now he's broken speaks broken you know arabic he's like we're diplomats this we're diplomats that these guys are outside like that and it really it really hit home we had like a ring doorbell you know like the camera and uh this guy turns up and you if you were to draw like a radical islamist terrorist you draw this guy like british dpm trousers chest rig ak-47 big beard and a football shirt like a like a red and white football shirt and he's ringing the doorbell because he our compound looks different from everyone else's compound it's got high walls it's got security on it it's got barbed wire on it he's now ringing the doorbell ringing the doorbell and you just see him look up he sees the camera and he just shoots the camera but if it was it was about as close as that front door is over there.

3:44:03Like not only did the camera go black, I could hear the weapon report. And I'm like, we're in a fucking serious situation here because if these guys come through that gate, we're going to have to, we've got, we've got a couple of options. One of them is you fight to the death, which is my preferred course of action. I had a machine gun by the door and I was like, I'll fucking, I'll barricade myself here. And if I have to rather that than get captured, I'd made that decision in my head. I was like, no, I'm not fucking letting these dudes take me no fucking way. I'll die on my sword. You know, they're not going to expect the level of violence that I'm going to give them when they come through that door.

3:44:33They just won't expect it. And I might get away with it for a while, and hopefully somebody will come and help me, but I was fully prepared to go the whole way there. I resigned myself to that was going to happen. Another course of action we contemplated was breaching a hole out of the back door, basically, and running across some open ground, which again was not a great option. Not a great option. Luckily for us, they kind of gave up on trying to get in that compound right then. but they got into the other compounds that had less fortifications. So now we've got three houses. We're the middle one.

3:45:08Houses either side have now got guys on the roof. I remember looking out the window, and there's a dude with a dragon off up there. And I'm like, that's not good, because at some point, the guys that he's shooting at are going to realise he's on that roof, and they're going to start smashing all these buildings. So I was like, fuck me, this is not ideal. Meanwhile, the guys are driving back as fast as they can, trying to navigate through all the checkpoints and all the rest of it. But how they do it is they've just got lines, basically. The first line will come up. they'll expend all their ammunition then the next line will come up and they just do that all day and then they build the berm and then they get behind the berm so on so forth so this is not going away this is a very very serious this is the first time i felt helpless i genuinely felt like there's no one coming to get you now there's this is it you know if they come through that door this is you're going to fight or you're going to die so it was dicey and uh yeah we're carrying on with the destruction plan then on the jtac it's on that we're going to throw you an asset africon they're going to send you an asset and i'm like thank god for that something you know and uh they sent me a p3 orion you know p3 orion is adult it's like a surveillance bird but it's not armed sean so i'm like fucking yeah cool check this dude in at least i've got some hellfires or something or do a show of force and it's like yeah we have to stay at this altitude and we've got no munitions i'm like no good to man the beast me that you know i mean it's i need i want jets not coming so anyway long story short the guys finally make it back through the turps they you know The fixers basically negotiate through the militias.

3:46:29The militias then give us a guide. They take the guys all the way to the front door, and they pull in through the gate, basically. They've spoken to the guys that are outside. They were fairly friendly. They were a little bit pissed off. They had to stop their gunfight to get us Brits out of the situation. But they sort of come in through the gate, and the team leader's like, we've got two minutes, so we have to fucking empty that house in two minutes. Anything with a serial number on it. Dems charges, fucking rockets, fucking belt-fed weapons, rifles, NVGs, suppressors, comms kit. It's a lot.

3:47:04You know, this is a fucking established safe house. So we're just fucking throwing everything in the back of these Land Cruisers. And then the fucking, the old guy, he's like fucking having a heart attack almost. He's not in a good way. He's panicking. Ali the pool boy's running around with the chisel still. You know, the signaler's losing his mind because he's the one that signed for all this equipment. so we're all bundling in and just as we're about to go the the the 2IC a guy called george comes running back we had this alsatian he bought this alsatian from somewhere and had a bad leg his name was ricks so he comes back and now we've got this fucking stupid dog in his hand he's throwing the dog in the car and it was just it was just such a weird surreal moment but it was like that was my first taste of like low vis operations um and they're not really my thing if i'm honest sean it wasn't really something that i was excited about if i couldn't put a plate carrier on and run around at night, you know, sorting buildings.

3:47:54I wasn't really interested in it, but it was definitely a good education for me. We conducted a NEO, which is like the evacuation of entitled personnel. So we had to do all of that. Interesting story on that one, um, completely not our fault and random, but we, one of the people that we brought off and put onto a British warship that had docked up, uh, HMS enterprise, it was called. Um, he ended up being the bomber of the Manchester arena no shit yeah he was he was the guy he was he would have this was probably a few years before but we we fucking got him out yeah and it's i don't feel bad about it because i can't so if i let my fucking head go down there it'll fucking but yeah it's just mental isn't it that like he escaped that country because he had a entitlement to do so we put him on a fucking british war shit sailed him back to the uk and then a few years later he fucking clacked himself off and killed a bunch of kids at a fucking ariana grande concert that's the mentality of these fucking people you know but yeah it was it was a really really interesting um deployment a lot of a lot of good lessons i learned from it um i know exactly where this was at yeah there was u.s personnel there as well right yep there was they left in fact we secured this when the cia evacuated yeah yeah two friends had led that evacuation yeah so yeah it was exactly around that same time frame we actually secured the embassy the u.s embassy um when when they decided that the country's imploding they withdrew from the embassy basically and the u.s marine corps led that and they took everyone out and they basically said if you're the only remaining team in country we were the only guys it was like everybody had fucking gone at this point are you serious yeah and they said to us can you secure the embassy for us and we were like fucking hell there's like five guys and a dog do you know what i mean what do you want us to do you know like you know just just go down there and speak to them through the, through the fixes.

3:49:48Cause every, there was thousands, hundreds of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but thousands of people were like outside the embassy. As soon as the dudes had left, as soon as the staff had been evacuated, they were like this big building. There was, there was ISO containers or connexes, connexes full of equipment, like everything from black, not, you know, not good equipment, but everything from black Hawk knee pads to fucking head torches or flashlights to medical kit, like shitty plate carriers. But like, there was a lot of kit there and they didn't want it just getting fucking, you know, what's the word?

3:50:18Looted basically. So our team leader went down there and, you know, they were about to jump over the fence basically. And he was like, who's in charge? And, you know, spoke to this guy who was quite pissed off at being, you know, who's this fucking, you know, westerner turning up in a blazer and a fucking pair of deck shoes telling me not to raid this embassy. And, you know, fair play to him. He navigated the situation quite well. He was like, we're watching. If anyone crosses this thing, we're going to kill you all. and it worked for a period of time. And yeah, the guys actually did go in there.

3:50:48I've got a US ambassador to the city. I've got a coin that he left in his desk that one of the lads gave me, which is pretty cool. But yeah, it was a super interesting time. It was, the country imploded. Shit. Yeah. I talk about it because it's different from a kinetic operation. But as far as low-vis operations go, that one was probably the most kinetic one for a while. And like I said before, It's the first time I think we've ever, or first time in a long time that we've actively had to fucking deny a safe house, like under fire in, in fucking quick order. Um, but I did, I learned a lot about, you know, moving around in those sorts of situations.

3:51:25You know, I was always had a, always had a pistol on me, always, you know, covert carry, all of that type of stuff. We're under the guise of diplomats with diplomatic plates. We're not doing traditional operations, you know? um but i got back from that deployment well hold on how the did you get out of that me personally or that house you personally how did you get out of that country uh i flew out about four months later when they opened up the airport in the city i flew out on an africa you were there for four months while that shit was going on yeah four four months five people and dog five people and a lame dog yeah it's cool it was cool cool yeah i flew out um via malta so i flew out on a on a they'd opened up the commercial airline dude that was probably the most diciest thing i've ever done an africa flight from the city to malta landed we'd actually um recovered a hostage so there was a guy that had been captured david boland was his name by militants.

3:52:29He was like an expat teacher. They told him to leave a bunch of times and eventually somebody captured him and was holding him ransom. They figured out that situation through a third party. They released him and organized us to go and pick this guy up. So the guys we picked him up from weren't the militants. They weren't the guys that held him captive. They were somebody else, basically, like a third party, like a media type sketch, you know? So we drive up, we get this fucking dude in the back of the car and he's like he's older guy you know he's in shit state his body's we got a medic there so one of the guys was a medic so he's like looking after him but they flew us they flew us a jet from malta and it was um it was a it was a government jet it was one that the royal family had used it's like a small private jet basically to recover this dude for uk government and the guys went back to malta with him to escort him back and the ambassador there was like this is the best thing ever we're so grateful and basically gave them keys to the city but we used that jet a few more times to do um we took a guy called jonathan powell who brokered the northern island ceasefire um he was like a like a big political guy that was good at negotiating you know truces and ceasefires so we were chaperoning him around whilst we were going to these meetings and all this this type of stuff um so the boys flew out on that but i didn't i flew out early two weeks early before the rest of the guys did because I had to go back for a course, the JTAC course.

3:53:55I needed to do a refresher or whatever it was. So yeah, I flew back out. But when I landed in Malta, they just, they were at his, I think it's a Marriott down there by the sea. They were like, you know, down by the port. I don't know if you've ever been to Malta, but it was like, it was like this, a room like this. It was like, there you go. Everything's on the house, complimentary. So it's surreal. One minute you're in, you know, North Africa dealing with all that stuff. The next minute you're in Malta, which is a holiday destination, this, and then five, six hours later you're on a civilian flight the civilian flight back into london heathrow like with a bag like straight down to you know back to hereford in the pub with the boys for a few you know a few days and then onto it like no no no time to process or you know absorb what's just gone on it's just constant constant constant and then it's like yeah i was off to the um fire cell so this is where i started to become a jtac started yeah started doing back-to-back tours of jtac and this is or 2014 15 16 so like the war was popping in iraq and you know syria those places there and we were just fucking smashing smashing isis on the floor basically um this is where you worked with delta this was prior to that so i did three deployments of those and there's we can talk about them but it was just a lot of bombing.

3:55:07It was just a lot of kinetic stuff.

3:55:12One of them is quite interesting. We were the first guys to cross the border from Iraq to another country, and we drove all the way along the Turkish border. It was like we left on Christmas morning. We left, we woke up, we had a champagne breakfast in herbal and then we packed our vehicles up and we drove for three days land move and we set up a patrol base basically in a cement factory but when we got there there was nobody there i went back a couple years later and the whole thing was like the us military got hold of it there was cv-22s med bays marines all kinds of when we got there there was our six-man team, a bunch of unit guys, probably about 20, 30 of those, about 10 of them were operators, the rest were support guys, CBs, building all the infrastructure up, the comms guys, a bunch of local militia that were our security force, or partner force, and a bunch of random French dudes, and these random French dudes were fucking nuts, dude, like, really cool guys, but, like, they were so industrious, they're building shit all the time, like, we turn up with, like, two Land Cruisers, one of which has got a gun on the top, so it's essentially, it's a fucking technical, let's call it what it is, a bunch of Javelin missiles, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and a green box full of booze, that's what we had, and the French were in there like building all kinds of stuff, you know, and we wasn't laid back, but we were like comfortable with it, I remember on New Year's Eve, we were all sat around, we had like a little fire pit outside, our whole team was in a room this big and uh we were outside drinking rum and you know shooting the ship and this guy comes up out of the out of the dark like they were full body armor you know nods down and he's like he walks up and he goes is it safe and we're like it is now if you're patrolling around like that you you crack on mate you know i mean it's like yeah yeah new year's eve have a drink but um yeah no it was it was it was a cool cool experience to do that i was jtacking for them as well so i was jtacking for the unit prior to that was working in the syflic which is a big um two star uh strike cell basically and you know you're operating in a room with 100 150 people red card holders you've got coalition jets from all over the world dismantling targets all over you know all over iraq and you know targets in syria and you're just basically controlling all day you're doing an eight-hour shift and you might drop you know thousands of pounds worth of ordnance not yeah like i dropped a shit ton of bombs in those deployments a fucking shit ton like metric shit tons you know and that's not an exaggeration i winchester like b1 bombers like on a couple of occasions down at sinjar they just give me like a a4 piece of paper with a bunch of grids on it you you send them to the plane and then as the plane's checking in it will give you a system read back on the bomb to make sure that that that coordinate's been put in the bomb you get them read back of like 20 desired mean impact points dmpis whatever you want to call them and uh yeah they just blow out yeah cool that's eight away go back for a re-attack just doing that f-15s just laying waste to all these positions like serious amounts of ordnance it was a really good education for me but then i started working for a strike cell for the unit which i can't go into a lot of detail about but it was a completely different ball game we were operating we had all of syria and it was just us and we were just hunting basically we were getting a lot of information coming from the partner force and then we'd verify it with a drone and then we'd strike it and it was all going back to back to brag where the where the um the sort of red card holder was so every time we'd do a strike we'd have to get it approved we'd have to go through all the cde and all the modeling and make sure the partner force was happy then we drop the ordinance and then we'd go on to the next one and i was just shadowing watching how they did business these are 24 sts jtax so they're like dedicated professional all they do is jtax whereas i'm an operator but i can also jtax so they're at a different level and i'm trying to learn but i was just going in there and hanging out with this guy for a while and we were just learning he He was a B squadron guy.

