This episode is sponsored by Transcend, a veteran owned and operated performance optimization company that I introduced recently as a sponsor on this show.
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With their CEO, Francisco Morales.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show British military veteran Darren Palatina.
So we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the military, the mental health impact of service, the mission he's on now to help heal veterans and first responders 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 Darren Palatina.
Enjoy.
Well, Darren, I want to start by saying thank you so much to Tim Lloyd for connecting us and to you for coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
I appreciate it, James. Cheers.
So first question, where on planet Earth are we finding you?
Shrewsbury, so UK, United Kingdom, a place called Shrewsbury.
Just outside of Shrewsbury, a place called Osro Street.
It's a small market town about 10 miles outside of Shrewsbury.
So it's a nice little town.
Brilliant. Well, I want to start at the very beginning of your lifeline.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings?
Right. So I was born in Shrewsbury.
I've done a complete round the world cycle back to Shrewsbury.
So, yeah, I was actually born in Shrewsbury town.
There used to be a hospital here.
I was born in 1984 in November.
I've got a dad who is in construction.
He's been a builder for bloody hell, I don't know how many years, like 45 years or something like that.
He's been in construction, building, originally a carpenter joiner.
But he later on in his sort of construction career became a property developer.
So now he owns a big property development company in the UK.
So mum and dad are divorced.
They divorced when I was 11.
And then my mum, she used to do nursing.
Then she went into, she trained to be a dental assistant and then was going down the dental route.
And then she's come back into nursing now as the head of the nursing district.
So she's like top management for the county now.
So mum has remarried, currently going through a divorce now after like 11 years, I think it is.
My dad has got a girlfriend, long term girlfriend.
We get on really well with her and they're good with my daughter as well.
On my mum's relationship side, we get on well with him.
Like not amazingly well, but we get on.
You know, we're friendly enough.
But obviously with the divorce and that now going on, we sort of try to keep out the way,
let it all do its own thing and whatever they need to sort out.
And then from that, from my biological mum and dad, I've got a sister.
She is bloody hell, what is she now?
She'll be 36, 37.
She's got a little one, well a little one and he's like 12 now, 12 year old kid.
And then I've got a stepbrother who is my mum and an old boyfriend of hers from years ago.
So we all get on with that side, you know, they're all really well and they all still get on.
So that part of the family sort of still together.
But mum and dad, the mum and dad relationship with that part is separated.
And then that's it. That's it for the actual family, family.
Then obviously me, my girlfriend, my three year old daughter.
That's my now immediate family now, if you like.
So we all live together in a small apartment.
So yeah, it's all good.
And when you were at school age, what were you playing as far as sports back then?
I bunked off school.
I was an absolute rebel in school, right?
So when I was in school, I used to race motocross.
I was seventh in the UK nationals for motocross.
I used to just love BMXing, dirt jumping, motocross, anything I could get my hands on that was dirt and wheels.
And whenever I used to go to school, I always used to get out of school as early as possible, normally before school started.
And I'd always end up on the bike tracks, riding my bikes, and that while mum and dad were at work so I couldn't get caught.
I had a couple of police chases back then where they were trying to get me off the land.
And like I said, a proper rebel.
I was in a punk band for nine years when I was younger.
I used to have bright pink hair, piercings.
Yeah, it was a fun childhood into teenage years, we'll say that.
In terms of school, I left school with no GCSEs, no qualifications, just had nothing.
But I enjoyed it. I had fun.
Back when you were little, was it still the case where at 15 you could have a 49.5cc motorbike?
I remember there was a couple of kids in my senior year that turned, I guess maybe it was 16.
It must have been 16 and they were the cool kids because they had these little tiny bikes.
Yeah, so legally for road, you have to be 16, 17, and you get what's called a CBT.
It's like a learner license, if you like.
And then you can ride up to a 125, but it has to be restricted and then depend on your age.
I can't remember. I've got my bike license, but it's a full bike license now.
So it's been probably nine years since I passed out.
So I can't quite remember what the rules are with young riders now.
Interesting. I remember there was one friend, actually he passed away since he had a car accident,
a single car accident, and he was probably the first person that wasn't extremely elderly
that I know that died at a very young age.
But I remember there was some sort of restriction where you could do up to 50ccs when you were 16,
I think, back then at least. This was probably a while ago now.
Yeah, yeah. Well, if you go really far back, like Grandad writes,
you didn't even have to have a license for a car back then.
He just took a little lap around the course and he's like, yeah, there's your license, done.
Yeah, so things have changed a lot, haven't they?
They have indeed. Well, what about punk?
I've had them from the US side.
I've had a lot of people talk to me about their journey through punk,
and a lot of them were what they called straight edge.
So they didn't drink, and it was the hardcore music,
but they weren't into the kind of self abuse that some of the punks that I witnessed growing up
were sitting in a bus stop drinking cider all day.
So what kind of genre of punk or community did you find yourself immersed in?
So we were pop punk, so very sort of upbeat.
I wouldn't say like some 41, but kind of more towards Green Day type style,
but with our own sort of spin on it.
I came from a self-taught background of bass, so I played bass,
and my favorite bands, well, my favorite band learning,
the two bands were actually Jamura Qui and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
So I was a very sort of slap bass, funky kind of bass player.
That's my kind of style.
But my vocalist and guitarist, both one person, they were like proper hardcore punk.
Then the drummer came from a metal background, so we had like a proper mashup.
But yeah, it was like the punk style.
Obviously, the drums blend into that with the beats that you use within punk.
And then I just put the funk bass to that, and it used to work really well.
I'll actually send you a link to our old album.
We did an 11-track album while we were touring.
So it was good. I'll send it at some point. You can have a listen.
And what about the scene? The kind of people that you had,
was it a violent concert or was it pretty chill, as I would imagine,
a Jamura Qui based music would be?
It varied. We used to play in some pubs that would have like 50 or 60 turnout,
and we had a couple of gigs which were over 10,000.
So it depends what side you're looking at.
Sometimes we have really local gigs in local pubs,
which we had a close following that were always well behaved
because they didn't want to ruin it for us.
But then when you get to the bigger ones, you've got proper mosh pits,
people headbutting each other. It was just like carnage.
So it completely ranged across the whole lot.
So it was interesting, especially we went all around the UK,
all the way from Scotland right down to Brighton and Cornwall as well.
We did a lot of gigs local. We had a couple in Europe.
I can't remember where we played in Europe.
In Germany and France we played a few gigs, but I can't remember the pubs we called now
or the places. But yeah, it was good in terms of gigs.
We were a good band for punk. I know some people who don't like punk,
they'll say, well, punk will never be good, but we were a good band.
In terms of the scene, the friend scene, I was heavily into drugs, like a lot.
I used to do... people say, oh, when they think drugs are like cannabis,
it was like, no, we were doing speed, ecstasy, MDMA.
I got spiked with heroin twice, cocaine.
I really went around the mill with that.
That was part of the reason we'll discuss it later while I join the army,
because I really wanted to get away from it after nine years of battering myself.
So it's just got to a point where I just had enough wanted out.
And yeah, that was it.
When the mental health conversation comes into the uniform professions,
there is a danger of just focusing on what we did or what we saw as the kind of
root cause for some of our challenges.
As I've matured learning and learning and learning through this podcast
and hearing so many stories now, the importance of the formative years
into our foundation later on was very clear.
When you look back now, and obviously we're going to get into some of your
mental health journey, were there elements of your childhood you think that
contributed to some of the drug use and other things that you were doing growing up?
Yeah, so I'm actually going through hypnotherapy at the moment.
We did discuss this on the first session and it went all the way back.
So when I was younger and mum and dad were still together,
we had a really big house up the road, literally within walking distance.
My nan and grandad lived there and my auntie and uncle all motocrossed.
It was all like racing.
We all meet up on weekends.
We had to track up my nan's eyes because they were in the farm.
You know, like nine, ten years old, we used to run around with air rifles
and machetes in the countryside just like hunting pheasants and whatever we could.
To earn a bit of pocket money, we'd go hunting pheasants,
sell them to the locals, probably weren't even our pheasants,
but probably illegal at the time.
That's what we used to do as kids.
But then when mum and dad divorced, obviously we couldn't afford to keep...
My dad had moved to town, which was probably, I want to say,
about 25 miles away from home.
And then my mum was left in this massive house.
It was like a six-bedroom. It was huge.
My dad built it in a big construction company.
He built this house, but we couldn't afford to keep running it.
So my mum ended up having to sell the house.
Then we moved into a town, Oswestry, which is where I live now.
And I think having all that childhood experience ripped away like that,
not being able to ride my bike in the countryside,
not being able to go hunting, not being able to build tree houses,
that had a negative effect.
