I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
that is Transcend.
Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
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Now when it comes to the world of hormone replacement and peptide therapy, what I have
seen is a shift from doctors telling us that we were within normal limits, which was definitely
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and then offer supplementations without ramming, for example, hormone replacement therapy down
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Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason
why the 7X project I was a part of was able to proceed because of their generous donations.
They also have the Transcend foundations where they are actually putting military and first
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So my own personal journey so far filled in the online form, went to Quest, got blood
drawn and a few days later I'm talking to one of their wellness professionals as they
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In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been
very diligent with my health, my testosterone was actually in a good place.
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Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies
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So whether it's libido, brain fog, inflammation, gut health, performance, sleep, this is definitely
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So to learn more, go to transcendcompany.com or listen to episode 808 of the Behind the
Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.
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 I've 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
worked for.
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
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So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every purchase that you make but I do
want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount especially around
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But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order or in the stores every
time you make a purchase.
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 former British paratrooper, member of
the tier one special forces, contractor and co-founder of Red 8 Sean Bishop.
Now in this conversation we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the military,
paratrooper regiment selection, special forces training, leadership, fitness, his deployments
overseas, fighting amongst the Ukrainian soldiers, the ordinance that took part of his skull,
his road to recovery, his weapons training company 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 well 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 Sean Bishop.
Enjoy.
Well Sean I want to say two things.
Firstly thank you to our mutual friend Dave Sanders for connecting us and secondly I want
to welcome you to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
So where on planet earth are we finding you this afternoon?
So I'm in Florida actually, Ormond Beach in Florida.
So that's not too far from me but obviously people listening they can tell neither of
us are originally from here so let's start at the very beginning of your timeline then.
So 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 Norfolk in England.
I have a sister and obviously a mother and father.
My mum was a housewife and my dad has done kind of a variety of jobs but he mostly worked
in parish councils.
Okay so when you were a young boy going through the school ages what were you playing as far
as sports and exercise?
So really I've never been a big fan of sports.
I played football as a youngster as many kids do but I mostly just kind of ran.
That was all I did.
What about military families?
Do you have any aunties, uncles, grandparents that did serve?
So yeah my grandfather he was an infantry soldier in World War II wounded on Anzio Beachhead.
He was probably one of my earliest kind of references to the military.
A lot of that generation are notorious for not really talking about it very much and
I think that's what we're finally unpacking now in our generation is that we are making
it normal to discuss what we saw and did.
When you look back were there any discussions with him about his experience in World War
II because sadly that's a generation that we're hearing the stories now through the
children and grandchildren rather than the soldiers themselves.
He was so everything was kind of age appropriate with my grandfather.
It wasn't really until he knew I was really serious about going into the army that he
started to kind of open up on things.
Did he discuss any of the experiences that he had that you can relay?
Yeah he kind of, how would you say, he opened up about the battle of Anzio, how he was wounded.
He would never talk badly about any medical people so he had a real kind of affinity for
medical people.
Did he stay in after World War II and if not what did he transition into?
No, he was DMOBS I think in 45, 46.
DMOBS came back to Norfolk and kind of just carried on, had a family.
I think he had three kids and that was him really.
When you look back at your early life then, we're obviously going to get into special
forces selection, that kind of thing.
What elements of your childhood do you think contributed to you having the physical and
or mental toughness to complete such a vigorous selection when so many people rang the bell?
Good question.
I really don't know, it was, how would you say, it was one of those things I just kind
of went into, got my teeth into and just wouldn't let go.
So it was, not to put too fine a point on it, it was very difficult.
I kind of struggled with everything far more than many people who didn't make it all the
way to the end.
I kind of hung in there and slipped through one of the holes in the nets.
So were you dreaming of joining the military and or special forces when you were still
at school?
Yeah, I was, so right from maybe five or six years old, that was all I wanted to do.
So I think I watched A Bridge Too Far, about Operation Market Garden when I was maybe six
or seven and I was like, that's kind of what I want to do.
So I did.
How old were you when you enlisted then?
You signed up.
16.
So yeah, I was pretty young.
Talk to me about 16 you physically, because I heard you on your friends podcast All in
Black.
You made a comment that suggested you weren't the kind of pit bull that you've become as
an adult.
No, I actually weighed 52 kilos, which is literally half of what I weigh now.
So it was, I was in a kind of a weird test time for my unit.
So you used to have to be 16 years and nine months old to join a combat arm.
If you joined at 16, you usually went to a thing called Junior Para and kind of did a
not a tone down, but a kind of version of depo that was age appropriate until you were
old enough to kind of go to adult depo and finish your training.
Now they run a thing called Army Foundation College at Harrogate.
I was in the in between stage, so they had neither thing running and I was in a, it failed
miserably, but I was in a test program to see if you could put 16 year olds in with
everybody else.
Nearly all of us got kind of broken in one way or another.
And yeah, I just kind of managed to grit my teeth, hang in there and get through.
I'm about to interview Mick Southall, who was one of the paras on the Falkland Islands.
And I know he, oh, you do?
I was wondering if you probably did.
Another one I had on probably about a year ago now was John Geddes under the pseudonym
John Graham.
Yeah, SAS as well.
But Mick, I know got enlisted at 16 as well and it's fascinating by 17, he was out fighting,
not on goose green, he was in a different battle.
But I think about now my son next door is almost 17 and it's just crazy to think that
that child would be a war.
When you look back now with this kind of veteran lens that you have, what is your perspective
on 16 year old soldiers?
I mean, I have personally, I have no regrets.
I kind of got through looking at it now.
I'm a little hypocritical.
If I had, I mean, I have a 17 year old daughter.
If she wanted to join the military, I would suck it up and support her.
But I wouldn't like it.
It's one of those things, it kind of, it works out.
But it needs a finer lens.
You need to kind of magnify everything and kind of take care of kids when they join.
Someone came on recently who was, I think they were US military and they made an interesting
point that a lot of the kids that are at the military age now, they grew up and we're talking
about children of military members, they grew up where all their parents had known was war,
whether they stayed in the full 20 years, but that was a part of their day to day living.
Unlike let's say the 1990s, maybe mother or father didn't really deploy a lot over those
times so the military maybe seemed like a better option.
But they said that one of the reasons why they thought that the recruitment was harder
now is a lot of children of military members that saw the last 20 years didn't enjoy it,
that mom or dad was always gone, that they came back different, whatever it was.
So what's your perspective through your daughter's lens of her perception of war, not so much
what you see but from a family dynamic point of view?
I think it's been kind of difficult.
It's always difficult to say goodbyes but it's always nice to come home.
What she kind of feels or thinks about me, I don't know.
You would kind of have to ask her.
We've always wrestled with that and just kind of put up with it if you like.
Absolutely.
All right, well then let's go to your journey in the military.
So you're 50 plus kilograms, you enter the military and not just the military but the
power kind of on ramp.