3:59:09And one day the JTAC was like, do you want to get on the mic? And I was like, it was a quiet night, nothing going on. Everything was good, legal, permissions wise. I'd done all the spins and stuff. So it was completely above board and they trusted me. And I was like, yeah, cool. I'll jump on the net. And he was like, yeah, cool. Just have a look around this area, see if there's anything. This is where the forward line of enemy troops is. This is where the forward line of own troops is or friendly forces. And basically anything south of that line is bad. And I was like, cool. so I'm just like scanning around with the drones and all of a sudden I see like this fucking minibus basically well it's a flatbed bongo truck but it's got like 30 dudes on the back of it and it's just driving up the road driving up the road stops and all these dudes get out and they start fanning out and I'm now checking now I'm speaking to the strike director I'm speaking to him and I'm like these aren't our guys are we was like no is that right go for the part and force let's make sure these are not our guys because this is looking nefarious as fuck right so these dudes are now lining up and it's almost a textbook ambush so they've got like a main killing group then they've got cut-offs and then they've got like a rear element to it and it's all down the side of this one msr that the um the the whatever they were calling were they peshmerga sdf or peshmerga were going up and down this road basically and they were waiting for them to come up and they were going to light them up so i'm there spinning up a strike i've got uh what did i have i had a tens so i had a pair of a tens and as i'm about to start spinning this strike up i'm starting to read them the nine line and get to you know all this all this j tackery shit gunship checks him so I'm like yeah fuck yeah he's like we want to do a coordinated attack so what that means is like basically the jets will come in or the A-10s will come in and drop bombs and as soon as those bombs have hit the ground they'll disappear in a different direction and the gunship just goes in an orbit and just cleans up basically um so that's what we did like this is my first control I've ever done for these guys this is like a unicorn control right you've got like 30 troops in the open you've got an AC-130 gunship and you've got two A-10s and it doesn't get much better than that, you know, so I started to spin up this strike, and I'm not, I'm just, I'm in the zone, like I am now, you know, just talking away, and like, before I look at, there's like a whole bunch of dudes behind me, that are from like, like the command sergeant majors there, and all kinds of people, and they're just watching, they're just watching, like the JTACs are like, making sure that I'm doing it all properly, and I'm like, are we doing this, and they're like, yeah, fucking send it, so we did, we fucking smashed them all to bits, mate, it was brilliant, two bombs went in, took the main body out, and then it was just gunship after that, it was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, yep, send it, was like yeah i've got runners away yep do it again we ended up putting a gv31 which is 2000 pounder straight through up they went like a coal but underneath the road there's about six of them that like squirted away underneath there so it was like yeah put a 2000 pounder in that and i was like boom job done and it's weird because you do that like on the 25 eka 30 eka whatever it was and then you get back into a a land cruiser and you drive back through herbal to your accommodation because it was, uh, we weren't co-located with them.

4:01:54It was a separate location, you know, pass the coffee shops downtown, back into the thing, go to bed. It's like, we talked about that book on killing. That's, that's extreme violence at distance and at reach. And I did that for fucking three deployments pretty much. And I, I've, I didn't pay enough attention to how much that affected my fucking headspace. Cause it was, dude, I've shot people from here to you away. I've been in all that stuff like we all have and that was different because it was on an industrial scale like I got a Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service on one of those deployments just for sheer just for sheer volume of fucking people that we're taking companies Italians off the fucking battlefield but you're doing it from reach you know you're doing it from a fucking telephone or a fucking computer or a radio in an ops room like weird.

4:02:50How did that affect you? Um, I got fucking blase about it, really. I didn't really... It didn't really, I think it didn't affect me. It didn't do any good. I know that, you know, I kind of became immune to it, which wasn't a good thing to do. I never had a SIGCAD allegation once. I was super diligent. Like I don't fuck about when it comes to making sure that those bombs are going on the right places and neither did the units that I was working for. It's extreme professionalism at all times. The pilots are on board, the targeteers are on board, the CDE modelers are on board, the league ads are on board, like red card holders.

4:03:26it's not we're not just bombing shit for the sake of it it's extremely precise accurate fires um so you get really good at it you do you get really fucking dialed into it and it just became a process really but then i look back on it as like i've literally watched thousands of people die on fucking tv like and sometimes you'd get given a list of paper like i mentioned before bomb that and you're like cool or you go out like the other incident i took with a gunship like you're hunting like that doesn't happen unless you put the jets where they need to be but i don't get any satisfaction from it because it's like that doesn't count it's like drone warfare now like all this drone warfare shit i don't like it drones are ids and i fucking hate ids and i don't care what anyone says it's a shitty fucking way to fight a war like there's no honor in that and i kind of feel a bit like that with the jtac and stuff i don't take any satisfaction from it other than the fact that we did a lot of good for you know partner forces and we did shape the battlefield and ultimately it got rid of a lot of bad people.

4:04:23But it's quite an intense job. You'd be doing that for three, four months in tents and then you come back and you're back in Hereford and you're in the pub and you're drinking and then all of a sudden you're back out and then you're back in Hereford in the pub drinking, trying to manage being a dad, being a soldier, doing that. I did that for a year pretty much, back to back to back. It's a lot, mate. It was a very intense period of my life. And then right at the back end of that, they were like, there's a posting coming up to the unit for one year. Do you want to go? I was like, of course I do.

4:04:59So I did. They sent me over to Bragg. I lived in Pinehurst. Southern Pine, sorry, not Pinehurst. Lived in a house there. Embedded myself with a squadron. I was made to feel super welcome. Like, those guys were fucking rock stars. Honestly. I have never been so impressed by a team as I have with those guys there. As assaulters, and I say this with the utmost respect to everyone else, the best assault team, teams that I've ever worked with, just primarily on shooting and CQB and assaulting, there's nothing on earth that compares to those fucking guys in that unit. And in my team, I had like four first draft picks from OTC.

4:05:42So they were fucking rock stars. Shit. Yeah, it was super impressive. I remember being humbled the first day I got there. It was like we went and shot a Bianchi cut pistol shoot. And I was okay with a pistol. With a long gun, I'm holding my own, one, hold my own. But at the time, pistol shooting wasn't really something that we did that much. We didn't have red dots. Like, it was there if you needed it. It was very much a secondary mentality. Whereas these guys are shooting pistol all the time. They shoot more pistol than they do rifle. So 5 meters, 10 meters, 15, starts to fall off a little bit.

4:06:10Now I'm back at 20. And it's comedy. But they're like handing me magazines. I'm trying to knock these plate racks over. trigger discipline shit fucking all over the place and I was like fuck every day we'd have a shooting competition for the most part half the day would be CQB half the day would be shooting or we do some climbing or some fitness stuff in between but for the most part shooting CQB was what we did every day which is why they're so good at assaulting they're not fucking around training guys to be JTACs or you know surveillance operators or any of that stuff they're just thoroughbred assaulters and they are in my opinion um the best guys that I worked with hands down so it was a fucking pleasure because I love that I love being an assaulter when people ask you I'm an assaulter that's what I do I'm a CQB instructor you know that was my bread and butter so I realized very quickly that I had to up the game so for the first four months I used to turn up early at work I used to go on the ranges on my own I used to stay after work on the weekend Saturday and Sunday I'd take a thousand rounds and I'd go on the range and I'd just press that trigger press that trigger and just learn how to press the trigger and hold the gun properly and just pistol pistol pistol and I stopped finishing sixth and then I finished fifth and after a while and I might finish fourth.

4:07:10Some days, fuck it, I might even come second, or I might even win one, you know? And it was just that constant having to improve. That's where I really started to dial into the craft. That's where it really happened, because my pistol shooting was not where it needed to be, and I felt a lot of responsibility going over there, representing my regiment in front of the unit. In a team of all-stars, it's a lot of pressure. So I threw myself at it, and I think that gained a lot of trust and respect in the squadron, because they knew that I sucked at pistol, but I was out there fucking working to get better.

4:07:42And none of them made me feel like a dick. None of them, there was no ego, no bullshit. They adopted me as a brother straight away. They treated me like one of their own, invited me to their homes, met their families. Like I was part of their team and I am deeply grateful and deeply impressed by the organization as a whole, but the individuals and the level of compassion that they showed me was second to none. and I'm deeply, deeply proud of my time with the guys at the unit. And, you know, fast forward a few months, this is coming up to deployment time, and I'm like, I remember one of the guys came over to me and he gave me a US flag.

4:08:22He was like, are you going to wear that? And I said, am I allowed to wear that? And he was like, fuck yeah, you are. So I put my fucking US flag on my chest and I wore that with fucking pride. it goes back to my fucking association with the United States military I've been in those fucking fields with those Marines I've been in those positions where them helicopters if they don't come your casualties don't get out they're putting in those Pedros they're putting in those fucking call signs on a fucking you know tiny little hot landing zone the RAF won't come in to get us US pilots come and get us every single time you know the assets that they gave us standing side by side with US Marines, fighting, watching each other bleed and die.

4:09:05Like, I fucking respect that flag to death, and I'd die for it. So to be asked if I would wear it was one of the proudest moments of my military career, and I fucking wore that with absolute pride, and I took that flag to war, and yeah, I'm proud that I did that. I've got some fucking cool pictures from it as well. It really did mean a lot to me that I got to wear that flag.

4:09:35And initially, my deployment was kind of strange because my team went to Syria, and I didn't have permissions to go to Syria, which was a weird situation to be in. But they were looking at a different target set than the one that the UK had permissions for. Bullshit, bureaucracy, all bad guys, what's the fucking difference? Kind of was how I looked at it. so I spent all of that time working up with that that same team like for months as tight as we could be those teams are way tighter than our troops for sure we eat together we train together we shoot together we lift together like everything together together six-man team six-man team I'm Bravo six right so I'm Bravo six and uh they all go and I don't get to go with them I have to go somewhere else so i go to iraq so i'm in iraq now my team's over there and i'm dislocated from them so i'm out there doing a job down in sulimanir we're doing bits and pieces with a partner force down there ctd ctg all those guys great time and then troops aren't major comes and he's like do you want to go to the etf which is the task force they're the ones doing the real sexy missions, right?

4:10:45The raids, the fucking high value targets, not the stuff just different from what the team in Syria was doing. This was a different, different troop, different task, different mission set, but it was really what I wanted to be doing. And he was like, I said to him, do I have permission? He's like, there's a helicopter coming in tonight. I suggest you get on the helicopter, get up there and we'll figure it out. I did. I got welcomed into the team, um, like a fucking brother. they put me in that chew and I became just one of them and again we ate together trained together watched fucking Netflix for hours together and then we went on operations and we fucking tore it up together it was a really really it was probably the best deployment I've ever done we were flying around in fucking blackhawks smashing people up and it was fucking great and it was everything that I wanted and thought that that unit would be about the level of professionalism not only from the operators but from the 160th guys all the way down to the targeteers those fucking aviation pilots are incredible like those night stalker dudes are fucking so so impressive um and it was felt really really close it did i remember on one it was no it was the second it was the second one it was the second job that i did with them the troops are maybe we've been looking at this compound and the troops are uh sorry the tl of the team um was like i need you to be off the black orc and i need you to secure that window on the western side of this compound and i'm at bodger that sarge like i've been in the regiment for about seven eight years now like you want me to run off a black orc and just cover down on that one window i can do that you understand i'm like fuck yeah so i do i get out we landed like as we're going on in infill the sorry on infill the daps are lighting up this guest house they're like Literally, as we're coming in, doors are open.

4:12:32We're fucking on the ramp. Sorry, on the tailgate, essentially. It wasn't a little bird. It was a black orb. We're sat on the edge of the bird like this. The doors are open, and you can just see the whole thing. Daps are coming in, shooting shit with rockets. I was like, this is fucking cool. If you can take a snapshot that you do with an iPhone and just have that picture in your head, it would be like, yeah, this is cool. I come straight off the bird, straight to where I need to be. what we thought was a window was not a window it would just look like that from the ir signature it was actually a piece of like polystyrene and there was a heat source coming out of it so my aperture is not a fucking aperture it's it's a fucking so i'm i'm now redundant so i'm like i need to get in the fight here as soon as we're off there's a gunfight happening people are getting engaged on um two-way gunfight unsuppressed weapons going back towards the assault force and uh yeah i sort of poke my muzzle through the through this piece of polystyrene styrofoam right you call it you know you know what i mean they make cups out of it you know what i'm talking about so i like punch this through it was a winter time so they used it for insulation in the summer i think they pop it out for air but i punched it through and the guy that we're after pops up like this out of his bed from no different from me to you away three four meters and it's our guy clear as fucking day he's got the same shitty haircut same scraggly beard like and he's got this you can see his weapons right next to him he's got a chest rig right next to him and he's kind of like this between helicopters landing and me being at that aperture seconds it's that fast and i'm there and i see him and he comes up bolt upright like that and i can see him just about to do that so i just dump three or four rounds into him straight away as soon as i do that somebody else in the room pops up and he's now trying to get to that weapon system so i lit this dude up as well so this is like within the first minute of basically being there then a fucking huge explosion goes off in the front of the building.

4:14:21This guy had brought his family into the room that he was in. He called his family out. So they ran across the frontage of the building where all the guys were stacked up. A wife and two kids, he brought them in, called them into the room that he was in and then clacked himself off. So the guys are dealing with that on the front side of the building. I'm now maneuvering around the backside of the building where the rest of my teammates are locking down the backside. And then it happens, the fucking explosion happens. And I'm just like fuck me the whole wall just goes out and goes back in it's like you know the them slow motion surreal moments it was really like that it was almost silent but luck my whole team was stacked up on that and i literally walk around the corner and it just goes and there's a fucking whole bunch of dust and smoke i get hit on the head with this fucking big rock my ears are ringing this is a crazy fucking two minutes i've just jumped off the back of a helicopter i shot a couple of dudes now my team's been blown up like this is fucking nuts yeah it's crazy mate and And what had happened is somebody in that building had clacked themselves off.

4:15:20There was a whole bunch of S-Vests in this building. But because of the thickness of the walls, it had absorbed most of the blast. And instead of crushing on the guys or blowing the guys up, what happened is it actually just blown them out, if that makes sense. But I didn't know that. So the team leader's looking at me, and I'm going, where's the fucking boys? And I'm like, I don't know where the fucking boys are. They've got to be under there. So I'm now trying to fucking dig out this rubble. There's tons of rubble here now. and I'm like, the dudes are underneath there, my team is under there, and I'm like this trying to dig out.

4:15:49And I just see one of them come wandering around, out of the dust, completely the wrong way, no helmet on, no rifle, no fuck all. And I'm like, I grab him and I'm like, are you good? And he's like, I fucking think so. He's like, where's my gun? Where's my helmet? And I'm like, dude, don't fucking worry. I'll send him over to the team leader. And then where's the other two guys, right? There's a five-man team and the team leader's accounted for, I'm accounted for, he's accounted for two more guys unaccounted for and again one of them's just like when the dust set i was just lying there he was he didn't have anything blown off he was always always intact he was just in shock pick him up send him out find the other dude we recover all the equipment it's just a fucking carnage for a couple of minutes but it was like because of that evening and because of those events what happened the squadron or that troop in particular really respected me i think i think i earned their trust because they knew that i would do the right thing at the right time and i would fucking perform when it really mattered, you know?

