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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing,
and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show,
British veteran, former contractor, and the author of When War Follows You Home, Ben Close.
So in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from Ben's turbulent childhood,
his journey into the military, some of the traumatic events he witnessed in uniform,
his transition story, his mental health struggles, catharsis through writing, and so much more.
Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week,
please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show,
leave feedback, and leave a rating. Every single five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast,
therefore making it easier for others to find. And this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories
so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Ben Close. Enjoy.
Well, Ben, I want to start by saying thank you to Paul Mullerri for connecting us,
and I want to welcome you to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
I'd like to thank Paul as well, and yourself, James. Thank you very much.
So where on planet Earth are we finding you my afternoon, your evening?
I'm in England, UK. So it's... what's the time now?
20 past 6. You know what, I've just done the same thing as you. I've just done the same thing as you from earlier.
This is 20 past 7. So I haven't changed the time on my watch because I'm back on Sunday.
Yeah, every twice a year there's a week where the UK and the US is off by an hour,
and it doesn't... without fail, even though I'm totally aware of it,
and I try and get it right on my calendar every single time I have an issue,
and this is what happened with us, which is good. I was an hour early, not an hour late this time.
Well, if I had this watch on, I would have been ready, but I didn't want to.
I didn't even change this one. But yeah, so...
All right. Well, I want to start at the very beginning of your story.
I know that you have a very powerful story that you've written a book about.
Yes. When more follows your home, yeah.
There you go. When more follows your home. But your early life factors in a lot,
and you've been very kind of public about that, which is something I think a lot of us in uniform
don't really discuss as much. You know, we think, oh, I have these mental scars
because of Afghanistan or the Grenfell fire or, you know, whatever it is, the London bombing.
But actually, there's a lot of cracks to our foundation early life.
So I'd love to start at the very beginning. So tell me where you were born,
and tell me a little about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.
Okay, so I was born in Wellingarn City, upskirts of Luton.
So I was born there in 1985, 38 now. My family dynamics came from a split family.
My mother and father split before I can remember.
So I'm a lonely child through that relationship. I'll make that one clear.
So I'm not a single sibling, but I am through my mother and father.
So my mum moved to Corbyn Ketchering. My father's from Luton and his family are from Luton.
My daddy and granddad, who I dedicated my first book to my granddad because he was my hero.
And yeah, so my mum was into education, her mum was into education.
My father was a soldier back in the day. And yeah, my granddad was in the army,
my great granddad was in the army. So yeah, I spoke.
Let's talk about the lineage then. What conflicts, because I heard you mention on Paul's podcast
that every single soldier that had served in your family actually came home, which is phenomenal.
Talk to me about the conflicts that they were all in.
Do you know what? I wish I had the medals here to show you. I actually have,
but it would take me a while to go and then often get them.
So it goes back to, we've got medals going back to beyond the First World War.
This is on both sides. This is both on the close side and on my mother's maiden name side as well.
But we've got, for some reason, we've got, well, not for some reason,
but we've got a bloodline that goes back through generations of people who have served.
In fact, my mum's granddad, yeah, my mum's granddad Alex, my great granddad,
who I never met because he passed away, he wasn't actually a soldier in World War II,
he was a firefighter like himself. So he was dealing with the blitz and everything around London and whatnot.
But military wise, it's not all about the military at the end of the day.
It doesn't matter what you do, everyone should be proud of what they do.
But yeah, so my great granddad was a firefighter during World War II.
One of my great granddads was a firefighter during World War II.
The other great granddad was one of the last off Dunkirk Beach,
which I've got the medal for, I've got his medal.
So we've got family that served in the Falklands,
got family who served in Northern Ireland, family who served in Iraq, which is myself,
Bosnia, myself, Africa, myself, Afghanistan, myself,
and also other wars that I went to as a contractor.
When you think about the blitz and firefighters in World War II,
my great uncle, my granddad, who I actually never met, he passed before I was born,
but his brother was some sort of chief level position in the fire service
that was present during World War II.
So it's funny, I wonder if they even have met each other.
Imagine, yeah, can you imagine that?
Crazy. So what about with this lens that you have now,
we're obviously going to talk about mental health,
when you look back at your dad, at your granddad,
are there any elements of their service, understanding mental health, PTSD, etc. now
that you recognise in them when you were younger?
So with my father, we've had a bit of a major discussion about another podcast.
So I'd rather not talk about my father at the moment.
I'll talk about things that relate to me, but not that relate to him.
No problem.
Because recently he's seen a few podcasts, I've done a few,
and he's more than happy with some, he's not so happy with other things.
But to answer your question, my granddad, I was a child when he passed,
a child of 15 when he passed, but my father, I know he's got PTSD,
he'll probably get the ass of me saying this, but I know he's got PTSD.
I'm not going to be personal and say how or why I know,
but I have PTSD and I can tell people who have PTSD just by talking to them
and listening to them and seeing their actions and the way of life.
So I know he has it.
My other granddad, he served in Egypt, he did Suez,
he was involved in Suez, who I've never actually spoken to before actually,
his name's George as well, his name is George,
and he recently passed with cancer, unfortunately.
In 2021 I believe, actually I just got home from Iraq,
and it was almost like he was waiting to see me, like the second granddad.
But yeah, I mean, I think I didn't really see the angry side,
I've never seen the angry side to my granddad, my father, it was a different story.
But not anger towards me, anger towards other people,
and on one occasion trying to help me, which I'm happy to go on to.
Yeah, so let's speak about that family dynamic,
you've got your actual father, your biological father,
talk to me about the next man that was in your life when you were young.
So that man is named Andrew, and the first podcast I ever did,
I didn't even want to mention the man's name, he's the father of my brother and my sister,
the only good thing to come out of that human being was my brother and my sister,
he was mentally abusive to my mother, domestically,
and I had things in private areas, I had a bedroom,
and my story, so I started writing my story in 2016 when I was in Yemen as a contractor,
and I can remember as far back as when I was five years old,
which is when this human being, if you want to call him that,
or this narcissistic person came into my life,
and obviously from that point in time he did what he did,
obviously no one knew it at first, but he had multiple families here and everywhere,
he manipulated my mother, he beat my mother through the whole time,
he used to beat her, but he used to get worse than that,
so when my brother and sister came along, so I'm 10 years, my brother's 30, I'm 38,
my sister's 31, 32, so there's a gap, but you see growing up,
whilst I was getting older, I used to have to witness and hear the domestic abuse,
him hurting, physically hurting her, her screaming to get out of the bedroom,
and the problem was as well, I had my brother and sister to take care of as well at the same time,
they can't see their mum and their fucking dad being involved in this,
so I was in a position where I had to be involved in that,
like being a protector, but who do you protect, your mum and your brother and sister,
and you know what's going on, when I was at school at 15, the ages between 14 and 15,
things got to the point that that was it, the bad points started with the worst,
it was probably always the same, but during this time it was the points where I remember
distinctly because I'm getting to that age, you know what I mean,
I was coming home from school, I used to leave weapons hanging around,
and then they would be lived, I used to go home, I used to do room clearances,
I'd literally go in the house, go left, go right, pick up a knife,
look through the house, because obviously one minute he's there and then he's left,
there was times where I'd go home and my bedroom window would be open,
and the fucker would be sat there playing his guitar, and I thought he'd left,
and then I'm like, they wouldn't speak to me, and this is the thing,
he abused, he physically abused my brother and my sister as well,
he kidnapped my brother once, that's the first one I mentioned this actually,
he kidnapped my brother once, and refused to give him back,
he tried to get me arrested at the age of 15 for assaulting him
because he was beating my mum, you know, but years back before all of this,
and I remember it, but I'm not emotional about it because I was too young to be emotional,
all I remember seeing was an ambulance and a call, but he'd waited for loving it,
and it turned out me and my mother went to the shop, my sister was premature,
unfortunately we don't get ill anymore, but that's another story, that's life,
I've tried to protect her too much, and it's putting my downfall in life,
it turns out she ended up having a brain hemorrhage,
we'd only gone to the shop for 15 minutes, and the ambulance was there,
and she nearly died again, and she suffered some brain damage,
he basically shook her, he shook her, and why he's not been convicted of these crimes,
maybe if it was today, social services would get involved,
and it might be a bit different, but back then I suppose,
so yeah, we're talking 30 years ago, 38 now, so potentially we're talking 32 years ago,
or whatever, I suppose the system was different,
when you speak about my dad and about Trait, my father, Trait,
it got to the point where I had to separate myself from Kettering to Luton,
and my father actually rang me on the landline at my nan's house,
and he said to me, where does this fucker live?