And then, obviously, soon after that, dad had a new girlfriend,
mum had a new boyfriend.
They both resented us being around.
So they didn't want...
If I go to my dad's for the weekend, my dad's girlfriend didn't want us there
because she had two kids.
And go to my mum's, my mum's boyfriend didn't want us around.
So it was like rejection from both sides.
And during the time in the band, my sister...
I've never spoke to my sister about it, actually, what situation she was in
because her and my mum's boyfriend are always in fights,
like all the time, constantly.
But I think I joined the band,
and it wasn't for about two years after being in the band,
it was when the drugs started.
But obviously, all this story led into us moving to this town,
meeting the wrong crowd, getting into band.
I didn't play bass before I moved to town.
And then I ended up having massive fights with my mum,
who we were living with at the time, and I ended up just leaving.
I got kicked out at 17.
And then I ended up living on a lot of friends' floors.
We had a practice room.
A couple of years later, we had a practice room where we'd play,
and we'd just set up a sofa there.
I'd sleep in the practice room,
get food in and stuff like that.
So it probably had quite a massive impact.
But it's not what we discussed in the hypnotherapy,
like when we talk about the whole story later.
Although that was a massive impact at the time,
it's definitely not what's impacting now.
It's kind of like water under the bridge is such now.
They've all got new partners.
We all get on right, and it's kind of all worked out okay.
Excellent. That's an important discussion though.
And it can be something horrendous,
like growing up around sexual abuse, or it can just be...
And I think this is a very powerful negative element,
just feeling not good enough for whether it's someone who gave you up for adoption,
whether it's not getting the attention from a parent now,
because the step-parent is in the picture.
And I'm acutely aware of that as a step-parent myself,
making sure that I'm present with my stepson, present with my son-son.
And of course there's the dynamic,
because whether it's your step or your original spouse,
there is a time sharing when you have children and a loved one.
But that feeling of rejection, not feeling safe, not feeling loved,
is extremely detrimental to a young child.
Yeah. I can imagine situations that...
I spoke to a couple of people from my channel,
and they've really gone through the mill with domestic violence,
fathers and all sorts like so.
With my childhood coming up, it's quite mellow compared to some.
We just had divorced parents and the lifestyle changed, really.
Effectively, that was it.
There wasn't any violence, there's no domestic abuse or anything,
or sexual abuse or anything like that.
So to most, it's quite light, and it's probably quite normal,
I would have thought, to quite a lot of families.
Yeah. They say don't compare trauma, though, and I agree with that.
Just because it wasn't horrific doesn't mean it didn't have an impact.
Sadly, I think it's common, but it's not natural to be born with two parents,
and all of a sudden you're living in different houses every other day.
I mean, it is what it is, but yeah, it's still abnormal.
I suppose at the time, it was traumatic at the time,
because it's probably the most traumatic thing you've experienced until later on.
When you compare your trauma later on in life, you look at that and think,
oh, it wasn't so bad, but at the time it was everything.
Exactly. It's what you knew. It was your whole world.
Yeah.
So what about career aspirations? You ended up in the military.
Was that what you were dreaming of in school?
No. So I always had an interest in drawing. I loved drawing,
and I wanted to be an architect.
And with my rebellious nature in school,
and I found that after finding that you'd have to go to college for five years
to become an architect, I was like, there's nowhere I'm doing that.
I didn't like school, never mind going to college for another five years.
So I didn't do that. And then I just kind of milled about for quite some time.
I had some work with my dad as a laborer,
later on became a tiler and flooring specialist,
and then moving into bathroom fitting and kitchen fitting and things like that,
doing all the aesthetics of it, with the tiles and flooring.
So I did that for eight years, eight or nine years.
At the same time as doing that, I was obviously in the band, doing the drugs,
in the rhythm on crowd, not really going anywhere.
And it just kind of felt like a bit of a dead end.
You're just doing this job for like, this is the rest of my life type thing.
But something I always wanted to do for so long, for 15 years, was do graphic design.
I had an interest in graphic design for many, many years.
And I put it off for years and then the military happened and stuff like that.
And we'll talk about it later.
But I didn't actually take the leap into graphic design until January 2022.
So it was like 15 years that I had held off.
But that's obviously the let one down the road.
So after the laboring, there was no real career aspirations.
I just needed to get away from the situation.
Like with the drug abuse, it was causing like kidney problems.
And I used to have really bad dermatitis on my hands.
And it turned out that the drugs were causing bad circulation to the skin.
And I found that out purely by off chance because I had a week off drugs.
And over that week, my hands were getting better, rapidly getting better.
And I didn't understand what it was.
And then one night when I took some ecstasy, a couple of pills,
and it was like literally the next morning my hands were back as they were,
you know, like really bad again.
So that's when it clicked.
And I was like, yeah, drugs are doing, that's what's doing the damage.
So I was like, I need to get out of this.
I tried to get out a few times, you know, but with it being a small town,
you kept getting pulled back in, pulled back in.
And eventually at 22, I was like, no, I'm done.
I'm getting in the Army. I'm going.
So at that time, my mum had moved back into the countryside.
This is some years later.
I know it's jumping all over the place, this is,
but my mum had moved back into the countryside.
I'm going to live with you for six months, get away from town,
and then get to the point where I'm just going to run every day, hydrate,
eat healthy, and I'm going to just apply to the Army.
And that's what I did, you know, in 2007 to get away from everything.
Which area within the military did you find yourself?
So I originally joined.
So when I first joined, I joined the infantry under the Welsh Guards.
And I think it was nine or 10 weeks in,
when they ruptured or tore my cartilage in my left knee.
And that put me down into holdover,
which is obviously like a recovery holdover within the training unit.
And while I was sitting in there, I was like, I don't really want to do infantry.
I think I've just sort of jumped in because when I went into the,
because I was trying to get away so much, what had happened,
I went into the careers office and was like,
what is the fastest way to get in the Army? I don't care who it's with, where it's at.
What is the fastest way to just get in?
They're like, the infantry, you can go in three weeks as long as you pass the medical.
So within three weeks, I was going into training up in Namcatric in North Yorkshire.
And when I got there, I was just like, now, if I did 20 years as infantry,
I'm going to come out with all this weapon training that I'm never going to be able to use on the way out.
So when I got injured, it gave me time to think about, you know, what do I really want to do?
And because I was always already in construction,
one of the things that made sense was the Royal Engineers.
So they do obviously engineering, bridging, explosives, all that kind of stuff, as well as soldiering.
But you also get a trade. So you can be electrician, plumber, bricklayer, anything like that,
because they go away and do construction tours, which is one of the tours we did later on.
But I decided in holdover that I was going to pull myself out of training.
So you can PVR, which is like an early release.
I did that and about four or five months later, I reapplied. I said, look, my knee's all better.
I had to go through like checks and medical checks and stuff like that with the knee.
I was running at the time. Then I got my running up to, you know, 10 mile runs and stuff.
So my fitness is getting even better anyway.
And then I decided to sign up for the Royal Engineers.
And that's where I stayed then at that point.
So describe what the role looked like, because you got in 07, 08, is that right?
Yeah, 2007. Yeah.
So what did that role look like and then what was the kind of combat landscape that you were dealing with?
Right. So when I first went through training, so I went in, obviously, when you go into Royal Engineers,
everybody does infantry training, everybody does as a Royal Engineer, everyone does the same basic training,
which is your soldier training. Then you do the combat engineers course, which is bridging, water supply, mine warfare,
minefield clearance and stuff like that. So everybody go through that.
Then at the end of that, you then all break up and go your own way to your own chosen career path.
So some might be radio operatives, some might be plant operatives, you know, like diggers and all that sort of stuff.
Some might go into more of a logistic role or construction role, whatever you do that way.
So I chose to go in as what's called a building and structural finisher, BNSF.
And that's specialised in, again, like tiling, flooring, all the cosmetics of building.
So painting, decorating, glazing, airless spraying, all that.
Anything you see as a finished touch within construction, that's what a building and structural finisher does.
So I'd already had like eight and a half years experience in construction, working hands on every day doing this job anyway.
And when I got in, so I'd already gone through training and just before going in to train
and I'd actually met a girl who I later married, we got married together, she was a nurse in the army.
And I got through training and as soon as I got to my unit, I did three months on the front gate as guard.
So you do like cycles of guard duty on the front gate.
And then after that, I got posted out to Oman to do construction tour.
The unit was already out there, but obviously you go to unit, do three months on guard and then get deployed wherever.
But I came out of my course with a 98% score, which is the highest score since like the 1940s, I think it was,
for the course of building structural finisher.
I think I was purely down to the amount of experience I got where everyone else that was coming in was quite fresh to the job.
But when I was going through there, we were due to get married towards the end of my course.