4:16:47We had a whole bunch of fucking gnarly fucking jobs like that. I remember one particular one where we were closing up on a compound. Again, lessons identified. This is where experience comes into play. Although I was in a team of rock stars, most of those guys had only done three or four years or maybe five. I'd done eight and a whole bunch of more deployments. So I was more experienced than, I was as experienced as the team leader, but I was still Bravo 6. And I always was happy to be Bravo 6.

4:17:18So, yeah, this one fucking job we did, same thing. It was like we tried calling them out, we get engaged on infill, we're not committing assault force to the building because we keep getting blown up. This is like, every single time we go near these buildings, they crack themselves off without fail. You could almost set your watch by it. It's that predictable. So we're going to change our TTPs and tactics. so we're just going to stand off and just call these call these dudes out we don't need to get close on the building we learned our lesson the hard way luckily no one got hurt the first time so we backed off but then it's like come out they're like they start firing guns at us it's like cool hit it with the daps so the fucking daps will light it up so same again come out no they fire back cool get the ranger platoon up here they'll fire kyle gust off at it boom and you just do this cat and mouse game until either the building's destroyed or there's no more fight we're like we need to get the sse we can't just kill these people blow the building them up and leave like ultimately the minute you fire a shot at us or you don't come up with your hands out you've bought a ticket you voted you ain't it's only going to end one way like these guys are not fucking around you understand but we don't want to just destroy the building because otherwise what's the point in us being there we might as well have done that with a fucking 500 pounder you know so we need to get this fucking information so anyway we're going up we're closing and we think we're clearing this building there's like a row of it's all burnt out at this point, but there's a row of rooms, and we're working sequentially now, so it's my team, we're going from room to room to room, working up to this end one, and we're fragging every room now, so it's hand grenades are going into every single room, then we put the dog in it, then we clear it, so this is kinetic, and I can start to hear praying, I can start to hear it, and I'm like, am I fucking losing my mind here, and I've got these peltors, over-the-ear peltors, so I pop my little thing out, and sure as fuck, I can hear this dude praying, and that's never a good sign, because he's going to fucking clack himself off in a minute.

4:19:03So I'm like, and I tell him, I was like, dude, there's somebody in there. You know, Peltor, and he's like, what? And I'm like, there's somebody in that room. And he's like, is there? And I'm like, I can hear him, dude. Like, that's how close we are at this point. And he's like, fuck. All right, cool. So we put the dog in. In fact, we didn't put the dog in. The dog got wind of it and fucking was in there straight away. So now we're in a bad situation because we've got a dude in there that's definitely going to try and clack himself off, and he's 100 % armed. and we've got a dog which is part of our team in there so now we we can't just put grenades in there we can't just put a t-bomb or you know whatever it is we want to do to we can't fire up hellfire right we don't want to lose the dog obviously luckily because they don't normally come off the bite we got got the dog off the bite dog comes off the bite and then it's like now it's posting grenades you know that's how that's how intimate that is now to the point where it's like we're fucking having grenades fucking throwing at this geezer to to neutralize the threat you know but it was extremely violent those deployments like those those raids there was either it was all or nothing with those with those raids and that target set it was either yeah they come up with their hands up they get detained no shots fired all good or it was like they are fighting to the fucking bit of death and it is going to go on all night you know to the point where it almost becomes not worth going because we know that that's going to happen so it's like let's just fucking cut the comedy and just smash it with a 500 pounder and give up on this because how many operators do we need to risk to get that hard drive or whatever it might be you know but we always did it and we made it work but the level of professionalism that those guys had second to none that so so impressive that unit and um i came back from that deployment There was some other stuff with...

4:20:53So Matt, Matt Tomro is a good friend of mine. He was out in Syria working his job for the regiment. He was a B squadron guy. And he was hanging around with my team. Remember I told you my team was over there, my six-man team. so he used to phone me up and the TL used to phone me up and be like you know I've got a new Bravo 6 you're not Bravo 6 anymore Matty's taking your spot and I'm like fuck you know like the fuck's going on it's just shit talking it's all good fun but um when I got out there he wasn't going on the ground they were just he was training them to do sniper shit or whatever he was doing and the partner force and he didn't really have that connection with Matty until I I turned up and there's two Matts, one's the team leader and one's Matt Tomrow.

4:21:44So I kind of sat down with Matt Tomrow and I was like, why the fuck are you not going on the ground? He was like, oh, well, I just haven't really asked. I didn't want to step on anyone's toes. They're doing their own thing. I said, fuck that, dude. You're an awesome operator. Why the fuck would they not want to have an extra pair of eyes on the ground? So I speak to Matt and I'm like, do you mind if Matt goes on the ground with you? Can you do that? He's like, yeah, fucking hell. if you vouch for him and i'm like yeah dude i trust i'd go through the door of him like that's the biggest compliment an operator can tell anyone's i'll go through the door of him any day of the week so he's like yeah cool so he starts going out on the ground and i was there for you know a little while and we did some we did some jobs together um

4:22:27then the deployment finishes for us he stays he's on a six month rotation and we've come halfway way through his so we do our four months and we go home new squadron a squadron come out and it's only a couple of weeks of being back in brag trying to fucking get your head around that mad deployment and i get a phone call and they're like matt's been killed and i was like what do you mean matt's been killed and i was like matt's been killed there's something's happened and John Dunbar's been killed as well. I fucking couldn't shake it, man, for so long. I felt so fucking guilty. I was so guilty.

4:23:09So, so... Yeah. Yeah. If I had introduced him, he wouldn't have been on that fucking job, you know? That's how I felt about it and it's taken me a long time to come to terms with that and I know it's not that and he wanted to be on that. He wanted to be on that fucking job. but I don't know, it's fucking, that's a hard one for me, like, I fucking love that dude, you know, and I'm fucking so sorry for him and John and their families, and that fucking broke my heart, man, it really did, um,

4:23:45that caused me a lot of fucking problems for a long time, I started to drink a lot.

4:23:54I couldn't shake that feeling of guilt. I still feel it. Some days more than others.

4:24:04And it was just so hard, man. We had funerals on both sides of the fucking, both sides of the Atlantic. The guys from the unit flew over for mats. We had guys fly over for johns. It was like, it ripped our community in half, man. And I know, I know, you know, It's what we do, but it fucking this This was when I stopped running Sean That explosion and that the explosion blew the lid off that box that I told you about before That was real time for me. I Thought all my teammates were dead that day. They weren't I was lucky But then when Matt died I fucking that was it That was what fucking tipped me and that was ten years of constant warfare at this time and it all just fucking came out and I just fucking lost it I lost my fucking mind dude I finished that deployment with those guys we buried Matt we buried John and then about two weeks after that I went back to the UK and then very shortly after that I deployed back out with my own squadron.

4:25:19It was our squadron's time to go out. So I had no time to process that. And I got to theater and they were like, you're going to go and be the LNO with the unit. So I was back with the unit for another four months, which I was fucking happy about. A little bit with A squadron and then with B squadron, with Kyle Morgan actually. We said, we shared a team, we were in the same team. And I was just straight back into the fight. And I was fucking drinking hard. I was fucking getting after it. Like, I was taking testosterone. I was drinking whiskey. I was getting in gunfights. I was fucking all of it.

4:25:59And I was just fucking hurting. I was fucking dying inside, you know? And, yeah. I did a lot of damage to myself during that period. I lost my grandma as well. My grandma was as close to me as, you know, she's the one consistent factor in my life growing up. I lost her. I had to go back on R &R, last time I ever saw her. So I had to go back on my R &R to do that funeral. Matt, obviously, a very close family friend, lost their daughter who was exactly the same age as mine. my daughter a freak accident rock fell off a cliff and hit her in the head beautiful baby girl you know that might used to play with my daughter so that hit home and then

4:26:52yeah there was a bunch of other with a helicopter crash we lost one of the 160th guys i watched that i watched that bird go down i watched that team get fucking smashed to bits i came off the back of the we were fought four birds landing and i was on three judge three three and they were on judge four four and i'm on the left side port side door as we're going in they fire the ir rocket to the dz it's a really dark night as i go off the bird the last thing i do is i look over and there's a load of like what looks like sometimes when the dust and the sand from the helicopters it's like a little white light you can see it it's like you know what I mean it's like it like glistens in like so I see that and I'm like okay cool judge four falls down and as I get off the bird iron clip running towards target and I just see this fucking debris field everywhere I'm like this is fucking weird I'm like what is that and then I look over and I just see the rotor gear the top gear you know the bit that sticks out the top of the helicopter where the um the blades are attached and it's just on the side it's on the floor and I'm like fuck and I look over I'm the I'm like literally the closest guy to it at this point and I look over and the fucking bird is down and it's on its side and it's like fuck the fucking but that's not hard landing that's a fucking crash and there's fucking dudes all over the place it fucking hit the deck basically and it'd gone like that and as it went the guys were getting ready to jump out the bird so some of them are unclipped now so they're getting thrown out some of them are clipped there was guys clipped onto the bird as it's like two or three feet across the ground underneath it basically being dragged along anyway we lost the pilot the pilot was killed all the boys were fucked up and it was just a fucking shit show fucking dudes wandering around like dudes do it's like where's my nods like fucking never mind your nods bro it's fucking bigger fish to fry here you know and i remember running back to it and then being told no go and lock down your position and that professionalism then i know it doesn't sound callous, but that was fucking impressive, we've just had a helicopter crash, continue, fucking Charlie Mike, go to your position, lock down the compound, and we did, we fucking dealt with that Moscow situation, and then we got right back to work, that fucking impressed me deeply, and we fucked those dudes up that night, and we got everything we needed, and that was, that was another cat and mouse game of going in and going back out, throwing grenades, all right, cool, we're not playing this fucking game anymore, We ended up smashing it with a GBU 39, which is a 250 pound bomb coming off the gunship.

4:29:24That's what, that was the end of it. We were like, nah, we're fucking done playing games with you, dude. We've given you fucking multiple chances. We've got fucking, we've got fallen angels and we are not fucking around tonight. So we smashed those dudes up pretty fucking good, you know? And, uh, we got to the morning and we were like, we all thought they were just going to take us back and they were like, nah, you're staying on the ground. was that why don't we deny the helicopters that now we are not having another fucking mogadishu here we are not leaving that fucking bird here we've lost people here and there's no fucking way on god's earth are we going to stand by and watch people jump up and down on that helicopter we ain't doing that we're staying and we're recovering every single fucking piece of it and that's what we did we stayed on the ground all day all night 36 hours we were on the ground we caught on that helicopter the teams came in we recovered it they did a land convoy they drove in they low-loaded that bird and they took it back to where it needed to be and we did not leave a fucking single piece of u.s material on that fucking battlefield and rightly so you know like fuck those dudes you don't get that from us we don't give you nothing they take everything and give you nothing you know and i was impressed by that too you know just the whole mindset and mentality of that i've said this before and i'll say it again british officers are built and bred to be politicians.

4:30:44US officers are built to be war fighters. I fucking firmly believe that. Some of the command decisions that were being made on the ground that night by those, by those leaders is deeply fucking impressive. And I can only say how proud I am to have been part of it. And that's why that flag means so much to me. That's why moments like that. But, um, yeah, that was, that was a fucking bad time in my life, dude. There was a lot going on. after that, I went, I'm still deployed now, I'm still, I'm still in theatre, and I finished my four months with that squadron, and I go back to finish off the remaining two months with my own squadron, and I am fucking drinking, and I am not giving a fuck about anything, life, I didn't care.

4:31:36I just didn't care. I was just trying to be anything. And it all came to a head one night and I had to go home. They're like, Jay, you need to fucking go home, bro. You need to go home and you need to fucking rest. And I did. I was burnt the fuck out and I had nothing to give. I was done, man. And for the first time ever, I had to take a knee. I drove so hard and so fast for so long and never stopped that the wheels came off and that's exactly what happened. And I went back and took some time out of the squadron and tried to process it all. Tried to process 10, 15 years of fucking continuous combat.

4:32:22Continuous fucking combat. And I just couldn't do it. I didn't have the strength. I didn't have the tools.

4:32:32And all the fucking body armor and gunships in the world can't save you in those fights, you know? And I didn't do very well at it. I really didn't. And I'm resentful for the fact that when you put your hand up and say, I need a fucking break, you get labeled. There's a stigma that comes with that. I don't care what anyone says. You get downgraded. They take you off the Yorbat. you're not deploying you're not allowed to even fucking play with guns so the one thing that i had my fucking safety net they took that away from me and they put me in some fucking shitty job and they were just like yeah you go and do your thing i said i fucking help i need help and they fucking didn't give me enough and when they did give it to me they made me feel like shit for taking it and I fucking hate them for that.

4:33:25But I took some time out, I did, and I was like, right, I need a new hobby. So I took up boxing and I fought in the regimental boxing show, which is thousands of people and normally operators don't do it. They bring in the army team or the navy team and they'll box each other and it's a money spinning exercise. people come and donate celebrities and all this bullshit and Tom Hardy and all these kind of people come to it but I was like no if it's an hour fucking building then there should be operators fighting so I took up boxing and they're like Jay this fight's in three months I was like I know it's like have you ever boxed before and I'm like no it's like this is no joke these are like legit you're gonna be in there with a legit boxer that's probably been doing this a long time I was like fuck it can't be that hard I'll learn so I went and lived in London took some time off work and just trained trained trained for for three months lived my friends are pro boxing coach so I lived like a fighter.

4:34:16I lived in a tiny little one-bedroom flat. I trained three times a day. I didn't drink. I did everything I could to get my mind right. And eventually, fight comes along. I feel like I'm finally back on track. I feel like I've regained some control. And, you know, I had to have something to focus on, Sean. You know, that's why I took up boxing. I was like, well, these motherfuckers ain't going to let me shoot anymore. And I damn sure ain't I'm going to be able to go back to theater. So I need something. So I'm training for this fight like a professional. I put my heart and soul into it, mate. And the night after, I go out for a couple of celebration drinks with my friends.

4:34:58I've got two black eyes. I didn't win the fight, unsurprisingly. I've got two black eyes, and some woman comes up to me. She starts talking to me like I'm a piece of shit. Oh, what have you been doing? What have you been doing? she's come up to me and I'm like, sorry, what? She goes, all right, have you been boxing? I was like, yeah, I was in the, uh, I was in the show. Yes. She goes, oh, it doesn't look like you want. She completely tried to humiliate me in front of my friends, basically. So I said, sorry, who the fuck are you? And she's like, oh, don't you know who I am? My, my husband's a sergeant major.