So he lived in Brayford Avenue, call me, I remember it like it was yesterday,
he lived in his sister's house in Brayford Avenue,
three or four doors down from 12 Brayford Avenue, which was our house,
and I shouldn't even remember this, I'm 38, I shouldn't remember where I lived back then,
you know, it's mental, and my nan overheard the conversation,
and the age of my mother, by all this time things were going on being said,
but my father was there, and even though we fell out,
this is the only one thing that he has done, fair play to him for it,
regardless of our fallout recently, he did organise and he was going to be involved
in taking this guy out of my life, and my mum's life,
because I think he still loves her, or loved her, or maybe he still loves her, I don't know,
but he was going to, there was people in Corby waiting for this guy,
about to get this guy, and we're talking firearms, we're talking battleclaw,
he was going to be gone, and at the age, I was 15, I'm sure I was 15 at the time,
in theory I could have got done for a conspiracy to murder, thinking back now as an adult,
but my mum actually saved this man's life, which is mental, thinking,
because my nan rang my mum, because they kept in good contact,
even though it was, so my nan was my dad's mum in Luton,
my nan rang my mother and told her what she'd heard on the phone,
my mum got straight on the case and said, basically to my dad,
you're not going to do this, you're not going to do this,
so essentially she saved his life, this man, this narcissistic, male child,
domestic abuser, not child abuser, I'm not saying sexually, for children,
that's another story for my mum, but he physically assaulted her,
and my mum even saved, potentially saved his life as well,
which to our credit says a lot about my mother as well, you know what I mean,
but you know, that was pretty shit upbringing,
I did my first podcast with a guy called Richard, a pre-book release podcast from the British Legion,
sorry, from the Hotel in London, and my mum has watched it on YouTube,
and it's the first and only time she's texted me, I'm looking at my phone now,
I'd love to get my phone out and read the messages, but I won't,
and basically she was in floods of tears watching the podcast,
and said I'm so sorry I put you through it all, you bro-reaches and stuff,
if it wasn't for me she wouldn't be here anymore, I was the one that was taking the abuse,
and I just said mum we're both fucking victims, we're all of us the victims,
it's not just you, you know, and she was like yeah, but, I was just like there is no yeah,
but don't, the only thing I said to her was, I wish you'd come to me and said this, years ago,
because I, during this time, I felt like it used to be my fault,
and I used to want the bloke, or I used to want this abuser to hurt me,
because I knew that I could have him strung up within an hour, a couple of hours,
but he'd never touch me, he'd always do it to my mother and his son and his daughter,
which used to fucking, used to really get to me as well, do you know what I mean?
But yeah, the only thing I said to my mum, was I wish you'd come and said this to me before,
because I felt as though sometimes it might be my fault, it might be my, because I was kind of like,
not shunned out, I ain't no angel by the way, I'm made for style, I've been out in the piss,
I've put my family through, I've been nicked, I've been to court, I've put my mum through hell,
I was a rogue child upbringing, she ain't had it easy, I'm no angel,
but at times I thought, is this the reason that I'm not being invited to weddings,
I'm not being invited to events, and is this why I'm the last to know things,
is this something that I've done? And it wasn't until I got these text messages from my mum,
after watching a podcast, apologising, saying how much she loved me, and how if it wasn't for me she wouldn't be here anymore,
and all I said to her was, I wish I knew this before, because sometimes I feel like my son who's seven now,
is suffering at the same time because he's my son, because I'm not so close to everybody,
I'm the only person, I don't need that support from everybody, I do my own thing,
I look after my own son, my own children, and yeah it was sad, it was a sad message to receive,
but it was a nice message to receive, but I had to be honest with my mum,
I thought it might have been my fault, and I wish Elliot didn't have to suffer through this as well,
but we're slowly getting there now, it's a long process.
Well that's good, if it's trending the right way, I think this is the problem,
and something I'm writing about in my second book now is this multi-generational trauma,
you've got whatever your mother's boyfriend at the time, the abuser,
whatever happened to him as a kid made him that way, and I'm sure whatever happened to his grandpa, you know what I mean?
Do you know what, I can't comment on his upbringing, because I don't know, but what I will say is,
this man, he wasn't a soldier, but he didn't have to be a soldier, he was a lorry driver,
but now somehow he is a counsellor in Nottingham I believe.
You're a mental health counsellor?
No, last time I tried to contact this man, I'm very angry with this man, because he's put me through a lot,
he won't talk to me, he shits me out of me, he won't talk to me ever, no, I'm an adult now, you know what I mean?
And he might have watched a dozen of these podcasts already, he knows that I know what he's done,
I know that I can understand a certain amount of anger, what you go through, but I don't go and beat up a woman,
or hurt children, or hurt animals, that's something I haven't said either, like hurt an animal,
because of what I've been through, and I certainly would never take it out on a woman in the bedroom.
So whichever way you've been brought up, there's fucking, there's stones, there's things you don't do,
there's a line, you know what I mean? If I have to pull myself away from, if I felt in a situation which has kind of happened,
but if I was in a situation where it's happened in the past, I feel that I can't be with the lady because it's affecting the child,
and as much as I love that lady, then I will move myself from that situation because the most important thing is the child.
And if you don't do that, you're selfish, you know what I mean? This goes back to my childhood, I want my sons to have a better upbringing than me.
So as I'm talking about this, it's quite obvious that the trauma maybe probably did start from home.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think this is the thing, these conversations now with our generation,
we have the opportunity for the domino to stop falling every single time, you know what I mean?
And be better than our parents were, and there's no disrespect to our parents, but my dad has significant trauma,
and his upbringing before that was traumatic, his parents, so you see this ripple effect, and obviously it manifests different.
I mean, again, abusing animals, abusing women, God forbid, sexually abusing children, these are unforgivable acts,
but going to the root cause and figuring out why this is happening is part of this conversation.
So with your specific journey, obviously it's pretty clear that you've been surrounded by violence, you've been preyed upon in your home.
Can I just say there, James, with the sexual thing, that was to do with my brother and sister, that was to do with somebody else.
Yeah, no, no, but it's come up a lot on this show.
Yeah, it's way more prevalent than we realize, especially amongst the little boys.
Yeah, of course it is, yeah.
So, but you've got this insecurity at home, you don't know whether this person is going to be there or not there,
like you said, show up in your bedroom playing guitar, playing mind games with you.
Your dad, there's violence in your dad's world as well, as you kind of alluded to.
When you were in the school age, did violence become one of your emotional outbursts even when you were younger?
Well, yeah, as I said in the radio, the Vidal's on the BBC radio, no offense.
I'm heavily dyslexic as well, so I was going through school, I was struggling with reading and writing.
Dyslexia wasn't a commonly known thing back then, so you got no disrespect to people that have got autism or anything else, you know.
Aspergers or that, no disrespect to them whatsoever.
But when you were, because I was dyslexic back then, you kind of got tied with the same, you had to get put in the same sort of,
if you showed the signs of struggling, you'd get put in the same room as people that do struggle for a different reason.
Yeah.
And then you can't, but you can't, you know, all the people with Down Syndrome, you'd be putting the same people in the same sort of class.
And I don't want to say tied with the same brush because there's nothing wrong with these people.
It happens, everyone's, you know, there's no bad or wrong in anybody, doesn't matter how you are.
But when you know that you're struggling, but you know you're not stupid, but you're being sort of treated as though,
you have worse learning difficulties than we have.
There's no working mechanism there for dyslexia back then, no there isn't, obviously.
Same as PTSD when I was in the army, there was no mechanism for it, there was no help factor.
So what I started doing at school was to rather than being singled out, which happened a few times,
there's a struggle then, I'd just act the clown.
So I'd act the clown because it's easier to get sent out of class being a clown than it is for someone to come in and go,
you're not reading properly, you're not writing properly.
And then at the same time you've got the shit going at home.
So I used to try to get myself suspended from school anyway in order to get home to make sure that fucker wasn't there anyway.
So it was just a big ripple effect, hamster wheel, you know what I mean, it just went on and on and on.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it turns, I mean, yeah, it even got as bad as, you know, you get your so-called hard mates at school
and all this sort of bollocks and whatever.
It got to the point where I'd just be like, you know what, we'll go home at lunchtime with a crate of beer,
fake IDs, get the beer from the shop, go home, something my mum's working, and then I'm going to write a bit of backup.
I never told them that. They'll know now because I've done podcasts.
It was just like, yeah, just act the clown, get suspended, fuck GCSEs because I'm joining the army anyway, so I don't need them.
So that's basically how, you know, it was just, yeah, it's mental thinking back about it.
What about sports? What were you playing back then in school age?
I played football. I wanted to box, but the school didn't, obviously school wouldn't let you box.
So I boxed in the playground instead with all the kids, all in the field, or with my boyfriend, but there you go.
That wasn't sparring. But yeah, football, football and then boxing.
I did do boxing anyway, but mum didn't want me to do it, but I just did it anyway.
But I had to use my paper money to do it and get someone else to write on the disclaimer formant.
Just basically tried to blag it the whole time. But yeah, basically football, football and boxing, self-defense, a bit of karate.
Beautiful. What about the military? You said, you know, by that point you want to go in the army.
Was that something you were always dreaming of or is that something you were dreaming of?
I joined, no, I joined for some reason I knew from a young age I wanted to be a soldier, but I didn't want to be a soldier, soldier.
I didn't want to be, I didn't know about different trades back then.
I just knew I wanted to be a fighting soldier from a very young age. A combat fighting soldier, a frontline soldier.
