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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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Well, since then, I have actually been using my products and I've had incredible success.

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There was initial blood work that was extremely detailed, and based on that, they offered supplementation.

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So I began taking DHEA, BPC157 for inflammation, based on the fact that I've been a stump man and martial artist and a firefighter my whole life, lots of aches and pains,

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dihexer to help cognition after multiple punches to the head and shift work and peptides.

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Four months later, they did a detailed blood work again, and I was actually able to taper off two of the peptides because my body had responded so well to just one of them that it was optimized at that point.

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So I cannot speak highly enough of the immense range of supplementation that they offer, whether it's male health, female health, peptides to boost your own testosterone, which I would argue is needed by a lot of the fire service,

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or whether it's exogenous testosterone needed, especially after TBIs or advanced age.

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Now, as I mentioned before, the other side of this company is an altruistic arm called the Transcend Foundation,

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which is putting veterans and first responders through some of their protocols free of charge.

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Now, Transcend are also offering you the audience 10% off their protocols, and you can find that on JamesGearing.com under the Products tab.

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And if you want to hear more about Transcend and their story, listen to episode 808 with the founder Ernie Colling, or go to TranscendCompany.com.

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This episode is sponsored by a company I've literally been using for over 15 years now, and that is 511.

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Now, my introduction to their products began when I started wearing 511 uniforms years ago for Anaheim Fire Department.

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And since then, I have acquired a host of their backpacks and luggage, which have literally been around the world with me.

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The backpack where I keep all my recording equipment is a 511 backpack, and then most of my civilian gear, the clothes that I wear are also 511.

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Now, more recently, they've actually branched out into the brick and mortar stores.

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So for example, Gainesville, where I do jiu-jitsu, has a beautiful 511 store.

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So if you are a fire department, a law enforcement agency, you now have access to an entire inventory of clothing and equipment in these 511 stores.

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Now, I've talked about the range of shoes they have and how important minimizing weight in our footwear is when it comes to our back health, knee health, etc.

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I've talked about their unique uniforms that are fitted for either male or female first responders.

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And then I want to highlight one new area, their CloudStrike packs.

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For those of you who enjoy hiking, this would even be an application, I believe, for the wildland community.

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They've created an ultralight pack now with a hydration system built in for rucking, running or other long distance events.

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Now, as always, 511 is offering you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, 15% off every purchase that you make.

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So if you use the code SHIELD15, that's S-H-I-E-L-D-1-5 at 511tactical.com, you will get that 15% off every single time.

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So if you want to hear more about 511 and their origin story, go to episode 338 of Behind the Shield podcast with their series of 511 stories.

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With their CEO, Francisco Morales.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.

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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.

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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.

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Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.

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Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

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Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.

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And this is a free library of well over 900 episodes now.

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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.

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So with that being said, I introduce to you Darren Palatina.

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Enjoy.

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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.

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I appreciate it, James. Cheers.

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So first question, where on planet Earth are we finding you?

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Shrewsbury, so UK, United Kingdom, a place called Shrewsbury.

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Just outside of Shrewsbury, a place called Osro Street.

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It's a small market town about 10 miles outside of Shrewsbury.

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So it's a nice little town.

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Brilliant. Well, I want to start at the very beginning of your lifeline.

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So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings?

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Right. So I was born in Shrewsbury.

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I've done a complete round the world cycle back to Shrewsbury.

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So, yeah, I was actually born in Shrewsbury town.

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There used to be a hospital here.

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I was born in 1984 in November.

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I've got a dad who is in construction.

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He's been a builder for bloody hell, I don't know how many years, like 45 years or something like that.

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He's been in construction, building, originally a carpenter joiner.

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But he later on in his sort of construction career became a property developer.

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So now he owns a big property development company in the UK.

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So mum and dad are divorced.

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They divorced when I was 11.

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And then my mum, she used to do nursing.

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Then she went into, she trained to be a dental assistant and then was going down the dental route.

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And then she's come back into nursing now as the head of the nursing district.

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So she's like top management for the county now.

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So mum has remarried, currently going through a divorce now after like 11 years, I think it is.

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My dad has got a girlfriend, long term girlfriend.

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We get on really well with her and they're good with my daughter as well.

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On my mum's relationship side, we get on well with him.

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Like not amazingly well, but we get on.

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You know, we're friendly enough.

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But obviously with the divorce and that now going on, we sort of try to keep out the way,

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let it all do its own thing and whatever they need to sort out.

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And then from that, from my biological mum and dad, I've got a sister.

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She is bloody hell, what is she now?

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She'll be 36, 37.

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She's got a little one, well a little one and he's like 12 now, 12 year old kid.

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And then I've got a stepbrother who is my mum and an old boyfriend of hers from years ago.

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So we all get on with that side, you know, they're all really well and they all still get on.

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So that part of the family sort of still together.

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But mum and dad, the mum and dad relationship with that part is separated.

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And then that's it. That's it for the actual family, family.

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Then obviously me, my girlfriend, my three year old daughter.

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That's my now immediate family now, if you like.

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So we all live together in a small apartment.

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So yeah, it's all good.

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And when you were at school age, what were you playing as far as sports back then?

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I bunked off school.

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I was an absolute rebel in school, right?

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So when I was in school, I used to race motocross.

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I was seventh in the UK nationals for motocross.

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I used to just love BMXing, dirt jumping, motocross, anything I could get my hands on that was dirt and wheels.

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And whenever I used to go to school, I always used to get out of school as early as possible, normally before school started.

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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.

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I had a couple of police chases back then where they were trying to get me off the land.

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And like I said, a proper rebel.

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I was in a punk band for nine years when I was younger.

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I used to have bright pink hair, piercings.

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Yeah, it was a fun childhood into teenage years, we'll say that.

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In terms of school, I left school with no GCSEs, no qualifications, just had nothing.

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But I enjoyed it. I had fun.

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Back when you were little, was it still the case where at 15 you could have a 49.5cc motorbike?

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I remember there was a couple of kids in my senior year that turned, I guess maybe it was 16.

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It must have been 16 and they were the cool kids because they had these little tiny bikes.

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Yeah, so legally for road, you have to be 16, 17, and you get what's called a CBT.

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It's like a learner license, if you like.

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And then you can ride up to a 125, but it has to be restricted and then depend on your age.

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I can't remember. I've got my bike license, but it's a full bike license now.

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So it's been probably nine years since I passed out.

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So I can't quite remember what the rules are with young riders now.

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Interesting. I remember there was one friend, actually he passed away since he had a car accident,

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a single car accident, and he was probably the first person that wasn't extremely elderly

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that I know that died at a very young age.

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But I remember there was some sort of restriction where you could do up to 50ccs when you were 16,

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I think, back then at least. This was probably a while ago now.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, if you go really far back, like Grandad writes,

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you didn't even have to have a license for a car back then.

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He just took a little lap around the course and he's like, yeah, there's your license, done.

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Yeah, so things have changed a lot, haven't they?

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They have indeed. Well, what about punk?

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I've had them from the US side.

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I've had a lot of people talk to me about their journey through punk,

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and a lot of them were what they called straight edge.

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So they didn't drink, and it was the hardcore music,

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but they weren't into the kind of self abuse that some of the punks that I witnessed growing up

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were sitting in a bus stop drinking cider all day.

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So what kind of genre of punk or community did you find yourself immersed in?

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So we were pop punk, so very sort of upbeat.

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I wouldn't say like some 41, but kind of more towards Green Day type style,

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but with our own sort of spin on it.

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I came from a self-taught background of bass, so I played bass,

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and my favorite bands, well, my favorite band learning,

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the two bands were actually Jamura Qui and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

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So I was a very sort of slap bass, funky kind of bass player.

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That's my kind of style.

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But my vocalist and guitarist, both one person, they were like proper hardcore punk.

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Then the drummer came from a metal background, so we had like a proper mashup.

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But yeah, it was like the punk style.

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Obviously, the drums blend into that with the beats that you use within punk.

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And then I just put the funk bass to that, and it used to work really well.

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I'll actually send you a link to our old album.

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We did an 11-track album while we were touring.

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So it was good. I'll send it at some point. You can have a listen.

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And what about the scene? The kind of people that you had,

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was it a violent concert or was it pretty chill, as I would imagine,

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a Jamura Qui based music would be?

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It varied. We used to play in some pubs that would have like 50 or 60 turnout,

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and we had a couple of gigs which were over 10,000.

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So it depends what side you're looking at.

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Sometimes we have really local gigs in local pubs,

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which we had a close following that were always well behaved

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because they didn't want to ruin it for us.

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But then when you get to the bigger ones, you've got proper mosh pits,

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people headbutting each other. It was just like carnage.

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So it completely ranged across the whole lot.

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So it was interesting, especially we went all around the UK,

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all the way from Scotland right down to Brighton and Cornwall as well.

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We did a lot of gigs local. We had a couple in Europe.

