This episode is sponsored by Bubs Naturals, yet another company that I track down to bring
on as a sponsor because I myself love their products.
They are offering you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, a 20% discount.
But before we get to that, I do want to highlight a few of the products that I use myself.
Firstly, collagen.
I am about to turn 50 and so my hair, my skin, my nails, not really a big concern when I
was younger, definitely a lot more of a concern now.
However, where I've really seen the impact is joint health and gut health and I've been
blown away that when I'm consistent using collagen, Bubbs collagen in this case, I see
a massive improvement in both.
Another area I drink coffee, love coffee and in the morning I use the Halo Creamer.
Now originally I used the MCT Oil Powder but now they have the Halo Creamer which has also
got grass-fed butter in it, a lot more creamy if you're not trying to go for the vegan option
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Now it's important to mention as well the altruistic element of Bubbs Naturals.
The origin story involves Glenn, Bubb, Doherty, one of the two Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi
and a good friend of the founders, Sean and TJ.
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you use the code SHIELD.
That's SHIELD at bubbsnaturals.com.
And finally if you want to hear more about their products and Glenn's powerful story,
listen to episode 558 with co-founder Sean Lake.
This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.
From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female
responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've
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Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they
are also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance
project.
We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier.
I ended up buying real ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been
my ride or die through Murph the last few years as well.
One area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous sponsorship spots is their brick
and mortar element.
They were predominantly an online company up till more recently but now they are approaching
100 stores all over the US.
My local store is here in Gainesville, Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts
you see online are applied also in the stores.
So as I mentioned, 511 is offering you 15% off every purchase that you make but I do
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But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order or in the stores every
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And if you want to hear more about 511, who they stand for and who works with them, listen
to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with 511 regional director Will Ayers.
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
Royal Marine veteran, author and cancer survivor Rian Eilert.
Now in this conversation we discuss a host of topics from Rian's early life, the scared
straight program he went to in Mexico as a young man, his journey into the Royal Marines,
some of his deployments overseas, the day he got his brain tumor diagnosis, his recovery
journey 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 5 star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of over 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 Rian Eilert.
Enjoy.
Well Rian, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming
on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you very much for having me.
So where on planet earth are we finding you your evening my afternoon?
So I'm in Portsmouth.
Brilliant.
So I would love to start at the very beginning then.
Tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings?
So I was born in a hospital called St. Peter's in Chertsey near Heathrow Airport and I grew
up in Guildford.
I've got a younger sister who's a police officer and I had a very good upbringing with my mum
and dad.
I was also very close to my grandparents.
Your grandparents?
Well tell me about them.
What were their backgrounds?
So obviously they were both children in World War II, grew up in what I'd argue is the last
of the best generations that had it hard but made the best of bad situations.
All of my family are from London.
What do they talk about?
Because my parents were kids in World War II as well.
They were evacuated when they were bombing all the cities and they were very, very small
like toddlers basically.
What did your grandparents talk about when they reminisce on the rebuilding after World
War II?
Well it seems to be very different, the American experience versus the British experience because
obviously no one really came to the mainland of the US and bombed them but the UK was decimated
financially and on infrastructure as well.
So here there was a lot of affluence and we call them the boomers, the generation after
the World War II generation.
And there's some incredible human beings but the pendulum swung so far the other way I
think from the horrors that the World War II generation saw and the umbrella they put
around their children.
So you could argue there's almost a sense of entitlement because they didn't feel that
suffering they gained from the rebuilding of the US and the affluence and that kind
of thing.
But the criticism is just an observation because that generation didn't fight in those wars
and a lot of them didn't fight at all.
Some of them were in Korea but they were fortunate enough not to see war and to grow up around
the affluence of rebuilding.
So what about in the UK lens though, what did your grandparents witness and experience
when they were growing up post-war in the UK?
So similar to you obviously they was evacuated but they said that obviously at the time it
just brought the UK together because everyone was in the same boat and everyone pulled together
to rebuild this great nation.
And then what about financially, when they went back were they experiencing any sort
of poverty or anything because I mean so many houses were destroyed and jobs and all those
kind of things.
You know there was a lot of struggles even in the the Falklands war era, we were still
struggling financially in our country.
Yeah so obviously they touched on how hard such things as what we take for granted food
was to come by.
Obviously money back then was pretty much non-existent but they made it work in harsh
times and that's why I always refer to them as being the last of the best generation that
saw the horrors of World War II and all come together and we're still this great nation
today.
It's a shame though I feel that as we lose the proximity to a horror like that and we
shouldn't have to have proximity to something horrendous like World War II or 9-11 or some
of these other horrendous incidents but the further we get the quicker people forget you
know and we lose that community and if you turn on the TV now there's a lot of division
you know from I would argue really from kind of like Covid times onwards you know.
So they always say oh it takes a war to bring people together and I wish it wouldn't.
I wish it could take a leader to bring people together rather than a tragedy.
Yeah I fully agree.
I'm just British for and through and can't admit that we're still not the greatest nation
on the planet.
Well they have the same thing here.
You see the flag behind me I mean obviously I'm a proud Brit you know living in the US
now and a proud American too.
I mean you can be both but yeah if you just walk around saying you're the greatest and
don't put the work in then you look around one day and you're not you know but if you
have humility and are proud of your country but also ask other countries how they do things
really well then you will rise up and everyone grows from it.
So what about careers what were your parents doing when you were young?
So my mum was a hairdresser and my dad worked for a window fitting firm.
Did you have any military in the family at all?
No no I didn't.
Okay and just side tangent what was it that sent your sister into law enforcement?
I think and I'd like to hope a little bit of me because she was talking about joining
the military but I kind of said because she was that bit younger than me you're probably
not going to get the experiences I had because the regiment and the units I was a part of.
Women's lacking in the military and that now so you're probably not going to get the good
trips so I was like if you're going to do anything join the police and then work your
way up to get into the counter-terrorism special firearms officers.
Now because I saw in one of the things I read about you that you work with that group is
that through her then?
No and I know I was doing that in my last job before I got medically discharged from
the military.
Okay and then what about her perspective female member of law enforcement in the UK?
I'm seeing you know obviously a lot happening here it seems to dribble over into the UK
as well we just had a big issue with our armed officers in the UK being kind of demonized
for doing their job and I've had several of those officers on the show I'm getting two
of them on together to talk about that.
What is her perspective of policing in the UK at the moment and then how what does she
think that we can do to kind of again we're talking about pendulums to bring it back to
the middle again?
Yeah so I think from what I hear is that obviously there's a lot of paperwork that goes to policing
now and a lot of red tape and a lot of scrutiny which makes it hard to do just general good
policing and I think she's quite lucky because she's part of Surrey police not the Met obviously
certain areas of London are a lot more violent and riddled with crime than other areas that
are on the outskirts of London.
Yeah I had some guys from a group of guys and girls from a group called SurfWell and
they take police officers out surfing it's kind of a mental health therapy and I was
asking them and they're definitely more rural police officers because they didn't have the
stories that some of my London police officers did.
Yeah.
Alright well then let's get back to you as you were in school age what were you playing
as far as sports and athletics?
I liked football I was always about football that was it.
I was an half decent runner but I put all my effort in the playing football.
Did you compete at running as well?
I did a couple of cross-country runs at school but I didn't compete in anything major.
The reason I ask it's always interesting when people that go into military police fire in
their younger life had played individual sports and they played team sports so when you look
back now what was it about even if it was only for a short time the cross-country and
then contrasting the team sport of football if any of those applied to your success in
the Royal Marines later?