That's all I knew. Didn't know what regiments you could join, didn't know trades.
Didn't give a fuck either. Just wanted to go and join and be a fighting soldier.
I did join the army cadets at the age of 12, 13, 12, 13.
We were a mix of very good people. One I'm still very good friends with today is that old instructor.
And his name's Mike. He's a very good friend of mine, even now.
And yeah, did the army cadets up until a certain age, but then it got to the point where I couldn't go out and get pissed now.
So I used the army cadets as an excuse and then ripped the uniform off and gone to the press instead.
And started fighting with grown adults at the age of 16.
So yeah, 15, 16. But no, I enjoyed the training. But I don't think anything can prepare a child to go and even a hostile upbringing.
I don't think anything can really, really prepare a child at a young age to go and join the military for a fighting regiment.
And what's going to come next? I don't think it's possible really.
I think it's the first time I've said this, but I knew that I wanted to go and fight people and I wanted to go and fight.
I didn't want to go and fight for my country because I was a child. Didn't know anything about politics. Didn't care about politics.
I didn't want to go out and murder those people. I just wanted to go to war as a child.
And maybe that was because I challenged so much anger from a child and an upbringing. I wanted to get it out.
And the only way to get it out maybe was to join the army. I don't know. I can't, I can't, I ain't got the answer to that. But that's the truth.
Did your grandad tell you stories of war? Did it kind of draw you into the camaraderie, the service, the courage, etc.?
Yeah, to be fair. To be fair, most remembrance Sundays, obviously it's coming up next Sunday.
Remembrance Sunday. I did go to a lot of remembrance day parades in Luton with my grandad and my father.
I think he might have turned up a few times. And yeah, obviously the army cadets brought that sense of being part of something as well.
I mean, maybe that's a good question as well. And maybe I'm being part of something because when I was growing up, I'm only thinking about this now.
I'm not so disillusioned with any other podcast. I'm actually thinking about it now. And maybe I just, yes, I wanted to go and fight.
Didn't have anything against the people. Just wouldn't have cared. I wasn't going to fight in the country. Maybe I just wanted to be part of something.
And go and let me engrossed somewhere, you know.
I think there's also another thing with us in uniform where, especially if you've been victimized when you were younger, I think you're drawn into service because you want to protect others.
You protected your siblings. You protected your mother when you could. But I think putting in uniform is another way of protecting.
And it's a faceless person that you're protecting. It might be in Nazi Germany. It might be Taliban, you know, run Afghanistan, whatever it is.
But I think being part of the solution is another draw to us. You know, you get to channel that physicality. You get that tribe that you're part of. You get that purpose.
But you're also now a helper in the world. You're a protector and stopping the victimization and the pain that you felt yourself as a child.
That's a good comment, James. It really is. I mean, what I've thought recently, after speaking to a lot of people recently, I've found no disrespect to, and if they watch this, no disrespect.
I'm not mentioning your names, excuse me. I'm not mentioning your names, but I've never ever been scared.
Be silent. I'll have mortals come out of my head. I'm never afraid to die.
The first time I fought realms of anger, which you probably come onto anyway in Iraq, but at that point, that was a bit of a learning curve for me.
Things did slow down. I did shake. But after that, it was like, I can't fuck anymore. But I did it for the right reasons.
But I've noticed through a lot of people that I've spoken to, a lot of people, when I came out, I was on PTSD in 2010. I was on GMTV.
Radio 4 Kill Factor came to me. I was in a Japanese newspaper published in Japan. I was in a Daily Mirror.
I was in a lot of press. A lot of people, because they were still within the system, i.e. the regiment that I was in, didn't particularly like me coming out with, oh, I've got PTSD.
So you get segregated. But you know, now they've read my book, listened to podcasts, and some of the best soldiers, and they're now supportive.
They're now supporting me in what I'm trying to achieve here, which is to get the word out of PTSD.
And then you don't have to go to fucking Iraq or Afghanistan or Bosnia or Somalia to get it.
A lot of people are coming to me saying, your story's touched home. And a few people say they've gone to doctors, have been diagnosed.
People say they've had the same upbringing. And these are people that I didn't even particularly get on with, but didn't really interact with in the army.
And certain people didn't particularly agree with me coming out back then and saying, I've got a problem.
However, you know, now they're coming to me and it's a good feeling. It is a good feeling. I just need it to get bigger.
But yeah, it's a lot of soldiers as well, and not just soldiers, people like yourself who are heroic in firefights.
Firefights, firefighters are different. I've noticed that a lot of the guys that, so obviously you as a firefighter, myself, without bringing myself up, and some other people.
I did a podcast with Chris. He's an ex-Marine recently as well.
There seems to be a lot of the guys that, not heroic. I don't want to say heroic because that's the wrong term.
But let's get in there, let's get the job done. Have come from a troubled upbringing.
That's how it seems to, it kind of seems to, so I mean, I've been in Afghanistan under fire. Yes, I've been to Iraq beforehand.
But when you've got bullets coming over your head and you've got mortars landing and you need to fire the mortars back and you ain't got no hard cover.
Some people, not all, but the first couple of times, try to dig a shell square, try to dig a hole with their fingers.
Because no matter training can train you to be used to having bombs coming down next to you.
Just like, you know, I've done it, when I did my anti-piracy course, I had to do a firefighter thing.
So like if there's a fire on a boat. So I've had my, what do you call it? Your man.
Yeah, yeah, the oxygen tank and everything. But, you know, I mean, I wouldn't know what it's like to run into a fire, a real fire and pull a human being out.
I'm not trained for that. Could I do it? If it was my son, I'd do it without anything on.
But what I mean by that is, you know, you can get trained to do these things.
But when it comes to it, it seems to be people, I might be wrong if some people might agree or disagree.
But I think a lot of people, a lot of people that have been through a troubled child upbringing for some reason, once do these jobs.
And it's like you said, maybe to help protect or give a bit back and the better ones at that job.
I'm not saying you have to have had a bad upbringing in order to be a good firefighter or soldier.
Or you're going to be shit if you haven't had a bad upbringing.
But I think it just gives it gives a bit more about you, you know, and, you know, on the hanging mile, I'm hanging out all my dirty laundry is for the world to see it.
I don't have to do this. Do you know what I mean? But I'm doing it because there's too many people hanging themselves.
There's too many people turning to addiction, drugs, drink.
The prison population is too big for ex-soldiers and public service.
Domestic violence is on the rise.
And yeah, and let's face it, apart from charities, who's there to give a fuck? Really?
Once you're out of that organization, there's no one there.
There's literally no one there to help apart from people that do podcasts like yourself and are there to talk and listen to others.
I've interviewed almost 850 people now, and a lot of them are, you know, military and first responder.
And it's amazing how many have a pretty rough upbringing.
And I think the story of hope is that if you can pass through that PTSD, you start processing with all the tools that are available and get to that point, it becomes a strength.
It becomes the ability to tell your story on a podcast and write a book about what you went through.
And that's the thing, the hope element.
But yeah, absolutely. The real part of the mental health message in uniform is missing is what happened before you ever put the uniform on.
So many people, I think, listen to all the podcasts that are out there where people are talking about it, people like yourself.
And it's me too. And that me too word got kind of abused recently. But it is.
It's like, holy shit, that happened to me.
And that's why people are like, well, how come this guy was only a Royal Marine for a year and then he hung himself?
Well, how come this firefighter was on six months and then they stuck a gun in their mouth?
Because we haven't asked about what happened before.
So it's such an important conversation. It really is.
I want to move to your military journey. I know there were some kind of bumps in the road.
So walk me through to when you finally joined the Coldstream Guards.
Yeah, I wanted to get in the army as quickly as I could. All I knew was I wanted to join a fighting regiment.
And the easiest, quickest way in at the age of 16 was to join the Army Foundation College.
So I went to do that. And obviously my granddad being my hero and like I said, I've dedicated this first book to.
Last time I seen him, I promised him I'd be a soldier. I put my thumb up to him. He put his thumb up to me.
He died that night. You know, it broke my heart. It broke my fucking heart. Absolutely broke my heart.
You know, it did when my nan died as well. But that was just like this man who were, you know, I hope Elliot, I hope my children and Elliot, Elliot's my youngest.
I hope they love me as much as I love my granddad. You know what I mean? And have that much respect for.
So turn the world inside out. But when I failed my first selection because I was an inhaler when I was 12.
At 16 I thought, fuck, what do I do now? Like tears in my eyes going home. So what do I do now?
I got angry on the train on the way home, went to the local shop, bought some beers, got drunk.
I thought, what do I do? Like my whole world now has crashed down on me because I had all my hopes built up on the army.
So that's what I was going to do. It just bit me in the ass. I've lost. I haven't kept a promise to my granddad.
You know what I mean? It was just like, what? Now what? So I had a bit of time thinking, working for some fast food restaurants in Kettering and doing some agency work.
Then I thought, oh, TA. TA was in Corby. So I joined the TA. Back then it wasn't like it is now. It wasn't a JPA system where if it's linked on computer, you could go fail one.