And I was like, look, I need to get out this course early because my wedding is going to be coming up pretty close after the course.
And I said to my instructor, you know, if I can finish this, you know, the final test is like a six month course and the final exam was like four weeks.
I said, if I can finish this in a week or two weeks, can I get let off to go and do the wedding?
He's like, nobody's ever finished within two weeks.
Nobody's ever finished a course within two weeks and got a decent mark.
I got 98% within seven days, seven working days.
So I absolutely smashed it out.
And the only thing that let me down on that was like a little scuffle on one of the tiles and that was it.
Otherwise it was flawless.
So they were like absolute gobsmacked.
Couldn't believe it. Let me go early.
I went and got married.
And then after that, my then wife got deployed to Afghanistan as a frontline medic.
She got injured. Her vehicle went over an ID, killed the two lads in the front and broke her back.
She got PTSD as well.
I didn't understand PTSD at the time.
So when she came back, she was a mess and, you know, things weren't working.
We got really rocky.
And then it was a case of, you know, we separated and then that later led to a divorce down the line.
But when I came off my course, went to my unit, then I straight away after three months on guard, I got deployed to Oman.
And I got put in charge of a team there because they knew my experience coming through.
I'd already had a lot of experience within construction.
That was I think the worst days we had were by 90.
I remember 96 percent humidity and about 68 degrees like Celsius.
So it was hot as hell, but humid as hell.
And we were, you know, once the block work had gone up, our job was to go into these rooms and deck them all.
And what we were doing was building an RF base on this construction tour for the Air Force.
And we'd be in the bay and literally you'd start at like half seven in the morning doing 18 hour days, like, you know, get absolutely ragged.
And you'd be you'd get into the bay and within 15 minutes you could ring your T-shirt.
It was you were just drenched from like top to bottom.
And that was all day. If you're going to get a new T-shirt on, it's pointless.
You just you come back and you're soaking. It wasn't it's part of it was sweat.
But a lot of it was the humidity of Oman city.
So that was that was a hard tour and that really separates men from the boys because you do 18 hours extreme heat,
extreme humidity, you know, there's camel spiders everywhere.
Them things are horrible things like, you know, they're dangerous as well.
But we have men going down all the time, left, right and center with heat stroke, dehydration, you know, and all that sort of stuff.
So that that went on for I think I was there for five or six months and then back to my unit.
Obviously back home, back to my unit.
And then shortly after that, I started up I was one of the start the the Royal Engineers down on my team.
They had mountain bikers, but they never actually formed a team.
So I put the team together and then the the warrant officer, he was me and him were really good friends.
Even I was like at the time a private and he was one officer, so it's a big gap between the ranks.
But he me and him got on really well because he was a keen mountain biker.
I was into downhill mountain biking, put the team together, started racing, competing in that as well.
So that was good.
And then I was always like an adrenaline junkie.
Bear in mind, I've done motocross, downhill mountain biking, BMX, in dirt jumping, everything you can, all the drugs.
It's all like adrenaline and and that high.
And there was a couple of friends, two other guys on my in my in my squadron that did downhill mountain biking as well.
We ended up going to race the the Megavalanche in France, which is a 30 kilometer downhill event.
It's crazy. It's nuts. It's all snow, ice and then mud.
But when we all got called out, we knew our we knew Afghan was coming up, Afghanistan.
So Herrick 15, which was 2011 and we all got called outside and they said, look, we've been called up.
We've got to go on deployment.
And it's going to be like 2010, beginning 2010, where we got the the notice.
And they said they want to, you know, we're going to be rerolling into ID search teams.
So like improvised explosive devices, basically bombs, ID search team and bomb disposal.
So we were going to retrain as engineers. Bear in mind, we already do like mine warfare and stuff like that.
So it's quite a natural progression.
So they said we won't volunteers first rather than they call it dicking.
But like we're going to volunteer you essentially, they call it dicking.
But rather than dicking for it, we won't volunteers first.
And I was like, I'll have some of that.
Boom, hand went straight up and I was like, this is going to be awesome.
I looked down the line of 48 men and there's only two other hands up.
And it was my two mountain bike friends because they're adrenaline junkie.
So it's three of us all ready for the buzz.
And after that, then, you know, other people start coming forward, you know, reluctantly come forward because it's a big risk.
You know, you're going out there to find bombs and disarm them.
So then that led to like 18 months training for Afghan.
And then we went out there. Eventually, we went out.
So there's loads of teams. I think it's like we were 48.
So there'd be about 50, 52 teams that were out there at any one time.
And they're like 10 man teams. So, you know, it's a large amount.
Not all Royal Engineers teams, some of like all cat badge teams, multi cat badge.
Yeah, we ended up training for 18 months, which ended up going to Jordan, you know, like Petra around that area for like environmental training to get used to like the heat, the humidity, the dryness, the desert, you know, all that stuff while you're doing the training.
And then, yeah, shortly after that, we went out to Afghan. So as a bomb disposal unit.
And that was that was kind of kind of it.
But, you know, we rewind a little bit. 2010, when this was all the training was going on, we actually did 10 marathons in five days.
We did a charity event as well as all this extra training.
And we did we went from Sheffield to Brighton, which is 200 and about 260 miles.
But we went via London. So it's for St. Dunston's charity for blind ex-servicemen, blind ex-servicemen.
And then we did that 10 marathons, two marathons a day for five days carrying 40 pound bergen.
So that was good as well to add to the pre-deployment training because you just get used to carrying the weight.
And then, yeah, we went out to Afghan to ready for the tour.
So that's kind of I know that was a long story that was.
That was just good though. I mean, it's just what happened.
So up to that point, had you witnessed much as far as, you know, a kind of true combat zone or because you meant Oman and some of these places have been kept away from it?
No, not really. No, it was pretty chilled out to me.
Like it was it was hard graft. I don't get me wrong. It wasn't easy.
My construction tour was it was a killer. Every day was a killer.
You know, even Jordan, but you're doing you're doing 12 to 15 hour days.
And if you finish your job early, you know, your training exercise early of like clearing a compound or clearing the route or whatever it be.
If it was another team that was still behind on time, you'd then be called out to go to them and go and help them out and help them clear the route quicker.
And, you know, so you think you're going to get the rest of the day to chill out and it's like no chance other jobs to do.
You know, it's the same with Afghan. You know, all they do is they replicate what's going to go on on tour, you know.
But in terms of there was no combat, there was no, you know, we had a couple of guys that there was a guy that got crushed.
We were on a bridging exercise and he got crushed by two of the panels and broke a load of ribs.
But, you know, that was just like an injury. He didn't die. It wasn't there was no blood.
It was just internal bruising, broken ribs.
I can't remember if he had any lung damage, but, you know, these panels are, you know, the big, big bridging panels that get lifted in by a crane.
But that didn't cause any trauma. It was just like as an injury send him off, you'll be all right.
You know, so other than that, yeah, nothing, nothing really like.
So contrast that with Afghanistan. Walk me through when you first arrived and then, you know, some of the notable incidents that you'd had.
Bloody hell. Right. So I went out. So essentially all the teams go out different and in my squadron, I think it was like six or seven teams in my squadron.
A lot of lads that we knew and the team that I was that I was on and there was another team.
So the other team, there was two guys in that team that they were like best mates.
They were always gobbled, always joking around.
You know, they would they would they got separated because they were due to get injured. They might got injured because of like the mess in about all the time.
And I got moved to the other team. I think I got moved to the other. I can't remember how it went, but I think I got moved to it.
We swapped teams, me and this one lad, Dom, and he went out.
They were all in Afghanistan together, but I was part of a training team initially for a first like four weeks.
So I was training. I went out early because we were training people like on like ground sign awareness and, you know, like tracking and looking for like signs that things have been buried and that sort of stuff.
And then while I was in that training team, I was in a position of what's called a battlefield casualty replacement.
So if anyone gets injured, they'd ship me out there to replace them on the team so the team can still operate.
And Dom, who was in my who I replaced, we swapped roles or teams, their team was out on the ground.
And within the first two weeks, they he lost his right leg or he stepped on a device which basically smashed the bottom of his leg apart.
And it was all in his boot mangled up in his boot. He ended up getting amputated from the from the knee down.
And that was within two weeks.
And when you're in Camp Bastion, which is the main the main base and then you've got Leatherneck, which is the US base attached to it.
When people get injured, they go into what is it now up minimized.
I think they called it up minimized, which is where they shut the communications down until the family of that injured soldier is notified.
So people aren't on Facebook and, you know, gobbling off about it before the family had been told.
So when you're in Bastion, you start to realize how many people are getting injured because every day up minimizes down up minimized, up minimized.
And as soon as it comes off within an hour, up minimized again.