Well I was always a team player so that was never in question and I think the cross-country
running I generally enjoyed running which I think definitely gave me an advantage at
certain times in my career with how much running you do do as you know yourself in the British
military it's very heavy on running or running long distances with carrying weight.
Now what about when you were at school career aspirations were you dreaming of the military
or was there something else in your mind at that point?
No I wanted to be a chef growing up I wanted to be a chef and yeah didn't end up being
a chef.
What inspired you to be a chef were there people or were there home cooked meals or
restaurants that really kind of inspired you initially?
I don't even know to be honest I did a bit of that food technology at school and I half
enjoyed that and then I used to like some of them cooking programs you know like with
like the proper professional chefs and I was like ah fancy a bit of that never happened
and at 35 I'll probably still can't cook.
I did home economics in my GCSEs because I was terrible at what would work CDT so HE
was the other one but all the girls were in that so it was me my mate Steve and then all
the girls so I actually got one of my best grades in that too so it's a good option if
your shits would work I'll tell you that now.
Alright well then when you graduated then were you still thinking about like pursuing
culinary in community college or did something happen that shifted you into the military?
So I started misbehaving as a teenager and I'm not sure whether you've seen it I'm sure
a lot of people in America would have.
There's been a documentary come out recently called The Programme on Netflix.
I haven't seen that one actually no.
So it's only been out about a week and a half and it's about behaviour modification
facilities out in the US and there was a couple elsewhere that have been closed down but I
actually went to one of them for a year in Mexico because I wasn't doing well at school
I was getting into trouble so I've got a year there to think about my actions well
it was actually 18 months but the facility I was in there was a big riot and it got
raided and it was closed down within 24 hours so I was transported back to the San Diego
border and then I was brought home, had to play catch up with GCSEs and I went to Brooklyn's
College to do a public service course and it was there where I met my college lecturer
who was a former Royal Marine commander and that's where we started looking at them avenues
of joining the military.
Coming back to the, I think they call them scared straight programmes is the term they
use over here.
They'll take kids into prisons and the prisons will all mess with them and scare the shit
out of them basically.
You hear of some programmes that are well organised and they see, like the fire programme
for example, there's a fire programme for young offenders that trains them to become
wildland firefighters and I've had people on the show that have done that.
Talk to me about firstly how did you find yourself in Mexico because there must have
been some sort of programmes in the UK and then secondly what was that actual experience
like for a young Englishman or English boy all the way down in Mexico?
So I'd been in quite a lot of trouble with the police and obviously my parents didn't
really know what to do to help me or get me off of this track of causing devastation and
I was the second British lad to go to one of these facilities.
There was another lad from Birmingham and I believe my mum may have heard of it through
his experience because he was out there when I got there and my mum spoke with the police
and said look this is what we're looking at and we think it might help.
So I was sent out there as a trial and I spent a year there but yeah it was horrific.
It wasn't a nice place to be.
You wasn't allowed to talk.
You was allowed out for an hour a day.
It was basically like being in prison but with a lot less human rights.
Like you see programmes now where people playing pool and chilling with their friends on the
landings and that, I would have taken that over.
What that Mexican place was like because there was no human rights going on in that facility.
Also being the only white English kid there obviously you've got to get a little bit more
abused than everyone else.
I'd heard on the podcast that you sent me that you were on, you talked about the programme
was shut down by the FBI and the federalis so that's probably a sign that it wasn't doing
what it was supposed to be doing.
Yeah that's exactly what happened.
That was the first time I'd ever had a gun pointed at me.
Was when the federalis and the FBI stormed it.
Well I'd imagine everyone else as well because I was one of the youngest there and the age
range was between 14 and 18.
And yeah I remember when it got stormed it was chaos, chaotic.
Everyone just running riot everywhere and then just loads of big Mexicans coming in
with assault rifles and FBI agents and it was like what is going on here.
It was like something out of a film but being a teenager I probably didn't really take it
in that much then because all I was thinking about was trying to get some decent food,
not getting mistreated and well basically not being in this facility anymore.
When you look back what were the elements of that experience even though overall it
was horrific as you said.
What were any elements that you gleaned that were positive and then talk to me about that
dark side.
When parents send their kids trusting that the facility is going to be molding them into
strong kind young men, what was the reality of your experience?
I think if I'm being honest positives to come out of it probably I've got knocked down so
many pegs I wasn't as big and as hard as I thought I was.
But it also taught me being there on your own I had no friends there, certainly not
for the first seven months.
And it kind of helped me probably stand on my own two feet and watch my own back because
there was things going on in that place every day.
I mean would I change it?
No.
It was horrific and I'm part of a Facebook group called the WASP Survivors because that
was the brand of these facilities, the worldwide association of specialist schools I think
it was.
And there's a lot of people with complex PTSD that can't obviously get over what went on
in these facilities.
Where I'm quite thankful I went there because I definitely think it probably gave me a good
kick up the ass and some decent mental resilience to then go forward and do as well as I did
in the Royal Marines.
Well let's talk about that.
I mean you've got physical resilience, you've got the mental toughness especially when you're
in a group of people where some of them are going to quit.
You find yourself in this school, you have this teacher who was a former Royal Marine.
Walk me through that from that conversation through to when you're actually enlisting.
So because to join the Marines at the time I'd imagine it's probably still the same.
You needed five GCSEs at sea and above and I had a couple but this college course if
I passed it would give me what I needed to be able to join the military and the Royal
Marines.
So I started this college course, started rebelling a little bit because I just didn't
like being in a classroom.
I was never one for classrooms and my college lecturer he basically had just come out the
Marines started telling me some stories and was like this might be an option for you get
away see the world be a part of something.
So I started looking into it and the college course was a year long so he started to train
with me and help prepare me as best as he could for I had a potential Royal Marines
course planned for at the end of it.
So I basically started going through the application process whilst on this college course and
I remember going home and telling my mum and dad that I'm going to join the Royal Marine
commandos and they laughed at me and then I was 100% going to be a Royal Marine commander.
Beautiful, it's amazing how many people the naysayers just fuel to their fire and I can
relate to that 100%.
Oh 100%, you won't do that, I am now going to.
Hold my beer.
Alright, well then what did that look through?
Because I know obviously for people that don't know the British military as well you've obviously
got SAS, SBS but then the lesser recognised element of Special Forces is the Royal Marines
as well and obviously there are some other groups to add to that but it's not just entering
another branch of the military, you guys are entering a much higher tier.
So walk me through what training looked like overall for those next few months.
So you start with, obviously you do all your interview process and that at the careers
office you have a medical, you have a pre-joining fitness test and then if you're successful
with them you go on to a potential Royal Marines course which is five days down at the commando
training centre at Lintstone which is just five days of showing them what you've got
to offer and obviously there's a lot of pass or fail criteria, physical assessments and
some written tests and then on the last day you're told if you've been successful or not
and if you have been you then get a date to start training or they might say six months
start training is six months or start next year but I think at the time the Royal Marines
was quite undermanned, obviously war had broken out, the great war on terror as everyone calls
it and I started training two months after my PRMC and yeah that was a shocker capture
because it's 32 weeks long and it builds you up but obviously a lot of it is harsh, physical
and mentally, lack of food, lack of sleep but it's relentless, it's constant, it's every
day so you do get tired and worn down and it's just about digging deep into them reserves
to get you through and then halfway through training after you've passed the set criteria
tests at each benchmark you then start the interesting stuff like the soldiering and
the commando stuff, the amphibious stuff, the cliff assaults and it generally becomes
more interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed that side of things.
When you look back now physically and mentally what was it that allowed you to complete the
course when some of the people applying with you failed?
I wasn't going home, I was getting that green beret and that was the end of the story.