So what did those first few years look like for you and how did you create resilience
in your body and your mind to overcome that initial physical deficit that you had?
It was really difficult at times.
All I did was just not give up.
So I think I started with 50 something people and I passed out with 10.
Ten of us kind of passed out.
Got posted to Toobarra.
That was kind of strange, turning up to battalion.
I was so small, so light and you could have sneezed and blown me out of the door.
I was so small but it was a crazy time.
It was a strange experience.
So when you were in that phase of your life, where did you find yourself being deployed
before you went to special forces?
So my first appointments were to Northern Ireland.
I think I did a couple of tours of Ireland.
I then went to Sierra Leone, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
So I kind of branched around all over the place really.
When I have British military members and they talk about their Northern Ireland deployments,
a lot of times they struggle because, you know, it was and I've always said the same
thing to me, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales were all one little nation.
Yes, we've got lines dividing the four, but we were all the same people on two tiny rocks
in the middle of the ocean.
And so they struggle with policing or soldiering against, you know, really their own people.
What was your experience in Northern Ireland specifically?
So where were we?
So I kind of policed a little bit of rioting around.
There was a bridge.
I can't remember the name of it now.
It was a bridge and one side wanted to cross the bridge, the other side didn't want them
to.
We kind of stood in the middle, split the two sides up and got bricked, bottled and
everything else.
But yeah, it was, yeah, it was early days, but it was what it was.
It was a good experience.
I think by the time I got there, it was all very refined.
All the SOPs and everything were firmly in place and it probably saved a lot of lives
and Northern Ireland and all our experience kind of there.
Probably saved a lot of lives when we ended up getting to Iraq and Afghanistan and everywhere.
Apart from Northern Ireland, there was a lot of the training still, you know, what I would
think like Salisbury Plain, a little bit more World War II leaning, but then Northern Ireland
gave you more of that kind of urban combat.
Yeah, it was, so how would you say?
It was a different time in the army.
So although Northern Ireland was there, it wasn't what you trained towards all the time.
It was looked at as something that had just been.
So you just went, did it, kind of sucked it up and yeah, you were always ready for the
whistle blowing on the big ones.
What about Sierra Leone?
I had a young man, Ishmael Bay on the show and he was a child soldier during that conflict
and his parents had been murdered and he'd been like so many boys captured and given
two options.
Do you want to die?
Do you want to fight?
So you had two options, you know, they're feeding them drugs and those kind of things.
What was that country's perspective at the time that you were there?
Sierra Leone was a little bit strange.
So I can remember walking into my house.
I can't remember whether it was mum or dad, the answering machine to listen to their messages.
There was a garbled message from one of the guys in YP2.
Basically you need to get back, we're going to war.
I was kind of sort of slapped in the face a little by that, but we weren't on any standby
or anything like that.
Everybody thought at every stage, this is going to be one of those slow burn kind of
things.
We'll all come back.
It'll all calm down.
It'll go away.
We all got back.
They were like, throw your shit in the bag boys, we're going.
So I was kind of like, okay, right.
You know, we'll kind of get part way there, turn around, come back, throw all our shit
in the bag.
Jumped on an aircraft.
Got to, I can't remember now where we got to.
Kind of got off blazing hot sun.
Somebody goes pointed to a Hercules down the end of the runway.
See that plane?
Yep.
Get on it.
Right.
Okay.
So we all got on it, sat on a Bergen, no seats in C130.
We all sat on a Bergen and I can remember somebody like a couple back from me going,
do we make ready?
And it just rattled all around the aircraft.
And in the end, one of the Falklands veterans sat on the tailgate, just stood up, clunk
click and then we ran off the back into C-13.
So it was a little bit strange.
I think we'd been there 40 minutes and they were like, patrols and snipers, drop your
heavy kit.
Someone's just been beheaded in three times.
So we all had to go and kind of sort that out.
But yeah, pretty nuts.
Pretty nuts.
Crazy.
So what was it that took you from Para to SF then?
What made you make that decision?
It had always been one of those things.
So before that I was in the sniper platoon.
I liked working in small groups.
It was one of those things.
I always looked at special forces as the highest form of soldiering.
And it was just one of those things that I kind of wanted to do.
What about physically?
Like you said, you were 50 something kilograms.
What did you do?
What were the kind of strength and conditioning philosophies that you leaned into to add some
weight?
I just lifted weights.
I'm not a technique guy.
I kind of just pick the heaviest thing you can move, move it and then technique comes
in over months and months.
But it's probably not the wisest thing, but that was kind of how I used to train.
So what about 9-11?
I mean, obviously a lot of the American veterans, it was an attack on our home soil here, where
you're sitting as well.
But it was a slightly different perspective for a lot of British serving military at the
time because it was on someone else's home front.
It wasn't on ours.
What was that day for you through your eyes and how did that impact your trajectory?
So I literally came off century duty.
I was actually in Macedonia.
I came off century duty.
We were living in an abandoned factory and I was stood probably two or three people away
from an exchange officer from the 82nd Airborne.
So I was kind of right there and there was one little television in front of most of
the battalion and I came in in time to see the second tower collapse.
I can remember one of the young lads asking, so what does this mean?
And somebody goes, you're probably watching the start of the next world war and probably
wasn't too far off to be fair.
Now were you in SF by that point?
No, no, no.
I was still two power.
So walk me through then.
So Iraq was the next thing that you did under two power?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did Iraq.
I actually went to Afghanistan before Iraq.
So walk me through that.
I mean, again, wherever you'd like to go, but you've done these deployments in Africa
or Northern Ireland now all of a sudden we are truly at war.
What were those first Middle East experiences like when you were still in two power?
Just strange.
It was really strange kind of being in places.
You had the call to prayers kind of coming up.
It was alien.
It obviously became normal over time, but initially it was really alien.
But I was in sniper platoon, so we always used to work in small teams, kind of remote
from everybody.
But yeah, it was odd.
I can remember, where did I fall to sleep?
I can remember having something poke me in the back, picked it up, threw it away.
And when I woke up in the morning, it was the top of the human femur actually stuck
in my back.
So yeah, that was a little strange.
What about when you first went to Afghanistan and Iraq?
Because what I've heard a lot is that people that were there early on in the conflict were
more often than not received fondly by a lot of the people, the indigenous people of those
countries, not the Taliban or the extremists, but the regular people.
There was a feeling of liberation.
What was the experience early on in either of those two countries?
Yeah, I mean, Afghanistan was a little different.
We actually got shot at by the Northern Alliance, who were our allies.
So they kind of had a crack at one of our OPs.
It was just a distraction.
They were actually trying to...
Nobody was paying them.
They were trying to steal food.
So they were like just shooting them and then kind of running to steal some food.
So that's all it was.
But Iraq was a little different.
So again, I first went to Iraq in maybe 2003.