So you know that there's people on the ground constantly getting hit somewhere, whether it's infantry being shot, people getting stepped on IEDs or whatever it be.
There's a massive range of injuries that take place.
And even if someone just falls over and breaks a leg, it's classed as an injury. So they have to go up minimized until everyone's been notified.
But we would just I remember being in the tent at night and you'd hear what minimized can you know, am I going to get called out now?
Am I going out on the ground? You know, when is it my turn type thing?
And it gets more and more scary. It's kind of like anticipating a drop on a roller coaster.
You know, it's coming, but you don't know when it's going to come, you know, and you know your your time is it's going to come at some point.
You just hear all these injuries coming in.
And eventually, Dom, Dom got hit.
And like I've got the story of how it all took place as well.
But I got called out to replace Dom.
And it was just lucky for me that I'd landed in a team that I knew the guys.
You know, I was already used to working with them.
And some of the other lads in my squadron, they got posted to teams that we never even met.
We never we didn't know any of them.
So not only are you joining the team, you don't know.
But them guys have just been through hell, like potentially with a friend killed or injured that they get off the ground.
So they're already in a bit of a highly battered state.
And then you're a new person. They don't even know joining the team to replace that person.
It's a bit morbid in a way.
But, you know, the operations have to keep going.
You know, you've got stuff to do, like, you know, so.
But, yeah, so if we if we go through the whole the whole deployment of Afghan, so, you know, we had other friends which were killed, injured, you know, Jimmy, he lost both legs on another team.
We had Ryan. So Ryan was one of our close friends.
He he he got a reading on the search equipment, you know, the equipment we used to find the IDs under the ground.
And when you search and you get something, you call back to get everyone to stop and to stop coming closer because you're going to try and go down.
And what they do is call it confirming. So you lay down and you're digging from the side in case it's a pressure release pad.
You're digging from the side to make sure to try and confirm what that device is.
And Ryan had got a reading and he called back. He said, oh, you know, hang on. I've got something here.
And when you turn back, you're meant to search again to confirm exactly where that reading was before you get down to dig, because you don't know where it is.
You know, you might have stepped forward a little bit or back or whatever.
But he didn't do that. And what he did, he put his equipment down and he he he went down on his elbows to try and confirm where he thought he got the reading.
And he dug down. There was nothing there. He said, I've got nothing.
And so when he went to get back up, what he'd actually done is put his elbows across the pressure plate.
So it was sitting between his elbows and his chest. And when he went to get back up, he put his hand down on it and it blew up and it broke ribs and smashed into bits.
But he didn't kill him. But he was in a bad way like. And that was one injury. One of our friends that got injured.
And then another one we had, there was a guy called Rifleman James Steel. He's part of the rifles. I can't remember if it was three or four.
I think it was four rifles. And we got called out to a job.
And as an IED search team, part of our job is if a device goes off, we have to go out and investigate.
We want to get intelligence to figure out the explosive size, what kind of detonation device was used, whether it be bandage, strings, pressure plate, light, you know, sensitive or command wire or whatever it be.
We have to go and get all that information to figure out. But unfortunately, part of the job is also recovering any parts.
So that's body parts, rifle, any equipment and stuff like that.
But this guy, he had stepped on a device coming back to their patrol base and the blast had taken both his legs out at the hip.
So from the hip down, it was just gone. And his team had managed to get him on the helicopter alive.
But he torn the cadres' waist to just try and stop him bleeding out.
He was alive, but obviously semi in and out of consciousness when they picked him up on the helicopter.
But when we were going out to investigate, we got told that he died on the way to Bastion on the flight.
But his team hadn't been told because obviously they were still on the ground keeping an eye out on, you know, nobody else coming into the area to plant any more devices.
So when we were there, we were told that we cannot tell their teammates anything that we know in terms of what's gone on with James because, you know, they've got to keep their heads together.
So we did our normal job. We did the isolation, which is you loop around the area to make sure there's no wires going into it.
And if there are, you cut those wires with like a detonator.
That gets rid of one threat. Then you've got like radio operated devices, you know, with a phone and stuff like that.
You've got ECM on your back, which is designed to scramble that signal. So they can't set anything else off with that.
Then the only other threat then you've got is pressure plates that you can step on.
So obviously without you've got search equipment that you've got to try and find stuff.
So anyway, we got to the blast point and we were doing the isolation around the blast point.
I found another wire or I found a wire and I was on a bit of equipment called a Goldie and the Goldie is designed to find cables under the ground.
And I got a read and I said, I got a read near news is quite close to the blast area.
And my section commander said, oh, yes, probably the wire to the device has gone off.
And I was like, I was like getting an idea of where this, you know, under the ground, trying to figure out where this where's this wire going?
Trying to reach as far as I could without stepping outside the search lane.
And I was like, now this ain't going to the hole. This is going off to the right of the hole.
So it wasn't going into the hole already done. And anyway, we cut the wire and we found a secondary device,
which was designed to try and get the search team after we come in to investigate.
And the device we found there is what they call a directional frag charge.
So for those who don't know what the FC is, it's essentially like you could you could say if you cut a gas bottle in half
and fill it with explosives and put like nuts and bolts and frag and stuff like that,
it's designed to spray a large area rather than a focused explosion.
So if we had that detonated, it could have taken out three or four of our guys in one go, you know, as a secondary device.
So they're very clever at what they do. But then, yeah, eventually we cleared that quite often.
We ended up picking up the James Steel. We had to recover his legs, his femurs, put him in bags.
You know, that was quite gruesome because there's no humane way of doing it.
You've got to pick it up and you throw it in a yellow plastic bag so nobody can see it.
And it's just body parts and stuff like that.
And then we found his rifle had been cut in half and we found one half roughly about 70 meters away from the blast.
So it was a bloody big blast. And then things like our search equipment,
we have to take that back so they can't get any intelligence off us from the search equipment.
So we picked everything up that we could.
And then when we went back to the patrol base, which is only probably about 400 meters away,
four or 500 meters away from the blast point, we went back there.
And then our team was, you know, recalibrating all our kit, putting new batteries in, you know,
like just getting all our admin squared away.
And the sergeant major of that infantry group called them over to announce that he died on the flight back.
And the hard part about that was seeing like 30 grown men in tears because it's like they've all lost their best mate.
Do you know what I mean? So that was something that really used to get me a lot, a lot like, you know,
like all the time it used to get me thinking about that.
And then that was like when we got back to our base, our patrol base that night,
everyone's just like sitting in silence trying to like, we gather what the fuck's just gone on like, you know,
and you're trying to sort of process it all. It's a hard thing to process.
And I think when you're on the ground picking up the body parts, dealing with the bombs,
you're so pumped with adrenaline, you just feel normal.
You don't feel that emotion coming in, stuff like that.
So that was the one thing that got us.
And then new, you know, I don't know if you know what R&R is like. Have you served military?
Not military, no, just fire.
No. Oh, OK. So with the military, you probably know anyway, you get like R&R,
which is like two week break in between somewhere in your deployment. It can be a random point.
But ours just so happened to be over Christmas 2011.
And we came back, so we run on R&R for two weeks and we came back,
I think it was like two or three days before New Year's Day 2012.
And we got back to Bastion, flew into Bastion from UK.
And we slept in Bastion one night and we were flying out to our patrol base the next day.
I can't remember what the base is called now, but basically we were flying out there the next day,
which would have been New Year's Eve 2011 before 2012.
And due to like jet lag and everything like that, we were asleep.
Like New Year's Eve, we were asleep in the tent, like eight of us in the tent, flat out cold.
We were just out, out for the camp.
So we weren't expected to do any jobs for a couple of days to just sort of get back into it.
And then New Year's Day 2012, so obviously the next day now,
we were in the command room, which is the main tent on the base to get a briefing on the ground,
what we're going to be covering, the areas that we go, where the other teams are operating and stuff,
an idea about the ground itself.
And they were saying, we know you guys have been through a lot of stuff already.
Like the team, even before I joined them, had gone through a lot of stuff and then we just continued.
They said, we know your team's been through a lot. We're one of the busiest teams on the ground.
They said, but don't worry, this base has never had any contact.
It's not been fired with anything, rockets, small arms fire from rifles, no fire whatsoever.
And we were like, happy day. So it's going to be an easy ride here, then we thought.
And literally an hour later, three mortars were fired at the base.
And the first one, we'd looked at it where they'd all hit.
The first one had hit our tent straight through the roof and it just blew all our stuff to pieces.
And it was like, if they were 24 hours earlier, that would have been a whole search team killed.
So it's purely 24 hour window that they could have had us.
And that's not traumatic at all. That was just like, Jesus Christ, that was lucky.
You know, but then after it just kind of gives you an idea of like the situations that can take place through tours.