I got back troop twice so I didn't pass out of my original troop, I was a good runner
but I couldn't climb ropes, I mean me at 18 years old I was built like a butcher's
toothpick so you and me both.
I was never ever getting my scrawny carcass up them ropes but we got there in the end
and then once I passed that phase and moved on to the next one I had to climb them ropes
with kit and a rifle and I was like, hold up a minute, I couldn't do it with nothing
on, now you want me to do it with kit?
So that was another stumbling block and then we got there in the end and then yeah I finally
passed out.
I spent an extra two months in training so it took me 10 months instead of eight.
I can totally relate, when I was I think I was 20 or 21 I could only do one pull up and
I was an athlete, I just never pulled, I never climbed before and then fast forward getting
into CrossFit but years later I could do rope climbs with my legs in an L, no leg rope climbs
and it's amazing to watch because as you said you will get there but you can't climb a rope
with no strength, I mean you have to build that strength up and you have to understand
obviously how to use your feet and everything else but it is a high level strength exercise
but the beautiful thing is when you see your scrawny ass, for me it was years later, look
back and go wow when I was 21 when I was supposed to be at my peak I couldn't do half the shit
I could do when I was 40 so it's kind of cool to see progression because I talk about this
on the show quite a bit, if you go to the leisure centre and you use the body building
machines there there's not real pride into just putting the pin down one more weight
but when you nail something like a rope climb that's a pretty amazing achievement.
It's something you don't do every day, like the ropes, I used to look up at them and think
really?
Yeah but it's functional, it's the thing, hanging from things, a lot of us now I say
a lot of us myself, I can barely hang up from a bar for more than a minute or so but then
you think about the people that carry pots of water for miles in some of these poorer
countries, I mean their endurance and strength just makes us laughable so I think it's good
when you can go back to what we would have done a long time ago which was climbing and
crawling and some of these other things that we just don't do.
So again going back to the podcast, when you graduated and you got your beret there's usually
a bit of a gap, am I right, before you actually deployed but yours was quite short, am I understanding
that correctly?
Yeah so you get to the, it's called King Squad week so you've passed your commando tests,
you've got your green beret and then you have a week where you're doing like leaving administration
for leaving Limpstone to join a commando unit and you get a choice, it's not guaranteed
you'll get your choice but you can choose what units you'd like to go to and you do
a lot of marching and ceremonial stuff ready for the pass out parade, for when all your
family come down and watch you get presented with your coveted green beret which was a
fantastic day and anyone who's ever witnessed a pass out will say what an amazing day it
is obviously off the back of an amazing achievement but 40 commando would just go into Afghanistan
as I was leaving training so we was told not to put 40 commando as our first choice because
they were fully manned and they were going out the door but I put 40 commando anyway
because I always wanted to go to 40 commando and miraculously me and I think four other
lads from our troop got 40 commando so we had a long weekend and then we joined 40 commando
on the Tuesday and then that was it we were straight into pre-deployment training and
then we deployed five and a half weeks later and met the unit out in Afghanistan.
Before we go to your first Afghanistan deployment you are in the pass out parade, you get new
green beret, your parents are there, the ones who told you you could never be a Royal Marine
talk to me about that conversation.
Is what it is isn't it?
You can see it, it's happening, you're watching me get it so there you go.
Was there an element of pride though?
You go back two years you're in a scared straight facility in Mexico that gets shut down by
the FBI and the federales and now fast forward two years you're wearing a green beret so
do you remember any conversations about the kind of metamorphosis that you've made as
a young man?
Not really but they were just obviously really relieved and proud that I'd achieved something
that at the time the slogan was 99.99% need not apply and I'd add the mental robustness
and the physical attributes to finally get that coveted green beret and get to where
I wanted to be.
I'm sure they obviously had sleepless nights throughout my career wondering if they got
a knock on the door from the Padre and the welfare officer but it was obviously a lot
better than the road I was going down where I might have got killed and end up in prison
anyway.
When you talk about 99.9% need not apply I think it was Mark Omrard and maybe Ben Wadham
as well like several of the Royal Marines that I've had on the show that was what got
them is the most genius advertising is like you're probably not going to be good enough
for this job and everyone that actually you know is the right personality be like oh really?
Hold my beer so it was genius.
All right well then Afghanistan the first time.
What I rather than dragging through all the details of every single one I'm going to put
this to you and you can draw from Afghanistan and Iraq and we'll kind of go to each one
you know in a minute but overall perspective certainly here in America probably less so
in the UK but we get a very polarized view of war you know maybe it's worse now back
home either a very pro-war rhetoric you know kill them all like God sort them out or a
very anti-war rhetoric you know they're all baby killers and in the middle are the men
and women that actually stand you know boots on the ground with our flag on their shoulder
you know doing what we asked them to do so two-part question the first part regardless
of the politics sent you there was there a point it could be first Afghan you know whenever
it was where you realize that there were some you know horrific people committing atrocities
that you and your men in this case were going to address.
Yeah yeah you're 100% right and social media doesn't help with any of this stuff now because
you get so many people that are opinionated off the back of the rumor mill but the realities
of it was if you're gonna rape and kill innocent women and children and behead innocent men
then well we can't have that we're gonna have to come and put a stop to that but I feel
it's very narrow-minded for people to just give it the baby killer thing and all like
we didn't run around murdering people we were there to stop people getting murdered because
terrorism is a cancer that spreads like wildfire and that ideology is not not a good thing
we've seen it from the Taliban the Al Qaeda to ISIS to Boko Haram Al Shabaab whatever
continent or country a terrorist organization is in the atrocities they commit are barbaric
you can't have that.
Absolutely well conversely other side of the question the thing that the media does very
poorly as well as TAR an entire country with the same brush so you know we're at war with
Iraq we're at war with Afghanistan when we're not you guys are there helping the native
people protect their own communities against these extremists so we never hear about the
kindness of compassion whether it's from the men and women and children in these countries
or whether it's our soldiers or Royal Marines so when you look back at all of the deployments
you know were there times where you remember kindness and compassion amidst this battle
ground?
Yeah probably the one that sticks out in my head the most is I was deployed into the Middle
East as part of a special forces combat liaison team and we was in the vehicles fully laden
big guns and as we was rolling through this city you had a lot of the farmers their children
and all these displaced people that were on the outskirts of the city all sort of like
waving at us like ah way thumbs up and clapping and obviously they was coming away from the
enemy and we was driving towards them and it was like that sense of pride yeah I'll
go and get get your city back or certainly try and that was quite a nice thing to see.
Well this is what we don't hear you know and I mean obviously you know I'll get to this
in a second but you know there's also that element of I heard this a lot from I think
it was Iraq and Afghanistan when we the allies first or you should I say it wasn't me when
you first got there you know early early on there was the same kind of welcome are these
people are going to help liberate our country the problem is you fast forward 10 years we
haven't left you know and now there's that turning where people that were our allies
now become our enemies.