And yeah, it was frosty, to say the least.
So I think the initial kind of relief, you know, we were there when Salah got caught.
That caused a lot of celebratory fire.
So it was literally like pull all the sentries in, everybody get underneath something because
everything that goes up obviously comes back down.
But yeah, Iraq was a little different.
Now I always ask people one of two questions, and I'll put this to you, and this can span
all the way through till present day.
And we'll walk forward, obviously, with the other side of your more special forces focused
profession.
But as you live in the US now, I would argue that the people here on their news stations
get a very polarized view of war, either very, very pro-war, kill them all like God saw them
out stacking bodies, or they're all baby killers.
And in the middle are the men and women, arguably children, 16, 17 year olds, that we send overseas
with our flag on their shoulder to serve our country.
The first part is a two part question.
The first part, regardless of politics, regardless of what sent you there, was there a moment
as a young soldier where you realized that there were some horrific people that needed
to be taken care of?
Yeah, I mean, really sort of going from way back when I was very, very young, I kind of
made my peace with how the world is and who's in it, and the fact that kind of people in
the military need to sort problems out.
So that was never a real issue for me.
I don't remember a sort of thunderclap reality bites moment.
Maybe the beheading right before you got off the plane is probably fitting that description.
Yeah.
All right, well then, conversely, because I think this is as if not more important, the
way that these conflicts are portrayed is that we're at war with Iraq, we're at war
with Afghanistan.
Obviously, what you guys are doing out there protecting the people of those countries from
some of the people terrorizing them.
So whether it was the indigenous people or whether it's people that you served alongside,
what were moments of kindness and compassion amidst some of those battle zones that you
witnessed throughout the years?
So jumping way forward to SF, there was a particular kind of linguist.
He was a Kurdish chap that I kind of worked with, who I got kind of pretty close with.
He was a decent guy.
He was kind of worth turning around and running back for, if it came to that.
Brilliant, all right, well then, what year did you transition to SF and then how did
that change your perspective of war in the time that you were still in the regular military?
So, I think it was 2010 that I was badged in.
I did a summer selection course and just kind of got badged just before Christmas.
But that was in the summer, like maybe around about 200 odd people and it slid down to,
well, 10 again.
So not very good odds of passing, but it was nice to be kind of stood there at the end
of that.
So again, with that lens, you're a 16-year-old, you make it through the parachute regiment
selection.
Now you're 10 in 200 odds.
What by this point do you think carried you through even greater adversities and still
allowed you to succeed?
I think it was probably mindset.
I think it was one of those things.
I saw an interview and it was an old guy from my old unit and he goes, the best piece of
advice he ever got was don't stop.
And that was it.
And that sort of stuck in my head, just don't stop.
Whatever you're doing, don't stop.
So yeah, it was a strange time, but everything felt very worthwhile.
Do you know what I mean?
The things that you would get at the end were always kind of worth putting yourself through
the mill for.
What was the contrast between parachute regiment and the SF unit that you were a part of ultimately?
And the reason I asked that, for example, the SEALs and the Green Berets and some of
these other groups that come on the show, especially if you're talking about SEAL Team
6, they are given all of the latest technology.
Obviously, they're given nutritionists and strength conditioning and they're trying to
forge the most elite of elite soldiers who then in turn do research and do training to
help the other SEAL teams.
What was that lens like through your unit compared to the parachute regiment?
Was there an exposure to a higher level of training and equipment there?
Yeah, it was one of those things.
You kind of got spat off the back of selection, feeling like you could do pretty much anything.
You then went to your squadron and realized that you couldn't.
Everything was alright, Jesus, you know the time and place, be there tomorrow with all
your shit.
And that was the only brief that you'd get.
And then you were like, turn into guys that you knew, where is the usual place, what time
is it and what do I bring?
They were like, you'll get used to it.
And you're like, well, I haven't, I can't, so what do I actually bring?
But you did get used to it over a bit of time.
It took a lot of working towards really.
I was quite lucky, I think I was a little bit older.
A lot of the guys in the unit already knew me.
So I had quite an easy transition when I first turned up.
That minimalist instruction, was that because as you spent more time and you got more training,
you already knew what each of these things meant?
Because I know the best fire departments I work for, they would have a keyword and that
meant a whole series of things on the engine or on the truck.
Was it that element that your level, your training and frequency was so high that after
a few months you knew what that meant?
Yeah, you just want to pick it up as you go along.
So I can remember the first exercise that I did.
It kind of hit the ground, we jumped in and I sort of collect all the parachute harness
off, stood up and was about to go forward and get my rifle, Bergen and everything else
and packed my suit up, turned around and squadron commander and the squadron sergeant played
you were doing it for me.
So they just walked over and were kind of already doing it.
I was trying to like, this is a little different to what I know.
But yeah, I think the unit is one of those places, nobody will walk past the broom, nobody
will walk past a crisp packet on the floor.
Nobody feels kind of above themselves.
So everyone's willing to kind of muck in.
What is it about that philosophy in that group?
Because it sounds to me like what's happened is there's humility and you hear this with
the SEALs, for example, they take it in terms of leading.
So it seems like the ego gets kind of stomped down a little bit and you have humility because
now regardless of rank, like you said, you're picking up rubbish and helping each other
pack chutes so that as a group you can get finished.
How was that forged in the SF team that maybe didn't have the opportunity in the Paris?
So again, for me, it was a little different having come from kind of sniper platoon.
But yeah, it was kind of very much that kind of thing.
So because you work in small groups, you can't really afford to have a big strung out kind
of hierarchy.
The hierarchy is very compressed and things work very differently.
So if you have an officer that feels he's above everybody and he doesn't need to get
his hands dirty, well, that's completely not the case.
So yeah, it was commissioned officers in particular used to get gripped when they turned up to
a squadron and it was literally like grabbed by the collar.
This is my troop, not yours.
You do the paperwork and shut your mouth.
It's kind of like, okay, right.
So yeah, it was, how would you say, a squadron is kind of a weird organism, but it kind of
works.
I think it's just been sort of time proven.
Brilliant.
Well, what about the next kind of phase of your military career then?
How did that shift?
And also tell me about the medic side too, because I know you became a combat medic under
that role.
Yeah, so everybody that joins the unit, you go one direction or the other.
You either go heavily into demolitions or heavily into med.
You cross train in both, but you do one in particular.
And that's known as your patrol skill.
My patrol skill ended up being med.
So I kind of went on numerous hospital attachments and did a fair amount of medical work.
Now I've heard you talking, and we'll get into it obviously with the Ukraine, not even
deployments, the Ukraine contracts that you've been through and obviously the near life death
experience that you experienced.
But while you were under that combat medic role, did you ever have to actually apply
those skills?
Yeah, loads of times.
So even right from being a young soldier all the way through to actually knowing what I
was doing.
Yeah, I've treated hundreds and hundreds of casualties over that time.