And then the thing that got me the most on tour, and I really struggled to tell the story for so long,
but it was we were we got called out to a job and I think we were at PB4, patrol base four, I think we were.
And I can't remember what the job was. I think it was to clear a treeline or something.
But we got called out on this job. And when you're going to a job, you're in single file.
So you're trying to cover as little ground as possible, because if there's any devices, you don't want everyone spread out type thing.
So you go in single file and I was the last man at the back.
And we're going to this job. And bear in mind, you're doing, I won't say how many meters between each man,
because it's obviously giving information away, but there's a certain distance between each man,
which if somebody steps on a device, it dramatically reduces the impact of that blast based on how far away you are.
So it tries to reduce the injuries between each soldier.
But basically, from the back to the front, it was it was a fair distance.
I couldn't see the front man. And at the front, we had an officer, female doctor, like fully qualified officer, doctor.
She'd been in I don't know how many years, but she was a proper doc.
And we all stopped in this field. And when you stop, you take you get down on one knee to get a bit lower on the ground.
So in case you get contacted or anything like that.
And where I stopped was right next to this little house, little mud, like not a mud house, but like a little hut, an Afghan home.
And a family of three came out, so a dad and two kids, a little girl and a little boy.
And they came out and the little girl came up to me, obviously me being the closest.
She came up to me and she's trying to talk to me. And I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't understand what she's saying.
In Afghanistan, a lot of the kids come up to you. They want sweets. They want pens, you know, something simple.
And you think, oh, you just get some sweets and chuck them to the kid.
But I give her some sweets. And she was like, like trying to tell me something.
I was like, I don't get it. What is it? And she lifted her sleeve up.
She's only about four, four years old. And she lifted her sleeve up.
And it was seriously it was septic from the wrist to the shoulder like she was she was fucked.
I mean, she was going to die if she didn't get medical attention at some point.
She was not going to make it. And I radioed ahead.
And I said, you know, we've got we've got you know, got a doctor at the front.
So I radioed ahead. I said, look, I've got a little girl here. She's in a bad way.
We need some medical attention. They came back on the radio and said, leave it.
They've got a mission to do, got a job to do. And that was the breaking point for me.
I was like, I'm done with the army. You know, so.
But the thing that got me recently was my daughter's now approaching that age.
So it became like a daily reminder, you know, before I started hypnotherapy.
And I was just like a daily reminder that we left that girl there.
And for like 12 years, I just blamed myself.
Should have done more. It was my decision. Do you know what I mean?
So it was it was hard. That was that was the tipping point.
Like, you know, you think after all those situations that go on, like injured friends,
recovering body parts, getting more than you tend, you'd think all that was the problem.
But it wasn't. It was that little girl.
You know, so yeah, that's that was the biggest impact.
It's interesting hearing you again underline that that was the worst thing,
because, I mean, obviously there is a compounding element, you know,
it's the death by a thousand cuts, all these things that you've been through up to this point.
But I see this over and over and over again, that organizational betrayal.
And it's not in that case deliberate. Like if you see any sick kids don't stop.
But it's, you know, that kind of moral injury.
Well, we were here to help these people. Here's a person we can tangibly help.
And you're telling me no. And so, you know, internally,
you're starting to deviate from that mission that you believe that you were serving
when you first entered that particular branch.
Yeah. Well, the problem you get as well, when you when you go on deployment,
there's this there's a saying that gets thrown around all the time.
You've got to win hearts and minds. You've got to win hearts and minds.
It's all about winning the people.
And I'm like, if you leave a four year old girl to die like that,
what's said that her dad now has probably got fucking Taliban contacts.
Now you're a target because you let a little girl die like.
And I'm like, you ain't winning hearts and minds like that.
And that to me, I was like, it just it completely my brain just couldn't process what had just been said.
Now, I can blame that doctor as much as I want because it was her decision.
But I also have to remember that she was probably three or four hundred meters ahead
and couldn't see this little girl.
So she probably didn't understand the the the level of that injury.
If I like this is why I blame myself for so long, because I should have been over the radio.
It's septic. She's going to die.
I could have been more and more and more on the radio.
I'm not going until we do something about it, but I didn't.
I just I was a private. She was an officer.
She said, now I was like, look, we've got to go see her.
So, you know, it's kind of like that, like, you know, so.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, clearly, it haunts you.
And this is the thing, you know, I mean, when when we have a mission, when we're part of a tribe and that's intact, it's very, very healing.
And you look, you know, watch Restrepo and some of these documentaries, these guys are in, you know, crazy firefights
and they're joking around with each other because they've got that shared suffering, that purpose, that tribe.
When when the tribe turns their back on you or there's a deviation from that very mission that you thought you're supposed to be on.
You know, as you said, that was momentary for that particular example.
But to you, that was a true visceral opportunity to save a life, not just the hearts and minds, but to actually save a life.
And as you said, that that father and that can be completely pro allies and down the road, feed information that saves our lives, you know, the British, the Americans and everyone else that was serving.
But instead, we did the opposite.
And so this, I guess, you know, not blaming because I'm completely detached from this conversation.
But when there's that moral compass shift that we have all sworn an oath to, whether it's in the first responders, whether it's in the military, that as we said earlier, you know, divorce.
These these are the soft areas that people tend not to notice are really, really detrimental when it comes to that, because if that's everything you sworn in, everything you believe in,
and then that's betrayed in that moment, then it has you questioning everything.
Yeah, like I said, the problem is like recently, it was only about eight weeks, pretty bit longer than 10 weeks ago.
Like the well, five months, five, six months ago, the PTSD started coming back.
I had it under control for so long, like years. I had it under control.
It was still not healed, but it was, you know, every day was manageable.
I wasn't snapping or anything like that. But yeah, like five or six months ago, it all started coming back.
And I couldn't figure out why, why am I suddenly suffering again now?
And it was like about 10, 10 weeks ago, I looked at my daughter and I was like, Flack, I know I'm like, you're nearly four, you're three now.
You know, and you're like that dad in Afghan hasn't seen his daughter grow up because she's probably not around anymore.
I think that was the, that was the reminder, the constant reminder, you know, but hypnotherapy now is really helping.
Like I've still got another six sessions to go through yet, but it's definitely made a hell of a difference.
Like I know it doesn't work for everybody, so I can't just, you know, say to you listeners, I'll go and get hypnotherapy.
But for me, it's definitely made a big impact.
Beautiful. Yeah, I've heard even people talking about not only addressing some of the kind of the challenges that they've had, but also just from a performance level.
Like there's a hypnotherapist I had on the show and she put me through, I think we did two or three sessions in the end, trying to help me with a book that I'm writing.
And so it was less about going back in time and addressing things and more about kind of the manifestation of new things.
So, you know, if people are skeptical, well then enter it originally trying to, trying to be a better version of yourself and you may find yourself going back in time and realizing that what's holding you back is actually some things that you never addressed.
Yeah.
Well, if we go forward from there now, so 2012 is when I decided to cut the army off.
And then we got back from Afghan and it wasn't like for three months I was all right, I was fine, didn't know PTSD or anything.
And I think I put that down to like still being pumped of adrenaline.
And three months after I started to snap and I was like, things weren't right.
And I really struggled being out the military at that point.
And I was probably 28, 29.
And I was like, man, I need to go back in.
I've got to go back in the forces.
I just need, I just needed to go back in.
That was it.
There was no other thing.
But I was like approaching 30.
I was like, do I want to be running around in the wet field with a Bergen on my back anymore?
Do I want to go in the army anymore?
I was like, I don't know.
And then I thought, I'm going to go in the Navy.
So that's when I signed up to the Navy.
I trained my ass off for so long, for like 12 months or 18.
I can't remember 12 or 18 months.
I was doing like half marathons, triathlons, like 13 fitness set.
I was like going all out, and I even dropped down to a two day working week because I couldn't fit the sessions in.
And I eventually joined as a mine clearance diver for the Navy.
And I joined as a diver.
And then, you know, about, I think it was about six weeks on course, I got a, I can't remember how long on course I was,
but I got an injury from, I had a problem with my sinuses under the water.
I couldn't deal with water pressure.
So that caused me to get downgraded for diving, which also meant I couldn't do, my second job choice would have been a medic on the subs, submarines.
But because of the pressure, I wasn't like to go on subs either.
So I later went into the aviation side, the fleet, I'm of the Navy to become an aircraft handler.
You know, the guys that do all the marshaling, the refueling, you know, lorry driving and that sort of stuff.
So just supporting the aircraft.
I did that for a while.
And then, but because of going from like diver, which is like full on fitness and intense day to day,
to sitting around for three hours a day waiting for an aircraft to come back, it was like black and white.
Do you know what I mean?
And I just, it wasn't for me.
So I did about another six, six years there.
And then I thought I'm going to start coming out.