Yeah I definitely think it didn't help with the withdrawal of Afghanistan either because
we put a lot of time effort money building relationships and infrastructure into that
country and then pretty much just run away overnight probably destabilize the country
within a week but obviously I don't make them decisions but there was definitely a lot of
good to come out of it I did I did a seven month tour in Afghanistan where I was embedded
with their special forces and I spent a lot of time with Afghan people in a small team
we'd eat together sleep together go out on the ground together and try and rid these
towns cities and villages of you can't even really call them humans they're monsters if
you go into a village and go are you joining us and they say no and then you start beheading
everyone in the middle of the street you're a monster and there's only one thing for you
because once you've got that mindset of that's that violent and that horrific you can never
change that I know people say I see the good and you will never change in that once you
are that far gone that way and you're that extreme there's no coming back from that which
is why the military has to intervene to try and bring peace and stability to the region
as you said the media are very good at painting the wrong picture you have quite an interesting
perspective because you you know we're Afghanistan excuse me in Afghanistan certain times during
you know the last decade or so rather than again pull individual events out of each deployment
what did you see as far as the the progression you know was it was it an evolution was it
a devolution you know with with each time that you visited you know how did your perspective
change and then and then also I guess I'll throw in there the success or the challenges
of some of the the the tactics that we're employing amongst the allies so my first Afghan
there was IED strikes but they wasn't really heard of by that point certainly not towards
the back end of the campaign where it was every day someone was treading on an IED which
gave us the freedom of movement to push out further so for example I was in a place called
Kajaki in northern Elman province when we was out there in 2007 and 8 our northern forward
line of enemy troops was about five kilometers and to the south it was about seven and then
when I went back in 2010 I went to the Sangin district center which was as everyone knows
one of the Taliban's main strongholds and some of my friends that went back to Kajaki
were saying that the forward line of enemy troops had now come into sort of like within
a couple of kilometers and on the northern side to 500 meters so we'd lost a lot of ground
and I think it's probably to do with some of the stipulations that were placed on us
to kind of give the enemy the upper hand so I think it was always a case of cat and mouse
really we'd take ground we'd lose it we'd take ground we'd lose it and then when I
went back to Afghanistan in 2011 to 12 I was part of a different unit where it was all
strike stuff all int based or intelligence based so we spent the whole tour finding out
where Taliban strongholds were IED factories and all the stuff that was causing the men
and women in the FOBs and patrol bases a hard time we were going out and hitting them at
night and that was very rewarding because of the stuff that we was taking off target
we was denying weapons drugs homemade explosives denying IED factories and that was all having
a direct effect on the whole bigger battle picture.
Speaking of drugs I've said this a few times on the show when I first started the podcast
you know the opium in Afghanistan specifically would come up and the soldiers you know Airmen
whoever it was were talking were very tight lipped it wasn't like I was pushing it was
just like oh okay that's definitely a no-go area and then three four years ago all of
a sudden the door flew open and everyone was talking about it and I think it's an important
perspective in this world where we've demonized addiction and it's such an irony because so
many people in uniform struggle a lot of our men and women are you know leaning into something
alcohol opiates you know whatever it is and now plant medicine you know ayahuasca you
know MDMA all these things that we demonize are actually healing a lot of our war fighters
from the trauma that they experienced but with this prohibition with this demonization
of addiction and we're you know we're throwing people who have a mental health condition
in prison thinking that will magically stop them being addicted you know we've created
so many issues and we see it in America like as a firefighter and a paramedic here I saw
the gangs I saw the homelessness I saw the sex workers I saw all the things the overdoses
and that's all from drug prohibition.
Talk to me about what you observed and how the illicit drug trade was funding the terrorism
that you guys were fighting.
So I'll give you one example we stopped a vehicle and well thought out they had obviously
built and welded in secret compartments within sort of white Toyota Corolla and when we stripped
it had 11 million pounds worth of processed heroin in it 11 million UK pounds worth spying
you a lot of weapons a lot of ammunition a lot of explosives to continue on with your
war effort and that was just one car on one night so you think of how many you'd have
the American Special Forces British Special Forces the Australians Canadians Estonians
all people doing strike ops you'd have the men and the women in the PBs going out on
patrols seizing drugs and stumbling across factories and opiate fields and all that stuff
11 million pounds on one day probably wasn't going to make a great difference when the
country had so much of it.
Do you know where a lot of that was destined was it Europe or the US?
I don't know.
Yeah, I'd imagine probably everywhere.
Yeah, yeah, I know the US consumes 75% of the world's opioids, so I'm sure a lot of
it was coming here.
Yeah.
What about Iraq for a moment the contrast between Afghanistan and Iraq because again
you know dragnetting we're at war with both everyone again I said I'm say everyone there
is you know a lack of education that makes people think that those two are very similar
countries but you know having guests and people that from those places obviously you've got
in a mountainous Afghanistan very very tribal then you have Iraq that used to be you know
a playground for a lot of people from Europe what was the difference that you saw through
your eyes from the countries themselves and you know wearing uniform as far as the military
side?
So I didn't do any warfighting in Iraq I was there to help train their navy to patrol their
waterways but it was just very westernized I remember I remember being in southern Iraq
and kind of thinking this resembles like a Turkey or an Egypt or something like that
whereas as you just alluded to Afghanistan was fields, green zone and very very mountainous
so they were two totally different landscapes and Iraq yeah I wasn't there for the invasion
I was too young and I wasn't even in the military then so the lads who did all the warfighting
I definitely didn't none of that there I was more sort of like on a training role if you
like to help their Iraqi marines and navy patrol their waterways.
What was your specialty in the Royal Marines?
Was it anti-tank?
Yeah so I was anti-tanks.
So I heard you know it's getting assigned and deploying to Afghanistan forgive my naivety
but when I think of that conflict I don't think of tanks so you know what would be the
target were there a lot of you know tanks amongst the Taliban or was it more that you
were aiming towards heavy guns or some of the other other areas that you could use the
same weapon systems for?
Yeah so yeah there wasn't a lot of tanks but the anti-tank missiles and the anti-tank
weapon systems that we had had good range on them which meant we could provide fire
support for the marines that were going door to door going into the compounds we could
get on the high ground and we could help either dig them out of trouble or fire them into
a village or a town for example and the Javelin anti-tank missile it's got two settings so
it's got a top attack for hitting the turret of a tank but you can also switch it to direct
attack which was proving quite useful to use against built up fire positions that the Taliban
had.
What about the evolution of the IED?
I've had some people on here who excuse me at EOD and talking about again you said that
we were cat and mouse like they would they would figure out how to you know diffuse a
certain one and then you know the Taliban would create a different version or they'd
create a second device so they lure them with the first.
What were you seeing as far as the evolution of that and then the impact on the men that
you served with?