What if any observations have you had between the medicine that you had to use on the battlefield
and some of the medicine that you watched in the civilian side when you were training?
So I suppose it's really a mechanism of injury.
People in the civilian world, they're used to getting people that are very, very poorly,
but there's no sort of visual kind of sign of that.
They're just really ill.
And it will be kind of taking people's odds that sort of indicates things.
Whereas in the military side of things, you're dealing with fit and healthy people that get
torn up by kind of pieces of metal going a bit too quickly.
So it's really how you turn the tap off, how you kind of stop bleeding, how you keep people
breathing and kind of those kind of things.
So now you've become on the SF side, you're working under that banner now.
Where do you find yourself and how is that different now versus where you were under
2 Para before?
I suppose it was just, it was very different.
You worked in a lot smaller groups.
When they said things would happen, they usually did.
So if they said a plane's going to land on that road in 20 minutes, 20 minutes later,
a plane would land on the road.
I suppose looking at it, you got kind of the more dangerous side of soldiering, but it
kind of just worked.
People were so good that you didn't have to kind of look to your left and right.
You just knew that people there were going to kind of do what they needed.
So you just sort of concentrated on your bit of that.
Where did you find yourself?
Were you back in Iraq and Afghanistan during that time too?
Yeah, both of those places.
Numerous times, but yeah, with a couple of other ones that we won't go into.
Yeah, mostly Iraq and Afghanistan.
And what, if any, were the differences between when you went the first time and then when
you went back years later?
I think just how things had kind of moved on.
So what was all new, and we were kind of trying to apply things that we learned in Ireland
in the early days.
Everything had kind of refined and kind of moved on to such a point where everything
was established off what you'd learned in those seasons.
So everything just kind of rolled really.
And what made you make the decision to transition from that role into the world of contracting?
It was just my time was up, so it was one of those things that I just kind of got into.
I actually got out right when the COVID disaster kind of struck.
Everybody on camp got stood down, sent home on full pay apart from me.
So I was kind of like, right.
I managed to find work pretty rapidly, and I went and worked out in Libya for eight months,
actually.
What was that transition like for you?
The reason I asked that, a lot of our first responders, military members, when they leave
that tribe, when they leave that group that they were so close to, and they had identity,
they had purpose, they had that tribe, like I said, it can be very jarring for people
to transition out during COVID, I could imagine probably was pretty rough to come out expecting
to be able to hug people and spend quality time.
And now you're in that nightmare.
No, it was, I think, with a strong kind of family around you, that kind of works out.
Plus, I went and worked in Libya with a few ex regiment guys.
It was kind of one home to another, really.
A lot of the people that have been on here, British and American and Australian, the withdrawal
from Afghanistan definitely stung, for lack of a better word.
And it's not to say that they don't feel like they made a difference, because all of them
can recall where they definitely did impact, where they were kind of deployed.
But the way that it was snatched out and the interpreters that were left behind, the equipment
that was left behind seemed to really sit very badly with a lot of people that served,
a lot of people that had trauma mentally and physically that came home, a lot of people
that lost friends that didn't come home.
What was your perception of that particular event?
I would call that an absolute disaster.
I kind of looked at it and yeah, it was pretty much disastrous.
I mean, all the gear that was left there, all the people we kind of left behind, yeah,
kind of stuck in the throat a little, that did.
But just one of those things.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, then let's shift it to Ukraine then.
Talk to me about now you're on the contracting side, the beginning of that conflict and then
when you found yourself deployed there the first time or sent there the first time.
So I found work with a company that kind of looks after a lot of guys from my old unit.
And I was bodyguarding for a news crew.
So I was kind of bodyguarding for reporters.
I'm going to be careful what I'm going to say.
But I found out pretty quickly I really don't get along with reporters very well.
They would say the wrong thing.
It would wind me up.
There were numerous kind of days where I would refuse to talk to them.
And when you're shutting that vehicle with somebody for hour after hour, not talking
to them can kind of wear a little thin.
But yeah, it was one of those things.
So I went out in very late February, literally just after the Russians had kind of come across
the border.
Basically I went to look after a news crew that was covering the refugee crisis right
on the border with Poland.
So I went to a place called Madika and it had thousands and thousands of people.
And I'm talking about five or six kilometers on a four-lane road literally jam-packed with
people standing and it was taking them three or four days to get to the front of that queue.
That kind of slapped me right in the face.
I was kind of at the scale of it and the amount of people was different to a lot of what I'd
seen before.
But it was what it was.
It was one of those things.
The crew that I was looking after was like, we don't want to go into Ukraine.
And I was like, I need to go into Ukraine.
So I got moved to another crew and walked across the border and then just kind of worked
in a lot of places where the Russians had literally just pulled out.
So it was places like Borodzianko, Buzha, places like that and they'd literally just
left.
So kind of went in there, was exposed to a lot of what the Russians had got wrong.
Numerous kind of things that sort of messed with your equilibrium a little.
There were tons of kinds of crimes that they'd sort of committed.
Watch the mass grave in the back of the churchyard in Buzha.
Kind of all the bodies get pulled out of there.
Yeah, it was a funny time though.
I heard you on your podcast you did with your friend, you made that same comment about the
media but you also talked about the way that it was reported only fit a certain narrative.
With Ukraine or even going further back, what has been your experience between just that,
what you're seeing versus the way that, and obviously we can't report everything that's
going on.
It could be very detrimental to security, but the way that the story is being told back
home versus what you guys are seeing on the ground.
So the network I worked for, it used to get told, and this was get told from over here.
So they would make a decision in, I think it was New York or LA, wherever their kind
of base was, they would get told what the news is today.
They would go out, clip photographs, bits of footage, sound bite people, and just make
it fit whatever they'd already been told.
And you were like, this is absolute bullshit.
Do you know what I mean?
They completely ignored the big ironworks in Mariupol, which is one of the most legendary
kind of feats of arms that we've had in recent years.
They completely ignored it, weren't interested in it.
A female reporter got asked by one of the interpreters, why don't you interview soldiers?
She was like, no, we want to interview real people.
I was like, real people?
Well, why?
Because I'm all that's keeping you stood up.
But yeah, it kind of blew my mind a little.
What would you tell people listening that wasn't reported through a lot of the TV back
home?
What were some of the things that, if anything, that were missing from the picture that we
were given as far as why we were there, what was actually happening?
And like you said, some of the things that the Russians and all the Ukrainians were doing
that the American and British people weren't being told.
I think it was probably the raw element, like going right down to, how would you say, today
we are going to have to suck it up.
We're going to have to run risks.
We're going to push right forward.
A lot of them weren't happy to do that.
Some of them did it stupidly and were shot.
And you're kind of like, if you just listen to your security guys, they could probably
keep you out of trouble.
There was quite a few, how would you say, really quite brutal crimes that they just
never reported.