And then when I started to talk about coming out, the guy that recruited me into the Navy, we're good friends as well.
We stayed in touch.
He heard I was coming out.
He said, you want to go into naval recruitment, which was like literally in my town.
You know, so I could wear the uniform, have the structure, you know, go home every night, but still be military.
And, you know, I wasn't, it was what's known as the FTRS or full time reserves.
But you essentially just like Navy all the way through.
I was going out to schools, giving presentations, recruiting, psychometric testing and stuff like that.
And that was good. Good couple of years.
I always enjoyed it.
It was a nice transition as well where before I left the army, bomb disposal straight into city street.
And it was just like, like I just dropped off a cliff.
But going into naval recruitment, I still had that little bit of attachment.
So it kind of gave a much smoother transition out of the Navy.
And then, but yeah, during the Navy time, I was, I went through a bit of a spell in the Navy and I was, I came on, I had a couple of weeks just leave.
I took leave for a couple of weeks.
And during that, about four days into the first week, my granddad that lived next door, he had a heart attack.
And my neighbor came and said, oh, your granddad's on the floor. We can't pick him up.
He's a big bloke, you know, real big bloke.
And I run up there and he was like face down.
I was like, you know, what the fuck's going on?
So I grabbed him, pulled him over to try and like, you know, try and see what was going on.
I couldn't get any air into his mouth because he smashed his mouth to pieces on the ground.
So you couldn't breathe into him. So it's just started chest compressions.
I fucking called an ambulance and I was like trying to get on the phone to my dad.
And at the time then my PTSD was like, I was, I was going overdrive at that point and he died.
He didn't make it.
And then after that, I went into a bit of a spiral.
And my other granddad on my mom's side, he was an ex-Marine and he had a brain tumor.
We knew he wasn't going to make it so he kind of expected to death at some point.
When my other granddad had a heart attack, it was just sudden.
One day he's here, next day he's not.
And about five weeks later, I got a call off my mom and said, oh, your granddad's in hospital.
He's not going to make it.
And this was like, you know, would have been about probably seven, eight o'clock at night.
I was like, fuck, I need to get home.
So I phoned my, the petty officer who was in charge on the flight line.
Said I've got to go home, my granddad's in hospital.
So he's like, yeah, OK.
So I drove that up and I got to hospital at 11 o'clock at night.
And they said, you can't come in because visiting hours are over.
I said, look, I'm in the military.
I've had to drive all the way up here.
My granddad's probably not going to make it.
And I went in there and he was unconscious but like struggling to breathe.
He had pneumonia as well.
Obviously, he went on his last couple of hours and still breathing and that.
But I went in and saw him for half an hour and then I left.
I think I left about half eleven, half eleven quarter to twelve.
And then he was pronounced dead at twelve o'clock.
So that was hard as well.
After that, I went into, I went dark.
Because obviously I had the PTSD, blown up wife, tried to save one granddad.
The other granddad died.
It was just like constant one after the other.
So it still gets me a little bit.
It should though.
I mean, this is the thing.
Healing is one thing, but I mean, it doesn't mean that you're not still going to have a flood of emotion when you think about people that you loved.
But yeah, I ended up, that led to real, real deep depression.
And the anxiety I got from that was insane.
And I went into, I went to doctors because I was having real bad chest pains.
I thought it was a problem with my heart.
And I went for about three months of like chest x-rays, ECGs, heart scans and cameras down my throat and all sorts.
Because every time the pain would come, my left arm would go numb as well.
So it was like something's up with your heart.
So I got downgraded again on base and he took me off the flight line.
And one day I went to doctors because I couldn't breathe.
I was really struggling to breathe pain in my chest.
And I went to doctors and said, oh, we can't fit you in now, but come back.
This was like late in the afternoon anyway.
So come back eight o'clock in the morning for, you know, what did they call it?
I can't remember what it's called now, but basically like fresh cases.
They call it fresh cases.
So you go to fresh cases in the morning.
They deal with all the fresh patients.
And I went in there.
But walking up to the med center at the time, I was really, I was like sweaty and I couldn't breathe.
My heart was, I thought I was going to fucking die like, you know,
and I'd already had three months of like testing and scans and all that stuff.
And I went in there and the doctor said, he said, oh, yeah, just take your top off and I'm going to listen to your heart.
I tried to lift it up.
I just broke down in tears like fucking real flood of emotion.
And he said, it's not your heart.
You've got anxiety.
I was like, fuck it all.
I didn't realize like, you know, all the months had gone by.
And then, yeah, they stuck me on antidepressants.
And one of the things, one of the things that didn't help me at the time,
and I still get anxious now is when I'm in loud environments.
You know, like it doesn't have to be like bangs and pops and doors slamming.
But like working with helicopters, it was just constant noise.
And he should stress me out really bad.
And, you know, I went on antidepressants for a while.
I think it was for about fucking nine months, maybe nine months on antidepressants.
And it made me feel like shit.
Didn't work.
Like they might work for some people, but for me, they were not doing the job.
And by this time then, I'd stopped sleeping, stopped eating right, put on weight.
You know, I was a mess.
And I ended up one day I just woke up and I was just like, I'm done feeling like this.
I'm not doing it anymore.
And that was the beginning, it's like meditation and stuff.
You know, so the first thing was I knew that if I couldn't,
I knew that the PTSD had caused depression, which had caused anxiety.
And the anxiety at that point just becomes a spiral.
It's a circle that feeds each other.
You know, you get anxiety, you get more PTSD, you get more depressed, more anxiety.
You just constant snowball.
And I was like, fuck now, first thing I've got to do is get the anxiety under control.
And that was the first thing I thought about.
Because if I could do that, I can start working on meditation for depression and go that route.
So after making that decision, I started reading books.
It wasn't like self-help books.
The first book I went through, I didn't read it at the time, I hated reading.
The first book I read was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
And fuck me, that is a marathon of a book if you don't read.
It's like small writing, about 350 pages, and it took me bloody months to get through.
You know, trying to do just 10 pages a night.
And even then I struggled with it because I just couldn't bother reading.
And I went online, I was like, what can I do for anxiety?
And I found there's a company in the UK called CALMS, K-A-L-M-S.
And they did a lavender capsule, a little capsule, gel capsule.
You buy over a counter, there's no drugs in it, it's just pure lavender oil.
And they said it can lower anxiety.
So I thought, fuck it, what have I got to lose?
So I bought a load.
You can't overdose on it, you know, it's lavender oil, it's a bloody plant.
So I did that when I got there, I double dosed.
I was like, double dose on these and see how it goes.
And literally within three hours, man, I was calm as hell.
I was like, my anxiety dropped.
I felt good, I was relaxed.
I was all right.
Now I know how to get rid of the anxiety or drop the anxiety.
Now I need to work on the rest.
So the next thing that was depressing then was obviously I put on weight.
I didn't have any confidence going to the gym.
So what I did then was I understood micro habits, like the military taught you micro habits.
You know, if you do loads of little habits, eventually it becomes something bigger.
And the first thing I wanted to do was get back in the gym.
And I had no confidence.
I was like, I ain't going in no gym.
You know, I put weight on, I was out of shape, I couldn't do anything.
So I thought, how can I at least start?
And I thought the only way of me getting in the gym is by going to 4 a.m. when nobody's there.
And that was the only way I was going to get in there because I knew if I was going to go in it's busy, I ain't going in.
So what I did for a little while, I got into the habit of just waking up at 4 a.m.
and sitting in my room until I got consistent at that.
And that's all I did, sit in my room.
And then after that, when I was consistent for two weeks of that, every day I could get up at 4 a.m.
The next step then was I'm going to go and sit outside the gym and just play on my phone at 4 a.m.
Just play on my phone.
I'm not doing anything.
Just sit out there at 4 a.m. playing on my phone.
And then following that then I go in the gym and just sit in the gym on my phone, not doing anything.
It was empty so it didn't matter.
And then eventually I start doing 10 minutes on the cross trainer.
No impact, not really pushing it.
Just getting into the habit of being consistent again.
And once I got onto the cross train, it was about three months and I was doing an hour and a half in the gym again.
Like it was nothing.
Didn't bother me.
And I was happy to go when everyone else was going.
My pull-ups had got good again.
So instead of being able to struggle to do one pull-up, I was doing 10 again.
And I got back into it quite quickly.
So that's the micro habits, the only way I could get back in.
And once I started the fitness, I started to feel better mentally and endorphins kicking in.
And I started to lose weight and then I was able to sleep again.
And that's kind of how I pulled myself out of that hole.
But Jesus Christ, dude, it was a long journey that was to get out of that habit of not doing anything.
So I'd got rid of the, or I'd lowered the anxiety with the capsules and then eventually got into the gym again.