So the first IED exposure I ever come across was when unfortunately three of our lads in
my section detonated the device but this was early on in the Afghan campaign so it was
82 millimeter mortars hooked up to a pressure plate with a battery source and that was how
that was detonated victim operated and then fast forward 2012 I was part of a team that
I was leading the close down an IED factory and we found like glass test tubes with three
different substances in it and it would have like a gray powder with a purple liquid in
between and then a white powder obviously I'm not EOD so I'm not even going to pretend
like I know what it was but it looked like something that needed to get pushed up the
chain through the correct channels and it was so far advanced that it took out needing
a battery pack which obviously brings it to no metal content so when people were using
mine clearance drills with metal detectors they'd do all sorts of things run longer wires
they had no metal content IEDs even solar paneled IEDs when they digged them in at night
and then when you come along obviously they've been watching us as we watch them the Valor
man as we call them who would be the point man scanning for devices in the ground he'd
come along with his paintbrush or his fingers to sweep to confirm whether it was just a
Coke can or a improvised explosive device and then the sunlight edit the solar panel
and bang they got very good with it they started daisy chaining them so if someone hit one
you'd have four or five go off together or they another country I went to later in my
career which was actually my last job they had even figured out how to put them on PIR
so you know like in your house where you've got an alarm and you've got the motion detector
in the corner for if anyone breaks through your back door they'd manage to set them so
it would take out the fifth person in the in the stack for example example so yeah they
got they got very good with IEDs and they got very complex so what about yourself I
mean we've been hearing obviously some you know some lower up tempo deployments and then
some very high ones you know high fatality rate as I heard you again on the podcast saying
that this was the first time since Korea that you lost so many Royal Marines what talk to
me about the impact of you know on you I mean you've got you know this high stress level
sleep deprivation you know all these other things and then loss after loss after loss
did you have any lows in your own mental health as you were progressing through I wouldn't
say mental health I definitely got quite bitter and wanted a hell of a lot of revenge I was
in a couple of situations where I watched my friends unfortunately get blown up and
die and then obviously they'd use an IED strikers a come on then you get ambushed so you've
got to try and sort your casualties out but at the same time repel an ambush so there
was definitely some horrific days out there but like we were talking at the beginning
of this about what made that generation through World War II so good is the tough times brought
everyone together and just made us more concrete together and everyone yeah what we had was
special like everyone was in the same boat and we was all in it together and we was going
to move mountains to make sure that we'd all be alright whilst completing our mission
I want to get to your transition in a second but as you're going through this I'm assuming
that some of your men are transitioning out what did you see as far as the impact once
they left and the reason why I say this and I had Sebastian Junger on several times and
he wrote Tribe and you know his observation as an embedded journalist was again I think
they were in Restrepo so it was one of the highest impacted places in Afghanistan and
he saw like you said I mean they lost people Restrepo was named after one of their guys
but he saw this just you know iron forge of these men but when they went back to Italy
to the demob was when he started seeing it all kind of coming apart because they weren't
around each other anymore and they all started going home what were you seeing as far as
some of your fellow Marines when they transitioned out and now they didn't have that tight knit
group anymore and they weren't wearing the uniform and they lost their kind of purpose
for a bit that so many of us do when we transition out?
I think looking back there's certain things I think the Royal Marines did wrong as an
organisation which cost people their mental health and I'll elaborate because I'll probably
get slated for slating the Royal Marines but we'd come back from Afghanistan as a tight
knit unit that's just spent seven months war fighting and if you didn't have a specialisation
like myself I was anti-tank so I'd stay within my troop within my company some of the younger
lads and I don't necessarily mean age-wise I mean like maybe a year or two out of training
that they hadn't specialised yet they were getting sent off on courses or to other drafts
like sometimes one incident one of the lads from our troop he got sent to a naval establishment
and I think things like that were quite harsh because he's just gone through all that trauma
for seven months with a band of brothers and you've just drafted him to a naval base where
he's not going to be around like-minded people or people that have shared the same heart
ache and sort of like team cohesion that we had and I think people just go inside themselves
and are like oh I'm not part of that anymore same as when people leave service one minute
you're a team leader or something on operations and it's you're the most important thing for
the United Kingdom's military at that time and then a month later you're outside and
it's like where do I belong now that's all I can guess because touch wood luckily I don't
feel that I struggle with any mental health.
It's an important conversation though and it should be there to make the Royal Marines
better it shouldn't you know that's the problem is that we shy away from some of these conversations
but it's not an empty criticism it's constructive criticism hey you know we did it one way and
it seemed to cause problems I don't know if you have an issue with suicide like we do
in fire and police here but I mean you know the behind the scenes of this heroic profession
that we do is a lot of men and women struggling a lot of suicide a lot of overdoses a lot
of alcoholism and it's not all doom and gloom but the only way we're going to fix it is
to change the way that we do it otherwise we'll just keep doing the same thing.
Of course yeah fully agree unfortunately I have lost a few friends that have taken their
own lives because the demons got the better of them but at the same time times are changing
and more help is becoming available and I think we're still well behind but we're moving
in the right direction.
About a year and a half ago I got to visit Reorg in Plymouth and I had Sam Sheriff kind
of ran a jujitsu class and rolled with um oh my goodness I'm blanking his name now junior
rolled with junior and got murdered by both of them but uh you know I saw how you know
them and then obviously Ben whose gym it was had created this place for Royal Marines to
reconvene to be together again and I just sat there having coffee you know before and
after and there was some you know some pretty mature Royal Marines coming in and uh it was
incredible so that's that's what's needed you know is is to prepare us for transition
in the first place if you've had someone literally you know in combat don't dump them out two
days later now they're in Sainsbury's wondering what the fuck just happened you know what
I mean and then also give them a place to feel connected whether it's a firefighter
and you bring them back in for training or you know whatever it is you've given everything
to that tribe that has become your identity and sometimes it's too far towards the identity
but you can't just you know let the doors close behind a man or a woman and then that's
it you cut the strings I mean you they've given you so much so we owe it to them to
to make that transition smoother and then give them a place where they can be amongst
their men and women again yeah 100 agreed well you mentioned somewhere in the middle
east so let's transition to there I know February 2019 was a pretty uh poignant day for you
or you know month for you should I say yeah great job best job I ever did uh the pinnacle
on my soldiering career doing covert operations against ISIS and um it was it was relentless
every day there was uh we were scrapping every day obviously we were trying to rid the middle
east of ISIS because of everyone knows who ISIS are they were on the world stage for
the atrocities they were committing and uh yeah I'd uh engaged a dash position and about
10 minutes later we got engaged with an American anti-tank missile not by the Americans but
it had got into the wrong hands after being um gifted to the Iraqi army and then we got
hit with a tow anti-tank missile suffered some friendly casualties which thankfully
they're still all right and still with us today unfortunately we did lose three of our indigenous
forces that we were partnered with and then um four of us got sent home the following day we got
medevaced because a few of us were slurring and not too steady on our feet come back to
Birmingham hospital and MRI scans hearing tests all the general checkup and lookovers
and then I actually flew back into the middle east for another month
and continued on as if nothing had ever happened I come home on my r&r so I had two weeks at home
and the day before I was due to fly back to do the second half of my tour I'll had a phone call
from a very high ranking lady at Birmingham hospital who kind of become like a mother figure
to me throughout the next part of this story telling me that I had to be at hospital at eight
o'clock the following morning at the time I was in Guildford so it's a good two and a half three
hour drive and she said don't drive and I went well I'm going to Heathrow tomorrow because I'm
going back in the theater she was like you know you'll be here at eight o'clock in the morning
and I was like maybe this might be serious so my mum drove me to Birmingham hospital I was rushed
in for a MRI scan and then it was kind of like being a celebrity there was loads of people in
white overcoats and clipboards and oh yeah come with me Mr Islet and then we walked into a
doctor's office there was like a hollow square of chairs sat around yeah again all people in suits
and clipboards and I remember saying out loud what is that little fucking good does it
they sat me down and said they tried all the pink and fluffy softly approach oh gosh can't
I can't suffer it I said oh can we just get to the point because clearly there's something going on
I'd rather just node and beat around the bush and then they started to explain to me what brain
tumors were when I was like that I don't really know anything about them to be honest obviously
I know they exist but I'd never known anyone with one I've never really heard anything about the
severity of what a brain tumor can do to a person's life and that was the start of the end of my
career really and they thought the end of my life but tomorrow I'll make it into the top six percent
of survivors in the world talk to me about that though I mean you've literally escaped death you
know in in combat zones for years and years and years now you sit there surrounded by super
attentive medical personnel you know what what was that news and then the first couple of days for
you like because I mean that's a pretty terrifying diagnosis to be given well I remember sitting in
the office and all I kept doing was looking at my watch thinking if they are up with this I can still
make that fight out of it bro got nothing to lose now and I was just like that do you know what I
didn't even really care I just knew that my pals were on the ground mixing it up and I wanted to
be there and they obviously told me what brain tumors were and at this precise moment in time
they couldn't determine the severity of what brain tumor I had but all they told me is it had to come
out with an emergency craniotomy so I said well I've only got three months of the tour left so if