4:35:28And I was like, I don't give a fuck who your husband is. Like, I'm sure he wouldn't be that impressed with you coming up to dudes on the fucking, you know, talking the way you're doing. She's like, I know the commanding officer. I'll get you fired. And at this point here, I'm like, you fucking don't talk to me like that never fucking come on to me i don't care who you are at this point like you're so disrespectful and like you are not your husband when it comes to rank do not try and pull that shit with me you know anyway she goes off and then writes up some bullshit story i get pulled in they give me a three-month warning i get punished it's just like the fucking hypocrisy of it it's just i gave my heart and fucking soul to train for that fight and she comes up to me like that and i get punished after everything that i've just fucking done there and like that was the start of it man that was when I started to lose the fucking will to live literally I was like I can't win I can't win if I do I can't win if I don't I dedicate my life I don't train I don't you know I don't drink I train pick up a sport I represent my regiment in the boxing ring in front of a thousand people it's quite it's quite a scary thing to do get in front of all of your peers under them lights and get in the ring with somebody in box especially if you don't know how to do it so I was fucking angry about that dude really fucking angry and yeah it was that that was like no you're not going to be in the squadron any longer you've got to go and do another job so then I was given the job of being the CQB instructor and that was great that was fucking great because I had something to fucking focus on again and that's when I started coming up with you know looking found GBRS and was looking across and I had people that looked up to me and I had purpose and I became a subject matter expert in the thing that I love.

4:37:06Being a chief instructor of the CQB cell in the regiment is the best fucking job in the world, bar none, period. In my mind. I was winning again. But I just couldn't shake that fucking feeling. I just couldn't fucking shake it. I'm just hopeless. There's nothing I can do that's going to make me feel any better. So I'm like, fuck, I can't win. And I felt like that. And I stopped going to see the nurses, like the therapists, because every single time I walked into that office, she'd make me fill out a form that said PTSD on the top of it. And it's fucking degrading. Like, don't talk to me like there's something wrong with me.

4:37:47Look at my military history. Look all the shit that I've been through and put myself through. No one's accountable for that for me like stop asking me if I'm going to kill myself do you understand like do better and she admitted it you know and again I want to bring this up because it was fucking woeful the support that we got and I know my friends have been through similar experiences and they'll say the same thing and it might seem a little bit unfair me saying this on here because they can't defend themselves so I'm not going to name people because I've got more class and dignity than that but what I would say is if they are watching this they need to do fucking better because these operators need it and they deserve it and I felt that personally and I felt let down I did and to be punished for some bullshit that didn't even happen no one asked for my side of the story you know it just sent me spiraling it just sent me spiraling and spiraling to the point where I just fucking ended up in a car with a fucking pistol that's how I got there

4:38:47I did too many deployments too quickly without processing it is my learning point from that and I thought, my ego thought that I could handle it and that I would be alright and I was until I wasn't and then I really wasn't and it was too late and I couldn't stop it and the only way I could stop it was to do that. That's what I thought and yeah I'm not fucking proud of it but now I know what that looks like I know what rock bottom is and I'm never fucking going there again never never never never and I'm grateful for that you know now I've got a superpower now I know what the bottom really looks like and I'm nowhere near that you know but that was a fucking crazy crazy period of my life that was like 2018 basically from 2000 well, if you really want to go back from my first deployment in 2008 all the way up to 2018, which at that point it was, that was 10 deployments, 10 years, fucking multiple different jobs, selection, trying to be a fucking dad, Afghanistan four times, fucking God knows where else, North Africa, Iraq, a whole bunch of fucking, whole bunch of shit's happened in that time and I

4:40:19I just didn't deal with it. I couldn't, I didn't know how. And I hope, you know, if fucking some person sees what I'm saying and goes, if you sound like me, you gotta fucking address it boys, I'm telling you. There's too many fucking dudes putting their fucking uniforms on and hanging themselves in garages. We've gotta stop it and the only way to do it is to face it and it's the scariest thing I ever fucking did. It terrifies me because I don't know the answer. I don't know how to solve it. It's not a CQB problem. There's no, there's no doctrine for it. You know, it's hard. It's fucking difficult.

4:40:51And I'm grateful. And I truly, truly, truly am grateful for the support that I've been shown by people. And I mentioned it before. If it wasn't for DJ and Cole giving me that lifeline, I'd be fucking lying in a ditch in the Ukraine somewhere, or I'd be fucking wouldn't be sat here. I can say that with certainty. So, you know, again, truly grateful and truly thankful to have good people around me. You know, I'm blessed. And I am still in the fight. And I ain't ever going back there. And I'm only going one way now. And I'm getting stronger. And I'm getting wiser. And I'm getting more emotionally intelligent.

4:41:33I'm getting more in touch with myself. And I'm being kinder to myself. I give myself a bit more slack these days than I used to.

4:41:42But, yeah, it's not fucking easy to do. That CQB job did help me though, it did. How are you doing now? I'm good. I am, believe it or not, I look like a mess tonight. I'm good, I'm really good. I'm happy, there's no dark clouds on the horizon. My relationship with my daughter is not perfect. I can do more, but it's the best it's ever been. We were on vacation recently together, she's so cool. We hang out. I'm happy. Does she know any of this stuff? Nope. I can't. I'm strong enough to tell her face to face. I can't. I'm weak when it comes to that, you know. Is she gonna watch this? She will. Maybe we'll watch it together.

4:42:40it's very difficult to have that conversation with a 15 year old you know but in some way on some level I hope that when she does see this maybe me not showing up for that birthday party makes a bit more sense now there were times out there I couldn't be a dad I just couldn't I didn't I couldn't I would have been it would have been it would have been a bad fucking idea you know so if I I didn't turn up that day, it was because there was some stuff going on that I had to kind of figure out, you know, I don't want to see me like that. What am I?

4:43:19How do you think she'll handle this? Well, she's level-headed. She'll see it and it's important to me because I need her to know who I am. And I need her to know that I am never, ever going back to that place. I've already been there. It's not like I need to see it. I've already seen it. I know what it's like. And I hope she takes some strength from that because I am fully focused on trying to be better in every way I can. And I've got to get this out of my system. This helps for sure. But I don't want to have to lie to her anymore. I don't want to have to pretend that I'm okay or I've been all right.

4:44:02I am now. I'm good. But I just wanted to know who I am. you know I sort of want I'm really happy you're doing this huh I'm really happy you're doing this I am I'm trying man I think she will be too I hope so she's a level headed girl man she'll get it like but that's why when people put pressure on my family or they start to do things that hurt my family Especially if it's my own people My tolerance for it is fucking less than zero My empathy for you is zero And I'll be ruthless In my pursuit of getting what's right And what's right for not only for my family But for the other families Because there's a million stories just like mine I'm not alone, I know I'm not There's a million other guys out there There's a squadron full of them On both sides of the Atlantic Doesn't matter what colour that flag is What shape that patch is SWAT team guys, law enforcement guys firefighters, you know, it's not even just military guys, young men all across, there's an epidemic of mental health issues, and people don't like saying mental health issues, but let's fucking call it what it is, because if we don't, then guess what happens, and if by actually saying it, and actually addressing it, it gives somebody maybe a little bit of confidence to go and talk to somebody or just even acknowledge it personally, then it's fucking worth it.

4:45:40So I'm glad we're doing this too. Good. Take a break. Sure. I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign Superbad.

4:46:29She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show. And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind-blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's going to be all things terrorists. How terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part. The newsletter is actually free. We're not going to spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two if we release two shows.

4:47:11The only other thing that's going to be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But, like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up. Link's in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.

4:47:47Like our extra intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions. Our new SRS on-site specials and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. And the best part? Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission, and become part of the Sean Ryan Show's story. all right j we're getting ready to talk about what you what you originally came here for yeah and um but before we do i just want to say thank you for for being so open and talking about all that stuff i know it's it's it's not easy to revisit that kind of stuff but no

4:48:42I'd bounce that thank you right back to you and say thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that. And I think it is important. It's important for me for lots of personal reasons. But I also think it's important that you don't waste an opportunity like this. And that you have to be a bit brave sometimes. And if you don't, then you can't affect anything. and you know I want there's good that comes from this situation I'm in a good spot now and I'm in a good spot because I have had to and I'm willing to acknowledge everything I've just talked about and be aware of it and have that level of emotional awareness and it's helped me out an untold amount by just being able to look in the mirror and understand where it is I've been and how far I've come and how lucky I am and how much good stuff I've got going on in my life and how grateful and thankful for it I am because I really, truly am and I'm in a really, really good spot now and long may it continue.

4:49:58But you've got to air that stuff out. You've got to do it. You can't keep it in. Trust me. You know the drill. It doesn't work. and i've been a test case for that myself and i know it doesn't work i'm never doing it again so thank you sure my honor and you're welcome thank you brother let's get into it yeah let's talk about your last operation yep 2022 um i was an assault team leader so not a troop sergeant major but an assault team leader so i was in charge of a fire team essentially but i was also a targeteer and we'd been watching this guy conduct attacks. He was the partner force's number one target that they wanted.

4:50:44He was an assassination cell leader. He'd done a whole bunch of nefarious stuff. We'd watch him open and carry weapons, which was very rare. It shows one of two things, naivety or full radicalism because they don't open carry because they know we can see it. So if they do, then it means that they're serious. They're true believers. So anyway, after weeks at this point of gathering information, intelligence, watching these guys do all kinds of bad stuff, basically, we was ordered to conduct a detention operation on this target, which I planned or was involved in the planning with heavily and we did everything we could to mitigate risk to force and mitigate risk to mission by our planning process and our professionalism in terms of trying to put ourselves in a most advantageous position in order to capture and detain this individual which was the main goal the objective of this operation was to detain this individual as we had done successfully dozens of times before on that deployment and we were in a good spot with it we understood the human terrain we understood the location we had spent hundreds of hours at this time of manpower isr and we had a good handle on the situation so the order was given signed off from the highest level from my regiment to go down and attempt to capture this individual so on the night of the operation July 3rd 4th we went down and that morning he'd conducted an assassination on a local checkpoint and we observed him wearing a suicide vest and I remember coming in that morning and being like damn looks like he's got a vest on and then we get reports human reports telling us that yeah that's exactly what what's been going on and he's now driving around this town with that vest on as a status thing to say you know this is what I'm about doesn't change a thing for us we approach the same operation as we would do anything you know there's no more or less diligence put into it due diligence is always applied and we try our very very best as professionals to make sure that we are not putting ourselves in unnecessary risk and that we're dealing with the situation in a professional manner so it doesn't make any difference to us it doesn't change how we look at it it doesn't change our mindset doesn't change our approach to this target it's just another target and we would consider all people to be of high threat this one was just active at that time so anyway for a series of events we uh we moved down on vehicle and the primary location that we had planned to do the operation had changed last minute because he's now hiding in a rural location which we know and have observed before to be a hideout location where they go to cache weapons which we've seen there to plan attacks and to basically hide out when they think the local partner force is probably going to come and try and do a raid he was right you know but unfortunately for him we'd been watching him for weeks so we knew exactly where he was going to go and sure enough that's where he was.

4:54:16Anyway as we move closer towards the target he gets spooked he then moves off into a different location and we go firm where we are and the decision is made to pursue into an urban area which we don't take lightly because we've planned meticulously and in detail for a very long period of time executing the operation on a specific place on the ground. So we understand it, we've got all the positions are there and all the cordons and all the rest of it. So now we're having to take a little bit of time to just re-evaluate the plan, do a risk assessment and understand the situation that we are potentially walking into and does it merit the sort of risk versus reward conversation, which to us it did and we were comfortable with what we did.

4:55:07comfortable with the decisions that we were making at this point. So we get off the initial target and we start moving into the urban area where this guy has gone back to his original location, his original house. He's picked up a couple of other individuals that we know to be assassination cell members and now I'm moving to a third location which is a known weapons case and we know it's there because we've got the intelligence reports and the ISR footage to back that up so it's all matching in line with pattern of life it's all nefarious and he's already tried to avoid capture one time when he hurt our vehicles so now he's effectively moved to another position and then a further position to avoid capture so our intention never changes we are there to conduct a detention operation we get out of the vehicles as soon as we get out the vehicles were engaged multiple times from different firing points very difficult to pid those firing points at night and in that that time frame you've got multiple radios going off there was no aviation the jtac couldn't get the the um apaches overhead quick enough um so we were basically on our own and now we're in a very dangerous situation you have to understand sean that we are not on the original target that we planned we are now in a place of his choosing in the night against guys that are armed, we know them to be armed, and are now engaging us actively.

4:56:38I'm not going to go as far as to say troops in contact, because that has a different connotation in my brain, that's a different thing, but we are under fire for sure. And everybody in the task force acknowledges that there's like 50 people on the ground, and everyone's seeing what we're seeing. This is not just my opinion, this is fact that's been backed up by dozens of witness statements at this point, ISR footage etc etc we get out we move into an L shape formation which is exactly what we would employ to do a detention operation at this point here there is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that this is a very dangerous situation but we are making every single attempt we can to capture this guy detain him we're still taking incoming rounds into the into the team now i see people maneuvering and he's not maneuvering away he's not maneuvering in a way that's peaceful he's not got his hands up he's not he is moving in an aggressive manner and he is moving tactically and when i mean tactically i mean up down like soldiers move when they're moving into position now i know that there's weapon cases around it and we're under fire so i have to be you know i to make decisions on what I'm seeing in front of me.

4:57:58So I make the decision to engage the target. It's hostile intent to me all day long. It's a threat to my teammates and it's a threat to myself. And the rules of engagement are there to help us. And this is well within our rules of engagement for the most part. But we are there to detain this guy, but he is now trying to fight us basically. so my team and I we return fire and we start to maneuver up on this on this element so we know that there's four people right and we are getting closer towards the target and I engage one of the targets from roughly 130 meters and get effective hits on target essentially and we're still maneuvering up towards the thing so in my mind there's four there's four people out there and this is highly dangerous so we're moving with extreme caution and due diligence making sure that we've always got one foot on the ground making sure that we're communicating to our satellite and call signs and making sure that everyone is aware of what we're doing there are no fratricide issues and we're now closing up on the enemy as per good doctrine okay as we start to get closer you can start to see this individual moving um still still moving away from us and like across our path not backwards not forward not surrendering um and not putting his hands up and this is immediate threat now we're in a farm farmland basically it's undulating ground it's dark um and it's you know it's it's a high risk position i'm now committing my teammates and myself um towards these enemy combatants that we have already established are hostile and there should be four and we're only tracking two at this point so this is an extremely dangerous position for me and my guys to be in um and due to the professionalism the courage and uh you know extraordinary level of you know boldness from those guys next to me to my right and left we managed to close down these these enemy combatants and neutralize the threat times two i'm still concerned about where the other people are so we then withdraw back to the vehicles and everything's okay we then go and conduct um sse on the on the two bodies um confirm what we need to know the partner force are absolutely ecstatic at this point their number one target has been taken off the deck um so all in all there is a level of satisfaction that we executed a good operation we were planned to do it and we you know the fact that he bought a ticket and voted was his his option, he did that.