And then from there then I just started to work on the mindset really.
And that's where I kind of fixed it for so long.
I was all right for years, like I said, until the daughter issue came along.
But yeah, and then it was, yeah, that's kind of it.
I know I rewound there, but obviously I went into military recruitment after that and did that.
And then came into, after military recruitment, I went into defense recruitment for BA systems who manufactured the military ships and submarines and aircraft.
Did that for 12 months and then eventually, like I said, 15 years, I decided to finally take the leap into graphic design.
And that was January 2022. I thought it's time to do something with it.
So I started learning Adobe and all on YouTube, self-taught.
And that's where I'm at now.
So talk to me about that. What is it that you do in the graphic design world now?
So at the moment we specialize in building LinkedIn profiles for business owners and content creators.
So obviously the design element comes into like the banner, the photo, featured section thumbnails.
My girlfriend's a copywriter, so she manages all the copy, you know, back sections, headlines.
We do all the SEO for searchability as well.
So that's what we do at the minute. That's all we specialize in.
So what about you said, you know, things were going well until obviously you were kind of getting these flashbacks again with your little girl being about the same age as the girl you were talking about.
The same age as the girl in Afghanistan.
I mean, what a beautiful kind of journey you've led us through as far as the micro habits and how you got from, I don't want to do anything at all, just to go to, I'm going to wake up at the time that ultimately I'm going to go to the gym.
I thought that was genius because, you know, it's a big leap to go from, you know, complete inertia to I'm going to do a 90 minute workout.
So you've developed these habit habits. You mentioned meditation as well.
What did you lean into again after that six months where it kind of had that resurgence?
So I still continued the meditation and I could lay, I laid off the lavender capsules for a little while and I just kept a box on me all the time.
If you ever started to, you know, you can tell when anxiety is coming because you start to get shortness of breath and, you know, I'd get the like people can be anxious and not have anxiety.
When you have real anxiety, it is like paralyzing.
Like people don't realize they think, oh yeah, I've got anxiety.
It's like you ain't got anxiety until you're like almost hitting the floor thinking you're having a heart attack.
Do you know what I mean? You know, so I always used to keep some on me at the time.
And yeah, like obviously I'd go back to work, start getting back into, you know, the PT and stuff like, you know, with the squad.
And then, you know, we did a quick, a few bits on ships and stuff like that. But it got to a point where I realized that the noise of the helicopters was triggering me again.
And I was just like, I can't do this job anymore. I couldn't transition to another job because the only other one would have been medic on the subs and I couldn't do that job.
You know, so that's when I decided to leave, you know, and it was just purely just fitness.
But when I left, when I left training, sorry, recruitment, naval recruitment, I wasn't even, I was still in naval recruitment at the time.
I kind of fell into that recluse sort of mindset again. I kind of went back in my shell a little bit and I stopped doing fitness.
And I was like, man, you know, I've got to sort this out again. I was living back with my dad and moved back in, you know, with my dad.
And I was like, man, I've got to, I've got to start meeting people again. Like, you know, I just threw myself out there and as I was going, there's a CrossFit gym down the road.
Meet people in the CrossFit gym. I need to get fit again. And I knew that if I was going to go to CrossFit, I was going to die.
Do you know what I mean? The fitness, because I'd lost my fitness again. So I fought for six weeks. I'm just going to run. I'm going to do five mile a day, run every day.
You know, I started doing that. Just started doing five mile off the bar. I struggled to do five mile at a time.
But I just made sure I did five mile a day, 25 mile a week. Even if I had to walk some of it. And I was just like, did six weeks of that.
I was like, right, I'm ready to go CrossFit. I went to CrossFit. Started doing that. Got absolutely beasted.
Enjoyed it. Met my girlfriend. We had the kid. That's where I met her at the gym, you know. So we had something in common then.
You know, so, yeah, fitness really helps. You know, it's good.
I should meditate more than I do. I know meditation helps a lot. I need to put more effort into that.
I just haven't bloody got time. We do the business. I've got the YouTube. I've got the little one waking me up at stupid o'clock and, you know, kind of five minutes.
That's a lot. What do you use as far as meditation? Do you use an app?
Zen, Zen music on YouTube. There's some really good tracks on YouTube actually.
And I've just had soundbathing meditation suggested to me with the, what they call them, the bowls.
Oh, yeah, the prayer bowls. Yeah, the things that they tap like, you know, and it's quite nice to listen to.
But yeah, the Zen stuff really, really puts me in deep. Beautiful.
Because the reason I ask, I use Headspace and that one, I mean, they have as little as a minute meditation.
So on those micro steps again, that's kind of a good one because it's guided.
So you've got a voice kind of talking to you and they'll be the longer the meditation, the more time there is with notes.
No speech, because now you had time to be eased in and they just kind of let you focus on your breathing.
But that's a very good baby steps app to get you back into meditation.
Yeah, like if anybody's not done meditation before, I've heard a lot of people say, I've tried it doesn't work.
The problem with meditation and you'll know this if you meditate is when you first start, a minute feels like an hour.
It's like Jesus Christ, I've only been in a minute trying to meditate.
I can't sit still that long. But eventually after four, five, six weeks or a couple of months, an hour feels like a couple of minutes.
You know, Jesus Christ, an hour has passed and you like your energy levels are just through the roof.
Like, you know, when I was getting into meditation, even in that dark, that dark situation back in the Navy, I got so heavy into meditation.
I could feel my body buzzing all the time. Like I was just even when I was depressed, I was just like energetic, like, you know, amazing.
But yeah, I used to go so deep into meditation.
The only way I'd come out of it is I knew I'd stop breathing because I'd gone so far in.
I'd come out and my mouth had been wide open and it was dry and I'd like I knew I'd stop breathing.
I don't know how long it might have been just a couple of seconds.
But I'd come around like Jesus Christ and I'd be buzzing.
But then I'd be starving because I've burnt so much energy in meditation, you know, and I was like, man, this is amazing.
It was addictive. You know, so when you get into it properly, like all these monks and that they must love life.
Just meditating all the time like. And the Buddhas are like, yeah.
I want to hit one more area and then we'll go to some closing questions.
But when I when I talk to people about time in combat, there's two areas that we don't normally hear.
And you you organically let us through one, which was, you know, regardless of the politics that put you in a place,
you know, what was some of the horrible people that you encountered?
And obviously these people in this case are trying to murder you and your friends.
So it's pretty clear. But the other thing that we don't really hear on news very much is kindness and compassion,
which is something that you tried to do at that moment with that little four year old through your whole time in uniform.
What were some of the the kind of memories when it came to kindness and compassion,
even if you were in a combat heavy area?
So not necessarily on deployment, but.
But when we went to Oman for training, we meet a lot of people who live in Oman.
You know, you're mixing with the locals, you're sharing their culture, you know, and helping them out.
And it's an amazing like people. If you haven't been to Oman, it's an amazing country.
And it's crazy, right? So I'll just quickly tell you a little bit about that.
But when when they did several times throughout the day when they meditate, not meditate, pray, sorry, and they pray in certain direction.
And you'll see the roads, the bypasses, the motorways, everything comes to a stop.
Everybody gets out the vehicles. They go to the roundabouts because the roundabouts are massive like like like shrines almost.
And they all get on the on the on the roundabouts and outside the vehicles, put them out on the floor.
They do their prayer and they all get back in the vehicle as if it never happened and just crack on with the day.
And it's like this place is nuts.
It's so good to watch their culture and their food is amazing.
And we had a cut throat shave with the proper shave and they do head massages and just getting really into cultures.
I love it. I love meeting other cultures.
But yeah, that that's like kind of a little bit of a culture connection.
But the compassion stuff, obviously, the little girl tried to help.
You know, like another thing we did, I can't remember what year it was.
I think it's 2009.
There was a flood in the Lake District or a bridge collapse in Lake District.
And we had to go out and put a temporary bridge in as engineers.
That's what we do.
And all the locals were loving it, you know, bringing you out cups of coffee and mixing with the locals and you're helping them out because the bridges collapse.
And now you got to put a temporary bridge in and people can't get across and and all that sort of stuff like flood help and things like, you know, Florida getting hit with hurricanes and you've got to go and give humanitarian assistance there.
And the military do a lot of good stuff.
They do.
But there's just some things that happen in the very finer details that affect people in quite an impactful way.
I think it's important that we hear the good that the military does, because I mean, you know, when you think about a two dimensional perception of the military is that, oh, they go and kill people.
You know, obviously, it's far more nuanced than that, you know, and it's, you know, there's times where the wrong people are killed, you know, that collateral damage is a very kind of harsh term for human lives lost that shouldn't have been lost.