I mean, there were guys getting pulled out of forests and arms tied together, hands cut
off, tongues cut out, eyes gauged out and bits and pieces cut off.
And you're like, we telling this story or no, no, we need to find somebody.
And it's, everything was really weird.
It was just a strange kind of air about the whole thing.
So with the position that you had now, again, not trying to get too in the weeds, but how
did the men that you served alongside in this capacity help bolster the Ukraine forces?
Sorry, where are you talking about?
In, like looking after the media or later?
Yeah, later.
So I think I'm transitioning.
Let me rephrase the question then, now that you've educated me.
How did you find yourself transitioning from the protection side to actually being more
on the combat side?
So it was kind of, it was one of those moments where, how would you say, I've made a decision,
you are not doing enough, not to put too fine a point on it.
I think I was making 14 or 15,000 pounds a month looking after reporters.
I halved that and went and worked for an American company, ran by an ex-Marsok guy.
Their job was either training up Ukrainian units or extracting civilians out of frontline
areas that were looking at getting surrounded or overrun.
So they were too dangerous for anybody else to kind of try.
I went and worked for them for a little while, still didn't think I was doing enough.
So I ended up joining the Legion.
The Foreign Legion?
Yeah, it's the Ukrainian kind of Foreign Legion.
It was a strange transition.
One of the older guys that worked for the company I was with, he actually joined it
before I did.
I kind of got, how would you say, bluffed into it.
So I went and met a couple of guys in Kyiv, had a bit of food and a couple of drinks with
them and they talked me into joining their unit.
The talk was, look, we work behind the lines, we run human teams, we're blowing up trains,
we're kind of living in small groups in the forest.
I was kind of like, yeah, that sounds like a bit of me, I'll sign up.
They were like, yeah, good to go, I'll kind of claim you, just go do your paperwork.
Went and did the paperwork, got up to where they were and the guy that had that conversation
with me and basically sold the unit was basically like, looked at me and was like, okay, anyway,
I'll catch you later, I'm off to Kyiv.
And I was kind of like, mate, I don't even know where to have a pee.
I don't know who anyone is, like what am I doing here?
They literally threw the unit at me.
So that kind of happened.
What was your mindset by this point?
Because you were a skinny young kid, you get into the powers, that starts building you
up, then you join the SF team.
But now you found yourself protecting journalists, which doesn't sound like it was a career high
for you.
And then now you're in the Legion, that kind of burning why, had that shifted?
Did you find yourself kind of looking for that mission or was the conflict that you
were witnessing enough to keep you driving forward?
No, it was so I mean, I originally went to Ukraine just to put food on the table.
That was as simple as it was.
When I got there, it really kind of knocked me around, kind of mentally and emotionally.
So I was kind of like, right, somebody needs their head cracking over this.
So I thought I would give it a pot.
So I kind of fell forward into the Legion, kind of worked in the unit that I've already
smoked about for a little while.
Got back off the job.
And how would you say the characters in the Legion are a little bit of a random bunch.
So I had everything you could imagine.
I had bikers, minor criminals, ex-soldiers, Jews, Nazis, every single thing you could
imagine I had under my small little banner.
This was within about 15 or 16 people.
And I can remember being like, yes, do you know what I mean, these are a bit of a random
bunch.
But the majority of them were good, loyal people.
They'd all kind of made a choice to come and fight for Ukraine.
And they were about as blunt as a house brick coming through your windscreen.
So they approached me after a job.
And they were like, just letting you know, we work for you, not him.
And that was literally about six feet away from our old commander.
And they literally just sacked him.
So I had a vote and kind of sacked him.
Which kind of left me kind of running the show for a little while.
I ended up getting quite close to another friend of mine, who I kind of worked with
a fair bit.
He was a former Coldstream Guards commissioned officer.
Spoke with a plum in his mouth, was a very posh guy, but was always up for a good fight,
basically.
So we ended up, we volunteered for a couple of funny little jobs, got into some kind of
bad scrapes.
And they approached the pair of us to kind of lead them onwards.
So we formed something we called Grey Team.
We said, we'll never turn down a job because it's too dangerous.
So here we are.
We're a small group.
We'll keep it really select.
We'll pick who we want in it.
And we'll just kind of offer our services to anyone.
Kind of way of thinking was, if we're a small group that doesn't mind taking risks, we could
just go around the country anywhere to anyone and offer them help.
We didn't want any kudos or congratulations, no pats on the back or anything like that
for getting work done.
We would hand that over to the bigger unit.
And I think it kind of worked.
So we had a bit of a reputation.
We were actually called Suicide Squad for a little while.
And I think people looked at us as kind of like pirates.
So that was actually how our CO used to introduce us.
So he used to gavel in Ukrainian and you ask people what he'd said.
And he was like, they're a bunch of pirates, but they're good guys.
So do you know what I mean?
That was kind of how it was.
Did that reputation spread to Russian troops?
You hear of some of these notorious snipers on the allied sides of World War II that are
known by the Nazis.
Did they ever kind of...
You ever hear back from the Russians or no?
No, it wasn't around for long enough to get a reputation like that.
It was kind of very short-lived because both me and Ned were badly wounded, probably seconds
apart.
So it didn't really go that far after that.
Well let's talk about that day then.
So tell me about why you guys were called to that particular scene and then kind of
walk us through the incredibly tragic events that led to some deaths and your near death
as well.
So we were already on a pretty rough job.
We got the call.
Don't ask any questions.
Just get yourself to here.
So we had to drive hours to get to the outskirts of Bakhmut.
Got there and we got told...
We were very small at the time, but we got told, look, there are nine Ukrainians stuck
in the basement of a building that's full of Russians.
We've tried to break them out twice.
It hasn't worked.
I got asked because I was the only ex tier one guy, are you willing to lead 40 men in
to Buster Mount?
And I was like, I don't know this area, but if somebody can get me to the building, I'll
lead you yourself.
So yeah.
So I kind of volunteered to lead it.
We put in a lot of planning.
So the target building, it was quite a big building, probably the size of, I don't know,
roughly three detached houses in UK, three floors above ground, a basement underneath.
And that's where the non-Ukrainians were.
The building was full of Russians.
The whole Russian army was in full assault.
So I mean, thousands of infantry, hundreds of armored vehicles, jets, helicopters, drones,
everything you could imagine in full assault mode had swept over the top of that.
We were kind of hitting the backfield forces.
And two attempts had kind of already failed at getting them out.
So it was a bit of a strange one.
The guys the night before we got there had hit a mine in the dark, took casualties, withdrawn
under fire in the pitch dark.
So my head's kind of whirling and I'm like, okay, dark is out because some of our guys
didn't have night vision.
The only way you find a mine or an IED at night is to set it off.
So I was like, right, that is out.
The building itself was in a little row of buildings leading to some big kind of barns
that were full of Russians as well.