5:00:38We gave them multiple, multiple chances to be detained and they wanted to fight us, they wanted to kill us. And it just turns out that we were better than they were. It's that simple. So I didn't really think too much of it. It's what we were there to do. We were ordered to go and do that and we demonstrated our professionalism to the highest level, in my opinion um and at the time i thought that would have been okay our commanding officer at the time signed it off and was happy with what had happened and had no issue with it um and then it got pushed up to the director of special forces you got put in for a citation for this yeah i was given a citation for that whole deployment yeah but it never came through it disappeared somewhere in the mail, you know?

5:01:33Um, but yeah, I was told by multiple people, including my sergeant major, you know, well done basically. We've written you up. Um, I'm not here for medals. It's nice to get recognition. It would have been nice for my daughter, for sure. It would have been a nice way to end my military career. Well, I'm bringing that up because of what you're about to say. Yeah. Before I go into what we're about to say, it's really important for context that people understand why this has happened. About three days before that, there was a BBC Panorama documentary making allegations against the regiment for alleged misconduct in Afghanistan 10 years previous to this.

5:02:18now the guy that was front and center in the crosses for this investigation is a guy called Gwyn Jenkins and he is now the first sea lord at the time he was the director of special forces so in charge of all special forces he is under the crosses for his mismanagement and unprofessionalism in dealing with these alleged incidences you know 10 years previous so it goes through my regiment It goes all the way up to his level, and he decides to launch an investigation into this, in his words, to show transparency, even though there's probably nothing wrong. And if there was anything wrong, they wouldn't have launched an investigation on it.

5:03:02Does that make sense? So he's done this, and he admitted to doing this on a VTC, and I stand by this because there's a whole room of people that saw it. He basically said, it's more important that we be seen to be doing the right thing than it is for this incident to go away. What does that mean? It means he threw us under the bus, knowing full well what would happen, because he wanted to be seen to show transparency without any care in the world for how that would affect us and our lives. No well done. Congratulations on being professional and doing a good job. the thing that we ordered you and trained you to do.

5:03:42He sent us down the river and he did that of his own admission to make it seem to the world that they are doing due diligence and that does not sit well because that is not what being a good leader is about. You do not throw your own guys under the bus for your own personal gain and that's exactly what happened and that was acknowledged by my commanding officer. It was even acknowledged by the policeman that came and arrested me in theater. They knew and said - They arrested you in theater. They arrested, wait, yeah. Oh, the plot thickens on that one, yeah. But it's widely known and acknowledged that the reason for this was so that he could be seen to show that he does do investigations because he'd failed in the past to do it properly.

5:04:33Does that make sense?

5:04:37so at the time so he's holding somebody accountable to save his own ass 100 well not holding somebody accountable because there's nothing to be held accountable for no because it's all been cleared because funny old thing three years later down the line they've realized that there is absolutely no wrongdoing and what we did and it was all completely within our rules of engagement It was not an excessive use of force, and it was professional. Like, there's no other way of saying it. What specifically instigated this specific incident? From which perspective, mate? Why did he pick this? Of all the combat, through all SAS, why is he honing in on this specific incident?

5:05:22Because it was one that happened underneath his watch, and it was one that happened three days after a BBC interview naming him that he'd been involved in this. That's why. And everybody knows that. And it's disgusting, in my opinion, to do that. And it shows a complete lack of moral courage, a lack of a spine, and it's cowardice. It's sending people down the river to save your own skin, for your own political and your own personal gain. and I'm not having it. Has he ever been in a position like this on the ground? Probably not. I asked his league ad, his lawyer that he had, they went down the line of its excessive force, which exactly what it says on the tin is, how can you quantify excessive force?

5:06:14He said there was a high round count. I would then argue that by doctrine and standards that we set ourselves accountable for in UKSF in order to be able to deploy on operations overseas or domestically, we reach a level of standards when it comes to firearms and manipulation of weapon systems. And one of the drills, one of many drills, is essentially a six-round from the high-ready in 2.5 seconds. We fired about that between three guys, okay? So he doesn't even understand his own doctrine because it isn't excessive force. Now, I'd like anybody, can you explain to me how much force is excessive?

5:06:51Is one round too many? It's two. Or are we engaging targets until the threat is neutralized? Where is it? Or is it subjective? So they took the subjective opinion on what we did, and they basically launched a full investigation into it. They opened up the door to the RNP, who are themselves under scrutiny for their unprofessional conduct, not only in this operation, which regiments launched a formal complaint against them for the handling of how they've done it in their, um, overzealous activities, which I'll go into in detail in a minute, but they're also under the cross says for their, um, their unprofessionalism in Afghanistan and not doing their jobs properly.

5:07:33So you've got two forces operating against us. Now you've got RMPs that have got, you know, a chip on their shoulder and are fully going in on this in, you know, what are RMPs? Royal military police, Royal military police. and then you've got a general who is using us as a test case to better his own political and you know personal career essentially now all of these things I've said are factual and he's even admitted that that's exactly what it was but he didn't understand the ramifications of it or where it would go and what's ironic to me is that when he left that position which is the head position in UK Special Forces.

5:08:20His next guy in came and spoke to us in theatre and said this would, quote, witness a room full of people, this would have never happened under my watch. That's never excessive force and you did the right thing. That's what he said. He's changed his tone on that a little bit now. He's gone back on it, but he forgets that we were all there when he said it. So the outgoing guys... Who is this? Who was it? what was his name? It'll come to me. Nick. I think his name's Nick. He'll come to me, but he's the current director of Special Forces. So the guy that replaced Gwyn Jenkins. Does that make sense?

5:08:59Everybody understands why this has happened, but nobody's doing anything about it. So this is where it starts to unravel, and this is where the real consequences of people's actions, of throwing good guys under the bus, not only does it undermine the confidence in the chain of command. Not only does it undermine the individual operator's confidence to the point where team leaders coming in to replace us were telling us we're not putting our guys on the ground because if they do what they're supposed to do, they're going to get this treatment. We had guys in the squadron that didn't want a soldier.

5:09:32We had guys that have left the military. Out of the four guys in my team, two of us left. One of them tried to leave but couldn't for visa issues, which I'll explain, and one of them is still serving, still serving his country after what they've done. what a fucking hero, you know, what a fucking good dude that is. But it was just how the whole thing was handled. Now, I'm not going to get into the specifics of pointing the finger at every single person that's been on professional list, because the blame solely lands at Gwyn Jenkins' door. And he's been recently promoted to the first Sea Lord, which is an extremely high position within the military.

5:10:11He was the intelligence, military intelligence advisor to the former prime minister. When the new government got in, he lost that job. And then he got given the first sea lord job and everyone's there going, oh, what a great guy. What a great guy. No, he's not. And for anyone watching this, you need to be careful because that man only cares about himself. He doesn't care about protecting the reputation of the regiment. He cares about himself because he knows that he's under the crosshairs for this Afghanistan stuff. So we were sent down a river. We were told, ordered to write witness statements with no legal representation in theater.

5:10:54I voiced my concerns about that and I think I was right to do so because all the Royal Military Police did was they took witness statements that we were made to write and And by made to right, we were given a document that said, if you do not do this, you will be charged, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So we weren't given an option basically. And I said, okay, we'll do the witness statements, but I think we should have legal representation. No, you don't need it. Don't worry about it. The first thing that the Royal Moralty Police used against us was our own witness statements that we told them we should have legal representation for this.

5:11:28So without any context or no evidence, they were using our own words against us, even though we said, hang on a minute, can we have some protection here? So they were caught out with that, which obviously impacted us. They trapped you. They trapped us. Yeah. And, you know, I'll read you some of the impact statements from the individual shortly. I'll give you a broad brush and then I'll get into some details. This happened three years ago, Sean. And it's only last week that they've concluded that there was no wrongdoing and we've been acquitted of all charges. No sorry, no compensation, emotional compensation, no nothing.

5:12:14And it's ruined people's lives. And it's something that needs to be addressed because this can't happen again. And it's not okay. and it's not fine to just wash it under the carpet and carry on. That's not in my nature. This isn't about anything other than having our perspective put across. And I've spoken to all the guys involved and they fully support what I'm doing because they know, hopefully, this might prevent it from happening in the future. I've already won the battle in terms of I've been acquitted, I've been vindicated that I did the right action after three years. Three years. to a point where I was even questioning my own self, you know, that's a dark place to be.

5:13:01And it's a very stressful situation to be under investigation for double murder, something that you know isn't true and something that doesn't read well. Can you imagine having that conversation with a 15 year old? Can you imagine having that conversation with your mother? Can you imagine having that conversation with your loved ones, your friends, your girlfriend it's it's a heavy thing to carry and we have done it we've carried it for three years um and now it's finally gone away and and all the media picked this up and all again all of the media picked this up we didn't get a voice we didn't get our opinion we've not said a word we've been professional we've been dignified and we've carried on essentially just trying to maintain some sort of level of sanity and try and rebuild our lives.

5:13:54But the level of accuracy of the media reports has to have been from a leak. It has to have been. There's no way on earth they could, they've got the picture completely wrong and there's no context in it, but the broad brush, the main details are roughly fairly accurate to a point. So it has to have come from inside the organization itself. And it's incredibly difficult when people keep putting stuff in the newspapers, on the news and family members are reading it and it just it's always murder you can't look past the word murder I've never murdered anyone in my life I'm a professional soldier that does exactly what I'm supposed to do with inside the confines of my rules of engagement to neutralize the threat if needs be like what like I've been trained to the highest level I've operated next to some of the most professional operators on the planet like professionalism is something that we take extremely seriously and it's insulting to me that people would think that we were unprofessional and it's shameful that they can band us with accusations in order to save their own personal careers that's disgusting that should never happen ever again but it just kept going and going and going and they tried to arrest us all at the same time but they failed miserably because of the RMP, the military police's incompetence.

5:15:18Okay. My personal, I'll tell you my personal situation first. They flew out to theatre. They came to our operation station, our command post. They arrested me. They searched my room. They confiscated my tablets and my phones. So I couldn't contact my family. And they wanted, I don't know what they were looking for. I don't know what they were looking for on there their argument was well we have to arrest you so we can seize your Personal electronic devices. I was that they're in a bag. There you go. You can take them So yeah, but we need to search a room the keys are there do it. They still did it So technically I've been arrested for murder at this point now when people look at investigations in the past Oh, we've done this before yes and yes and no Nobody's been arrested for it.

5:16:08Okay. One of the guys was arrested in front of his mother in front of his sister, and the RMPs told him, we're arresting your son for murdering two civilians. I've got it all written down. I've got it all here, everything documented. One of the guys was arrested at his home in front of his wife, where the policeman told his wife squarely in the eyes, we're arresting your husband for murdering two civilians. You can't unsee that. Family members will never, ever be able to unsee that. One guy was tricked. by the rnps of coming for an interview under caution they got him in a room they basically locked the room and said bang you're under arrest so they could search him whilst he's whilst we're deployed whilst we're out there serving our country still operational still trying to do the right thing and we have to deal with this not only at home but also overseas okay so it's a lot for people to deal with we were offered next to no support when it comes to legal aid, it was 60, 65 days.

5:17:12I think I've got the details. I'm going to read all this stuff out in a minute, but it was over two months of limbo where we had no legal support because they couldn't be read on to the specifics of the operation, which we're not talking about, um, for legal reasons and disclosure reasons, but they couldn't even, we couldn't even get lawyers. They wouldn't even provide us with lawyers. And the ones that they did provide us with initially wouldn't do it because they weren't getting paid enough money by the MOD. It's disgraceful. so a lot of the guys felt very isolated fast forward till 14 months ago I left I'd left the military I was trying to put everything behind me move on and try and give something back I took a job for GBRS as their lead instructor I went out to Virginia Beach and I was staying with DJ and Patsy at the time lived in their house for the best part of three months and I was granted an O-1 visa for extraordinary ability and that O-1 visa was a pull not a push and what I mean by that I was written commendations from SWAT team guys I'd also spent some time at the unit I'd trained guys from green team as a guest instructor I deployed with the US flag on my chest the United States asked me effectively to come out and help train law enforcement officers, SWAT teams, military units, etc, etc.

5:18:39That was what I was going to go and do. That was my future. I come back to the UK to collect my visa and one of the things that you need to provide is a sheet which states whether you've got a criminal record or not. I don't have a criminal record because I've been in the military for the best part of 20 years serving my country but on this piece of paper it says wanted for investigation, under investigation for murder. Now I'm at the US embassy with this sheet and I have to show this to that lady at which point they're at negative. We are not giving you a visa because it says you're under investigation for murder which has been vindicated that is obviously not correct.

5:19:18So it's impacted my life. I came back from Virginia Beach for three days. I was supposed to be there for three days with a small bag to collect my visa from the US Embassy in London and then go on with the rest of my life and it's been a heavy few years and for the first time I felt positive and I felt like I could get on with my life and I could change direction and it was all good until that moment. One of the other guys tried to do exactly the same, he was that broken by this whole process that he decided to leave. He was an A-stream operator, he was selected to be a troop sergeant major and he turned it down He was like, no, I don't want anything to do with this because of the way that we've been treated by this individual and by the RNP.