I could have probably gone to another recruiting office and got in the army. Just bullshitting. But I left it.
I only joined the REBEE, one-way recovery unit in Corby. I went through their training, passed their medical.
I didn't tell them I failed selection for the army. So obviously it's the reserves now. So I started training as a recce mech.
And this is where I started realizing, oh, it's different parts of the army. The army is not all about fighting. So I was trained as a recovery mechanic.
It didn't suit me. I was fucking around with chains and how to recover vehicles. And then back in my head, I'm thinking, I don't want to do this. I want to be on the ground.
But this is 80. Shooting, doing tactics, fieldcraft. So it wasn't my thing. I wanted to join the Foreign Legion because I thought I'd never get into the regular army.
So I mean, this just shows the mentality of me at this age. I mean, what 18-year-old, 17-year-old wants to join the Foreign Legion? I mean, fucking hell.
You know, so I started looking for a legion. They said I could join at 18. I had to go to Marseille. I was pestering my mum as well. You need to send the appeals off.
You need to send the appeals off. So when I got to 18 birthday, I was bang, I was going to go to the Foreign Legion. Getting prepared to go to the Foreign Legion.
I got a letter through basically saying, you're at Peel, you're now 18. You go to Frimley Park Hospital. Basically, I had to go on a treadmill with a mask on.
I had to assess my lungs, my breathing and all this crap. And I passed. So the Foreign Legion left my head. Fuck the Foreign Legion. My recruiting sergeant was a culture guard.
And obviously that had some influence on what I joined. Back then, again, I got some book leaflets on the culture guards. Not very good at reading anyway. I didn't care.
I was just like, is it a fighting regiment? Are they elite? Yes, they are. Right. Let's go with that then.
Now looking back, it's the oldest fighting regiment in the British Army. So I'm proud to serve in the culture guards. And we did a fucking good job as well. On every tournament and they will continue to do that.
But yes, October 13, 2003 was the catcher at the Diggle Basey Training. And that's where that journey began.
So where was the first place you found yourself deployed? Because I know listening to Paul, I'm not well versed with the culture guards, but understanding that there's a kind of ceremonial element in London. But now 2001, the towers fall and now the Allied nations are heading to the Middle East again. So where did you find yourself first?
The culture, the ceremonial duties get split between all the household division, the guards. Actually the household division, but they all do different jobs. So the culture guards, the Irish guards, the Welsh guards, the Scots guards, the Welsh guards, they all have their turn at doing ceremonial duties.
But they've all got the ceremonial companies as well. So usually what would have happened would have been you finish your basic six months training and you go to their ceremonial company, which mine would have been, it would have been Wellington Barracks.
And that would have been number seven company. And that would have basically been like a phase three training, but hitting ceremonial and then go to battalion. But as luck would have it, our battalion was going to Iraq in 2005.
So I passed out in St. George's Day 2004 and they, me and one other, and they shipped us straight over to Walshaw and basically prepared to go to Iraq in 2005. Basically up to our train started. So my first point of deployment was Iraq, 05, 19, 20 years old. And I thought all my Christmas was going at once.
So question I ask everyone. And the reason is not so much in England, especially in America, we get a very polarized view on the news of war, either very pro-war, kill them all, that God's taught them how, very anti-war, they're all baby killers.
And then you have the men and women, the boys and girls, arguably that are actually sent overseas to actually do the job. So the first part of the question, regardless of the politics that sent you out there, and as you mentioned, you weren't super engrossed in the service of the country anyway.
Was there a moment where you realized, okay, there are some horrific people out here that we do need to take care of?
You know what? I just, I could have got sent to Iraq, Afghanistan, I could have got sent to Congo. I didn't care. I was just fulfilling my childhood dream to go to war. As it happened, it was Iraq.
And Saddam Hussein was on the run. But it was just, it was quite early on as well, 2005. It wasn't long after the invasion. It was a shit state out there in Basra in 2005. But I didn't care. I literally just wanted to get there and be what I wanted to be.
I just wanted to go, it sounds mad, but at the age of 1920, I just wanted to go to war. Just what, you know, put it this way, if I was in America, if I was an American in the 60s, if I was American in the 60s, I would have just signed up to go to Vietnam.
That's the sort of, I just wanted to go. Not for my country, not because the news said it was horrific out there, but in my own brain, I just knew that's what I had to do and what I wanted to do. So, yeah.
But obviously, I got sent there for probably the wrong reasons, looking back on it now. And the organization which I'm now against, but which we can come on to. But I wanted to go as a child on my own.
So, yeah. You know what? The question would be, would I join the army if there was no wars going on? Probably, but I might have gone to the Foreign Legion. I don't know. History is history, isn't it? You know what I mean?
But you've come from, you know, urban southeast of England. Now you find yourself over there. Your motivation was to just simply go to war. But as far as what you found yourself around, did you start seeing the enemy as it were? You start seeing some of the horrors that were being done to the Iraqi people?
Unfortunately, Iraq was a hard one because, luckily or unluckily, I've been to other war zones quite a lot. And back then, you had your Sunnis, you had your Shias, and they were fighting each other.
But at that age, you don't get briefed on who's the good guys, who's the bad guys. And unfortunately, in 2005, a lot of the incidents that were happening was IDF, indirect fire, onto our bases, and IEDs out on the ground, which really used to fuck us off.
Well, it used to fuck me off because if someone's going to blow you up and you're not dead, you want to fight them. So at least if there's a follow-up shoot and you're not dead, you can fire back at them.
But when an IED goes off and you get called out for QRF, which happened to me a lot of the time, you go on QRF, Quick Reaction Force, set a cordon up to a blown-up vehicle that have got dead coalition troops in them or close protection officers, mercenaries, whatever, you start to think, what the fuck's this all about?
Obviously, the first incident that happened to me on the same tour, and I was the first person to do it, on the Sanger. But yeah, it opened your eyes. Like I said, I don't know what I expected. I don't know what I expected out there.
But I was quite quick at adapting anyway. I was quite quick at adapting to the scenario that I was in. What is hard, what was hard and what's still hard is at least in Afghanistan, we went that way and we knew this Taliban were going to be shooting us and we were going to be shooting them back.
Whereas Iraq was very different. It was very urban, fibula-based, fine-billed paribases. But you'd go through a village where you was giving water to the children, doing hearts and minds on the Monday.
And then on the Sunday, on the Wednesday, sorry, your mates were blown up in the same village and you're like, what the fuck, what the fuck, what are our friends, like what's going on here? And then all of a sudden the police are involved in certain, one minute there's a bomb gone off but then the police are there and it's like, we all know about the corruption out there anyway.
And you're like, but at the time I didn't think that. Now I look back and think, what a load of bollocks. You know, what an absolute lies. So corrupt and you're looking back now, it's so obvious.
So the other side of the coin, you're in these, and it can be another country as well, you're in these places where these conflicts are going on. I think, again, you've used the term earlier, Tariq, with the same brush. What the media does very poorly here is they say, oh, we're at war with Afghanistan. We're at war with Iraq. When we're at war with extremists within those countries who are actually terrorizing their own people.
So what about moments of kindness and compassion? You talked about hearts and minds with the war, whether it was your fellow soldiers, whether it was the indigenous people, when you're around such horrendous war zones, were there moments that struck you of normality or kindness and compassion when you look back?
What, from the locals?
From anything.
I don't really know. I mean, you know, it's hard. You've got, the thing is, when you're at war, you're at war. And the minute you let your guard down, if you start, some people will show, will take kindness as weakness. This is a problem. A lot of people take kindness as weakness. They do it down the pub. They do it in a job. A boss will do it.
So people will take kindness as weakness. And if you let your guard down and you show too much kindness, then that's the time you're vulnerable, aren't you? So you have to maintain professionalism.
I was a father, but I wasn't a dedicated father, as bad as that may sound. I wasn't attached to my daughter back then, or my son. I was a young man, 19, 20 years old in Iraq.
I just didn't want to get involved with the locals who come up here begging for food, begging for this, begging for water, blah, blah, blah, which is sometimes give them a bottle of water. With the kindness and compassion side, there were, you know, there were times where we would have to go and do a cordon and the officer, an officer of a non-kinetic would go in and
go on about building the school, rebuilding the school. So you're doing a bit of guard, stagging on whilst this is happening. But then around the corner, you're getting blown up again. It's hard. You're sort of like, you know, I mean, I can give some good examples of Afghanistan as well.
You know, it's kind of who pays more on the day? Who pays more on the day? Who's going to give you the most? If they're going to give you a thousand dollars to set up a bomb in your village, you're going to take it. But if we're going to pay you this to help you.
I mean, you know, we had a, in Basra, we had this guy, Iraqi guy who lived miles away from Basra, miles away from Basra and he used to come down, he used to come down every day at his own little shop at the hotel.
And he used to bring, he used to bring us, he used to have like coke, he'd bring, he'd even bring dirty DVDs for the lads to watch. You know, he used to, he's like a little lucky lucky man, you know, he used to have his own little shop, like all dodgy like Band of Brother DVDs and everything, things for us to watch.