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I can't remember where we played in Europe.

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In Germany and France we played a few gigs, but I can't remember the pubs we called now

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or the places. But yeah, it was good in terms of gigs.

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We were a good band for punk. I know some people who don't like punk,

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they'll say, well, punk will never be good, but we were a good band.

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In terms of the scene, the friend scene, I was heavily into drugs, like a lot.

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I used to do... people say, oh, when they think drugs are like cannabis,

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it was like, no, we were doing speed, ecstasy, MDMA.

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I got spiked with heroin twice, cocaine.

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I really went around the mill with that.

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That was part of the reason we'll discuss it later while I join the army,

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because I really wanted to get away from it after nine years of battering myself.

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So it's just got to a point where I just had enough wanted out.

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And yeah, that was it.

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When the mental health conversation comes into the uniform professions,

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there is a danger of just focusing on what we did or what we saw as the kind of

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root cause for some of our challenges.

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As I've matured learning and learning and learning through this podcast

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and hearing so many stories now, the importance of the formative years

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into our foundation later on was very clear.

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When you look back now, and obviously we're going to get into some of your

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mental health journey, were there elements of your childhood you think that

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contributed to some of the drug use and other things that you were doing growing up?

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Yeah, so I'm actually going through hypnotherapy at the moment.

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We did discuss this on the first session and it went all the way back.

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So when I was younger and mum and dad were still together,

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we had a really big house up the road, literally within walking distance.

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My nan and grandad lived there and my auntie and uncle all motocrossed.

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It was all like racing.

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We all meet up on weekends.

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We had to track up my nan's eyes because they were in the farm.

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You know, like nine, ten years old, we used to run around with air rifles

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and machetes in the countryside just like hunting pheasants and whatever we could.

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To earn a bit of pocket money, we'd go hunting pheasants,

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sell them to the locals, probably weren't even our pheasants,

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but probably illegal at the time.

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That's what we used to do as kids.

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But then when mum and dad divorced, obviously we couldn't afford to keep...

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My dad had moved to town, which was probably, I want to say,

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about 25 miles away from home.

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And then my mum was left in this massive house.

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It was like a six-bedroom. It was huge.

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My dad built it in a big construction company.

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He built this house, but we couldn't afford to keep running it.

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So my mum ended up having to sell the house.

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Then we moved into a town, Oswestry, which is where I live now.

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And I think having all that childhood experience ripped away like that,

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not being able to ride my bike in the countryside,

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not being able to go hunting, not being able to build tree houses,

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that had a negative effect.

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And then, obviously, soon after that, dad had a new girlfriend,

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mum had a new boyfriend.

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They both resented us being around.

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So they didn't want...

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If I go to my dad's for the weekend, my dad's girlfriend didn't want us there

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because she had two kids.

213
00:16:07,120 --> 00:16:10,120
And go to my mum's, my mum's boyfriend didn't want us around.

214
00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:13,120
So it was like rejection from both sides.

215
00:16:13,120 --> 00:16:16,120
And during the time in the band, my sister...

216
00:16:16,120 --> 00:16:20,120
I've never spoke to my sister about it, actually, what situation she was in

217
00:16:20,120 --> 00:16:24,120
because her and my mum's boyfriend are always in fights,

218
00:16:24,120 --> 00:16:26,120
like all the time, constantly.

219
00:16:26,120 --> 00:16:31,120
But I think I joined the band,

220
00:16:31,120 --> 00:16:34,120
and it wasn't for about two years after being in the band,

221
00:16:34,120 --> 00:16:35,120
it was when the drugs started.

222
00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:39,120
But obviously, all this story led into us moving to this town,

223
00:16:39,120 --> 00:16:41,120
meeting the wrong crowd, getting into band.

224
00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:44,120
I didn't play bass before I moved to town.

225
00:16:44,120 --> 00:16:50,120
And then I ended up having massive fights with my mum,

226
00:16:50,120 --> 00:16:53,120
who we were living with at the time, and I ended up just leaving.

227
00:16:53,120 --> 00:16:56,120
I got kicked out at 17.

228
00:16:56,120 --> 00:16:59,120
And then I ended up living on a lot of friends' floors.

229
00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:00,120
We had a practice room.

230
00:17:00,120 --> 00:17:03,120
A couple of years later, we had a practice room where we'd play,

231
00:17:03,120 --> 00:17:04,120
and we'd just set up a sofa there.

232
00:17:04,120 --> 00:17:07,120
I'd sleep in the practice room,

233
00:17:07,120 --> 00:17:09,120
get food in and stuff like that.

234
00:17:09,120 --> 00:17:13,120
So it probably had quite a massive impact.

235
00:17:13,120 --> 00:17:18,120
But it's not what we discussed in the hypnotherapy,

236
00:17:18,120 --> 00:17:21,120
like when we talk about the whole story later.

237
00:17:21,120 --> 00:17:24,120
Although that was a massive impact at the time,

238
00:17:24,120 --> 00:17:27,120
it's definitely not what's impacting now.

239
00:17:27,120 --> 00:17:30,120
It's kind of like water under the bridge is such now.

240
00:17:30,120 --> 00:17:31,120
They've all got new partners.

241
00:17:31,120 --> 00:17:35,120
We all get on right, and it's kind of all worked out okay.

242
00:17:35,120 --> 00:17:38,120
Excellent. That's an important discussion though.

243
00:17:38,120 --> 00:17:41,120
And it can be something horrendous,

244
00:17:41,120 --> 00:17:43,120
like growing up around sexual abuse, or it can just be...

245
00:17:43,120 --> 00:17:46,120
And I think this is a very powerful negative element,

246
00:17:46,120 --> 00:17:53,120
just feeling not good enough for whether it's someone who gave you up for adoption,

247
00:17:53,120 --> 00:17:56,120
whether it's not getting the attention from a parent now,

248
00:17:56,120 --> 00:17:58,120
because the step-parent is in the picture.

249
00:17:58,120 --> 00:18:02,120
And I'm acutely aware of that as a step-parent myself,

250
00:18:02,120 --> 00:18:07,120
making sure that I'm present with my stepson, present with my son-son.

251
00:18:07,120 --> 00:18:09,120
And of course there's the dynamic,

252
00:18:09,120 --> 00:18:14,120
because whether it's your step or your original spouse,

253
00:18:14,120 --> 00:18:18,120
there is a time sharing when you have children and a loved one.

254
00:18:18,120 --> 00:18:23,120
But that feeling of rejection, not feeling safe, not feeling loved,

255
00:18:23,120 --> 00:18:27,120
is extremely detrimental to a young child.

256
00:18:27,120 --> 00:18:32,120
Yeah. I can imagine situations that...

257
00:18:32,120 --> 00:18:36,120
I spoke to a couple of people from my channel,

258
00:18:36,120 --> 00:18:41,120
and they've really gone through the mill with domestic violence,

259
00:18:41,120 --> 00:18:45,120
fathers and all sorts like so.

260
00:18:45,120 --> 00:18:53,120
With my childhood coming up, it's quite mellow compared to some.

261
00:18:53,120 --> 00:18:58,120
We just had divorced parents and the lifestyle changed, really.

262
00:18:58,120 --> 00:18:59,120
Effectively, that was it.

263
00:18:59,120 --> 00:19:02,120
There wasn't any violence, there's no domestic abuse or anything,

264
00:19:02,120 --> 00:19:05,120
or sexual abuse or anything like that.

265
00:19:05,120 --> 00:19:09,120
So to most, it's quite light, and it's probably quite normal,

266
00:19:09,120 --> 00:19:11,120
I would have thought, to quite a lot of families.

267
00:19:11,120 --> 00:19:15,120
Yeah. They say don't compare trauma, though, and I agree with that.

268
00:19:15,120 --> 00:19:18,120
Just because it wasn't horrific doesn't mean it didn't have an impact.

269
00:19:18,120 --> 00:19:26,120
Sadly, I think it's common, but it's not natural to be born with two parents,

270
00:19:26,120 --> 00:19:29,120
and all of a sudden you're living in different houses every other day.

271
00:19:29,120 --> 00:19:33,120
I mean, it is what it is, but yeah, it's still abnormal.

272
00:19:33,120 --> 00:19:36,120
I suppose at the time, it was traumatic at the time,

273
00:19:36,120 --> 00:19:40,120
because it's probably the most traumatic thing you've experienced until later on.

274
00:19:40,120 --> 00:19:43,120
When you compare your trauma later on in life, you look at that and think,

275
00:19:43,120 --> 00:19:46,120
oh, it wasn't so bad, but at the time it was everything.

276
00:19:46,120 --> 00:19:49,120
Exactly. It's what you knew. It was your whole world.

277
00:19:49,120 --> 00:19:50,120
Yeah.

278
00:19:50,120 --> 00:19:53,120
So what about career aspirations? You ended up in the military.