5:20:02This is all about how he treated us and how the RNP treated my teammates, okay? It's very difficult for guys to move on with their life when you've got this thing hanging over them in the back of your mind. It only feels like I left the army last week. I've been a civilian for coming up to two years. but I only feel like I left the army last week and it's had a fucking significant effect on my on my life how I feel my teammates lives my teammates family's lives it's caused the breakdown of two relationships guys that have given everything and love that regiment to death and I still do have had to walk away from it because of what Gwyn Jenkins did to us and our and you know I just want to be able to sit there here and put my side across our side across because nobody's asked us for our narrative and yet it keeps coming out in the press and now everyone's jumping on the bandwagon saying this and saying that I want to clear a few things up and I want to get the truth out there so that people should be held accountable and this my primary goal for this is nothing more than this should never, ever happen again to anyone because it's absolutely disgusting.

5:21:23It's a disgrace and it's something that we need to address because we can't just turn a blind eye to this, which is exactly what he wants. Okay. So if he does watch this and feels uncomfortable about it, good. That's a good thing because you should do, you know, he really should feel uncomfortable and I want him to know the impact because he's too arrogant to reach out after multiple times. And this really is a last resort because I've written, and I'll tell you in detail, multiple letters from my solicitor, my lawyer, to the Royal Military Police, to the Serious Investigation Board, to Director of Special Forces, to basically anyone and everyone we've written letters saying, hurry the process up, or at least allow people that are under investigation for incidents in the military, how can I be blocked from traveling?

5:22:14make that make sense like i'm innocent until proven guilty anywhere in the world but yet we're being treated as guilty until proven innocent which is not only morally wrong but how can we treat service personnel like that where's where's the level of respect or compassion for us and our families there is none um so it needs to change so that's the reason we're doing this and i want to highlight the actual emotional effect it's had on people and we've never been able to have our say and yet we have to sit there and watch the whole world read about this and read about that in all the press and we're supposed to just sit there and do nothing they destroyed your name they destroyed it yeah they destroyed us they tried to destroy us but um we're still in the fight for sure.

5:23:07I wrote a letter to my MP, which is a Member of Parliament. So a politician, essentially, who wrote a letter to the Veterans Minister, who basically, and I'll read you his response, said, yeah, there's a charity out there somewhere. That's what we're supposed to be doing. If he needs help, ring this hotline, basically. No empathy there. Bearing in mind this guy was, used to be in the Special Forces.

5:23:35what's significant about him is everyone knows how unfair and how poorly we've been treated do you remember i told you the guy who was blown up in afghanistan john who lost two legs on an arm he's a close friend of that veterans minister and he wrote him a personal message and basically he got the same short shift reply of yeah process is process just wait out so i've tried everything i literally could not have tried more i wrote and let's turn lawyers i've written let's to politicians. Years of trying to get some resolution on this. Years of trying to get some sort of clarity on it, of trying to be able to move on with our lives.

5:24:10It's significant to the point it's affected me. For nine months, Sean, I couldn't earn a penny. So when I left the military, I didn't leave with much. I'm not a rich man, but I spent all my pension, all of my savings, maxed out credit cards. I was living in Airbnbs. There were times where I didn't even have enough money to get that and I was sleeping in my truck. Like, I'm not joking, Sean, it's been a fucking nightmare for the last 14 months. Three days I was supposed to come back for. No way to live. No source of income. I couldn't earn money from GBRS because I didn't have a visa and we wanted to protect the integrity of what we were doing because we're professional.

5:24:46So I'm using everything I can at this point. I'm getting no support. The only support that I got was from the regimental association and they, they threw me some money in order for me to basically put a roof over my head in an Airbnb, uh, and do some laundry. That was basically what we got. So I'm thankful for those guys for doing that, but they're not part of, they're not part of MOD. They're, they're a, they're a, they're a regimental association and old boys network, but it's, that's not good enough. That's, that's not enough. The loss of income, not being able to earn money, let alone having to spend all of my own just to, you know, just to keep a roof over my head, essentially.

5:25:27Tens, hundreds of thousands probably at this point is loss of income and expenditure from my own personal accounts. Just trying to, you know, survive day to day. I'm not after a fucking penny and I want to get that out. I don't care about money. I don't care. I just want this to never happen again. And I want people that are involved in this to be able to look themselves in the mirror and go, yeah, we need to do better in the future. That's what this is about. This is not me spitting my dummy out or having a Prince Harry pity party situation. It's not that. You're not here to victimize yourself.

5:26:01I'm not here to do that. I'm here. Looking out for the future of SAS operators. Yeah, 100%. This can't happen again. And it's all good and well said and it won't. But it won't. It will, sorry, if we don't change it or if it doesn't get voiced. And it's my time now. It's my time to have my say, because for three years I've had to sit by and watch people destroy the integrity of what we were doing, attack my team, and drag my regiment's name through the mud for no reason other than personal gain, political gain. And that's not right. The regiment is a fantastic organization. It's an incredible asset to the nation and it provides an incredible layer of security, um, across the world for not only our civilians and citizens, but you know, our coalition as well.

5:26:49The regiment is a fantastic thing and dragging it down like this is disgraceful. It's disgusting. And I'm not having that. So these people need to be held accountable. I want to touch on a couple of the points from the guys, because without that, you know, it, it, the context is important on this. so we've got everything from the very start to the very end so first thing I'll read out is from the colonel prosecuting officer again I'm going to leave him out of it name-wise because I've got class and I've got dignity but I'm going to read this to you the first word you soldier c are notified that charges will not be brought against you under section 1212 of the Armed Forces Act 2006 in respect to the case referred to this authority arising out of the allegations of murder during a deliberate detention operation 3rd, 4th July 2022.

5:27:48The position may change, however, if, for example, further evidence comes to light or a further allegation is made or there is an appropriate request for the decision to be reviewed in accordance with the service prosecuting authority's victim's right to review policy. That's what we got after three years, Sean, That's what we got. So no name, you, soldier C, not very personal. And then at the end of it, it's a warning. It's not a sorry. It's not congratulations. You didn't do anything wrong. It's a you, soldier C. How degrading is that? You kind of, it's disgusting. And then at the bottom of it, well, this might change.

5:28:25No acknowledgement of any wrongdoing there whatsoever. No empathy, nothing. So that's what we got after three years. You can check that out and you can have a look at that. That's some bullshit right there.

5:28:51So they're still digging in. Essentially, for example, further evidence comes to light or a further allegation is made, or there's an appropriate request for the decision to be reviewed in accordance with service prosecuting authorities' victims' rights to review policy. What that means is it's not over. It's just they haven't got what they need right now. It doesn't tell me. I don't get a warm, fuzzy feeling that I'm going to get left alone here. Why would they even send this? So why would they even? Exactly. It makes no sense, right? Does that make sense to you? It makes no sense. Good. It's not just me, then.

5:29:32so you're not clear you're clear for the time being i'm clear for the time being and i was speaking to the lawyer again recently last couple of days about trying to get my form redacted so it doesn't say under investigation for murder so i can go and get my visa so i can go and get on with my life and there's this whole bullshit process and they're like no it's going to take some time, you've got to do this and that. I'm either innocent or I'm not. You just told me I am, so give me my form and let me get on with my life. That's it. How long does this go on for? For the rest of my life? I've given enough for my country, Sean.

5:30:09I just want to get on with it, mate. I just want to have a nice life. You know what I mean? I feel like I've earned that. I feel like all my teammates have. This one here, this is from the Ministry of Defence. from the Veterans Minister. I was sorry to learn a Mr. Kahn's financial hardship and homelessness. I would encourage him to seek assistance from the Veterans Gateway, which offers support to veterans 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on a range of issues, including housing and finances. The Veterans Gateway can be contacted on a free phone number, and there's a website that you can go and look at.

5:30:46That's from the Veterans Minister, a guy that used to be in the SBS, a guy that used to be one of the squadron. That's what you get. That was in direct response to a letter that I had written,

5:31:01drafted by somebody that is very close to the prime minister, who actually wrote his autobiography, via my local politician, a guy who was supposed to help me. We wrote that letter to that local politician, who then forward it to this, this guy, the veterans minister, and that is the, that's the response I got. A free phone number.

5:31:33And you know what really winds me up about stuff like that is just the sheer cowardness of it because it's like, we've reached out to that dude twice. Once from a guy whose life I was there to try and help save. So a personal touch, and one through a completely professional touch and get nothing, nothing from these people. Not, okay, let me look into it, let me do this. It's just due course, wait out. And that's not good enough. And yet I look around and you're doing expeditions to Mount Everest and they're saying that you're for the vet. No, you're not. You're for yourself. And if any of these people have got anything to say, I'm more than welcome to sit down and have this conversation with them.

5:32:11But I've tried to reach out to them on multiple occasions through multiple sources, through every official channel possible and get nothing. So if they feel like this is unfair, then they need a reality check.

5:32:25Let me start working through some of these personal issues that the geezers have faced. So personal issues. RMP searching of my personal home that I just moved into after telling me they would not search my property, arriving unannounced with multiple cars and cops late in the evening. Telling my girlfriend directly I'd murdered two people. Turning our house upside down during their search. taking personal items from me and my partner family photos on usb devices that i've still not received back this one breaks me searching my one-year-old son's nursery bedroom while he was sleeping in his cot i want them to think about that imagine being at home with your new wife and a brand new baby and all of a sudden military police come knocking at the door they tell your wife to a face that you're being arrested for murder and then they turn your house upside down, including the baby's bedroom with the baby asleep.

5:33:17That's what the RMP did to us. How does that make you feel? It pisses me off. It pisses me the fuck off, mate. That's what it does. It's wrong. Partner having counselling because of her and put her in a terrible mental state for years, almost a breakdown in our relationship. That's one guy.

5:33:40I was arrested on the 28th of July 2022 in front of my mother and sister while home at R &R. During the arrest, the RNP told my family that I was arrested for murdering two civilians, which has caused irreparable damage to my relationship with my sister. These people are destroying lives. Two weeks after being arrested, I was back in theatre when all our weapons were seized. So get this, this is the professionalism of the guys I'm talking about. they came they seized all of our guns whilst we're in theater on combat operations they take all of our guns all of our rifles pistols optics do you know what we did we went down to stores got new guns re-zeroed and cracked on because we're professional that's what we're about i was unable to speak to my lawyer about the case as disclosure cell it took 69 days to read him on so for 69 days we had no legal support because the people that are supposed to be dealing with this to read these people on didn't do it.

5:34:42We were offered two and a half thousand pounds for a holiday. That's what we were given. That's what they offered. Obviously, we turned that down.

5:34:54I feel that there was an irreparable mental distress caused to me and my family by the fear and anxiety which generated by the investigation. My confidence, self-esteem and personal relationships feel permanently damaged.

5:35:07I had a breakdown in January 2025 and was close to taking my own life. I've been undergoing professional mental health treatment since early 2024. This guy flew out to Colombia to go and do psychedelic treatments because he was on the verge of killing himself. And he didn't get any support from the military. There was no program for it. so he's gone off his own back and done that because he was at his last phase, he had nowhere else to go and I could see it in him

5:35:45next guy, being instructed ordered to fill in witness statements with no legal advice for the serious investigation report which were then used against us you were the only one who questioned it you being me

5:36:01SIR signed off by headquarters, but then referred to the RMP by DSF Gwynn Jenkins. So what that means is the regiment were good with what we, the commanding officer of the regiment signed that off and said, that is the correct use of force. Everything's good. I've got no problem with it. They then refer it up and guess who gets it? Gwynn Jenkins. and he's the one personally who referred it to the Royal Military Police. He did that. He was only protecting himself because he wanted the CDS job, but he didn't get it. We were tricked under the premise of an interview under caution. The RMP tried and failed miserably to arrest us all at the same time.

5:36:45So they tried to do us all across the world at the same time, failed miserably. I arrived at the right time and the right place to conduct the interview. then they arrested me, read me my rights, fingerprints, swabs, DNA, then physically marched me to my accommodation so they could confiscate and seize my phones. It's exactly what they did to me. This also coincided with the botched search of the guys houses and the home addresses in the UK. Handing over weapons,

5:37:15including pistols and MVGs. We went and got new ones, zeroed the men and was good to go to deploy again. Looking back, our professionalism and ability to crack on probably wasn't the best idea. Sean, what you must understand about this is they flew us back from theatre. They got us all in a room and conducted a no-comment interview under caution in a police station with two SIB investigators that went on for hours, and then they flew us back to theatre. Two weeks later, I jumped out of the back of an aircraft and led my team to target. So all this is going on and we're still having to do this

5:37:55How the fuck are you supposed to think? Put it in the box now Put it in the box and you crack on that's what we do BTC stating the RHQ would get us the best lawyers money. No object. I Rang one explain the situation reading a pre-prepared script with a number for on a number on it for the lawyer to call then we were told they were too expensive i had to choose basic basic legal aid lawyers so what that means is they promised us the world sean they said we're going to give you the best representation money can buy no object there's a big fund for this type of stuff with millions of pounds in it and yet they wouldn't pay for legal aid we had to get basic lawyers now the one that i've got is incredible and i'm very grateful for him but they gave us a whole list of these high flying lawyers and not one of them would touch it because they weren't willing to pay the price for 62 pound an hour was the cap 62 pounds an hour is what we were worth for these guys now this might sound like i'm getting digging in on people but if you don't talk about this then it goes away and it doesn't get rectified so there's there's doesn't sound like you're digging in on people just sounds like you're telling the truth that's all it is to come out these are from the guys

5:39:07having to tell my wife our families about the investigation there was no help advice or support on how to deliver such news. Then they, the wives, families, etc. had loads of questions that couldn't be answered because we didn't have any information, i.e. how long will this take? General Nick, on his handover takeover, coming out to theatre and standing next to me, stated that's hostile intent all day, there's nothing to worry about. That's the incoming director of special forces that I mentioned a second ago. Only to change his tune years later saying that he would have done the same thing as Gwyn Jenkins.

5:39:38These people are spineless. he completely reversed his statement completely reversed his statement 180 degrees after standing there in a rooftop with all of us my entire team drinking a beer telling us how fantastic a job we'd done and it would have never happened under his watch through his exact words and that you've got nothing to worry about i don't i don't understand this at all so they arrest you and your teammates for murder yep fly you back to the uk investigate yep for an investigate interrogate yep interrogate you four hours we sat in that office four hours under caution and then they deem you fit for duty again while you're under investigation to go continue doing the job yeah i conducted two three four lexos operations combat operations in a week shortly after that i led my stick to target twice why why would they I know you don't know the answer to this but I'm just gonna ask the question anyway if you guys are loose cannons out there murdering innocent civilians why would they fly you back into country to do it again because they knew it was all bullshit and they knew we didn't do anything wrong if they thought we'd done something wrong if they really thought we'd done something wrong, they wouldn't let us do that, right?