One day he didn't turn back up to work and he shopped in the open and everyone was thinking, well, where's this guy gone? It turns out that he was assassinated by him and his family were all assassinated because he was found working for coalition forces.
So, where, where, where'd you go from that? You know what I mean? It's fucking crazy. And really, did, did the coalition forces go and help him? Did they help his family? Probably not.
He probably tried to earn a few quid and had his whole family watch out and the government and the forces out there at the time probably didn't give a fuck either. I don't know, I can't comment, but I can't imagine him, can't imagine his family and the end of the chapter, can you? Not now.
Yeah. I mean, even now I've just had a guy from Afghanistan, he lives in the US at the moment, but he's talking about the plight of the Afghani people or the Afghan people, excuse me, now, you know, we withdrew and it was like, all right, we're done with that. Oh, Ukraine, let me go help you now.
But they're starving to death. They're about to go into another deep winter where a lot of them are going to freeze to death and they're having, you know, tens and tens and tens of children just in this one area that he knows that are dying almost every single day.
Then you add the Taliban in again, you know, and now I just saw that Pakistan is going to evict every Afghan refugee or, you know, immigrant that they have there. So now that's another one and a half million people push back into the country.
So yeah, I mean, it's interesting, so many people from all backgrounds as far as geography, Australian, you know, British, American, Canadian, they all struggle with this. Like, we know we did good things when we were there, we helped build the school, we dug wells, we protected these villages.
But, you know, when they leave and then these towns and cities are just taken back over again and the people that were helping are now strung up from light poles, you know, how do you justify that?
It's hard for the average person in uniform to look back and not carry some guilt and shame for, you know, not supporting the people that risk their lives and risk their family's lives to help us when we were over there.
Well, I feel bitter about it now because we used to take some good ground off the Taliban. But then we, it's a classic Vietnam story, Afghanistan.
Afghanistan. We're still in Iraq at the moment. I mean, like my last contract was in Iraq with the DID. Al-Assad, at least you still got a footprint, you know, at Al-Assad Air Base in Iraq. Whereas Afghanistan, we've got Fakun.
I mean, well, I don't know why you evacuate a country and leave billions of dollars, loads of weapons, Apache aircraft, unless you wanted to go into Russia at some point, run through the back door.
I'm just saying that on the back of things, building up a repertoire with the old enemy. It wouldn't be the first time.
But, you know, luckily, I mean, I've lost friends in Afghanistan. Don't get me wrong. Luckily, I haven't lost children.
Believe me, if I lost my son, my son was a serving soldier and went to Afghanistan and lost his life or he or she lost their life.
Right here, right now, I'm thinking, what the fuck's this government doing? They've been out there fighting for a so-called peace of mind to protect these people because it's all good and meant to be.
My son or daughter was killed out there doing a job and they just leave.
What would be there for them? Were we there for them? Or was 9-11, God bless everyone at 9-11, was that just a bullshit reason to go into another country and invade it for another hidden agenda?
Do you know what I mean? And you can't because, you know, you don't, let's face it, Iraq has got a lot of oil. That's why we still have contractors in Iraq now.
BP, everything, you know, Afghanistan's got minerals, but the biggest opium source is the Taliban and you need opium.
So who's to say that there hasn't been a deal struck up somewhere from some high politician for another politician? And it's like, oh, well, we'll just give that back now.
I don't trust any of the people in power anymore that say this is the reason we're going over here, this is the reason we're going there, because you just can't trust the word that comes out of their mouth.
Do you know what I mean? And it doesn't matter whether you fly a Hercules and Apache or if you're a grunt on the ground.
Once you're out of that organization, they don't care about you. They'll string you up dry. They don't want to hear you. They don't want to support you. They don't want to.
They may be homeless, the army does, you know what I mean? Sorry, not the army, not my regiment, the Ministry of Defense.
They don't give two shits about the people. All they care about is themselves and what's going on fair above me, you and other people who never ever know.
We're just pawns to be used at the end of the day, are we? You know? And the reason I went back as a contractor to do it after I got my head straight.
Well, I say straight, once I got it in a capable working mechanism, the reason I went back was because I was good at my job and it's where I felt comfortable.
But essentially I went and I did it for choice. I did it for choice anyways. I wanted to join the army, but I went back for money in the end.
I went back to earn better money and carry on doing all I know, basically. I didn't look like I wanted to be a fine soldier.
If you were to ask me now whether I'd advise my seven year old to join the army, I'd have to answer that really hardly because I think it's good, but I wouldn't want him to join a fighting regiment.
I'd advise him, go, probably go to the Navy, the Air Force, learn a trade. Take something from them for free whilst they're paying you that you can take out into the city street and make it in city street.
Because essentially that's what's going to happen later on anyway, because you're not always going to be incorporated in. Once you're out of their system, you're out of their system.
It doesn't matter what choice you make.
Well, you said about the reasons behind it. I remember just as a civilian going, 9-11 happens and we're going into Iraq.
To me, it's like Mexico invades somewhere and they retaliate with Canada. It's two different countries.
I think it was disgusting seeing that kind of lumped in. I think a lot of people now will all agree, all the veterans on here, that we were told one thing and then the other thing was actually the reality.
Did they make a difference while they were there? Yes. But has a lot of it reverted back to the way it was before? Also, yes.
It's even worse now, isn't it?
Yeah, because you've left a void now.
Yeah, and they're not getting back into Afghanistan.
Yeah, they're not going to trust us now, are they, the way we left the last time?
Just before we get to the mental health transition story, when you look back, you've already got a huge amount of trauma in your early life.
You transition into the military, you go overseas. Are there any incidents when you reflect now that really compounded that kind of trauma that you already had, some ones that really kind of haunted you?
What, as in hostile countries? Yes.
Okay. Yeah, I mean, a few in this book here, I've still got to do the second one. The second one's ready to go, actually. The second one's ready to go.
Let this one be, let people get to grips with this one first and hear the podcast go out and absorbed.
The first time I took lethal force, lethal aim shots at somebody was in Iraq.
I wasn't being shot at at the time, which is documented in this book and many other podcasts.
I fired a warning shot on one vehicle, it slowed down, it stopped. Half hour later, same thing happened, flatbed vehicle with three Iraqis in it.
Sorry, there weren't Iraqis, but I wasn't, so no difference.
Fired a warning shot, the vehicle sped up rather than slow down. So I split second with the decision, what do I do?
So I took aim shots at the driver. Do I regret that decision? No. I actually got a recommendation flat for my actions because I thought the rules of engagement cut over to the letter of the law.
Turned out, allegedly, they were news reporters and he was a news reporter.
That's all I know. I'd go to the RMPs, do a statement with the RMPs, the Royal Ministry of Police, and that was that.
But there was time where I started to see a difference in the military. I was great then, I was great back then doing that.
I came home with R&R, rest of the corporation, and I got myself, you know, even driving down, I say MSR, even driving down a road from IF Brides Norton, I remember seeing a wire across the road and I was going, I went, stop, stop, stop, stop.
In my head, I was back on the MSR and I thought it was command wire.
And I got out of the vehicle and then I was smelling the grass and the frost. The driver's like, you all right? The guy who drove me, I said, you all right?
And I came back to reality and I thought, what the fuck am I doing? I'm in England. So I said, oh yeah, I need a piss. I just need a piss.
Went stage away. I'm not going to say, oh, I thought it was a bomb on the side of the road. I said, fuck it, that's mate, you're in England.
But, you know, but like other things, after that, there was a big riot in Iraq called the Janiat riots. Two SES lads were arrested in Basra and it all went mental.
And walls got drove into the tanks and a lot of lethal force was used. Allegedly civilians were killed.
I was involved in the incident as in the whole incident as a whole. And the guy that got out with the warrior, sat on fire with petrol bomb, that was horrendous.
He was on Sky News. But after all of that, I was in a vehicle convoy that broke down. To cut a very long story short, I was in a vehicle convoy that broke down.
And the warrior went past us. It was a very big convoy. The threat level went up. All the hearts and minds got out of the window after this Janiat riot.
And it was sort of towards, it was getting towards the end of the tour anyway. And we were just like, yes, there was half a multiple in a snatch vehicle.
And we were just like, right, we'll set up a vehicle checkpoint. And like I said, to cut a very long story short, one vehicle kept coming in.
We expected the convoy to turn around to come and get us, but no one came and got us. One vehicle kept coming through. They're not stupid.
The threat level was very high. We had no comms, limited kit, and we was on our own. So I came up with the idea of stealing a police car, stealing a car.
Police car comes into a later, stealing a local's car. But I was mindful of this vehicle that kept coming in up and down at the NSR.
So we basically pulled one of them out, got the other guy to pull the other guy out. My colleague, his name is Mack, we plasticed him off the hands.
We found a weapon in their car. I said to the rest of the multiple, bearing in mind I was a junior rank at this point as well.
I said, let's get in this fucking vehicle and do a runner. Blow the snatch up. We've been there hours. We were vulnerable.
Half of us, let's say half Mork was just half sections. We were talking five or six lads.