279
00:19:53,120 --> 00:19:56,120
Was that what you were dreaming of in school?

280
00:19:56,120 --> 00:20:01,120
No. So I always had an interest in drawing. I loved drawing,

281
00:20:01,120 --> 00:20:04,120
and I wanted to be an architect.

282
00:20:04,120 --> 00:20:07,120
And with my rebellious nature in school,

283
00:20:07,120 --> 00:20:11,120
and I found that after finding that you'd have to go to college for five years

284
00:20:11,120 --> 00:20:13,120
to become an architect, I was like, there's nowhere I'm doing that.

285
00:20:13,120 --> 00:20:17,120
I didn't like school, never mind going to college for another five years.

286
00:20:17,120 --> 00:20:22,120
So I didn't do that. And then I just kind of milled about for quite some time.

287
00:20:22,120 --> 00:20:24,120
I had some work with my dad as a laborer,

288
00:20:24,120 --> 00:20:29,120
later on became a tiler and flooring specialist,

289
00:20:29,120 --> 00:20:33,120
and then moving into bathroom fitting and kitchen fitting and things like that,

290
00:20:33,120 --> 00:20:37,120
doing all the aesthetics of it, with the tiles and flooring.

291
00:20:37,120 --> 00:20:41,120
So I did that for eight years, eight or nine years.

292
00:20:41,120 --> 00:20:45,120
At the same time as doing that, I was obviously in the band, doing the drugs,

293
00:20:45,120 --> 00:20:47,120
in the rhythm on crowd, not really going anywhere.

294
00:20:47,120 --> 00:20:52,120
And it just kind of felt like a bit of a dead end.

295
00:20:52,120 --> 00:20:56,120
You're just doing this job for like, this is the rest of my life type thing.

296
00:20:56,120 --> 00:21:03,120
But something I always wanted to do for so long, for 15 years, was do graphic design.

297
00:21:03,120 --> 00:21:06,120
I had an interest in graphic design for many, many years.

298
00:21:06,120 --> 00:21:11,120
And I put it off for years and then the military happened and stuff like that.

299
00:21:11,120 --> 00:21:13,120
And we'll talk about it later.

300
00:21:13,120 --> 00:21:17,120
But I didn't actually take the leap into graphic design until January 2022.

301
00:21:17,120 --> 00:21:20,120
So it was like 15 years that I had held off.

302
00:21:20,120 --> 00:21:25,120
But that's obviously the let one down the road.

303
00:21:25,120 --> 00:21:30,120
So after the laboring, there was no real career aspirations.

304
00:21:30,120 --> 00:21:34,120
I just needed to get away from the situation.

305
00:21:34,120 --> 00:21:37,120
Like with the drug abuse, it was causing like kidney problems.

306
00:21:37,120 --> 00:21:41,120
And I used to have really bad dermatitis on my hands.

307
00:21:41,120 --> 00:21:45,120
And it turned out that the drugs were causing bad circulation to the skin.

308
00:21:45,120 --> 00:21:51,120
And I found that out purely by off chance because I had a week off drugs.

309
00:21:51,120 --> 00:21:54,120
And over that week, my hands were getting better, rapidly getting better.

310
00:21:54,120 --> 00:21:56,120
And I didn't understand what it was.

311
00:21:56,120 --> 00:21:59,120
And then one night when I took some ecstasy, a couple of pills,

312
00:21:59,120 --> 00:22:02,120
and it was like literally the next morning my hands were back as they were,

313
00:22:02,120 --> 00:22:04,120
you know, like really bad again.

314
00:22:04,120 --> 00:22:05,120
So that's when it clicked.

315
00:22:05,120 --> 00:22:08,120
And I was like, yeah, drugs are doing, that's what's doing the damage.

316
00:22:08,120 --> 00:22:10,120
So I was like, I need to get out of this.

317
00:22:10,120 --> 00:22:13,120
I tried to get out a few times, you know, but with it being a small town,

318
00:22:13,120 --> 00:22:15,120
you kept getting pulled back in, pulled back in.

319
00:22:15,120 --> 00:22:18,120
And eventually at 22, I was like, no, I'm done.

320
00:22:18,120 --> 00:22:20,120
I'm getting in the Army. I'm going.

321
00:22:20,120 --> 00:22:24,120
So at that time, my mum had moved back into the countryside.

322
00:22:24,120 --> 00:22:26,120
This is some years later.

323
00:22:26,120 --> 00:22:28,120
I know it's jumping all over the place, this is,

324
00:22:28,120 --> 00:22:30,120
but my mum had moved back into the countryside.

325
00:22:30,120 --> 00:22:33,120
I'm going to live with you for six months, get away from town,

326
00:22:33,120 --> 00:22:37,120
and then get to the point where I'm just going to run every day, hydrate,

327
00:22:37,120 --> 00:22:39,120
eat healthy, and I'm going to just apply to the Army.

328
00:22:39,120 --> 00:22:44,120
And that's what I did, you know, in 2007 to get away from everything.

329
00:22:44,120 --> 00:22:49,120
Which area within the military did you find yourself?

330
00:22:49,120 --> 00:22:51,120
So I originally joined.

331
00:22:51,120 --> 00:22:54,120
So when I first joined, I joined the infantry under the Welsh Guards.

332
00:22:54,120 --> 00:22:58,120
And I think it was nine or 10 weeks in,

333
00:22:58,120 --> 00:23:01,120
when they ruptured or tore my cartilage in my left knee.

334
00:23:01,120 --> 00:23:05,120
And that put me down into holdover,

335
00:23:05,120 --> 00:23:10,120
which is obviously like a recovery holdover within the training unit.

336
00:23:10,120 --> 00:23:12,120
And while I was sitting in there, I was like, I don't really want to do infantry.

337
00:23:12,120 --> 00:23:14,120
I think I've just sort of jumped in because when I went into the,

338
00:23:14,120 --> 00:23:17,120
because I was trying to get away so much, what had happened,

339
00:23:17,120 --> 00:23:19,120
I went into the careers office and was like,

340
00:23:19,120 --> 00:23:22,120
what is the fastest way to get in the Army? I don't care who it's with, where it's at.

341
00:23:22,120 --> 00:23:24,120
What is the fastest way to just get in?

342
00:23:24,120 --> 00:23:27,120
They're like, the infantry, you can go in three weeks as long as you pass the medical.

343
00:23:27,120 --> 00:23:33,120
So within three weeks, I was going into training up in Namcatric in North Yorkshire.

344
00:23:33,120 --> 00:23:37,120
And when I got there, I was just like, now, if I did 20 years as infantry,

345
00:23:37,120 --> 00:23:42,120
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.

346
00:23:42,120 --> 00:23:46,120
So when I got injured, it gave me time to think about, you know, what do I really want to do?

347
00:23:46,120 --> 00:23:51,120
And because I was always already in construction,

348
00:23:51,120 --> 00:23:53,120
one of the things that made sense was the Royal Engineers.

349
00:23:53,120 --> 00:23:59,120
So they do obviously engineering, bridging, explosives, all that kind of stuff, as well as soldiering.

350
00:23:59,120 --> 00:24:03,120
But you also get a trade. So you can be electrician, plumber, bricklayer, anything like that,

351
00:24:03,120 --> 00:24:07,120
because they go away and do construction tours, which is one of the tours we did later on.

352
00:24:07,120 --> 00:24:12,120
But I decided in holdover that I was going to pull myself out of training.

353
00:24:12,120 --> 00:24:15,120
So you can PVR, which is like an early release.

354
00:24:15,120 --> 00:24:20,120
I did that and about four or five months later, I reapplied. I said, look, my knee's all better.

355
00:24:20,120 --> 00:24:24,120
I had to go through like checks and medical checks and stuff like that with the knee.

356
00:24:24,120 --> 00:24:29,120
I was running at the time. Then I got my running up to, you know, 10 mile runs and stuff.

357
00:24:29,120 --> 00:24:31,120
So my fitness is getting even better anyway.

358
00:24:31,120 --> 00:24:34,120
And then I decided to sign up for the Royal Engineers.

359
00:24:34,120 --> 00:24:37,120
And that's where I stayed then at that point.

360
00:24:37,120 --> 00:24:42,120
So describe what the role looked like, because you got in 07, 08, is that right?

361
00:24:42,120 --> 00:24:44,120
Yeah, 2007. Yeah.

362
00:24:44,120 --> 00:24:52,120
So what did that role look like and then what was the kind of combat landscape that you were dealing with?

363
00:24:52,120 --> 00:24:58,120
Right. So when I first went through training, so I went in, obviously, when you go into Royal Engineers,

364
00:24:58,120 --> 00:25:04,120
everybody does infantry training, everybody does as a Royal Engineer, everyone does the same basic training,

365
00:25:04,120 --> 00:25:11,120
which is your soldier training. Then you do the combat engineers course, which is bridging, water supply, mine warfare,

366
00:25:11,120 --> 00:25:14,120
minefield clearance and stuff like that. So everybody go through that.