5:40:56And there's drone footage. It's all out. This exact operation. 100%. Yep. It's all there. Fifth new witness statements. What makes it even more of a bitter pill to swallow is the two police officers that came and wrested me in theater, and they came out the first time, said to me, we've seen the drone footage. We don't even know why this is a thing, but we've got to do our jobs. And it was almost like they wanted me to have sympathy for them. It's like, sorry, mate, I'm just doing my job. Well, sorry mate doesn't quite cut it in this situation. This isn't a sorry mate situation. You know, when you've got the two people that are arresting you, telling you that they know this is bullshit and that it's political, and they admitted that to my face, it's a hard thing to get your head around, Sean.

5:41:39It really is, mate.

5:41:45RHQ decided to give a Charlie Charlie one, which means an all hands, basically. they briefed everybody about an ongoing investigation, an invite that wasn't extended to ourselves. I heard the news from my wife. So basically, for damage limitation and reputation control, because they knew that the guys in the squadrons were fucking outraged and were questioning whether they could be deployed and trust the chain of command, not the regiment so much, but above that, they invited everyone in and explained the situation, but they didn't invite us. Make that make sense. What would be your take on that?

5:42:23I know what I think. I think they know they fucked up and they were trying to fight fires and they didn't want us in there because if we were, we would have told everybody what actually happened. How can you have an all hands without the people that are involved? And why is he finding out by his wife? Who another wife said, oh yeah, my boyfriend was at this brief. Did you go to it? What brief? Nah.

5:42:49He said he was being almost accused of potentially leaking the story to the press. All the scrutiny was asked for. I was accused of leaking this story to the press. Two days after my visa got returned, I got a phone call from one of the guys saying that the adjutant had phoned him up personally because the story had leaked into the papers. And he said, I think Jay's gone and done this. Or do you think Jay... How fucking dare you? How dare you have the audacity to accuse me of leaking this to the press? and I know you might be sitting here going, well, you're on the show and Ryan talking about it.

5:43:21Yeah, because it's done and I want my say. Can you imagine how offensive that is to me? Do you think I would leak that to the press? No. And if I was going to do it, I'd do it with accurate details. I'm not leaking the shit to the press. Somebody's leaking it to the press and I'm setting the record straight because I'm sick and tired of reading about bullshit stories in the newspapers that my family see. It's not correct. It's not right. And quite frankly, it needs to be addressed. So that's what I'm doing.

5:43:50my wife and other people's families rightly having enough of this bullshit after seeing me us going through a hard time speaking to the welfare speaking to the welfare and being basically dismissed there's nothing that can be done and then this this upsets me receiving a phone call from the next day telling him to quote get a grip of my wife so basically she's phoned up she wants to know answers she's there's a protocol for this there's people that if you ever have any dramas whether you're deployed or whether it's this or whether you know the kids need picking up from school or the car breaks down or your husband's been accused of murder then phone this number and we'll try and help you she phoned that number got nothing and then to take take the piss that dude phones the guy up the next day and goes, hey, tell your wife to get a grip.

5:44:41Get a grip. Depression, fear, anger, and a complete loss of self. All the negative effects it's had individually and the family friendship level. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't want to leave the house without panic attacks. You're talking about one of the finest operators I've ever met. Panic attacks. Seeing the mental health nurse at work and being told if I wanted to go on medication, I would be downgraded. Not allowed to access weapons and my chain of command would be informed. So he's reached out and they've basically said, cool, we could help you, but it means that we're going to have to report it and that you are no longer allowed to do your job.

5:45:20How can you be in the SAS but not be allowed to play with guns? The fuck are we talking about here? I didn't do that for pride reasons and worried about my reputation. So we sucked it up basically. He tried to get help. They bounced him and he sucked it up and carried on. Having to leave home and start divorce proceedings because I was unsafe.

5:45:41It's destroying families. It's destroying people's lives, mate. It's destroying families, big drinking issues, multiple jobs falling through because of the ARCO form, same situation I'm in when looking for employment outside of the wire, basically it makes it nearly impossible to get a visa to go anywhere. So what are guys supposed to do? How long does this go on for? but how long are we going to be punished for indefinitely? Bearing in mind we've done nothing wrong and everybody knows that this is a test case by Gwyn Jenkins to show transparency. If you watch transparency, here it is. This is transparency.

5:46:15You reap what you sow, you know? Again, I know there's more and there is. There's pages of this. These are just the ones I've highlighted. There's pages of it. This is the Arco form. This is the form that caused the dramas. Read that.

5:46:42See what that says.

5:46:49This personal data is provided to you by ACRO, Criminal Records Office, for the purpose of an immigration consular visa or citizenship related to applications made to a foreign government. Keep the data secure, protected against loss or unauthorized access.

5:47:22having the word under investigation for murder on that form is not a good look i felt sorry for the girl at the embassy she was loving it she was like yeah awesome you're exactly the kind of person we want to give an 01 visa to thank you for your service is what she actually said to me until she saw that. And she didn't know how to circumnavigate it. She had to get a superior in. Then another one came, this whole thing. It's embarrassing to me, Sean. I'm stood in the freezing cold rain for four hours queuing up to get into the US embassy, a nation which I'm deeply proud of and will die to protect.

5:47:54I'm stood in that line and I get humiliated. I'm made to feel That fucking big by my own government

5:48:04I've already had a US visa Sean had a NATO visa. I lived there for a year. I've been to America over 50 times I've been to war for that for that country where we what recourse do you have now? In terms of what's next I mean when this first letter came out That you read yep the position the position may change however Well, just to read it again. You, Soldier C, are notified that charges will not be brought against you under Section 121-2 of the Armed Forces Act 2006 in respect of the case referred to this authority arising out of the allegations of murder during deliberate detention operation on 3-4 July 22.

5:48:50The position may change how it... I just... We've already read this. The position may change, however, if, for example, further evidence comes to light or further allegations are made. Or there is an appropriate request for the decision to be reviewed in accordance with the service prosecuting authorities' victims' rights to review policy. It means it's not over, Sean. It means it's just on ice and that we have to go on with the rest of our lives with this. What happens in 10 years' time? Are they going to call me back? Are they going to arrest me again? Because they don't leave this stuff alone.

5:49:28There are guys from, you know, and part of what we're doing here is shedding the light on this. There are guys from Northern Ireland. There are guys from the Falklands. There are guys from all sorts of conflicts that have been going on for decades that are still fighting this. I said, you know, there's a partition. I sent it to Jeremy. Over 100 ,000 people have signed that petition in the UK because of what they're doing. They're reversing it and making it, the government are making it possible for people to just keep revisiting these things. It's disgusting. It's got to stop. It's undermining.

5:49:58And this doesn't undermine it. What do the attorneys say? They don't say much, to be honest. Do they care? It doesn't feel like it. Doesn't feel like it to me. My personal one does. Gwyn Jenkins certainly doesn't care. The veterans minister doesn't care. Who could get involved to solve this? Whose attention do you need to get? I don't know. I don't know. I'm at a loss, Sean. I'm just a dude from the squadron, bro. I don't know. I'm lost in this. I've had to stand by and watch for three years how this has just destroyed people's lives, destroyed it. How many different investigations are going on throughout the military right now?

5:50:40Dozens. Countless amount. I don't know. I couldn't give you an accurate detail, but a lot. Have you seen any come to completion? They very rarely do. They just rumble on for years and years and years and years until the guys under investigation die. There are guys that are dealing with stuff from Ireland from like the 70s, 80s. It's 2025. The fuck are we doing it? So they never close a case. Sometimes. How does that make you feel? And it's all good and well-say and it's all good to go. All I want is my form. Let me go and get on with my life. That's all I want. I want that and I want this to never happen again.

5:51:20And before people start throwing people under the bus for their own political gain, maybe have a little think about it, you know? I know I'm not going to change the world. They'll probably throw the book at me, I don't care. I'll die on this hill. I'll fight to the death on this one. I've got nothing to lose. Like, I know I'm in the right. I'm armed by the fact that I'm in the right. You've already admitted in that piece of paper there that I've done nothing wrong. there's no evidence there's no crime this is bullshit everyone knows it make it go away how big of a story is this in in uk right now depends what day of the week is it's in all of the major tabloids all of them is it a media yep all of the newspapers all of the digital newspapers it's in all of them the times the guardian the daily mail like legitimate newspapers everything everything yeah and none of them have reached out to you nope and every single one of them the information that's in there just keeps getting thicker and thicker and thicker somebody's talking to them somebody's explaining them and yet they have the audacity to try and accuse us nah I'm not having it it's not fair and you know what the worst thing about it is like the silence is deafening like if you know about this and you don't do anything about it, to me you're just as guilty.

5:52:44You're just as guilty as Gwyn Jenkins and those RMP that did that. We had an incident recently where an armed police officer shot a guy, lethal force, a guy that had been involved in a shooting the night before. He was into drugs. He was a gangster. and multiple attempts to detain him, very similar story, eventually had to use lethal force. He subsequently been vindicated that that lethal force was just and righteous and proportionate, but they had him up in court on a murder charge. And you know what the police did? They put their guns down and said, we're not going out. We're not going to do it because this is how you treat our people.

5:53:31Do you know who stepped up when those armed police stepped down? Who? We did. Our regiment.

5:53:43The irony isn't lost on me. The police are not having it. They're like, no, fuck this. Why should we? We don't do that because we're the military. And do you know what? There's guys that are like, if that happened to our squadron, we'd do the same thing? No, you fucking wouldn't. You didn't. And I'm not attacking that. I'm not saying it. Everyone's got to get on with their own thing. And I don't want this to damage anybody. But it can't fucking happen again. And people should know about this and feel uncomfortable about it. That's what this is about. And if they don't, maybe they're too arrogant to care.

5:54:15Maybe they are. I'm pretty sure Gwyn Jenkins won't reach out. I'm pretty sure he'll come up with some bullshit or he'll try and come after me in some way or whatever. Cool. I'm good with it. I've done nothing wrong. I defended my country. I defended my teammates and I was put in a position ordered to be in that position. Took fire from enemy combatants, re-engaged, neutralized a threat. It's that simple. And it's on drone footage. It's all there.

5:54:47It's a difficult one, mate. It's so frustrating, like so, so frustrating. And I feel like the last few days, I mean, again, I don't know how many times we're going to say this today, but I don't believe in coincidence. I think it's very ironic that a couple of days before this, that happens. People are aware of it. I was coming to talk to you. People are aware of that? I think so. A couple, close people. But like anything, once one person knows, you've got to assume everybody knows, right? I didn't like it. No, no, I trust you. Yeah, yeah. but um

5:55:22it's just heartbreaking man I just love that I love still do that organization that cat badge with my whole fucking heart dude I'd die for it I'd still die for it loving it nearly killed me and I feel like it's who do we need to reach how can I help you other than doing this interview who do we need to reach Who does this conversation need to get to? Do you need somebody wealthy over there to back you? Do you need to reach a certain politician? It's a strange one because I've exhausted every single aspect that I can. I don't think we can throw money at the problem and it will go away. I don't know, Sean, how this doesn't happen again to people.

5:56:15and I'm fairly confident that within a period of time, I will be able to get my form because that's only right. But at the same time, I don't trust them to be able to do the right thing. What is the form that you need? It's the ARCO form. So that criminal record form. So as soon as that form comes back with, I'm no longer under investigation and it doesn't say murder on it, I can now go to the embassy. I can give it to that lady and she can give me a visa and I can get on with my life. And they're still dragging their heels. Have you brought the notice of non-direction? Have you brought that to the embassy?

5:56:51Not yet, no. So what we've done is we've sent that to my legal team. So I've got an immigration lawyer that GBRS have paid for tens of thousands of dollars at this point, you know, trying to help me out. They paid for all of that. Couldn't be more grateful. And they've held my hand essentially through this whole process. So she's got all the information. I've reached out through my lawyer in the last couple of days to reach out directly to the Royal Military Police and to get this situation unfucked so that they can get that off my record and I can get on with it. And then we got some bullshit army response saying, yeah, there's a step-down process.

5:57:22Basically, it's like it's completely unhelpful. It's like. There's a step-down process. What does that mean? Who knows? Not even my lawyer knows. He said I'm going to go back and work out what that actually means. Like it shouldn't take more than a second for them to be able to go, is he under investigation for murder? No, he's been cleared. Cool. We'll take that off the sheet then and give them a new sheet and let them go to the embassy. It's not hard. But it's still like they want to have some sort of... This whole thing has felt like they were looking for something. They were looking to try and find it.

5:57:53And I guarantee you, Sean, if they could have and they had found something or some angle to come at us and put us, stood there in a trial, they would have done it. But there isn't anything there because there's no wrongdoing. That's the most frustrating thing. It's like, and I'm glad that they've written that and said that we've done nothing wrong because otherwise you can come on here and people are still going to have that in their minds. Like I've lost close relationships with family members because they wanted to distance themselves from me and this, this, this allegation, you know, that's, that's a fucking hard thing to deal with, man.

5:58:32It's ongoing for all of us. And when we all got the news,

5:58:40it was an incredible moment but it was a very bittersweet moment it doesn't feel like it's a hollow victory it's because it's not no what's the appetite of the uk citizen on this what do you think they'll do when they hear this will they be pissed i think so every single person i've spoke to in the last three years is outraged by it from all demographics, military, non-military law enforcement, civilian, you name it. There's, you can't look at any of these facts and everything I'm saying is not subjective. It's not an opinion. These are facts backed by the data and you can see it's all in black and white there.

5:59:19You know, those letterheads have got army letterheads, ministry of defense letterheads. Like you can see it. It's all black and white. There's an outpouring of out, you know, of, of disgust in the UK for this. We shouldn't be treating our soldiers like that. That is the general feeling across the nation. Hence the reason 100 ,000 people have signed a petition to get these guys from Northern Ireland left alone. What is Jenkins doing now? So he's the first sea lord. So he now has the highest position in the Royal Navy that you can get.

5:59:56Does he have political aspirations? 100%. Thank you.

6:00:06You can sit up there and, you know, Whitehall in your ivory tower making these decisions that affect guys like me, guys like my teammates. And yeah, we don't have the political horsepower. I don't have the government or some fancy title, but I have got my truth and I have got a voice and I've served my country for a long time and I think my voice should be heard. And when I speak, I speak for all of us and with the full backing and support of my teammates. Have you thought about getting a publicist? What is a publicist, Sean? A publicist can get this into the media. A publicist can connect you to the right connections to put public pressure on him.