We got into the Mork. Three of us got into the car. The others were a bit hesitant. It's not right.
So I had to then uncuff these Iraqis, try and speak a bit of Arabic, saying sorry. Salam alaikum, alaikum salam, peace be upon you peace.
Not that I really wanted to wear that anymore. They'd just been plastic cuffed up. Put them back in the vehicle.
Vehicle's driving off. We're fucked now. We're compromised.
We've just shown that we've just done something that shouldn't have happened. I say shouldn't have happened, doesn't happen.
So we basically, we tapped off to the base that we come from as it was a proven route.
We got hit from the, got hit. It was about 12km we had to walk, that's how. Tactically, we did it tactically.
We got hit from the right. Whether they were warning shots or not, I don't know.
But the phone cracked when they were ahead. Peeled into the desert. Tactically moved through the desert.
Didn't fire. I wanted to fire back. I was dying to fire back. But at the end of the day, there wasn't that many of us.
We had no cons. We'd have died. No way we could have sustained that. Not with what we had on us.
So we were on our way back to Shiger. There was a vehicle checkpoint manned from the Iraqi police.
But at this point, we knew it was there. We had night vision.
And we were thinking, the problem is, the problem is with this, is the fact we've took people out of the car,
going to take their cars, dropped to Shiger. A few miles, a few km up the road, this happens.
Whether they were warning shots, direct shots, whatever, from a compound.
And now we've got to, now we've got to, now we've got to go past an Iraqi vehicle checkpoint.
Permanent vehicle checkpoint. These guys could have told the police.
There's five armed guys. There's five British soldiers. There's five militants.
They don't, I don't know, they could be on the lookout for some blokes walking up the road with an RPK that just smashes the bits.
You know what I mean? So we had to be mindful of this. So we came up with the idea to tactically, pepper pot, bounce forward.
Charlie Doe, our fire team, cover, go forward. Turns out the guy in the towel was asleep, which isn't uncommon.
Fuck anyway, and the other guy was asleep. And at this point, we were going to steal a police car.
We'd come up with the idea, enough's enough. We're fucking tired. We've run out of water.
It's been a long night. Eventful, but long. Let's just get, let's get back to Shia.
Luck, as luck would have it, multiple soldiers from Shia logistic base came to the police station.
We thought they were looking for us. They weren't. They were like, who the fuck are you?
And when we told them what had happened, they were from 1B1 Irish Regiment.
And when they looked, they said, like, who are you? And we told them, they're like, no, mate, seriously, this is what's happened.
So they rescued us essentially, took us back to Shia.
And their commanding officer shook up, shook every one of our hands and said, if you were our troops, we would be writing you up.
We would be, we would be writing you up for some sort of award, military award, because you've gone above and beyond service here.
You don't get trained for this. It shouldn't have happened.
And you've dealt with it in a professional manner. And we'd be proud of you.
And what really fucked me off was my regiment, sorry to say it, but it's true,
covered the whole thing up. It didn't happen. They picked us up the next day.
And it was, you're not getting the fucking vehicle. We basically got told this does not, they're spoiling the whole thing over again.
Even people in the regiment didn't even know it happened. It got covered up that much.
And it was then I started thinking, all right, hang on.
So it's good for you when it's good for you.
When it's not good for you, someone's got to take a bit of responsibility.
The shit rolls downhill massively.
And that, you know, that really pissed me off.
And then other things that happened after that, I just started seeing through it, started seeing through it.
And now I'm over it and I look back, like I said about the PTSD discharge statistic, it's just, yeah, it's just a big corporate,
it's just a big, massive corporate, probably the biggest corporate organizations in the world.
And when it works for them, it works for everyone. When it doesn't work for them, you're a piece of shit.
It's a shame, but it's true.
So you mentioned about the transition, the PTSD diagnosis, almost being homeless because of them trying to switch the criminal record and the medical discharge.
Walk me through not just that time, but literally the last 15 years or 13 years,
where the darkest place that you were mentally and then what you did to allow yourself to, you know, to start healing.
What were some of the tools that work for you specifically?
The darkest moments was after Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was a different world altogether.
We were fighting Taliban.
We were killing a lot of Taliban.
I was part of a mortar pursuit, I was part of a mortar attack.
We were killing a lot of Taliban. I was part of a mortar pursuit and I was a machine gunner in Afghanistan.
We were getting into a lot of contacts in Afghanistan.
There was no real remorse in Afghanistan.
There was very limited hearts and minds in Afghanistan.
It was us against you.
There was an element of hearts and minds.
We had to build that up with the farmers because we needed their land.
But again, Afghanistan, it was quite easy to know who was going to get contacted anyway,
because the ICOM charter, but not just the ICOM charter, the locals would fuck off from the village.
So once you know they're leaving the village, you know, right, we're having a fight today.
We're going to have a good fight today.
But darkest moments, you know, when I got back from Afghanistan, I had the charges coming up.
I was getting medically discharged.
I just, I went very anti-army after Afghanistan because, because when I come out with a PTSD,
I got sort of segregated amongst other people.
So people who were my friends couldn't be my friend.
They were told not to talk to me.
That's how I felt.
And it's like, I thought you were my friend.
I thought we were brothers, which we are now.
But at the time, it was, yeah, it was horrible.
The day that I thought I was getting a medical discharge, even the doctor told me,
you're getting medical discharge today, OK?
And to sort of a, you know, not the end of, sort of the end of an era sort of thing,
but move on because a medical discharge would have meant a little bit of rehabilitation,
resettlement, a bit of help with social worker, et cetera, you know.
I literally got to, so I went to the medical, pushed through the medical quickly,
went to the command officer, to the office, got marched in, thought it was a bit weird,
got marched in, got kicked out of the army, there and then, for having a prison sentence.
And like I say, that's when the real, that's during this sort of time as well,
I tried to take my own life a couple of times and luckily didn't succeed.
But I was very close, you know, I took a lot of tablets at one point,
which completely fucked me up.
I took a lot of tablets, it's been a really dark place.
But then talking to my charity family, talking to my charity guy, Ron Paxman,
an ex-SES lad, who he then put me on with GMTV.
And we went through their healing process, their therapy, which helped me.
I don't know why. I can't even explain what kind of therapy it was,
but it wasn't EMDR because that didn't fucking work really when I was in the military.
But their therapy helped me, it just helped with a click in my brain.
And it's then I realized after that, I'm better than this.
I don't need to kill myself.
Obviously, I wasn't at that point, I wasn't thinking about helping others like I am now.
At that point, it was more, I want to go back.
I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn't weak and I wanted to go back and do the job that I knew I was good at,
which is what I did. But those dark times lasted a good two, three years.
Am I PTSD free now? No, I'm not.
But I can talk about it. I'm open about it.
You're never going to be over it.
But there's a way of dealing with it and coping with it, coping mechanisms,
which is what I'm trying to get out to people.
I don't want to see people.
I had one bloke a few years ago that I worked with.
And he put a suicide note on Facebook.
I won't mention his name.
And honestly, I looked at that, I looked at his suicide note on Facebook.
I thought, oh fuck off.
That's what I thought. I thought cry for help.
So I actually messaged him saying, stop being a prick.
This is my sister, stop being a prick.
He's got wife and children and dogs.
So stop being a prick.
I hope you don't have read this message.
But stop being a prick.
Give us a call.
All this is a cry for help.
Do you know what he done?
He actually went and fed his dogs and hung himself in a dog kennel with his dogs.
And his wife found him.
And I couldn't believe that I sent him that message.
I thought, fuck.
Some people do. I wish it had.
Do you know what I mean?
It's hard. So hard.
That's what I'm trying to express with this book.
When war follows your home, it could be from a childhood, like you said, what happened before.
Why would you hang yourself after being in the Marines for a month?
It could be from anything.
People just need to speak out and reach out.
You don't have to, like you say, you don't have to have been a firefighter in Grenfell or 9-11.
Or a Guantarac, Bosnia, Afghanistan, a bit of mercenary to get PTSD.
It could be a mixture of things.
It could be anything.
It could be a car crash.
It could be a fight that you witness in the street.
You know, it could be anything.
And the thing is, people, it could be Jimmy in the pub down the road that never really speaks out, sits in the corner.
Unless he's a full-blown alcoholic and you know his background, he's a little dole.
But even then, why is this guy sat on his own, not speaking to anyone?
Or Sarah, the one that's always pissed down the other pub that you can't talk to?
Or why does she kill herself? She's always on the piss.
Well, maybe she had things in her head that she didn't talk about or didn't want to talk about.
And that's what I'm trying to get at, you know.
People need to speak out, especially men, because men are worse than women at speaking out.
You know, men will do it over a pint at the pub.
But they won't go live like I have now to you, saying there is a way forward.
You know, women are more likely to go to the doctors than what men are to seek help.
That's a statistical fact.
But obviously, women bottle things up as well.
But the suicide rate in men is a lot higher than it is women.
And I just think people need to speak out.
Hopefully this book, my journey, my story, everything else people can connect with and can lead me in a different direction.
But also bring closure and help other people around the world.
Not just in England.