367
00:25:14,120 --> 00:25:19,120
Then at the end of that, you then all break up and go your own way to your own chosen career path.

368
00:25:19,120 --> 00:25:25,120
So some might be radio operatives, some might be plant operatives, you know, like diggers and all that sort of stuff.

369
00:25:25,120 --> 00:25:30,120
Some might go into more of a logistic role or construction role, whatever you do that way.

370
00:25:30,120 --> 00:25:34,120
So I chose to go in as what's called a building and structural finisher, BNSF.

371
00:25:34,120 --> 00:25:39,120
And that's specialised in, again, like tiling, flooring, all the cosmetics of building.

372
00:25:39,120 --> 00:25:43,120
So painting, decorating, glazing, airless spraying, all that.

373
00:25:43,120 --> 00:25:50,120
Anything you see as a finished touch within construction, that's what a building and structural finisher does.

374
00:25:50,120 --> 00:26:00,120
So I'd already had like eight and a half years experience in construction, working hands on every day doing this job anyway.

375
00:26:00,120 --> 00:26:08,120
And when I got in, so I'd already gone through training and just before going in to train

376
00:26:08,120 --> 00:26:13,120
and I'd actually met a girl who I later married, we got married together, she was a nurse in the army.

377
00:26:13,120 --> 00:26:21,120
And I got through training and as soon as I got to my unit, I did three months on the front gate as guard.

378
00:26:21,120 --> 00:26:24,120
So you do like cycles of guard duty on the front gate.

379
00:26:24,120 --> 00:26:29,120
And then after that, I got posted out to Oman to do construction tour.

380
00:26:29,120 --> 00:26:35,120
The unit was already out there, but obviously you go to unit, do three months on guard and then get deployed wherever.

381
00:26:35,120 --> 00:26:44,120
But I came out of my course with a 98% score, which is the highest score since like the 1940s, I think it was,

382
00:26:44,120 --> 00:26:49,120
for the course of building structural finisher.

383
00:26:49,120 --> 00:26:57,120
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.

384
00:26:57,120 --> 00:27:01,120
But when I was going through there, we were due to get married towards the end of my course.

385
00:27:01,120 --> 00:27:08,120
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.

386
00:27:08,120 --> 00:27:16,120
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.

387
00:27:16,120 --> 00:27:22,120
I said, if I can finish this in a week or two weeks, can I get let off to go and do the wedding?

388
00:27:22,120 --> 00:27:24,120
He's like, nobody's ever finished within two weeks.

389
00:27:24,120 --> 00:27:28,120
Nobody's ever finished a course within two weeks and got a decent mark.

390
00:27:28,120 --> 00:27:31,120
I got 98% within seven days, seven working days.

391
00:27:31,120 --> 00:27:33,120
So I absolutely smashed it out.

392
00:27:33,120 --> 00:27:37,120
And the only thing that let me down on that was like a little scuffle on one of the tiles and that was it.

393
00:27:37,120 --> 00:27:39,120
Otherwise it was flawless.

394
00:27:39,120 --> 00:27:41,120
So they were like absolute gobsmacked.

395
00:27:41,120 --> 00:27:43,120
Couldn't believe it. Let me go early.

396
00:27:43,120 --> 00:27:44,120
I went and got married.

397
00:27:44,120 --> 00:27:51,120
And then after that, my then wife got deployed to Afghanistan as a frontline medic.

398
00:27:51,120 --> 00:27:56,120
She got injured. Her vehicle went over an ID, killed the two lads in the front and broke her back.

399
00:27:56,120 --> 00:27:58,120
She got PTSD as well.

400
00:27:58,120 --> 00:28:00,120
I didn't understand PTSD at the time.

401
00:28:00,120 --> 00:28:03,120
So when she came back, she was a mess and, you know, things weren't working.

402
00:28:03,120 --> 00:28:05,120
We got really rocky.

403
00:28:05,120 --> 00:28:12,120
And then it was a case of, you know, we separated and then that later led to a divorce down the line.

404
00:28:12,120 --> 00:28:18,120
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.

405
00:28:18,120 --> 00:28:21,120
And I got put in charge of a team there because they knew my experience coming through.

406
00:28:21,120 --> 00:28:24,120
I'd already had a lot of experience within construction.

407
00:28:24,120 --> 00:28:30,120
That was I think the worst days we had were by 90.

408
00:28:30,120 --> 00:28:37,120
I remember 96 percent humidity and about 68 degrees like Celsius.

409
00:28:37,120 --> 00:28:39,120
So it was hot as hell, but humid as hell.

410
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:45,120
And we were, you know, once the block work had gone up, our job was to go into these rooms and deck them all.

411
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:50,120
And what we were doing was building an RF base on this construction tour for the Air Force.

412
00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:58,120
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.

413
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:02,120
And you'd be you'd get into the bay and within 15 minutes you could ring your T-shirt.

414
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:06,120
It was you were just drenched from like top to bottom.

415
00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:09,120
And that was all day. If you're going to get a new T-shirt on, it's pointless.

416
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:13,120
You just you come back and you're soaking. It wasn't it's part of it was sweat.

417
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:15,120
But a lot of it was the humidity of Oman city.

418
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:24,120
So that was that was a hard tour and that really separates men from the boys because you do 18 hours extreme heat,

419
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:28,120
extreme humidity, you know, there's camel spiders everywhere.

420
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:33,120
Them things are horrible things like, you know, they're dangerous as well.

421
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:39,120
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.

422
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:45,120
So that that went on for I think I was there for five or six months and then back to my unit.

423
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:48,120
Obviously back home, back to my unit.

424
00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:57,120
And then shortly after that, I started up I was one of the start the the Royal Engineers down on my team.

425
00:29:57,120 --> 00:29:59,120
They had mountain bikers, but they never actually formed a team.

426
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:05,120
So I put the team together and then the the warrant officer, he was me and him were really good friends.

427
00:30:05,120 --> 00:30:11,120
Even I was like at the time a private and he was one officer, so it's a big gap between the ranks.

428
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:14,120
But he me and him got on really well because he was a keen mountain biker.

429
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:19,120
I was into downhill mountain biking, put the team together, started racing, competing in that as well.

430
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:21,120
So that was good.

431
00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:25,120
And then I was always like an adrenaline junkie.

432
00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:29,120
Bear in mind, I've done motocross, downhill mountain biking, BMX, in dirt jumping, everything you can, all the drugs.

433
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:33,120
It's all like adrenaline and and that high.

434
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:39,120
And there was a couple of friends, two other guys on my in my in my squadron that did downhill mountain biking as well.

435
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:46,120
We ended up going to race the the Megavalanche in France, which is a 30 kilometer downhill event.

436
00:30:46,120 --> 00:30:50,120
It's crazy. It's nuts. It's all snow, ice and then mud.

437
00:30:50,120 --> 00:30:55,120
But when we all got called out, we knew our we knew Afghan was coming up, Afghanistan.

438
00:30:55,120 --> 00:31:05,120
So Herrick 15, which was 2011 and we all got called outside and they said, look, we've been called up.

439
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:07,120
We've got to go on deployment.

440
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:13,120
And it's going to be like 2010, beginning 2010, where we got the the notice.

441
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:17,120
And they said they want to, you know, we're going to be rerolling into ID search teams.

442
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:23,120
So like improvised explosive devices, basically bombs, ID search team and bomb disposal.

443
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:28,120
So we were going to retrain as engineers. Bear in mind, we already do like mine warfare and stuff like that.

444
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:31,120
So it's quite a natural progression.

445
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:36,120
So they said we won't volunteers first rather than they call it dicking.

446
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:39,120
But like we're going to volunteer you essentially, they call it dicking.

447
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,120
But rather than dicking for it, we won't volunteers first.

448
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:44,120
And I was like, I'll have some of that.

449
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,120
Boom, hand went straight up and I was like, this is going to be awesome.

450
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:51,120
I looked down the line of 48 men and there's only two other hands up.

451
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:54,120
And it was my two mountain bike friends because they're adrenaline junkie.

452
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:56,120
So it's three of us all ready for the buzz.

453
00:31:56,120 --> 00:32:02,120
And after that, then, you know, other people start coming forward, you know, reluctantly come forward because it's a big risk.

454
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:07,120
You know, you're going out there to find bombs and disarm them.

455
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:13,120
So then that led to like 18 months training for Afghan.

456
00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:15,120
And then we went out there. Eventually, we went out.

457
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:19,120
So there's loads of teams. I think it's like we were 48.

458
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:23,120
So there'd be about 50, 52 teams that were out there at any one time.

459
00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:26,120
And they're like 10 man teams. So, you know, it's a large amount.

460
00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:32,120
Not all Royal Engineers teams, some of like all cat badge teams, multi cat badge.

461
00:32:32,120 --> 00:32:48,120
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.