It was in a strip of buildings and it was in a strip woods right next to a train track.
So I said, right, the strip woods is out because guys have been hit.
We can't see through it with our own drones.
So strip woods was out, dark was out.
We had a Ukrainian guy who had done sentry duty before and knew some of the nine guys
that were already there.
He had done sentry duty in that actual building so he knew which one it was.
His job was to take us to it and literally give us that.
Wait until we fought to the basement, come forward, speak to the Ukrainians through the
door, get them to pop the door, come out.
We were then going to bundle them up and get them straight back the way we came in.
The way we were going to do that was I arranged for a big distraction.
So a lot of artillery, a lot of mortars kind of hitting things near, far, kind of scattered
targets all over the area.
My whole idea was just get every Russian in the area to hit the ground, put his head down
and not want to stick it up.
Our job was we were going to go straight down the train track, get the target building indicated,
hit it with every missile that we were carrying, run forward, fight to the basement, grab a
mace and get them back the way.
To say it didn't go quite that way is a bit of an understatement but it didn't.
Did the Russians know they were beneath them?
Yes, they knew.
I'll be honest, looking at it now, I think they were using them as baits.
They just left them.
They could have easily bust down the door, threw a charge down there and just wiped them
all out.
But I think they were using that to draw in Ukrainians.
They were like, how many of these guys do you reckon we can kill?
Just keep them coming.
So that was kind of what I think they did.
And it worked.
It worked pretty well.
We the whole thing, the whole distraction and everything, us taking the Ukrainians,
that worked up to the point where he literally indicated the target building.
I was just spreading the guys out.
We were about 20 meters away from the building and a Russian just sprints out of the front
door with a red flare in his hands and pops it.
So this finder took us a little by surprise.
We shot him.
He actually managed to stay on his feet.
You could watch dust popping off his gear.
But he stayed on his feet and actually made it back in the building.
He died straight away from the amount of holes that we put in him.
And that kicked everything off.
So we immediately came under fire from, I don't know, four or five different positions.
Kind of took care of that.
You could see a lot of Russians kind of moving around in the target building.
I gave a standby for rapid, gave a rapid fire.
And I went forward alone to find a breach point.
Why did I go alone?
Just didn't want anybody to get shot up or grenade it.
So I kind of pushed forward, survived, got to the building.
And I was like, right, I need to check this doorway.
So I did a pie maneuver, so you kind of step around the door, pointing your weapon inside.
And it kind of gives you awareness of what's inside.
You get to kind of check out for tripwires and everything.
And I literally came, because I couldn't push too far away from the building, because otherwise
I was going to get shot from above.
I literally came pretty much muzzle to muzzle with a Russian.
He went to raise his rifle.
I shot him, stepped back out of the doorway.
The lads all opened up, so they fired missiles, machine guns, rifles, everything for every
opening and kind of put that to bed.
I showed him that I need more guys, got three guys.
I'm kind of stacked up on the door, and I was like, we're going in.
Squeeze my shoulder when you're ready.
Got the shoulder squeezed, stepped again.
Another Russian was stood right where his mate had died.
He actually had his rifle up and fired, hit the woodwork and the brickwork right next
to my face.
That kind of stuck a load of brick dust in my eyes.
Got him, laid him out.
Was still under fire from further back in the building.
I shrunk in, took a knee next to the door and kind of took care of that.
Then heard the shout, grenade, and grenades started getting kind of thrown out of the
top floor at us.
I couldn't get more than two syllables out without a grenade going off.
I mean within feet of us.
It was grenade, grenade, anyway, we're going in that right grenade.
It kind of wore a little thin.
I'm like, right, follow me, pull back.
Pulled everyone back to the wall or what was left of the wall, about 20 meters away.
Undid the knot in our knickers, gave it another go.
Same thing happened.
We were like right fucking pulled back.
Pulled back to the building next door that had been cleared by another team.
We kind of pulled into there.
That carried on ages.
I think we all up hit it 14 or 15 times, just backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards.
My friend Ned took a bullet through his shoulder.
So actually got shot through the shoulder.
Completely ignored that.
He was like my fucking shoulder's stiff.
One of the boys kind of pulled his shirt open.
He's like, have you been shot?
He's like, no, fuck it, just put it back on.
I'll carry on.
It's just kind of like, right, okay.
Then we got to a certain stage and one of the lads actually grabbed me and he goes,
how many times are we going to hit this thing?
I was like, yeah, fair one.
So I asked the Ukrainian major who was there, I was like, look mate, how many times do you
want us to hit this building?
He was up for it, right there.
And then he was like, look, you've hit it enough times, let's go back now.
The captain literally grabbed me and big wide eyes.
He's like, that's our men in there, don't fucking leave them.
So I'm kind of like, fuck, you've got me there.
Right.
Everybody fucking stand up, who could still stand.
Had to stand down a couple of lads because they were too badly hurt to kind of assault.
On my ass, followed me.
So I led one more attack.
Ned at the target building, literally, pile drivers me onto the floor.
Grenade goes off, bang, he's fragged in the back, which I like him a bit now, but it was
what it was.
I got knocked back from a grenade blast, so I was actually stacked up on the corner of
the door.
Grenade went off in the door.
That knocked me back.
Another guy kind of took my place, shake my head, kind of get back up, re-control me.
Kind of realize this just isn't working, let's pull back to the kind of building.
So we pull back into the building.
Just hit by a huge munition that kind of shook loads of shit off the ceiling.
Unlike everyone else, there was kind of a bit of confusion at that time, and then you
get manned down.
So I'm looking at everybody and literally everybody that had come with me on all those
assaults.
I thought I'd done fairly well because I wasn't holed up at the time.
So I had no kind of fragments, no gunshot, no nothing.
So I thought I'd done pretty well, but everybody else was full of holes at the time.
So I'm like, right, if somebody's manned down and everybody is kind of holed up and kind
of bleeding, Ned had been shot and fragged at the time, and it's kind of like somebody
must be really fucking hurt.
So I run back down the line, I get to Joe who didn't make it, go to Joe, mate, who's
the manned down and what state is he in?
He goes, I don't know, brother, not sure.
And at that time, everybody comes kind of spilling past.
I grab one of the guys and I'm like, what's going on?
He goes, mate, the lads have done in, they need to go back.
So I'm like, right, if I can you lead them back to the friendly checkpoint, give me a
last man call.
So everybody kind of comes blundering past.
Ned, after being shot and fragged, wouldn't leave, just he stayed right to the end with
me, which is pretty decent of him.
But we kind of got to that stage where last man goes through, so we kind of chip off.
And by this time, you can kind of hear that the Russkies had drones up for ages, so we
were getting plastered with mortars and artillery all the time.
You could hear armour moving on both sides of us.
It was a bit of a mess, but we start kind of cracking on back towards the friendly checkpoint
and the Ukrainian major and captain just stop, go down and they're arguing over a radio.