I do the three months then I've got a month's leave can we worry about this on my month's leave
and then we'll crack on as normal they kind of looked at me as if I was I think they were a bit
gobsmacked I don't know whether they was looking at me as if I was stupid or not but they were like
no I don't think you're grasping the severity of this I was like yeah but surely we can worry about
in three months time can't be that bad and they were like you are not deploying back into fear
that's that done so I was like that oh brilliant and the best thing was is I got to drive home
past Heathrow thinking oh there's my flight and then three weeks later I had I had the craniotomy
set they gave me loads of steroids to reduce the swelling in my brain to be able to do surgery
so I went in and I had pretty much a large percentage of the front right part of my brain
removed and then they obviously sent it off for a biopsy I was in hospital for a bit the lads were
coming to visit me every day which was nice and then it was about 10 days later I had a
I had a meeting with my consultant so I was actually with a with a friend of mine because
my mum and dad had taken my children on holiday and they were going to cancel the holiday and I
said no that's not fair on my kids because none of us planned for me to be here so I'd like you to
still they've been looking forward to the holiday I'd like you to still go on a family holiday and
I'll be all right so my friend come and stay with me in the hospital because the whole time I'm
staying in a an amazing facility called Fisher House which is a welfare house for the families
of injured soldiers and at the time obviously the country wasn't really engaged in a known war
Afghanistan had the combat operations had died right down so the house was pretty much empty
and they was using it for service members with cancer that needed a place to stay that had
traveled far from treatment or any follow-up appointments so I got to stay in there
for a lot longer than I anticipated but it was a lovely facility with amazing people
so me and my friend walked over to the main hospital which is like a five minute walk
and he said to me how are you feeling I went well it's only two outcomes I'm either good or
fucked that's it there's no in between this area it's one or the other and he went nah you'll be
all right you're good well we'll find out in 10 minutes and when in same scenario people sat around
and I looked around and I was like come on hit me with it and they basically said you've got 12 to
15 months to live we need to start chemo and radiotherapy immediately so I was like oh okay
and I looked at my mate and he's like got tears rolling down his cheek and I was like actually
told you I'd either be fucked or good I'm fucked and tried making a bit of a joke about him I
don't think anyone saw the funny side apart from yourself and then it was a very quiet walk back
to fisher house and then the worst part of it all was phoning and telling other people
I can deal with it on my own it's when you hear other people's when their voice goes and you're
like I've just ruined someone's day and then I was put into a nine month prolonging life phase
where I had two chemotherapies maximum radiotherapy but one of the chemotherapies
was making me go blind so I pulled myself off of that one and just said I'd rather die than be
blind because I can't see anything and I'll yeah that ain't happening so I just cracked on and then
I kind of got a bit fed up with sitting around really so the welfare officer told me that I had
two years sick leave to die peacefully at home and I was like now I'm going back to work so I went
back to work and the second lot of chemo that I had I had it for about six or seven months it was
tablet form it was the intravenous one that was making me go blind so I said well look I can take
my chemo whilst at work and if I feel ropey I'll just go to the toilet throw up and crack on so I
started helping running courses and heavy weapons cadres back in the unit and supporting the
pre-deployment training ready for other units and other teams to go out the door and then that's
where I started doing the counter-terrorism liaison officer stuff with the police the ctsfos
so yeah that was uh quite a hectic time and then covered it
so then it was like go on I was like I'd rather be here but I was trying to like just show people
that this ain't gonna beat me get me get me back on the ground but there was no doctor that was
ever gonna sign off a bloke who's terminally ill and got not long to live to go running around the
middle east again talk to me about the the recovery because as you said you know this was 2019 you
were given just over a year to live and we're sitting here in 2024 now what did they see and
then you kind of alluded to it a little bit talk to me about your mindset because you did the same
kind of treatments that I'm sure lots of other people with the same you know brain tumor had
but not allowing yourself to think about I'm just gonna go home and die because you think about even
retire to take cancer out completely people who retire from this profession if they don't have
purpose a lot of our you know men and women do pass away in their 50s even though they should have
been alive arguably for another 34 years so talk to me about the mindset that you had from diagnosis
through to when we're sitting here today I think it was I looked back at my career
and I've been in I could I couldn't even tell you how many firefights I've been in obviously I've
been involved in two explosions and I was just like I've had probably four or five situations
where I've sat there thought of my kids and my family and gone this is it and then you get that
I love it I think it's the best thing in the world the best feeling is when you're back so far into a
corner and you want to curl up into a ball but you find that hunger within yourself and go no no no
everyone's getting put in the ground before we are and then you find that fight and that willing and
I thought I've survived too much to go through a disease and just die in a hospital bed I was
like I ain't having that so I was like you say terminal I say temporary
like that should be a t-shirt just cracked on really I think going back to work helped
because I was still active
but during my treatment because I'd still be in the hospital for quite a lot of it
I used to turn up sort of like the unit I was part of we used to get issued civilian clothing
so like your north face your wrap your foul raven your arcteryx we used to get issued that
for certain parts of the rotation so I used to make a point of wearing that for my treatment
and then when I wasn't having treatment and I wore me on my arm and I was like I'm gonna die
treatment and I wore me on Arnie jeans and my Stone Island cardigans and my Ralph R. M. Polo tops
there was a difference so I kind of treated my treatment as work something that needs to be done
and then my civvy life going to football and out with my friends I'd wear different clothes so I
wouldn't be sat there looking at a pair of trainers going oh I had chemo in them three days ago
so I kind of like just compartmentalized this is what I need to do and this is how I'm going to do it
so went back to work did all of that and I just carried on training I wasn't breaking any records
like going to the gym because obviously I was ropey and I did throw up a few times I lost all
my hair and everything like that but in my head if I did 15 minutes on a treadmill or half an hour
on a bike or a rower that was in my head a victory of more than what anyone else in my situation was
doing and I just kind of stuck with that really and I kind of looked at everything as like well
that's a positive step forward because going back wasn't an option it was you can go left and you
can go right but you can't go backwards you've got to find a way of going forwards and I just chose
different ways of finding ways to go forward which must be working because as I said earlier
tomorrow I'll make it into the top six percent of survivors in the world with what I've got
and then once tomorrow's out of the way we'll ignore that and we'll focus to the 10 year and
get into the one percent. It's interesting how you said that you chose to stop chemo and obviously
I mean losing your vision is a pretty strong motivator for that but I think it's very exciting
we're starting to shift seemingly into the world of immunotherapy now which I'm not super well
versed in but it seems a lot safer for the patient a lot more targeted for the cancer
because when you look back and you look at you know I mean the women that have breast cancer and
the children that have leukemia and you know this these chemo treatments destroy them I mean they
absolutely you know and I there's no way of knowing but I can't help but feel that chemo kills some of
these people more than cancer does you know maybe that if they were able to do some as you said some
mindset shifts some exercise some change in diet who knows maybe they could have you know
reverse whatever they were going through but you took away one of your treatments and you actually
had great success so I know what is your observation of of just that of being your
own advocate even if you're going through a terminal diagnosis and receiving chemo at the time
I think if I look back at all the time I've spent in that prolonging life phase in the cancer center
I'd say the majority of it is all in the mind because I'd see people in the cancer center
as you do with either their partner or parents and you'd see them go into the oncologist's
offices and then you'd see them come out and you'd see certain people just drop their heads
and I was like you've just given up on life like you've literally just been told something
by another human and you've come out and gone and I think that is where it goes wrong when people
drop their heads and go oh I'm gonna die that's the end of it like you need to value your life
and fight for your life until you're in a box because until you're in a box who knows how long
you got the chemo that I stopped having was a trial it was part of a trial so I still had another
load of chemo and radiotherapy anyway but I was kind of at the point of this is just a riff it
and I'm not going to spend my last days however long I have being blind so that was just an option
I'd kind of already accepted that I'd rather die than be blind so that wasn't really a hard
decision for me to make. What about diet you talked about you know working out again not having to
break records but just keep moving again you know get the blood pumping working on strengthening
your body getting outside did you change the way you were eating at all? No my diet was terrible
my diet was horrific the thing is is I can only imagine this is the closest I'll ever get to
feeling what a pregnant woman has and I had some really out there cravings so all I wanted was a
chicken royal with cheese from Burger King a fillet of fish from McDonald's
Aunt Bessie's Toad and the Olds and Nando's that was it that's all I ever wanted and that's pretty
much all I ate for months on end just because the chemo was giving me them weird cravings
that's what I wanted and because I thought I was going to die anyway I was like I certainly
ain't gonna start eating broccoli and Brussels sprouts and carrots and that you know what I mean
because if I've only got a year I want to eat and enjoy what I like. Yeah well one of those four is
good food at least Nando's the rest of shit. Oh yeah totally shit hey I'm still here though five
years later maybe McDonald's will give me a little marketing number. Don't tell them that you'll be
the next Jared from Subway. That didn't end well. All right well then you mentioned about Covid
hitting so talk to me about sitting down and writing your book Every Day is a Battle,
Fighting Demons, Jihadis and Terminal Cancer. So obviously I went back to work,
I was doing what I was doing at work, loving life, just trying every day. Every day to me was a
victory because I hadn't died yet and then Covid hit but I just bought a house to be closer to my
children to spend as much time as I could as close to them as I could in case obviously I did pass
away and I got the keys to my house the day that the UK went into its first proper lockdown.