462
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:53,120
And then, yeah, shortly after that, we went out to Afghan. So as a bomb disposal unit.

463
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:55,120
And that was that was kind of kind of it.

464
00:32:55,120 --> 00:33:04,120
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.

465
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:07,120
We did a charity event as well as all this extra training.

466
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:13,120
And we did we went from Sheffield to Brighton, which is 200 and about 260 miles.

467
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:19,120
But we went via London. So it's for St. Dunston's charity for blind ex-servicemen, blind ex-servicemen.

468
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:26,120
And then we did that 10 marathons, two marathons a day for five days carrying 40 pound bergen.

469
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:31,120
So that was good as well to add to the pre-deployment training because you just get used to carrying the weight.

470
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:35,120
And then, yeah, we went out to Afghan to ready for the tour.

471
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:38,120
So that's kind of I know that was a long story that was.

472
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:42,120
That was just good though. I mean, it's just what happened.

473
00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:52,120
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?

474
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:55,120
No, not really. No, it was pretty chilled out to me.

475
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:58,120
Like it was it was hard graft. I don't get me wrong. It wasn't easy.

476
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:02,120
My construction tour was it was a killer. Every day was a killer.

477
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:05,120
You know, even Jordan, but you're doing you're doing 12 to 15 hour days.

478
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:13,120
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.

479
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:20,120
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.

480
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:25,120
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.

481
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:30,120
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.

482
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:37,120
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.

483
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:44,120
We were on a bridging exercise and he got crushed by two of the panels and broke a load of ribs.

484
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:50,120
But, you know, that was just like an injury. He didn't die. It wasn't there was no blood.

485
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:52,120
It was just internal bruising, broken ribs.

486
00:34:52,120 --> 00:35:00,120
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.

487
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:04,120
But that didn't cause any trauma. It was just like as an injury send him off, you'll be all right.

488
00:35:04,120 --> 00:35:08,120
You know, so other than that, yeah, nothing, nothing really like.

489
00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:17,120
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.

490
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:28,120
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.

491
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:35,120
A lot of lads that we knew and the team that I was that I was on and there was another team.

492
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:39,120
So the other team, there was two guys in that team that they were like best mates.

493
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:41,120
They were always gobbled, always joking around.

494
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:49,120
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.

495
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:56,120
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.

496
00:35:56,120 --> 00:36:02,120
We swapped teams, me and this one lad, Dom, and he went out.

497
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:07,120
They were all in Afghanistan together, but I was part of a training team initially for a first like four weeks.

498
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:18,120
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.

499
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:24,120
And then while I was in that training team, I was in a position of what's called a battlefield casualty replacement.

500
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:29,120
So if anyone gets injured, they'd ship me out there to replace them on the team so the team can still operate.

501
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:37,120
And Dom, who was in my who I replaced, we swapped roles or teams, their team was out on the ground.

502
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:46,120
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.

503
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:51,120
And it was all in his boot mangled up in his boot. He ended up getting amputated from the from the knee down.

504
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:53,120
And that was within two weeks.

505
00:36:53,120 --> 00:37:03,120
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.

506
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:07,120
When people get injured, they go into what is it now up minimized.

507
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:14,120
I think they called it up minimized, which is where they shut the communications down until the family of that injured soldier is notified.

508
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:20,120
So people aren't on Facebook and, you know, gobbling off about it before the family had been told.

509
00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:28,120
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.

510
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:30,120
And as soon as it comes off within an hour, up minimized again.

511
00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:39,120
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.

512
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:43,120
There's a massive range of injuries that take place.

513
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:51,120
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.

514
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:58,120
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?

515
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:01,120
Am I going out on the ground? You know, when is it my turn type thing?

516
00:38:01,120 --> 00:38:07,120
And it gets more and more scary. It's kind of like anticipating a drop on a roller coaster.

517
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:13,120
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.

518
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:15,120
You just hear all these injuries coming in.

519
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:19,120
And eventually, Dom, Dom got hit.

520
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:23,120
And like I've got the story of how it all took place as well.

521
00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:27,120
But I got called out to replace Dom.

522
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:30,120
And it was just lucky for me that I'd landed in a team that I knew the guys.

523
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:32,120
You know, I was already used to working with them.

524
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:37,120
And some of the other lads in my squadron, they got posted to teams that we never even met.

525
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:39,120
We never we didn't know any of them.

526
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:42,120
So not only are you joining the team, you don't know.

527
00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:48,120
But them guys have just been through hell, like potentially with a friend killed or injured that they get off the ground.

528
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:52,120
So they're already in a bit of a highly battered state.

529
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:56,120
And then you're a new person. They don't even know joining the team to replace that person.

530
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,120
It's a bit morbid in a way.

531
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:00,120
But, you know, the operations have to keep going.

532
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:04,120
You know, you've got stuff to do, like, you know, so.

533
00:39:04,120 --> 00:39:16,120
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.

534
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:20,120
We had Ryan. So Ryan was one of our close friends.

535
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:27,120
He he he got a reading on the search equipment, you know, the equipment we used to find the IDs under the ground.

536
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:36,120
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.

537
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:42,120
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.

538
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:47,120
You're digging from the side to make sure to try and confirm what that device is.

539
00:39:47,120 --> 00:39:57,120
And Ryan had got a reading and he called back. He said, oh, you know, hang on. I've got something here.

540
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:05,120
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.

541
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:08,120
You know, you might have stepped forward a little bit or back or whatever.

542
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:15,120
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.

543
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:20,120
And he dug down. There was nothing there. He said, I've got nothing.

544
00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:26,120
And so when he went to get back up, what he'd actually done is put his elbows across the pressure plate.

545
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:34,120
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.

546
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:41,120
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.

547
00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:50,120
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.

548
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:55,120
I think it was four rifles. And we got called out to a job.

549
00:40:55,120 --> 00:41:01,120
And as an IED search team, part of our job is if a device goes off, we have to go out and investigate.

550
00:41:01,120 --> 00:41:14,120
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.

551
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:20,120
We have to go and get all that information to figure out. But unfortunately, part of the job is also recovering any parts.

552
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:24,120
So that's body parts, rifle, any equipment and stuff like that.

553
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:35,120
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.

554
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:42,120
So from the hip down, it was just gone. And his team had managed to get him on the helicopter alive.

555
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:45,120
But he torn the cadres' waist to just try and stop him bleeding out.

556
00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:51,120
He was alive, but obviously semi in and out of consciousness when they picked him up on the helicopter.

557
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:56,120
But when we were going out to investigate, we got told that he died on the way to Bastion on the flight.

558
00:41:56,120 --> 00:42:05,120
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.

559
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:15,120
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.

560
00:42:15,120 --> 00:42:22,120
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.

561
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:25,120
And if there are, you cut those wires with like a detonator.

562
00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:31,120
That gets rid of one threat. Then you've got like radio operated devices, you know, with a phone and stuff like that.

563
00:42:31,120 --> 00:42:36,120
You've got ECM on your back, which is designed to scramble that signal. So they can't set anything else off with that.

564
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:41,120
Then the only other threat then you've got is pressure plates that you can step on.

565
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:44,120
So obviously without you've got search equipment that you've got to try and find stuff.

566
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:50,120
So anyway, we got to the blast point and we were doing the isolation around the blast point.

567
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:58,120
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.

568
00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:03,120
And I got a read and I said, I got a read near news is quite close to the blast area.

569
00:43:03,120 --> 00:43:08,120
And my section commander said, oh, yes, probably the wire to the device has gone off.

570
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:14,120
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?

571
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:18,120
Trying to reach as far as I could without stepping outside the search lane.

572
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:22,120
And I was like, now this ain't going to the hole. This is going off to the right of the hole.

573
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:28,120
So it wasn't going into the hole already done. And anyway, we cut the wire and we found a secondary device,

574
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:32,120
which was designed to try and get the search team after we come in to investigate.

575
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:36,120
And the device we found there is what they call a directional frag charge.

576
00:43:36,120 --> 00:43:43,120
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

577
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:48,120
and fill it with explosives and put like nuts and bolts and frag and stuff like that,

578
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:53,120
it's designed to spray a large area rather than a focused explosion.

579
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:59,120
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.

580
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:05,120
So they're very clever at what they do. But then, yeah, eventually we cleared that quite often.

581
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:11,120
We ended up picking up the James Steel. We had to recover his legs, his femurs, put him in bags.

582
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:16,120
You know, that was quite gruesome because there's no humane way of doing it.

583
00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:20,120
You've got to pick it up and you throw it in a yellow plastic bag so nobody can see it.

584
00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:22,120
And it's just body parts and stuff like that.

585
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:29,120
And then we found his rifle had been cut in half and we found one half roughly about 70 meters away from the blast.

586
00:44:29,120 --> 00:44:33,120
So it was a bloody big blast. And then things like our search equipment,

587
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:38,120
we have to take that back so they can't get any intelligence off us from the search equipment.