So I take a knee, face the rear because I'm the last man to leave.
And in the end, I'm like, Ned, what are they doing?
So Ned kind of walks up, listens to them both and then looks at me with this worried look
on his face and he's like, they still got wounded back there.
I'm like, right.
OK, well, we've got to go back for them.
So we already had wounded.
We had a lot of wounded.
So I'm like, one of the boys, you lead them back to the friendly checkpoint.
We'll go back and grab the Ukrainian wounded.
So the major, the captain and Ned, we all kind of grouped together and kind of go to
walk off and Sy, who also didn't make it, kind of latches on the back of us.
Ned looks at him and he goes, he said to go back to the friendly checkpoint and he just
stares at him and goes, fuck off.
So that happened and five of us kind of walked back in expecting to literally meet Russians
toe to toe.
I think we get roughly 300 odd meters back towards them.
We hear a lot of crashing and kind of movement ahead.
So all kind of weapons up, waiting for we thought might be the Russians to Ukraine.
Ukrainians come blundering through the trees.
One of them's got no weapon.
He's really bleeding heavily out of one arm.
Literally grab hold of him.
Mike, you all right?
He's like, yeah, so I'm like, right.
Fucking move that way.
Don't hang around.
Him and his mate chip off.
The Ukrainian major gives us a thumbs up.
So I'm like, right, let's go back.
So we start moving back towards the friendly checkpoint.
All the way down, it was a dead straight train track and kind of went on for ages.
And all the way down here, you could just hear explosions really close to us.
I'm kind of moving in.
You could see the friendly checkpoint from miles away and it was getting hammered.
Big explosion after big explosion.
And I'm like, we can't move either side.
We can't kind of alter our course here.
We just need to suck it up and get down there.
That was the safest place to go.
So we kind of keep cracking on.
We get to a little slope and it starts kind of pulling up to the checkpoint.
The Ukrainian major who was leading our little group literally takes a knee and just refuses
to move.
So I again take a knee.
I'm facing the rear.
I'm like, Ned, what is he doing?
So Ned walks up to him.
They have a little argument.
Ned takes a pace backwards, raises his rifle and he's like, I will fucking shoot you where
you're kneeling if you don't get up and move over that berm.
So the major gives it one of those and then kind of gets up and moves over.
It wasn't until I got to that point, I could kind of see in his mind why he didn't want
to sort of push over.
The other side of the berm was pure carnage.
So there's dead, wounded, laid everywhere.
Everybody's voice had raised a couple of octaves.
I think panic was about to set in.
There were guys sort of self-torn okay.
It was a bit of a mess.
So I'm like, shit.
Okay.
So I take literally center stage, just talk calmly to everyone.
You pull him over there.
You tourniquet him.
You do this.
I try and calm everything down, which kind of worked until T-72 round.
So that's a main battle tank, lands within kind of inches of me and blows me completely
off my feet.
Ned clearly remembers watching that explosion.
So he said he literally watches the explosion, watches me disappear in the explosion.
And he's like, his heart fucking sinks because he's like, that's all the control is on him
now.
He goes, he kind of keeps looking and he goes, I just pop back up and start working like
nothing's changed.
And he goes, that kind of blew his mind a little bit, but you know, it is what it is.
A few of the guys were looking at me with strange looks on their faces.
So I just go, no dramas and kind of give them thumbs up and just carry on.
So I kind of continued to control everything, which worked for a little while.
Then there's a big explosion.
And then you hear, man down, man down, it's Ned.
I'm like, oh fuck.
So I run down off the little hill that I was on and up his, up the slope to Ned and he
was in a bad way.
So he'd been hit full on with an artillery shell.
He'd kind of blown his legs apart.
He had kind of bones stuck out of him and was a little bit of a mess.
He was close to going into shock at that point.
So I look at him and I'm like, we need to get him down the hill.
He needs a doctor, I can straight away.
So four of us kind of grabbed bits of him and kind of dragged him down this slope.
We get him part way down and it was kind of, there were trees stuck everywhere, kind of
blown up trees and we kind of hook him on a tree.
So literally it's bone one side, Ned the other side, which hurt him obviously.
He let us know it was like, oh shit.
So we move him back up, unhook him, eventually kind of get him down the hill, throw him in
the back of the vehicle.
I grab his head, pull him over, give him a kiss, whisper something in his ear and say
to the driver, right, fucking get him out of here now.
There was another big load of artillery, another load of casualties, that all kind of kicks
off.
So Ned's vehicle goes absolutely nowhere.
I take centre stage again, calm everything down, kind of working through everything and
that's when the second T-72 round literally goes off right in between my legs.
So I was on one knee and it literally came in and that one really knocked me for six.
So I can remember being laid on my back, smoke everywhere, fucking feel my head up and just
look down at a complete mess.
So it had blown the inside off both legs and the back off my right leg.
I was like, oh shit, you're not in a very good state here.
So I remember shouting over and I fucking shout Ned, point down and he just gives me
a really weak thumbs up, which is kind of funny now but yeah, it was just one of those
things.
So after that I don't really remember much but from survivors of the day they said everybody
was screaming at me, get in a fucking trench, get in a trench.
So I managed to get back to my feet, walk over to the lads that are taking cover in
a trench.
There was Joe, George, Sy, Bruce and Kerry.
I kind of move over to them, heard 152mm artillery shell coming in so that started whistling.
I took a knee on the lip of the trench and put my head down and the round actually lands
in the trench.
I killed Joe, killed Sy, killed George, severed an artery in Bruce's arm and knocked Kerry
stiff and blew four square inches out of my skull and made me look dead.
So that happened.
I don't obviously remember any of that.
Kerry I think jumped out of the trench, ran over to someone else who was kind of hit,
started treating them.
Bruce screams my name, tries to drag me in the trench but he's got a severed artery in
his arm.
He works out I'm dead because I look dead.
Runs over to Kerry, Kerry grabs him and goes he's fucking dead and you're hit.
Torn the case his arm and cazor bags him.
Then I think somewhere I was left for dead.
I think eventually somebody kind of checked me, I must have made a noise or something
and they were like fucking hell he's still in the game.
Patched me up, sent me to a field hospital.
They saved my legs.
I was then packaged further north because they knew they didn't have the neuro experience
to kind of deal with my head injury.
I went up to Neapro.
That was the story.
Out of 40 men that went forward, 14 were dead.
Nearly everybody else was injured, likely or otherwise.
Not the best of days that.
No, absolutely awful day.
Just before we go to your recovery, when people listen, obviously not just yourself, the men
you worked alongside as well, I mean the courage and the heroism against the odds that you
were facing was pretty epic for lack of a better word.
When you kind of analyze it now, what was it that allowed you to overcome that immense
fear and keep pushing forward?
Again, I think it was just that don't stop kind of philosophy.