I mean, people in America will hopefully relate to this as well.
That's what I hope.
We're just touching on what we talked about at the beginning of your story, seeking that tribe, you know, that purpose.
What I've seen is super detrimental for military first responders again is if you are betrayed by the organization.
Now, all of a sudden, you felt part of a tribe and now you're ostracized, whether it's the stigma of 15 years ago.
Like, you know, don't be a pussy talking about mental health.
What's wrong with you? Or whether it's organizationally, you know, your medical discharges refuse or whatever it is.
I think that's a big, big part of this conversation.
I know a lot of a lot of the suicides that we've had, that's been a contributing factor in the fire service.
You know, there's people wanting to help. They're kind of stigmatized or they're shunned. And then that's kind of like the final straw.
It's not really. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, it's not.
I mean, you can't put it down to the fire service, the army or even the M.O.D. or public services.
It's not they're limited to their funds and what they can do.
It's the powers that be. It's the government's.
It's the powers that be that give the give the give the resources to the public services, like the fire service, the police, the ambulance.
The first responders, you say the M.O.D. is the power is the government's powers that be the ones that tell you that they make the decision to go to war and then told told that.
Put the orders on you to go to war. And obviously, first responder, you're responding to something that's happened that someone else has caused.
But at the end of the day, you know, you're job before you join up, but there should be more help.
But that's got to come. You can only get more help if the powers that be give you the help.
I mean, I think I think America, I think America are a bit more privileged than the I might be wrong, but I think America might be a bit more privileged with with with help and certain things than what the British are when it comes to leaving, leaving the forces or leaving the leaving first response.
I won't be wrong with that, but it's all that's what I see.
It's more spoke out, more spoke out, more more support, more support for the public.
I won't be wrong, but that's that's how it seems.
Yeah, no, it's weird. I see it from two different lenses.
I think some areas one does well, some does another.
But the big thing for the first responders here, if you're a military, you you have VA benefits.
If there's any kind of medical element to your service, then you'll have that health care the rest of your your your life.
You leave police, fire, corrections, EMS here.
That's it. Doesn't matter if you got banged up.
You didn't sleep for 20 years and now you've got heart disease or cancers.
It's like tough shit. You're not a problem anymore.
So whereas was why I rave about the NHS.
Is it perfect? No.
But I think it's not perfect the moment because it's so poorly funded and supported.
But at least our firefighters and police officers in England, at least they know they can get medical care here.
If you're not insured, you're fucked.
So that's a disconnect, I think.
So I think there's a lot of things that they do in the UK better than here, to be honest.
We've got this facade of helping.
But, for example, the VA with the mental health stuff, I know that there's some great people in that system.
But overall, most of the people have gone through a lot.
Yeah, they just threw pills at me, you know, which is not getting to the root of an issue.
So on the front, it's like, yeah, we take care of our veterans.
But actually, when you get in there, it's like, well, you check boxes with your veterans.
You're not really giving them the tools that they need.
And what's interesting here is there's this real movement for psychedelics to the plant medicine.
A lot of veterans are having a lot of success with ayahuasca and MDMA, counseling and things that are a little bit less traditional,
but seemingly a lot more effective because they're able to get to the nucleus.
You do EMDR and they're like, oh, it was that stop at the checkpoint.
Let's work on that. But you can't EMDR your way out of your entire childhood.
That's not how it works. It's an acute event tool.
So, you know, something like ayahuasca would probably be a good fit for you,
where you unpack a lot of the shit that happened when you were younger,
and then you get to kind of go through that with a counselor as well and address the entire lifespan rather than, oh, you were in Fallujah, you were in Ramadi or wherever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is why essentially I want to do what you're doing now, main goals to help people.
And I, there's nothing worse, in my opinion, there's nothing worse than having an issue,
whether it be like you say, for Iraq here, there, or anywhere,
go and see someone with a white coat on and then sitting down with a degree and saying, oh, yeah, we know what's wrong with this.
We know, we can diagnose. Fuck off, mate. Unless you've been there, you've done it.
I could sit and talk to people. I could talk to someone out of suicide if I had the time. I know I could.
I could sit there and talk to someone, listen, empathize and sympathize,
because I might not have been through the exact thing that's upset them or traumatized them,
but you still betray the same kind of behavior. So you can still connect on a different level with them.
And they're more likely to listen to you than they are someone wearing a white coat that just says,
let's make the present pills, come and see me next month.
Yeah, absolutely. Because that's a plaster, a bandaid, as I say, in America.
You're just putting it over a bullet wound. You're not getting to the fact that you've got lead inside you.
I agree. At least a lot of things have got to change. It's as simple as that.
100%. Well, I want to get to, obviously, this book and then we'll just give a teaser of the next one just before we do, though,
because it's something that's come up in conversation once in a while, Somalia.
So I saw a great documentary, I forget what it was called now, is it Sea Spirits Sea Spirits? I think it was.
But, you know, two dimensionally, we're like, oh, these people are the enemy.
Like right now with Gaza, people are swearing up and down just the same way they did in covid and everything else.
Like, no, this is my truth. They're the bad guys. No, they're the bad guys.
And the same with Somalia. When you look at the history of the piracy, from what I understand,
The fishing, the fishing. I know he was going to say that. I knew he was going to say that.
But you've been out there. So tell me your perspective, you know, because I mean, I've just watched the documentary sitting in America.
So tell me your perspective of what, if you were able to at all, was the nucleus of the piracy out of that particular country.
And then let's just talk about your experience contracting out there.
Well, in a nutshell, I was again, I was contracted to go on ships of many, many, many more.
I've done super yachts. I've been very privileged. I've done some lovely super yachts.
And I've done some absolute dog shit ships like the ones that should never.
I did one that was done in the 60s, which is where I had a contact with three pirates, actually.
Well, I say not so long ago, but in 2018.
But I mean, once again, at the end of the day, that leads.
The question you're asking, now I look back, but back then I didn't care. I didn't care.
I was getting paid to do a job to go on that vessel. And all I care about is getting that vessel from A to B.
You know, the transit route. That's all I care about. I sort of paid to care about.
But looking back, their government is so corrupt. Somali government is so corrupt.
And what's led them, what's led them, now doing research, what's actually led them to do piracy is because of poverty.
And they're starving. And their kids are starving. If my son was starving now, I'd go to Robtusco for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread.
Because I'm not going to let my son starve. So I do see what you're saying.
But again, you know, it's one of them. When you do the anti-piracy courses and the CB courses, they don't tell you.
Well, basically, more good issues, they're starving. And the government aren't giving them the money.
So they're setting up piracy outfits to go and take ships in order. But then the Somali piracy, a lot of the money was being funded through Al-Qaeda anyway.
So even the money that they were getting for the ships, it's not like it was going on the women, the children and the living.
It was all part of a big massive conspiracy, a terrorist organization. So it did need to be stopped.
But then, you know, maybe the money that's channeled through all the shipping industries should be funneled into countries that need it as well.
Rather than just let, like when I was in Yemen in 2000, like in Yemen, that's probably the worst place I've been in my life.
I'm sorry to go back again and again. But, you know, seeing small children die of smallpox and cholera on the side of the road.
That's me as a pandemic, not COVID. You know, I didn't see dead, stacks and stacks of dead people in England.
I didn't see, you know, I was in Mosul, I was in Mosul during the epidemic, the pandemic, whatever it is.
But when I was in Yemen, I was seeing dead children, dying children and mums, obviously their jabs,
praying on the side of the road for these small children that were smallpox and respiratory diseases, I'm guessing cholera.
And obviously I couldn't do anything. I was actually dressed up as an Arab at some point because it was run by Al-Qaeda down in Mekala and Salif and Aden.
So I can't, you know, what I could do is feed the dogs. I love dogs, what can I say? I was feeding the dogs.
But, you know, you've got Yemen that's basically probably one of the worst countries in the world.
But next to it, you've got Oman and you've got Saudi Arabia, some of the richest countries in the world.
And all they're doing is throwing the people that they don't want and their shit into a country that can't sustain itself.
So then you get two political organisations fighting and it's just like, and you've got all these shipping companies going through worth billions and billions of pounds every day.
Same as Somalia. I've got nothing against Somalians or Kenyans or anything else.
But, you know, you don't see, you don't see South Africans hijacking ships.
But then if you see, if you go like towards Philippines, there's Philippine piracy, loads of Philippine piracy.
And why is that? You know, but a lot of it is, you can understand it more if it was the money that they're getting was funded.
But, like, all it seems to be, I went, I did West Africa as well, Nigeria transits as well.
We weren't supposed to be there. So we went there as advisors.
But again, it's just bullshit. It's just so corrupt because you're there, you're doing a job.
But really, all you're doing is lying in the pockets of the governments that are allowing the shipping to go through.
And they're not, and they're not just, they're not giving the money out to who needs it or looking after people who needs it.
I think that answers, I hope that answers the question anyway.
Yeah, no, it gives a very different, you know, unique perspective, because obviously we're all aware of the Captain Phillips story and some of these other ones, you know, where the Somali pirates were involved.