588
00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:41,120
So we picked everything up that we could.

589
00:44:41,120 --> 00:44:46,120
And then when we went back to the patrol base, which is only probably about 400 meters away,

590
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:50,120
four or 500 meters away from the blast point, we went back there.

591
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:55,120
And then our team was, you know, recalibrating all our kit, putting new batteries in, you know,

592
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:58,120
like just getting all our admin squared away.

593
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:08,120
And the sergeant major of that infantry group called them over to announce that he died on the flight back.

594
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:16,120
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.

595
00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:21,120
Do you know what I mean? So that was something that really used to get me a lot, a lot like, you know,

596
00:45:21,120 --> 00:45:24,120
like all the time it used to get me thinking about that.

597
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:29,120
And then that was like when we got back to our base, our patrol base that night,

598
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:34,120
everyone's just like sitting in silence trying to like, we gather what the fuck's just gone on like, you know,

599
00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:38,120
and you're trying to sort of process it all. It's a hard thing to process.

600
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:42,120
And I think when you're on the ground picking up the body parts, dealing with the bombs,

601
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:45,120
you're so pumped with adrenaline, you just feel normal.

602
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:48,120
You don't feel that emotion coming in, stuff like that.

603
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:51,120
So that was the one thing that got us.

604
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:59,120
And then new, you know, I don't know if you know what R&R is like. Have you served military?

605
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:01,120
Not military, no, just fire.

606
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:05,120
No. Oh, OK. So with the military, you probably know anyway, you get like R&R,

607
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:09,120
which is like two week break in between somewhere in your deployment. It can be a random point.

608
00:46:09,120 --> 00:46:13,120
But ours just so happened to be over Christmas 2011.

609
00:46:13,120 --> 00:46:18,120
And we came back, so we run on R&R for two weeks and we came back,

610
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:23,120
I think it was like two or three days before New Year's Day 2012.

611
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:30,120
And we got back to Bastion, flew into Bastion from UK.

612
00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:36,120
And we slept in Bastion one night and we were flying out to our patrol base the next day.

613
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:40,120
I can't remember what the base is called now, but basically we were flying out there the next day,

614
00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:45,120
which would have been New Year's Eve 2011 before 2012.

615
00:46:45,120 --> 00:46:49,120
And due to like jet lag and everything like that, we were asleep.

616
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:53,120
Like New Year's Eve, we were asleep in the tent, like eight of us in the tent, flat out cold.

617
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:56,120
We were just out, out for the camp.

618
00:46:56,120 --> 00:47:01,120
So we weren't expected to do any jobs for a couple of days to just sort of get back into it.

619
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:08,120
And then New Year's Day 2012, so obviously the next day now,

620
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:13,120
we were in the command room, which is the main tent on the base to get a briefing on the ground,

621
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:17,120
what we're going to be covering, the areas that we go, where the other teams are operating and stuff,

622
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:20,120
an idea about the ground itself.

623
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:24,120
And they were saying, we know you guys have been through a lot of stuff already.

624
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,120
Like the team, even before I joined them, had gone through a lot of stuff and then we just continued.

625
00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:32,120
They said, we know your team's been through a lot. We're one of the busiest teams on the ground.

626
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:35,120
They said, but don't worry, this base has never had any contact.

627
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:42,120
It's not been fired with anything, rockets, small arms fire from rifles, no fire whatsoever.

628
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:45,120
And we were like, happy day. So it's going to be an easy ride here, then we thought.

629
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:49,120
And literally an hour later, three mortars were fired at the base.

630
00:47:49,120 --> 00:47:52,120
And the first one, we'd looked at it where they'd all hit.

631
00:47:52,120 --> 00:47:57,120
The first one had hit our tent straight through the roof and it just blew all our stuff to pieces.

632
00:47:57,120 --> 00:48:02,120
And it was like, if they were 24 hours earlier, that would have been a whole search team killed.

633
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:05,120
So it's purely 24 hour window that they could have had us.

634
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:10,120
And that's not traumatic at all. That was just like, Jesus Christ, that was lucky.

635
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:19,120
You know, but then after it just kind of gives you an idea of like the situations that can take place through tours.

636
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:27,120
And then the thing that got me the most on tour, and I really struggled to tell the story for so long,

637
00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:33,120
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.

638
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:37,120
And I can't remember what the job was. I think it was to clear a treeline or something.

639
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:42,120
But we got called out on this job. And when you're going to a job, you're in single file.

640
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:49,120
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.

641
00:48:49,120 --> 00:48:52,120
So you go in single file and I was the last man at the back.

642
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:58,120
And we're going to this job. And bear in mind, you're doing, I won't say how many meters between each man,

643
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:03,120
because it's obviously giving information away, but there's a certain distance between each man,

644
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:10,120
which if somebody steps on a device, it dramatically reduces the impact of that blast based on how far away you are.

645
00:49:10,120 --> 00:49:15,120
So it tries to reduce the injuries between each soldier.

646
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:20,120
But basically, from the back to the front, it was it was a fair distance.

647
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:26,120
I couldn't see the front man. And at the front, we had an officer, female doctor, like fully qualified officer, doctor.

648
00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:30,120
She'd been in I don't know how many years, but she was a proper doc.

649
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:34,120
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.

650
00:49:34,120 --> 00:49:37,120
So in case you get contacted or anything like that.

651
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:43,120
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.

652
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:48,120
And a family of three came out, so a dad and two kids, a little girl and a little boy.

653
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:53,120
And they came out and the little girl came up to me, obviously me being the closest.

654
00:49:53,120 --> 00:49:58,120
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.

655
00:49:58,120 --> 00:50:02,120
In Afghanistan, a lot of the kids come up to you. They want sweets. They want pens, you know, something simple.

656
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:05,120
And you think, oh, you just get some sweets and chuck them to the kid.

657
00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:08,120
But I give her some sweets. And she was like, like trying to tell me something.

658
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:12,120
I was like, I don't get it. What is it? And she lifted her sleeve up.

659
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:17,120
She's only about four, four years old. And she lifted her sleeve up.

660
00:50:17,120 --> 00:50:23,120
And it was seriously it was septic from the wrist to the shoulder like she was she was fucked.

661
00:50:23,120 --> 00:50:26,120
I mean, she was going to die if she didn't get medical attention at some point.

662
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:30,120
She was not going to make it. And I radioed ahead.

663
00:50:30,120 --> 00:50:34,120
And I said, you know, we've got we've got you know, got a doctor at the front.

664
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:37,120
So I radioed ahead. I said, look, I've got a little girl here. She's in a bad way.

665
00:50:37,120 --> 00:50:40,120
We need some medical attention. They came back on the radio and said, leave it.

666
00:50:40,120 --> 00:50:44,120
They've got a mission to do, got a job to do. And that was the breaking point for me.

667
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:47,120
I was like, I'm done with the army. You know, so.

668
00:50:47,120 --> 00:50:53,120
But the thing that got me recently was my daughter's now approaching that age.

669
00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:57,120
So it became like a daily reminder, you know, before I started hypnotherapy.

670
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:01,120
And I was just like a daily reminder that we left that girl there.

671
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:05,120
And for like 12 years, I just blamed myself.

672
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:08,120
Should have done more. It was my decision. Do you know what I mean?

673
00:51:08,120 --> 00:51:13,120
So it was it was hard. That was that was the tipping point.

674
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:20,120
Like, you know, you think after all those situations that go on, like injured friends,

675
00:51:20,120 --> 00:51:25,120
recovering body parts, getting more than you tend, you'd think all that was the problem.

676
00:51:25,120 --> 00:51:28,120
But it wasn't. It was that little girl.

677
00:51:28,120 --> 00:51:33,120
You know, so yeah, that's that was the biggest impact.

678
00:51:33,120 --> 00:51:37,120
It's interesting hearing you again underline that that was the worst thing,

679
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:40,120
because, I mean, obviously there is a compounding element, you know,

680
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:44,120
it's the death by a thousand cuts, all these things that you've been through up to this point.

681
00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:49,120
But I see this over and over and over again, that organizational betrayal.

682
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:53,120
And it's not in that case deliberate. Like if you see any sick kids don't stop.

683
00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:56,120
But it's, you know, that kind of moral injury.

684
00:51:56,120 --> 00:52:00,120
Well, we were here to help these people. Here's a person we can tangibly help.

685
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:03,120
And you're telling me no. And so, you know, internally,

686
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:07,120
you're starting to deviate from that mission that you believe that you were serving

687
00:52:07,120 --> 00:52:11,120
when you first entered that particular branch.

688
00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:15,120
Yeah. Well, the problem you get as well, when you when you go on deployment,

689
00:52:15,120 --> 00:52:18,120
there's this there's a saying that gets thrown around all the time.

690
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,120
You've got to win hearts and minds. You've got to win hearts and minds.