So where my friends who were in the trades industries couldn't work a lot of them helped me
do my house up so it was livable. So I had my own house which yet again was another positive because
I've just been told I'm going to die anytime soon and a few of my mates from within the special
forces group at various different units were like ah mate if you're just sat at home you need to
write a book. I was like I don't know I don't know nothing about writing a book and then
what birthday would have been so it must have been my 31st birthday I think. My nan bought me an
Apple Mac computer like laptop and I started having a little play around to see if I could
string sentences and paragraphs together in a way that people might actually think I knew what I was
going on about and it started like that and then by the end of it I was able to type all right
so it took me about between 12 and 14 months and I had a I think it was a 76,000 word manuscript
sent it off to the special forces disclosure cell because obviously spending six years
in the group they went through it and I had to redact or retract 33 percent of the words
and I had to redact or retract 33 percent which shocked me a little bit because I thought I'd
been very careful with what I'd spoke about as long as I didn't say countries tactics and people
and all that stuff I thought I was all right but there was stuff that was explained to me that
just couldn't go in there so it was like changing plays on words so yeah the head of the disclosure
cell come around my house and actually sat with me and helped me salvage my manuscript and then
they give me the green light to publish so then I sent it to an editor who went through it and then
because of Covid no publishers were taking on new manuscripts so I just self-published on Amazon
and just got it out there so there's actually one here. Beautiful I self-published on Amazon too
well what was your experience of that I don't know if you had the same thing but when I
when I asked a lot of people and I did ask you know all kinds of people what I got back was if
you and I were Stephen King a publisher would absolutely make sense because they would do
everything they could to promote it and put it in bookstores and all those kind of things
but if you are Rhian or James who no one knows they might give you a small advance and you have
their logo on your book but they're not going to really put any effort into promoting and you
might have a big bill for you know creating the book that now you've got to sell you know x amount
a thousand before you even make a penny so to me you don't have the the kind of marketing ability
that a publisher would have when you self-publish but the beautiful thing is you can put out your
book and you hit upload and it's like all right there it goes so I mean I asked you a question
and gave you a fucking monologue after that so what was your what was your kind of experience
with that type of publishing well I was getting nowhere with any publisher I think I sent out
about 10 emails asking if they were accepting manuscripts and because of the pandemic no one
was doing anything so all I wanted to achieve with my book there was nothing in it to do with
financial gain or anything it was if one person read my book and went oh fuck me I'm gonna crack
on as well I'd achieve mine and yeah I've had quite a few messages of people coming to me
saying that they've read my book and look at life in a different perspective now
so as far as I'm concerned I achieved my aim with starting all that even even only a month
ago I had someone message me so I saved their life which was overwhelming to receive a message
like that off the back of a book but as far as the publishing went I found it very easy
and because I wasn't in it for the financial gain I just kind of forgot about it it's on Amazon
obviously I tell people if they buy it they buy it you know I mean it's just I haven't got to
think about it it's just there and it's left a legacy so when I do die in about 50 years time
because I'm going nowhere anytime soon there'll be a book left behind at least I've left something
behind absolutely well this is you know when you hear there's that term the quiet professional
the silent professional you know and a lot of you know the sf and special operations you know men
and women didn't write didn't talk about it but I think as you mentioned if you just leave out the
specificities you know we were here doing this you know with these people and just tell the human
stories there's so much power to it and when you know a royal marine talks about not only you know
their early life and then finding themselves in Mexico for a year and entering the royal marines
in Afghanistan and Iraq and then a brain cancer diagnosis there's so much value to that and you
know the other 33 percent you know who cares and I use that phrase all the time if it helps one
single person it sounds like you've done so much more than that yeah anyone writing a book to make
money is a fool so therefore write a book that actually makes a difference in the world
all right well then just while we're on the cancer conversation before I go to some closing questions
there is a great organization in America called the hunter seven foundation and they really
highlight cancer in uniform you know in the military specifically here in the us and
the burn pits and you know the contaminated water and some of the things that killed a lot of our
you know war fighters here what is that conversation in the uk are you seeing a lot of cancer
in our you know especially our iraq and afghan era soldiers and sailors and role marines and if so
are there organizations that are taking care of them I think we're very far behind when it comes
to stuff like that because I actually um follow hunter seven and have for a couple of years now
I don't know how but um that I'll come across them on instagram and they had actually shared
my book which I thought was mental because I haven't but obviously I have worked with
americans a lot in my career especially the latest stages of my career um so I don't know how it got
to hunter seven but they they published my not published but promoted my book for me and I was
like ah who are these and then I uh interact with them regularly just off of the back of the studies
that they've got going on that they publish on their platform but yeah the uk is just so far behind
are you seeing a lot of cancer then in in the military there I don't know to be honest
not that I'm aware of I know a lot of people in the military and I wouldn't say having followed
hunter seven for a few years now it's certainly not in my opinion anywhere near like that but then
we're a much smaller armed forces yeah we're only sat at about 60 70 000 as a whole military
as a whole military so I think that's probably got a part of playing it but
I'm actually in court in may because when I left service my pension
and the payout I received was pretty pathetic and there's now possibly a
cancer they think maybe now they know I had a brain tumor because it was missed years before
when I was part of a PTSD study to try and help soldiers with PTSD and it was benign but then
within two years it went to the most aggressive form of cancer you can get which is a glioblastoma
so I said well surely in that two-year period where I'm firing every weapons rockets
been hit with a missile something has had to have activated that benign tumor into a malignant cancer
obviously the military are disagreeing at the moment but I take a lot from hunter seven and
the people that they've published their articles back into my case
but yeah hopefully the the uk there's obviously people working in the background that I'm not
privy to but we're nowhere near that hunter seven level where they are actively going out of their
way to help veterans with cancer it's the same even in the fire service we have what's called
cancer presumption laws and what's supposed to happen is if you get these listed cancers that
are supposed to be related to the fire service then you get coverage and obviously your family
gets coverage if you pass away but I've heard from so many people that the insurance companies
behind these you know coverages will fight these first responders knowing that if they die before
there's a you know an agreement then they don't have to pay them so there's some really nasty
underhanded stuff and also take the fires out the way that we work in the first responder professions
like here in America the average work week is 56 hours a week not sleeping every third day for 10
20 30 years that in itself is a carcinogen so they're wanting you to prove oh which fire were
you in that gave you this it's like what's not that that's a little piece of it you're asking
someone to be awake every third day you know or 12 hour three night shifts a week or whatever it is
a shift worker that's classified as a carcinogen in itself you know so if we're going to ask these
men and women to to fight for our country or you know hold the line while you sleep softly in your
bed then we've got to take care of our military and our first responders you know for doing that