But it's so sad, and I've talked about this a lot.
If you look at history, no matter where you're sitting right now, whatever your country's history is, it's nearly always a few profiting off the masses.
And you can see it in England, you can see it in America. It's not just poorer countries.
You know, there's drug companies here.
We have an opioid crisis that's killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and people are making a fuckload of money from that.
We have people selling burgers and drinks, sodas.
And we have an obesity epidemic that is killing millions of Americans.
You know, so it doesn't have to be, you know, like a war or piracy or, you know, some sort of terrorist organization.
It can be a lot more insidious through smoking cancer, through obesity and heart attacks.
But it's always the same fucking thing.
And history is trying to teach us like, you know, when these people start rising up.
And I just had Sebastian Junger on the podcast.
He was saying this, he's like, if you look at ancient tribal culture, when someone in the tribe starts being toxic and self-serving,
they'll probably just throw them off a fucking cliff somewhere and go back to being a functioning tribe.
But for some reason in modern society, especially, we allow these few to just totally, you know, dominate the masses.
And Haiti, I just had a firefighter who was in Haiti when they had the earthquake.
300,000 people died in that earthquake.
And that is a beautiful, beautiful island here in the Caribbean.
And it would be the most thriving tourist destination if they could just steer the ship, if they get the people back on their feet.
But it's been nothing but corruption.
And so you've got a lawless country that are all hacking themselves to death with machetes at the moment.
So, same as we went to Moroni, absolutely gorgeous country, Moroni.
Just off the coast of Kenya.
Obviously, it's a volcanic island, but I've been there many times through transit.
And fuck me, the poverty out there, and it's the most gorgeous country apart from the live volcano, which might put a few people off.
But, you know, there's so many, like, yeah, such a beautiful country.
But just run by, it's not run, it's lawless.
Yeah, I get what you're saying completely.
I've been to the Maldives twice as well, on super yachts.
And I flew in and out of Maldives.
The main Mali, I think it is Mali, Maldives, the main country, is an absolute shithole.
It's covered in garbage, it's covered in crap.
It's derelict, it's concrete jungle.
It's dirty, it's horrible.
But then you get on a little boat or a little hovercraft, go 30 nautical miles in the city, and you've got luxury.
It's like the main capital of the Maldives, people have died on the streets as well.
And you've got all this money getting channelled through the islands.
It's like, same thing, isn't it?
Yeah, no, it's tragic.
It's funny, my brother actually works on super yachts, so I'm not going to mention names, but I'm curious if you guys have worked together,
because he does all the kind of audio visual engineering and designing for them, but he was writing on them for quite a long time.
Okay, interesting.
My granddad might know each other, and I might know your brother.
There we go.
All right, so your book is When War Follows You Home.
So firstly, let's talk about why you wrote the book and where people can find it, and then we'll give a little teaser for the next one that's coming.
Okay, so When War Follows You Home, I basically started back to Yemen in 2016, just like a little boy.
I was on a form of deployment and I had a lot of shit on my brain.
People used to say to me, Ben, you should write a fucking book.
You should have a film out. You had a mental life on the streets, off the streets, at war, not at war.
So I just started thinking, you know what?
I had a bit of time on my hands and I just had a lot of shit on my brain.
So I used it as a way of therapy.
Just started writing a diary from the first time I could remember, at five.
So from five years old, just started writing a diary, that's five years old.
In 2016, writing from when I was five, from what I can remember, writing a diary.
And it took me seven years to do it.
And I did 135,125 words, which is fucking mental.
And I didn't know what I wanted to do with it.
I looked at it and thought, wow, this is like 900 pages of word.
And I invested in a book publisher because my spelling is atrocious, dyslexic.
And if I'm going to do something, I want to do it properly.
I don't want someone to read a book and go, oh, there's this grammar error.
You spelled because wrong.
If I'm going to do something, I'd rather invest it and get it done properly.
And change people's change, change lives and do it for myself, my family as well, essentially.
So, so yeah, my book, my book, my book, so often my book publisher, Cassandra Walford, Walford Publishing,
went through the manuscripts of the whole, the whole manuscripts, unedited manuscripts,
which a film producer should see, unedited version,
because someone will want this as a film, believe me, or series.
And it was, it would have been too big for one book.
I mean, this book, Walford is your home.
It's 210 pages.
So it's not big.
It's not small.
It's a good read.
It's, you know, if you're a good reader, you could do it in a couple of days or whatever.
But yeah, so that, my publisher wants it to be what you want out of this.
Like I said, I've had a bit of a mad life.
I haven't been an angel.
I could have had loads, I could have, it could have been about loads of things and got the wrong message across.
But I decided through my childhood experiences, my experiences at war, my experiences on the street,
let's make it about something that anyone can relate to, i.e.
mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder and mental health.
So that's the read that I've gone down and here we are.
Brilliant. Where can people find the book?
So the book, the book could be purchased on Amazon.
Wendmore, Walford is your home.
Just there.
There's the back of it as well.
It's half the story.
I won't say like how or why, but like I say,
it's to be continued anyway.
Wendmore, Walford is your home could be found on Amazon.
All you have to do is type in Wendmore, Walford is your home.
I think you've got the link anyway, haven't you?
So you put the link up anyway.
Yeah, I'll put the link on.
I haven't looked recently, but if it's not on the American one, I'll put the link to Kodot UK.
And that will give you the option to get it shipped over to the States as well.
It is available in America.
Okay, there we go then.
I'm 99.9% sure it's available in America.
So it's on Amazon.
It's also on Ingram Sparks, which, so Ingram Sparks, again, it goes on Ingram Sparks.
Wendmore, Walford is your home.
It gives out loads of distributions to other places.
And I went on Ingram Sparks and it's turned and sold in America.
So I know that some one in America has bought.
But I'm pretty sure I'm 99.9% sure it could be shipped from America from Amazon anyway.
Yeah, perfect.
All right. And then what about the next book?
Give people a teaser.
So after they've done, if you have finished reading this one, they know what's coming next.
Well, I don't know what's coming in the first one yet, did I?
It could be about any of what we spoke about.
But the second one is a follow on from the first.
It's not off subject.
It's a follow on, but it goes on about real dark times and suicide awareness.
And then a full circle for PTSD.
And there's a lot of that.
I don't want to say I can't really say too much because it will give away the first one.
And it's not a sales pitch either, but people need to read and understand the first one to absorb it.
So they understand the second one.
If I said if I release the second one before the first, what the fuck you want about it?
It'd be like releasing series three of Cobra Kai before series one.
That's an interesting example you just gave.
So you need to watch Karate Kid first before you watch Cobra Kai.
Yeah, absolutely.
But yeah, I just hope it gets the message out there.
I hope people, I hope it leads me in a different direction in life as well.
I don't want to do what you're doing now or something similar.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I mean, all these people that come on the show, the books, the documentaries, the podcasts, the songs, I mean, you name it.
I was telling a friend of mine who's an artist yesterday, I feel like there's a renaissance.
That was Da Vinci's time where music and art and everything suddenly changed and took off.
And I think there's a kind of renaissance again of mental health and emotion and recalibrating, for example, what a man is, getting rid of this bullshit.
Oh, we're just fucking robots with no emotions and actually tapping into what we're supposed to be doing.
And I think that there are some great organizations, like the BBC, I think is pretty spot on with most things.
But over here, a lot of the shit news stations and newspapers, they're losing a lot of their power because people just want the raw truth.
So it is the books and the documentaries that are doing really well.
People don't want the cheesy soap operas anymore.
They want the raw documentaries to learn how Alex Honnell climbed El Capitan with no rope or what happened at Restrepo or you name it.
So I think it's great that you already are doing part of this and whether you have your own podcast or whether the book is made into a film.
I'm really excited to see what the next five, 10 years holds because I would like to optimistically hope that we, the people, kind of retake that power from the shit bags of the world
and start moving the needle forward to back to maybe forging some peace in the world for a while.
It may not be perfect, but getting away from the cycle of trauma, the cycle of violence and the cycle of war that we seem to be stuck in.
Just the bullshit negativity in the world, because that's all it is at the minute.
It's just bullshit, everything.
You turn the news on, there's nothing nice about that.
There's no good news about that.
There's no good news, is there? It's all just either Ukraine, Palestine, fucking, you know, I mean, COVID or there's a storm coming, you know, it's going to be too hot.
It's just like, it's going to be too cold.
It's just depressing.
And unfortunately, unfortunately, you know, the human race at the minute wants to feel protected and they feel protected by the society.
They're telling them things on TV. They're getting too focused into TV rather than listening to real people.
That's the problem. They want to feel protected by the protection and really that protection doesn't give a fuck about it.
They couldn't care less.
That's the truth. That's the truth.
100%. That's a mic drop moment right there.
Yeah.
Ben, I just want to say thank you. It's been an amazing conversation.
You know, I try to not go down all the storytelling. Obviously that will be in the book, but, you know, we've explored some really cool topics.
So thank you so much.
It's been a different podcast, James, and it's been, yeah, stay in touch, please. And you know what I mean? Yeah, it's been good.