691
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:22,120
It's all about winning the people.

692
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:25,120
And I'm like, if you leave a four year old girl to die like that,

693
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:29,120
what's said that her dad now has probably got fucking Taliban contacts.

694
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:32,120
Now you're a target because you let a little girl die like.

695
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:35,120
And I'm like, you ain't winning hearts and minds like that.

696
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:41,120
And that to me, I was like, it just it completely my brain just couldn't process what had just been said.

697
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:46,120
Now, I can blame that doctor as much as I want because it was her decision.

698
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:50,120
But I also have to remember that she was probably three or four hundred meters ahead

699
00:52:50,120 --> 00:52:52,120
and couldn't see this little girl.

700
00:52:52,120 --> 00:52:56,120
So she probably didn't understand the the the level of that injury.

701
00:52:56,120 --> 00:52:59,120
If I like this is why I blame myself for so long, because I should have been over the radio.

702
00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:01,120
It's septic. She's going to die.

703
00:53:01,120 --> 00:53:03,120
I could have been more and more and more on the radio.

704
00:53:03,120 --> 00:53:05,120
I'm not going until we do something about it, but I didn't.

705
00:53:05,120 --> 00:53:07,120
I just I was a private. She was an officer.

706
00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:10,120
She said, now I was like, look, we've got to go see her.

707
00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:15,120
So, you know, it's kind of like that, like, you know, so.

708
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:17,120
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, clearly, it haunts you.

709
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:24,120
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.

710
00:53:24,120 --> 00:53:30,120
And you look, you know, watch Restrepo and some of these documentaries, these guys are in, you know, crazy firefights

711
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:36,120
and they're joking around with each other because they've got that shared suffering, that purpose, that tribe.

712
00:53:36,120 --> 00:53:44,120
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.

713
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:47,120
You know, as you said, that was momentary for that particular example.

714
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:55,120
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.

715
00:53:55,120 --> 00:54:07,120
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.

716
00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:09,120
But instead, we did the opposite.

717
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:14,120
And so this, I guess, you know, not blaming because I'm completely detached from this conversation.

718
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:25,120
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.

719
00:54:25,120 --> 00:54:36,120
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,

720
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:42,120
and then that's betrayed in that moment, then it has you questioning everything.

721
00:54:42,120 --> 00:54:48,120
Yeah, like I said, the problem is like recently, it was only about eight weeks, pretty bit longer than 10 weeks ago.

722
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:54,120
Like the well, five months, five, six months ago, the PTSD started coming back.

723
00:54:54,120 --> 00:54:57,120
I had it under control for so long, like years. I had it under control.

724
00:54:57,120 --> 00:55:03,120
It was still not healed, but it was, you know, every day was manageable.

725
00:55:03,120 --> 00:55:08,120
I wasn't snapping or anything like that. But yeah, like five or six months ago, it all started coming back.

726
00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:12,120
And I couldn't figure out why, why am I suddenly suffering again now?

727
00:55:12,120 --> 00:55:20,120
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.

728
00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:27,120
You know, and you're like that dad in Afghan hasn't seen his daughter grow up because she's probably not around anymore.

729
00:55:27,120 --> 00:55:34,120
I think that was the, that was the reminder, the constant reminder, you know, but hypnotherapy now is really helping.

730
00:55:34,120 --> 00:55:42,120
Like I've still got another six sessions to go through yet, but it's definitely made a hell of a difference.

731
00:55:42,120 --> 00:55:47,120
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.

732
00:55:47,120 --> 00:55:51,120
But for me, it's definitely made a big impact.

733
00:55:51,120 --> 00:56:00,120
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.

734
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:08,120
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.

735
00:56:08,120 --> 00:56:14,120
And so it was less about going back in time and addressing things and more about kind of the manifestation of new things.

736
00:56:14,120 --> 00:56:28,120
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.

737
00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:29,120
Yeah.

738
00:56:29,120 --> 00:56:37,120
Well, if we go forward from there now, so 2012 is when I decided to cut the army off.

739
00:56:37,120 --> 00:56:46,120
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.

740
00:56:46,120 --> 00:56:50,120
And I think I put that down to like still being pumped of adrenaline.

741
00:56:50,120 --> 00:56:54,120
And three months after I started to snap and I was like, things weren't right.

742
00:56:54,120 --> 00:56:57,120
And I really struggled being out the military at that point.

743
00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:01,120
And I was probably 28, 29.

744
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:02,120
And I was like, man, I need to go back in.

745
00:57:02,120 --> 00:57:04,120
I've got to go back in the forces.

746
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:07,120
I just need, I just needed to go back in.

747
00:57:07,120 --> 00:57:08,120
That was it.

748
00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:09,120
There was no other thing.

749
00:57:09,120 --> 00:57:10,120
But I was like approaching 30.

750
00:57:10,120 --> 00:57:13,120
I was like, do I want to be running around in the wet field with a Bergen on my back anymore?

751
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:14,120
Do I want to go in the army anymore?

752
00:57:14,120 --> 00:57:16,120
I was like, I don't know.

753
00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:18,120
And then I thought, I'm going to go in the Navy.

754
00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:20,120
So that's when I signed up to the Navy.

755
00:57:20,120 --> 00:57:24,120
I trained my ass off for so long, for like 12 months or 18.

756
00:57:24,120 --> 00:57:26,120
I can't remember 12 or 18 months.

757
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:31,120
I was doing like half marathons, triathlons, like 13 fitness set.

758
00:57:31,120 --> 00:57:37,120
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.

759
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:41,120
And I eventually joined as a mine clearance diver for the Navy.

760
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:43,120
And I joined as a diver.

761
00:57:43,120 --> 00:57:50,120
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,

762
00:57:50,120 --> 00:57:55,120
but I got an injury from, I had a problem with my sinuses under the water.

763
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:58,120
I couldn't deal with water pressure.

764
00:57:58,120 --> 00:58:05,120
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.

765
00:58:05,120 --> 00:58:08,120
But because of the pressure, I wasn't like to go on subs either.

766
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:14,120
So I later went into the aviation side, the fleet, I'm of the Navy to become an aircraft handler.

767
00:58:14,120 --> 00:58:19,120
You know, the guys that do all the marshaling, the refueling, you know, lorry driving and that sort of stuff.

768
00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:23,120
So just supporting the aircraft.

769
00:58:23,120 --> 00:58:24,120
I did that for a while.

770
00:58:24,120 --> 00:58:31,120
And then, but because of going from like diver, which is like full on fitness and intense day to day,

771
00:58:31,120 --> 00:58:35,120
to sitting around for three hours a day waiting for an aircraft to come back, it was like black and white.

772
00:58:35,120 --> 00:58:36,120
Do you know what I mean?

773
00:58:36,120 --> 00:58:38,120
And I just, it wasn't for me.

774
00:58:38,120 --> 00:58:41,120
So I did about another six, six years there.

775
00:58:41,120 --> 00:58:43,120
And then I thought I'm going to start coming out.

776
00:58:43,120 --> 00:58:49,120
And then when I started to talk about coming out, the guy that recruited me into the Navy, we're good friends as well.

777
00:58:49,120 --> 00:58:50,120
We stayed in touch.

778
00:58:50,120 --> 00:58:51,120
He heard I was coming out.

779
00:58:51,120 --> 00:58:55,120
He said, you want to go into naval recruitment, which was like literally in my town.

780
00:58:55,120 --> 00:59:01,120
You know, so I could wear the uniform, have the structure, you know, go home every night, but still be military.

781
00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:06,120
And, you know, I wasn't, it was what's known as the FTRS or full time reserves.

782
00:59:06,120 --> 00:59:09,120
But you essentially just like Navy all the way through.

783
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:13,120
I was going out to schools, giving presentations, recruiting, psychometric testing and stuff like that.

784
00:59:13,120 --> 00:59:15,120
And that was good. Good couple of years.

785
00:59:15,120 --> 00:59:18,120
I always enjoyed it.

786
00:59:18,120 --> 00:59:23,120
It was a nice transition as well where before I left the army, bomb disposal straight into city street.

787
00:59:23,120 --> 00:59:26,120
And it was just like, like I just dropped off a cliff.

788
00:59:26,120 --> 00:59:29,120
But going into naval recruitment, I still had that little bit of attachment.

789
00:59:29,120 --> 00:59:35,120
So it kind of gave a much smoother transition out of the Navy.

790
00:59:35,120 --> 00:59:46,120
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.

791
00:59:46,120 --> 00:59:48,120
I took leave for a couple of weeks.

792
00:59:48,120 --> 00:59:55,120
And during that, about four days into the first week, my granddad that lived next door, he had a heart attack.

793
00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:58,120
And my neighbor came and said, oh, your granddad's on the floor. We can't pick him up.

794
00:59:58,120 --> 01:00:01,120
He's a big bloke, you know, real big bloke.

795
01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:03,120
And I run up there and he was like face down.