I think we were always taught when it's a hostage rescue, which it was, all bets are
off.
So if all of you die doing a hostage rescue, just crack on, just get it done.
And I think that was kind of my mindset through the entire thing.
So it was just don't stop, just keep going, kind of carry on.
Everybody worked really well.
The lads that I was with, yeah, I can't speak highly enough of them.
They were all really good guys.
You sound amazing.
They really do.
What about your road to recovery then?
I mean, we're sitting here having a conversation.
You're still extremely active these days.
Help me through losing four square inches of what one would imagine to be a pretty important
organ to your kind of journey out the hospital.
So yeah, I was sent north to the hospital in NITRO.
My wife came out to see me, which was pretty impressive.
I was in a medical coma at the time, but yeah, there was, it was kind of a long sort of road
to recovery.
I went up to NITRO, kind of stayed there for a little while while they sorted my head out.
I was moved up to Keefe, stayed there for a little while.
And then I was packaged over the border and moved somewhere else.
And eventually I moved all the way.
Yeah, I moved via London all the way back home.
But I was in London for the majority of my recovery time.
So I actually spent four months in hospital, four solid months.
And that was on a thousand pounds a day of antibiotics.
What were your deficits, if any, when you first, you know, gained consciousness and
were able to move, did you have any temporary damage as far as your physicality?
Well, initially, I could hardly speak.
So it was one of those where my wife was stood there, getting everything kind of explained
to her.
They showed her my wounds.
I was in a bad way.
I was unconscious, laid on a bed.
And the guy was saying, look, his speech might not come back for a couple of months.
It's usually the last thing to come back.
But, you know, we were kind of worried with his head injury, you know, whether it will.
And the wife said, I kind of peeled one eye open, saw her, said, love you, and then piled
in again.
So that was kind of the first thing that I actually said was that.
You won some points there, that's for sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was it was a bit weird.
The whole kind of thing was really odd.
So they actually rebuilt the four square inches with a titanium plate and kind of put that
back in because I did have a real curved kind of bit out of my head, which looked kind of
weird when you looked at it.
But yeah, they kind of rebuilt it and done a decent job.
And what about getting to the point that you're at operationally now?
I mean, was there a kind of on ramp again?
I mean, four months in hospital, obviously, you're losing some of your fitness and your
strength and you've got the muscles that were damaged in your legs as well.
So how are you able to kind of train yourself back to where you are now?
That's a good question, really.
So with the bits of kind of missing out my legs, I think I might like on completely missing
my adductor.
So I'll never be able to twist my leg like I twisted it before.
Yeah, it was it's just one of those things that you kind of have to get used to.
It was a little weird when I first had a shower and I was like, me, you are missing some chunks.
But I am only four kilos lighter than I was at my heaviest.
So when you think of the bits that the Russians kind of blew off, I don't think four kilos
is kind of workable.
Absolutely.
Well, then let's walk to the creation of the red eight then the way we were connected.
Like I said, Dave, we connected us and you're right down the road from me and you're up.
Excuse me, you are giving weapons classes in this local area.
So what made you decide to transition into that space alongside what you're still doing
today?
So it was I literally got approached by a friend of mine who I fought with over there.
And he was like, do you want to start a business together?
I was like, how do you mean?
He goes, well, I'll do all the admin and you teach.
I was like, yeah, good for me, mate.
We'll we'll crack on and do that.
So that was kind of where Red 8 came from.
Yeah, kind of nuts.
But yeah, I actually I've got to go back to Ukraine this week, actually.
So the Ukrainians, although it's taken absolutely ages, they've given me a medal for that day.
So that was kind of nuts.
It was a guy I hadn't heard from for months.
Just kind of started texting me.
I sort of text him back.
We did kind of a bat and ball for a couple of days.
And he finishes off the one day he goes, I've got something here of yours.
I'll send you a photo later.
So I'm just thinking somebody's found an old piece of gear and kind of handed it in.
And he sends me a picture of my medal.
Yeah, which I thought was pretty nice of them, to be fair.
So yeah, turns out I'm getting the gong.
So I've got to go and collect that, actually, this week.
So yeah, there's a few lads I actually would have put in for medals, but I don't know whether
I'll be able to do that when I'm there.
I'm not sure.
Particularly Ned.
Ned's been good as gold.
He was a tough old boy on that day.
And Ned's still with us now.
Have I got that correct?
Yeah.
Okay.
Beautiful.
All right.
Well, then I want to get to what you offer in Red 8.
But just before we do, through your lens, we have obviously multiple conversations going
on at the moment.
I just interviewed Tulsi Gabbard and she was referring to the beginning of the Ukraine
invasion and what we're seeing now is a proxy war compared to some of the other things that
maybe we should have been focusing on.
And we had the whole conversation on who benefits from initiating a war in the first place.
But then you also have now what's going on in Gaza and that, rightly so, has got a lot
of people looking that way.
Through your lens, though, how is the situation in the Ukraine and what needs to happen to
assist them to finally get the Russians out of their country again?
That is a good question.
And I don't think Ukraine will finish quickly.
I think it's a bit more of a grind.
It's just one of those things you constantly need support.
So whatever kind of stuff you can give them, whatever kind of help, and that's everything
from a pair of warm socks to cruise missiles.
It's kind of everything in between.
Just kind of keep supporting them.
And that's really, you'll eventually have to kind of get to that stage where one of
them kind of gives up and pulls back behind a line on a map.
Good question, though.
Let's hope it's sooner rather than later.
It's horrendous seeing any of these conflicts and there's so many at the moment.
So for people listening then, if they are looking for training, which I absolutely will
be, I'm still a white belt with any sort of firearm at the moment, what training do you
offer at Red 8?
So we will kind of bespoke tailor everything from somebody who just wants a day, you know,
if you are a couple of hours on a range, never shot before, nothing, just wants an experience
all the way up to kind of tier one soft, one close quarter battle, room clearance and everything
kind of refined.
We can kind of tailor or tether any course to anybody that wants kind of any level of
training.
Brilliant.
And where can people find Red 8 on social media and on the website?
So for the social media, I think we are on Instagram and we also have a website.
So they're both, one is the Red 8 team, that's on Instagram.
And I think the website is, I am not sure.
No problem.
I'm going to put the website on the show notes for this episode anyway, so people will be
able to find it there.
Well, Sean, I want to say thank you so much.
I want to be mindful of your time because as you mentioned, you might literally be jumping
on a plane tomorrow to go and get your medal and see some of the people that you serve
with.
But it's been an incredible conversation, really has.
And from some of the attributes that led to your success, some of the heroism that your
fellow brothers exhibited that we don't have here anymore, it's been an essential conversation.
And obviously the perspective into Ukraine, which I think most people just don't hear
that kind of storytelling at the moment.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast today.
No worries, Mike.
Look, thanks very much for asking me.