6:01:02I haven't thought about it, no, but I'm something I'm not adverse to.

6:01:09Listen, I'm better than him. I've got more integrity and more class than him. I don't want to destroy his career. It's not worth it for me. I don't care about him. He's worthless. He's a coward I don't even expect an apology. He hasn't got the spine or the moral courage to do that These kind of people never give apologies. No He won't I just want him to know Maybe his wife can read that maybe his wife can watch this And when they have that conversation and they look each other in the eye Maybe they can see how it's affected us I'd have died for my teammates that night and I'd died for them again that's the difference there's a lot of people in UK that are not happy with the way things are going for a multitude of reasons in fact we had a group of extremely wealthy people that want to talk to me about it and want me to bring it to light and so maybe we can connect you with them maybe they have some type of pull I wish I had more connections over there for you, but I think this is a damn good start.

6:02:25I hope so. I hope good comes out of this. Again, I don't want to come across like I'm whining or bitching or, you know, that's not what this is about. You're not coming across like that. You're coming across like you just want your life back. Yeah. You want your teammates to have their life back.

6:02:43that's it anyone i want it to future operators to not have to worry about this shit yeah so they could serve their country without this type of stress exactly that's the way it comes across good but i hope it does and that's genuinely genuinely a heart hand on heart that is all i want from this and i don't know maybe can we can we make a change can we not put that stuff on forms can we not can we not do that in the future like can we just not put it in the press and that yeah I don't want my family I hid this from my family for a long time to the point where it was untenable I couldn't I had my mum phone me up on New Year's Eve everyone else celebrating oh this is gonna be you know happy new year and all this other bullshit she phones me up and she's like this is you isn't it she's not stupid smart woman she puts it together like that's a fucking conversation you don't want to have with your mother you know

6:03:37how's your daughter handling this

6:03:42she doesn't know sure she doesn't know not the extent of it no i can't hide it from her for any longer that's one of the reasons this is useful i need to need to get it done and i've had to hold hold hold hold hold she hasn't seen the press she got a phone what did happen

6:04:07it's little things like one minute i'm watching her play soccer right i'm stood there watching her play soccer all those parents all know what i did for a living and there's a fucking documentary coming out by the bbc telling us that we've done this i've done that or there's some newspaper story there's a documentary coming up on the panorama yeah about the afghan stuff the afghan stuff. So this whole thing, this whole thing is because of the Afghan inquiry and he's under pressure from it. So he threw us under the bus to show transparency because of that. That's what this is about. And the BBC, like, make this make sense.

6:04:43How can the BBC commission investigative journalists to go ambulance chasing around Afghanistan about stuff that happened a decade ago, allegedly, with no real valuable sources of information other than, you know, people in farmers and people saying, you know, they're all getting paid. They're all getting paid to give those testimonies. So on one hand, the BBC are doing that. And on the other hand, they're spending tens of millions of pounds per episode to commission Rogue Heroes, a documentary about the SAS called Rogue Heroes. So you either like the SAS or you don't like the SAS. How can you do both?

6:05:22Which one is it? Hypocrisy of the British media when it comes to this stuff is, it's not even shocking anymore. It really isn't. It's a shame, but it doesn't surprise me anymore whatsoever. And again, for these journalists out there that are writing these stories to get clicks for a bit of clout or whatever it might be, just think about it. I hope they see this and think about how that affects all of the good people. What about all of the people? What about my friend Matt's family? A guy that lost his life serving his country, couldn't be prouder to have been in that regiment. How the fuck do you think it makes his family feel reading that?

6:06:01You know? There's just no empathy whatsoever. People need to be really careful, and that's why I want to come here and say this so I can set the record straight a little bit. you know I can look you in the eye and tell you that I didn't do anything wrong Sean I stand by what I did and I do the same thing again again and again and again and I felt that at the time and I feel it now I wouldn't have done it how can you question my professionalism like what would have you rather us do not return fire and take a casualty in the middle of a field just let them run away is that what we do what do you what would you propose that I you know what course of action would have you suggested that I take no it's fucking bullshit

6:06:45I'm sure the drum footage has never been released no do you have access to it no does your attorney have access to it I can ask him potentially I don't think so I think they're very careful and very not sneaky is probably not the right word but they keep it all under lock and key a lot of this stuff needs clearances this and clearances that to be released you know i mean i've seen this before i interviewed the the blackwater guys from nasur square i don't know if you're familiar with that incident but they the us government actually deleted the 10 minute section of drone footage that proved their innocence yeah and then they were pardoned You know, I'm not too concerned about...

6:07:42As that piece of paper says, it's not completely done, but I am confident in the fact that, at least in the meantime, there's going to be a knock at the door, but it's still there. It doesn't feel like it's gone away. and I've been given assurances that the form will come, it might take a little bit of time and there's some process to go through. But three years is a fucking process. How much process do you want? Don't keep saying process to me. I've been through the process. It's nearly fucking destroyed my teammates' lives. It's had a negative impact on mine, completely turned my future upside down.

6:08:23It's not right and it needs to be addressed and that's what we're doing and I think hopefully people will see this and go, we need to do better. We need to treat our service personnel better because they deserve better. They deserve better. I don't know. There's not a person that I've spoke to about this that doesn't look at that and go, yeah, that's not good enough. You talk to us about exacting standards. You talk to us about judgment. You talk to us about leadership and all these other buzzwords that these people want to throw down our necks and throw in our faces. well let's see some people don't get involved in this because they haven't got the moral courage to stick the head above the parapet and they're happy just staying there and being ignorant to it and that's not that's to me that's complicit you're part of the problem if you don't do anything about it if I was to just go now get my visa and disappear off and not address it I feel like I'm letting myself down I feel like I'm letting the dudes down and I also feel like I'm letting the fucking next generation of dudes.

6:09:25Like, we need to address this and make sure this shit doesn't ever happen again because it's wrong and the guys deserve better. That's it. This is my goal for this, you know? It's my end state, is that I'm not after money. I'm not after a thank you. All I want is for this to never happen again and for people to look at this and go, we need to make fundamental changes to the way we do business. and if that happens it's a win and that's why it's worth flying fucking halfway across the world and having this conversation with you that will get seen by some people it'll get seen can guarantee you that

6:10:12and i don't want to go to war with anyone i'm done i'm tired of it sean i'm exhausted with the whole thing honestly it it's exhausting I don't feel like there's a silver lining at times when it comes to this I'm grateful that I'm quite resilient I'm grateful to myself for being quite robust I mean it doesn't appear like that sometimes but the fucking tactical patience and uh the amount of times when I see, you know, pictures of his face being promoted, being awarded stuff, you know, smiling as if nothing's happened, it makes me, angry is not the right word, it makes me fucking furious. You understand how angry this situation makes me feel?

6:11:09And I've been nothing but patient, reserved dignified and I'm not out here screaming and shouting saying I want this, I want that I just want it to go away and I want it to never happen again and I don't think that's unreasonable and if they'd have answered my requests and they hadn't just fobbed me off with some free phone number or ignored me or made me feel like a piece of shit for three years and they'd have done their jobs with the same level of professionalism that my teammates had done, then I wouldn't be sat here. So they can have no complaints. And those R &P officers that did that, they should be ashamed of themselves.

6:11:53I'm sure they are. Good. There's no sympathy from me on that. Zero. And there's a whole bunch of names I could bring out there, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to do that unless I have to. And this isn't a passive-aggressive threat. These are facts. that's only the tip of the iceberg we've got it all we've got every single failure every single unprofessional action from the fucking minute those rounds left our rifles to the fucking second that i'm sat here now so we've got more if we need it yeah if you put it all out on a piece of paper you'd look at it and go this has to be some sort of joke this can't be real but it's not very fucking funny if you're sat where i am i don't think you find it's very funny either do sean No, I don't.

6:12:40I can see in your eyes, you know, I know I trust you, you know, but you know, DJ Cole backed me from day one. They knew about all of this situation. I told them straight away and they still decided to give me a contract. They still decided to pay for my legal fees. They still backed me. They still gave me the opportunity to have a career from the day one. Like I'm so grateful for that. And thank you for them to, for doing that, you know? And what's been really nice about this in a weird way is that I've lost a lot of people in the fire over this. There's been a lot of casualties. Friends that I thought were close to me are not.

6:13:21People I feel like are manipulating my situation for their own means. I feel like it's cost me multiple relationships with people, including family members. Hopefully we can rebuild. I hope we can. But what it's done has left me with a core circle of people I know genuinely care about me. The people that I've got in my life now and the small circle that I remain with are my people. They're important to me and I know I can trust them and I love them all dearly. And that is a blessing. There are good things that have come out of this, but it doesn't excuse it. You know, it doesn't.

6:14:10And I say this, if you don't know the code to my wife, you know, if you don't know the code to my wife at my house, you are not my friend. There are people now reaching out after 18 months, three years. All right, Jay, good news. How's it going, mate? Nah, not interested, dude. The people that were in the trenches with me, the people that got down and actually backed me, trusted me, believed in me when I said I didn't do anything wrong, they're my people. And if you haven't heard from me for three years, there's a reason why. And if I haven't heard from you in three years, don't bother. I'm done.

6:14:39You know? It's a shame.

6:14:48Well, Jay, I'm sorry, man. I am sorry this is happening to you. And it's killing me right now that I can't think of a solution. But I'll be thinking on it. and we'll do the best that we can to get this out there as wide as we possibly can to as many people as we possibly can. And I'll be thinking of people that I can connect you with.

6:15:17I can't say thank you enough. and again it's almost like it hurts me that I'm in this position and the people feel like they have to help me I'm a proud man you know and I don't want to ask people for help but I don't know what to do I don't I don't I don't know how this gets solved or how we rectify it and it doesn't happen again like I am fucking so grateful for the opportunity to sit here and say this I'm so so thankful for all of you guys it's not lost on me that you are thousands of miles away from your home and that you've taken this and I can see it I understand that this resonates with you and I know it resonates with a lot of people and yeah it's it's humbling to see there are good people out there that want to see good things happen to good people and that's a lifeline for me that's something that gives me a lot of strength and a lot of confidence and there are times I really need to draw on that and remember that it's you know there's good there's good people out there the regiment's a fantastic organization it shouldn't be put in this position by top brass.

6:16:40It shouldn't be. It's people should be looked after by these politicians and these generals. Like I said before, I love it. I loved it to death. I still do. I'm very proud of it. But the people that organize and run that shit need to change. They're destroying the organization. If they don't address it, it's going to, it's not positive. Nobody can do their job if this is looming. No, you can't. We talked about that at the beginning.

6:17:13Been through a lot. Yeah. It's been a rough go for you. You definitely don't need to be dealing with this shit. I'd rather not. I'm sorry. It's not you, brother, but I appreciate that. Thank you. I do. I genuinely do appreciate that, Sean.

6:17:34and hopefully some good will come out of this. I'm an optimist. I am. I'm an optimist and I think with my background and my life, I wouldn't be sorry if I wasn't. I'm an eternal optimist to a point but at the same time, acutely aware of how fucked up this whole situation is and it needs to be changed. One of the things, I won't keep talking about it, it's unnerving to see the level that these people were willing to go to show transparency to the point where for the longest time I genuinely thought I would end up standing in a dock and there was going to be a moment in my future where 12 people would disappear and come back and someone would say, are you guilty?

6:18:25Yes or no? Sitting in a cage felt like a very, very real possibility for me for a long time. And people will go, nah, it's never going to go that far. I was like, well, it's gone this far for that long. What else is coming? You know, that's a bad place to be. And I'm grateful that I'm not in that position anymore. So let's just hope good comes from this. People look at it and go, yeah, we need to fucking make some fundamental changes how we treat our soldiers not just now but in the past guys dealing with legacy stuff and I spoke to DJ about this and to Cole and I'm sitting there thinking what about the guy that lives in Hereford that has been involved in this for 20-30 years from something that happened in Northern Ireland and he made a split decision split second decision he's not come in on the Sean Ryan show.

6:19:23He can write all the fucking letters he wants to, whoever he wants, no one's going to hear him. Hear me, because I'm blessed. I'm in a position where I've got friends that do have a platform, and I'm damn sure I'm not going to waste that opportunity. I'm not trying to sound like I'm some sort of white knight or I'm a martyr. Far from that. My life's far from perfect, as we've just found out, but if we can weaponise

6:19:54the ability to get this seen and broadcast and that message out there to the point where it becomes loud and people cannot do this again, then that's it. That's worth it. And if I didn't do that, then I don't think I'd be able to look myself in the mirror properly. If I just ride off into the sunset, that's not who I am. I didn't leave my teammates in the fight that day, and I fucking damn sure ain't going to leave my teammates in the fight now. I'm here to the fucking bitter end of whatever this looks like and I'm willing. I'm willing to go all the way. And I know I've got a team of people behind me that little back all the way.

6:20:35So let's just hope that the message lands and that some good comes out of it, you know? Well, Jay, like I said, we'll do everything we can to get this out as big as possible, as wide as possible to as many people as possible. And I'll be thinking, of ways that we can help you further. And if something comes to me, I'll let you know. Awesome, Sean. Thank you. Stay in touch. And I just want you to know, thank you for being here, and it was an honor to interview you. It was a real honor, and I fucking hate that this is happening. Thank you. It's reciprocated. like I've watched you interview some of my heroes I've watched your voice help people directly I've seen the impact that DJ's interview had on people firsthand on dozens of occasions and you do a good thing so to be sat here in front of you is a little bit surreal but also extremely humble and so you know thank you again and I probably won't do another one of these certainly not for a long period of time and certainly not for these reasons I didn't do anything before because this this this platform is what is where this needed to be heard and I'm grateful that we had the patience to wait and we did it properly and we've come here to Dubai and we've done it properly and I'm glad for it.

6:22:19So thank you. And same to you, Jeremy. Thank you for reaching out and that weird set of circumstances. Well, I told you that I don't believe in coincidences. And to get your name brought to my face three times in 15 minutes, totally fucking random, I got a feeling something's going to happen. Because I'm here because that happened. And I don't believe in coincidences. So have faith. I've got faith. All right, brother. Thank you. God bless. Thank you, brother.