And, you know, Gaza is a prime example of that now. But it's important that we highlight the good because I've heard so many so many amazing stories of, you know, kindness, compassion, community inclusion in these places, because I think one of the things that the U.S.
media does very poorly is they kind of just tarred an entire nation with the same brush.
So right now, supposedly, all Russians want to be in Ukraine.
I doubt highly all Russians want to be in Ukraine.
You know what I mean? And it's the same with you hear these Afghan and Iraqi indigenous people that, you know, literally risk their lives alongside the allies to protect their country.
But the thing is, so like one of the biggest things that the Navy do is humanitarian assistance.
That is one of their biggest, if not the biggest operation they do.
And they go around the world all the time and like policing the sea for drug imports trying to get in, you know, they stop drugs coming in weapons coming in that they're policing like like the Navy have got such an insane job to do.
But it's mental if you could see what the Navy do is nuts right but humanitarian you know Florida gets hit with a hurricane.
What they do they just write one of the ships on training exercise right that's rerolled now to go and give humanitarian assistance supplies equipment, you know, Royal Marines.
Right. People see them as killing machines, they're out there doing you know construction work and building huts and shelters and, you know, making sure people have got medical supplies and food and, you know, so it's easy for people to sell.
Yeah, you get brainwashed in the military and it's all about killing. It's like no, it's bullshit.
Like, you know, most, most of the deployment our deployment we were only that we were there to find bombs we went after fire support, you know, a lot of the teams that a lot of search teams on the ground don't even fire one bullet during their entire deployment.
Because the infantry take care of that going so they're just there to clear route so that the public can get down that route again or they can go into their compound again or, you know, getting rid of Taliban in a certain area so that people have got freedom of movement again because they've been restricted in a certain area you know so people need to be very careful how they have a, they tie the military, like, don't get me wrong, people come out the military a lot of the time battered mentally and physically.
A lot of the time, you know, especially if you've been to like operational deployment.
But the stuff the military can do is phenomenal.
It's phenomenal like, and it's such a big, big organization I know some people listen to this ago yeah but they used for, you know, control the public and the use for terrorism and that, you know, they got licenses to kill them.
No, that's it, you know, most of the guys that join want to go there to do some good. That's what most people want to do. You get the occasional nutter, you know, nutcase that wants the guys want to go and kill everyone because they're just crazy.
No, but even then people, it gets battered out of them. It gets beaten out of you in training. If you're an asshole going into training, you're going to come out the other side as a different person like, you will.
Beautiful. Well, one more thing just before we transition.
You kind of walked us through, you know, the challenges that you had the tools that you found to apply to yourself.
What about the tools that were given you and the preparation to transition again this isn't pointing fingers it's just it's a conversation that comes up a lot that transition from, you know, especially if you were in some sort of combat unit and then as you mentioned the next
time you were back in the shopping center back in England, that can be very jarring for some people, you know, you've lost your kind of identity and in a way you lost your sense of purpose you lost your tribe that you literally would die for.
What were the tools that were given to you and if there are areas, how would you advise them to be improved for this next generation of warfires.
So, coming out of the military is a very hard one to to manage because, especially if you come off deployment you don't normally start to see the PTSD until a couple of months later.
You know you go through like a 24 hour period in Cyprus for what they call decompression, where there's no rifles there's no shooting isn't you just get to have a beer have a laugh.
And they assess everyone but it's like you've literally just come out of Afghan on a plane to Cyprus, have a beer and now you're going to UK, that decompression area is not long enough to assess anybody. It's just not, you know what I mean, because, like I said my PTSD didn't start to come in until three months after.
You know so it's hard to, I think it's almost impossible for the military to manage that.
Because unless you're going to put somebody in holdover which is tens of thousands of troops at any one point you know across the military RAF Navy and Army, tens of thousands of serving personnel at any one point could be out of service for three to six months while you're assessing them.
So, it's not going to, they're not going to be able to do that.
In terms of PTSD help I know it's becoming more and more aware now and it's being looked into I know they're testing I think they're testing psychedelics in military at the moment and they're also testing, when I was leaving they were testing meditation.
That was coming in, so there was meditation being tested and I know some of the processes of hypnotherapy as well, some of the processes that are done.
And people have been suffering for over 10 years have been almost fully recovered within six months so they're trying.
It's a big big problem I think it's too big for anybody like that you do stuff with, you know with people with mental health I'm trying to do the YouTube I've got charities in UK there's Help for Heroes and I think the problem is, it's such a massive, massive problem that even with all these people
trying to help, we're not even scratching the surface. We're not going, you could go 10x the people that are trying to help and we still wouldn't be scratching the surface, because it's such a big problem, you know, and especially like I focus on men with my one because we don't talk.
And that's why I focus on men.
You know, so I think that's the problem but the transition in terms of leaving from military to civilian. You've got resettlement you can do courses you've got, you know, some funding to go and get qualifications as you transition out.
A lot of the younger lads who do four years they can't be bothered with resettlement they just want to get out and then they leave with nothing. A lot of the guys who've done 20 years, 25 years or whatever.
They tend to take their time and plan a bit better when they come out and they use the resources that they've got.
So you mentioned a YouTube channel, talk to me about what you're doing to be part of the solution when it comes to the mental health crisis.
Right, so obviously when I had the breakdown about eight or nine weeks ago, I've got quite a big following on LinkedIn for profiles, and I went into such a spin that I wasn't replying to DMs comments anything I wasn't doing it and people could tell that, you know, I, they couldn't tell something was going on but they knew something was out of normal like abnormalities that were going on because my content wasn't regular and I just came out one day as like, this thing you ain't going to expect this video but this is what I'm going to do.
I was like, I'm in a bad way.
And I talked about my struggles and PTSD and what gone on on deployment in the video just came out public.
And within 10 minutes of that video I had like nine other guys in my DMs going, how in the fuck did you come out public with that because they're struggling.
And they can't, they haven't got the confidence to talk about it.
And so man this is like a, this is a big problem. And at the same time I had a couple of therapists reach out as well offering me free support, you know to try to try like psychedelics, EMDR, hypnotherapy, I passed a couple of them forward.
And I'm going with the hypnotherapy and I realized that men don't talk and this is, this is the sparking point of what I do now so I started the YouTube channel.
I've started off with speaking to any men who have faced trauma and now suffer with PTSD and depression.
Even if they're through the other side, I want to know their story, how they got through it, you know the treatment they used or whatever, you know, whatever the story be.
To get their stories shared, because I want people to start talking and I know since doing the two interviews, I've only got two interviews on, two interviews on there at the moment speaking about trauma.
But since then I've had other men come out and say, oh we'd be interested in telling our story. It's giving people confidence to talk.
And although I'm not, I'm not qualified in any treatment or medication or anything like that, the idea eventually, you know, once they get a good network will be to interview the men to get the stories but connect them to the right therapists who can help and charities and stuff like that.
And eventually I'll register, later on down the road I'll register to become a charity myself but the idea of my channel now, at the minute because I'm on a budget, I'm just doing like Zoom interviews, you know, to get the stories out there just to start recording.
But if you go on the YouTube channel you'll be able to find, well I've got GoFundMe, I'm trying to raise funds through the business and through GoFundMe to buy a vehicle which I can turn into a mobile podcast station.
And then I'm going to drive around the UK and I'm going to go and interview these people face to face.
That's the goal like so. Yeah. Beautiful. So where can people find the YouTube channel and where can they find the link for the GoFundMe? I'll put it on my web page as well but where else are people listening?
Yeah so the YouTube channel's decision of power, youtube.com however they spell it forward slash and it's decision underscore of underscore power, decision of power of underscore underneath each one.
If you're trying to find me on TikTok, on Instagram it's just decision of power or one word no underscores. And if you go on any of those socials there's a link to the GoFundMe as well.
So I've got quite a big target of 65k, it is a big target and I know that but there's a lot I need to do in that vehicle.
It won't just be a little van, it'll be a full massive vehicle, sleeping quarters, podcast studio, kit the front out as well for podcasts as well so we can do it whilst travelling, grab a coffee, have a chat.
It's going to be a full 360 job on the whole truck and then some of it will go to fund things like 12 months worth of fuel, insurance, the equipment to record.
So I'm trying to get as much of the funds together to get everything covered as I can.
Brilliant. Well Darren I want to say thank you so much for walking us through your journey and again I think there's just as much power in the divorced parents and the girl that you couldn't save as some of the grotesque things that you also witnessed.
But the fact that those two were more traumatic ultimately I think really does underline the fact as we said before that you can't compare trauma and that moral injury piece is a very very real thing whether you're a young kid with divorced parents or whether you're trying to save a young child.
So I want to thank you so much not only for your courageous vulnerability today but also for being so generous with your time and coming on Behind the Shield podcast.
Thanks for having me on then, I really appreciate it.