yeah well they got this thing I saw on the hunter seven page a few weeks ago operator syndrome
which brings exactly what you've just spoke about into play alongside with the firing of
heavy machine guns rockets and all the stuff that goes with it the blast waves and
and mild traumatic brain injuries and all of that stuff so I've sent all that to my representation
and we'll see what happens in my no doubt I'll just get on but you've got to try yeah never
open until it's over no no may as well fight all right well I want to go to some closing questions
so I can be mindful of your time the first one I love to ask we talked about your book and just to
give the title one more time every day is a battle fighting demons jihadis and terminal cancer
are there any other books written by other people that you love to recommend it can be related to
our discussion today or completely unrelated I'll be deadly honest I've never read a book
I've never ever never read a book obviously I had a busy childhood causing misdemeanors
went to Mexico come back from Mexico I had to catch up with me education join the Marines and
then it was kind of like just a operational cycle constantly I did seven operational tours
covered it I wrote a book
well actually cancer then covered then wrote a book so it's like I've never really had
any time I've never read a book did you find it hard right in a book when you hadn't read a book
the reason I say that is as because I've written one I'm writing my second one now finishing it up
and I have this imposter syndrome because I'm writing a fiction now I don't read fiction that
much and so I'm like how am I gonna do this when I don't even read very many like how do you
you know how do you get a person to talk while you're writing in a book you know how do you
describe you know what they're wearing all this stuff but if I think back and you know I'm
assuming you've read books and textbooks in school but after that never really reading a book
how how did that factor into your writing did you struggle to write
I really enjoyed it because I wrote it in a way of me talking and it was good because
so much had gone on in my career I was phoning people I hadn't spoke to in 10 years going oh
mate do you remember that day and it was like just bringing my relationships closer together and
reminiscing over over old times and yeah I just really enjoyed it and I found it not easy because
it was our work to sit there for five hours a day typing away and thinking does that sound
right rereading it and that but I think I just typed as I would talk
I think I just typed as I would talk
yeah that's that's all I can say really but yeah a bit weird I wrote a book but I've never actually
read one yeah no it's interesting if you ever if you ever gonna read one there's one called tribe
by Sebastian Junger and it's only I think 160 pages or something amazing and it's so pertinent to
you know war and that as you said that brotherhood that you had and finding yourself on the outside
um so when people ask this question people either read or they enjoy television and film so what
about films and documentaries any of those that you love band of brothers is an absolute classic
that's that's obvious that should be a given for anyone in the military
and then more recently I've thoroughly enjoyed the covenant 12 strong 13 hours all of them type of
recent films about the seals and the war on terror hacks or rich was another good one obviously from
way back in the day save in private Ryan if we if we're going down like the war film genre
they're some of my favorites I had Shane Taylor on the show who played doc in the band of brothers
and then Captain Dale Dye he was the one that trained all the guys to be soldiers and amazing
I mean you hear the kind of behind the scenes it's it's you know such an incredible production
and I think there's it's such a great reminder as well of what masculinity is supposed to look like
because when you listen to the real men of easy company that at that point was still alive and
talking at the beginning of the end of each episode you can see the raw emotion in their faces and
these were some of the most you know incredible warriors that ever fought wearing an American
uniform and they're in tears they're in tears about you know the people that they lost the people
their lives that they had to take I mean there's you can see that that resonated so not only was
it so well told as far as what they did in the 40s I think their voices in I think back then it
was the 90s when they were doing those recordings you know I mean you're talking 50 plus years 60
years later that a man is supposed to cry the man is supposed to be moved by loss and all the
devastating things they had to endure and so this facade of men don't cry you know rub some dirt in
it stiff up a lit bullshit but yeah there's a time and place for that like in a firefight or
going into a fire but that's not how we're supposed to be all the time we have to process those
traumas yeah fully agreed brilliant all right well speaking of amazing people the next question is
there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders
military and associated professionals of the world
I'll have to think about it but I definitely think it should be someone from the medical emergency
response team you know the people that did all the cazavacs the Americans had the Pedro
Hacksaw we had the Mert then people that were like the flying
surgical theaters that were doing operations on board the
shanook or a blackhawk like them people are yeah they're proper heroes them they saved a lot more
brothers but I'd never really got to meet any because by the time I got flown home from the
middle east it yeah just where we were we were quite remote so I didn't see anyone till I got
back to Birmingham but definitely someone from the medical emergency response team
because I think a lot of podcast books films are about like the kinetic side of things
but obviously then people in the surgeries and on the demurts they go through a whole different
war that's well traumatizing daily just in a mental capacity and physical for the hours that
they're putting in but what I think is the most important thing is that we're not just talking
capacity and physical for the hours that they're putting in but what I mean is they're seeing
they're seeing their fellow countrymen blown to smithereens and shot to pieces and
yeah I think that would be a really interesting one 100% and then when you say that I think again
of Mark Ormrock when he's telling a story of lying there they all thought he was dead in the corner
of a helicopter and all of a sudden they realized he's still breathing the next people I'm assuming
he saw were exactly who you're talking about yeah brilliant so yeah I'm sorry I'm not going to know
anyone to hand but from that cohort of professionals where anyone listening feel free to message me if
you have someone I think that we need to tell the story so thank you for that all right well
then the last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you and your book what do you
do to decompress these days I'll go I'll go to football try and work when I can and I like
going to the pub as most of us do what about the England squad are they looking good for the euro
same old England in it go into every competition with I oats and then just get your heart broken
again at the end we'll see there's got to be a time the tides got to turn at some point yeah
yeah there's only so long we can sing three lines before we actually win
that's what I'm staying alive for see them win a trophy there we go but you can't win then otherwise
you're going to drop there we can't have that all right well then the very last question firstly
the book where can people find again I'll sit read it one more time every day is about all fighting
demons jihadis and terminal cancer it's on amazon brilliant yeah it's on amazon and then your
your name is rian uh is it is it is that how you pronounce the last yeah okay so okay so everyone
there is r i a n i l e t t yeah and then I've got an instagram account it's just more personal
that's got the link to my book on it and it's twiggy 1664 all right I gotta ask why twiggy
because when I passed the commando tests to become a royal marine I was actually under the required
weight to join the royal marines because of how much weight I'd lost in training because my last
name was ailer I got nicknamed twiglet remember them like um delicious the marmite uh little stick
things I loved them yeah so it just went from twiglet to twiggy brilliant well rian I want to
say thank you so much it's been such an incredible conversation such a uplifting conversation
because I mean you know aside from all the combat and the other stuff you talked about
you know to get that kind of diagnosis when you're still so young and then it's evident you know in
this conversation that how much mindset played into it how much that belief and that determination
that same grit that you got on the battlefield you know factored into to where you are today so
I want to thank you so so much for being so generous with your time and coming on
the behind the shield podcast today thank you so much for having me