796
01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:04,120
I was like, you know, what the fuck's going on?

797
01:00:04,120 --> 01:00:09,120
So I grabbed him, pulled him over to try and like, you know, try and see what was going on.

798
01:00:09,120 --> 01:00:14,120
I couldn't get any air into his mouth because he smashed his mouth to pieces on the ground.

799
01:00:14,120 --> 01:00:17,120
So you couldn't breathe into him. So it's just started chest compressions.

800
01:00:17,120 --> 01:00:20,120
I fucking called an ambulance and I was like trying to get on the phone to my dad.

801
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:27,120
And at the time then my PTSD was like, I was, I was going overdrive at that point and he died.

802
01:00:27,120 --> 01:00:28,120
He didn't make it.

803
01:00:28,120 --> 01:00:33,120
And then after that, I went into a bit of a spiral.

804
01:00:33,120 --> 01:00:41,120
And my other granddad on my mom's side, he was an ex-Marine and he had a brain tumor.

805
01:00:41,120 --> 01:00:44,120
We knew he wasn't going to make it so he kind of expected to death at some point.

806
01:00:44,120 --> 01:00:47,120
When my other granddad had a heart attack, it was just sudden.

807
01:00:47,120 --> 01:00:49,120
One day he's here, next day he's not.

808
01:00:49,120 --> 01:00:55,120
And about five weeks later, I got a call off my mom and said, oh, your granddad's in hospital.

809
01:00:55,120 --> 01:00:56,120
He's not going to make it.

810
01:00:56,120 --> 01:01:03,120
And this was like, you know, would have been about probably seven, eight o'clock at night.

811
01:01:03,120 --> 01:01:04,120
I was like, fuck, I need to get home.

812
01:01:04,120 --> 01:01:11,120
So I phoned my, the petty officer who was in charge on the flight line.

813
01:01:11,120 --> 01:01:13,120
Said I've got to go home, my granddad's in hospital.

814
01:01:13,120 --> 01:01:14,120
So he's like, yeah, OK.

815
01:01:14,120 --> 01:01:17,120
So I drove that up and I got to hospital at 11 o'clock at night.

816
01:01:17,120 --> 01:01:20,120
And they said, you can't come in because visiting hours are over.

817
01:01:20,120 --> 01:01:21,120
I said, look, I'm in the military.

818
01:01:21,120 --> 01:01:22,120
I've had to drive all the way up here.

819
01:01:22,120 --> 01:01:24,120
My granddad's probably not going to make it.

820
01:01:24,120 --> 01:01:30,120
And I went in there and he was unconscious but like struggling to breathe.

821
01:01:30,120 --> 01:01:31,120
He had pneumonia as well.

822
01:01:31,120 --> 01:01:36,120
Obviously, he went on his last couple of hours and still breathing and that.

823
01:01:36,120 --> 01:01:40,120
But I went in and saw him for half an hour and then I left.

824
01:01:40,120 --> 01:01:44,120
I think I left about half eleven, half eleven quarter to twelve.

825
01:01:44,120 --> 01:01:47,120
And then he was pronounced dead at twelve o'clock.

826
01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:52,120
So that was hard as well.

827
01:01:52,120 --> 01:01:58,120
After that, I went into, I went dark.

828
01:01:58,120 --> 01:02:03,120
Because obviously I had the PTSD, blown up wife, tried to save one granddad.

829
01:02:03,120 --> 01:02:04,120
The other granddad died.

830
01:02:04,120 --> 01:02:07,120
It was just like constant one after the other.

831
01:02:07,120 --> 01:02:13,120
So it still gets me a little bit.

832
01:02:13,120 --> 01:02:14,120
It should though.

833
01:02:14,120 --> 01:02:16,120
I mean, this is the thing.

834
01:02:16,120 --> 01:02:24,120
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.

835
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:32,120
But yeah, I ended up, that led to real, real deep depression.

836
01:02:32,120 --> 01:02:36,120
And the anxiety I got from that was insane.

837
01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:42,120
And I went into, I went to doctors because I was having real bad chest pains.

838
01:02:42,120 --> 01:02:45,120
I thought it was a problem with my heart.

839
01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:55,120
And I went for about three months of like chest x-rays, ECGs, heart scans and cameras down my throat and all sorts.

840
01:02:55,120 --> 01:02:58,120
Because every time the pain would come, my left arm would go numb as well.

841
01:02:58,120 --> 01:03:01,120
So it was like something's up with your heart.

842
01:03:01,120 --> 01:03:07,120
So I got downgraded again on base and he took me off the flight line.

843
01:03:07,120 --> 01:03:10,120
And one day I went to doctors because I couldn't breathe.

844
01:03:10,120 --> 01:03:13,120
I was really struggling to breathe pain in my chest.

845
01:03:13,120 --> 01:03:17,120
And I went to doctors and said, oh, we can't fit you in now, but come back.

846
01:03:17,120 --> 01:03:18,120
This was like late in the afternoon anyway.

847
01:03:18,120 --> 01:03:23,120
So come back eight o'clock in the morning for, you know, what did they call it?

848
01:03:23,120 --> 01:03:27,120
I can't remember what it's called now, but basically like fresh cases.

849
01:03:27,120 --> 01:03:28,120
They call it fresh cases.

850
01:03:28,120 --> 01:03:29,120
So you go to fresh cases in the morning.

851
01:03:29,120 --> 01:03:31,120
They deal with all the fresh patients.

852
01:03:31,120 --> 01:03:33,120
And I went in there.

853
01:03:33,120 --> 01:03:39,120
But walking up to the med center at the time, I was really, I was like sweaty and I couldn't breathe.

854
01:03:39,120 --> 01:03:43,120
My heart was, I thought I was going to fucking die like, you know,

855
01:03:43,120 --> 01:03:48,120
and I'd already had three months of like testing and scans and all that stuff.

856
01:03:48,120 --> 01:03:55,120
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.

857
01:03:55,120 --> 01:03:56,120
I tried to lift it up.

858
01:03:56,120 --> 01:04:01,120
I just broke down in tears like fucking real flood of emotion.

859
01:04:01,120 --> 01:04:03,120
And he said, it's not your heart.

860
01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:05,120
You've got anxiety.

861
01:04:05,120 --> 01:04:07,120
I was like, fuck it all.

862
01:04:07,120 --> 01:04:11,120
I didn't realize like, you know, all the months had gone by.

863
01:04:11,120 --> 01:04:13,120
And then, yeah, they stuck me on antidepressants.

864
01:04:13,120 --> 01:04:17,120
And one of the things, one of the things that didn't help me at the time,

865
01:04:17,120 --> 01:04:23,120
and I still get anxious now is when I'm in loud environments.

866
01:04:23,120 --> 01:04:27,120
You know, like it doesn't have to be like bangs and pops and doors slamming.

867
01:04:27,120 --> 01:04:30,120
But like working with helicopters, it was just constant noise.

868
01:04:30,120 --> 01:04:32,120
And he should stress me out really bad.

869
01:04:32,120 --> 01:04:37,120
And, you know, I went on antidepressants for a while.

870
01:04:37,120 --> 01:04:41,120
I think it was for about fucking nine months, maybe nine months on antidepressants.

871
01:04:41,120 --> 01:04:43,120
And it made me feel like shit.

872
01:04:43,120 --> 01:04:44,120
Didn't work.

873
01:04:44,120 --> 01:04:49,120
Like they might work for some people, but for me, they were not doing the job.

874
01:04:49,120 --> 01:04:55,120
And by this time then, I'd stopped sleeping, stopped eating right, put on weight.

875
01:04:55,120 --> 01:04:57,120
You know, I was a mess.

876
01:04:57,120 --> 01:05:04,120
And I ended up one day I just woke up and I was just like, I'm done feeling like this.

877
01:05:04,120 --> 01:05:07,120
I'm not doing it anymore.

878
01:05:07,120 --> 01:05:12,120
And that was the beginning, it's like meditation and stuff.

879
01:05:12,120 --> 01:05:19,120
You know, so the first thing was I knew that if I couldn't,

880
01:05:19,120 --> 01:05:24,120
I knew that the PTSD had caused depression, which had caused anxiety.

881
01:05:24,120 --> 01:05:29,120
And the anxiety at that point just becomes a spiral.

882
01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:31,120
It's a circle that feeds each other.

883
01:05:31,120 --> 01:05:34,120
You know, you get anxiety, you get more PTSD, you get more depressed, more anxiety.

884
01:05:34,120 --> 01:05:36,120
You just constant snowball.

885
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:42,120
And I was like, fuck now, first thing I've got to do is get the anxiety under control.

886
01:05:42,120 --> 01:05:44,120
And that was the first thing I thought about.

887
01:05:44,120 --> 01:05:50,120
Because if I could do that, I can start working on meditation for depression and go that route.

888
01:05:50,120 --> 01:05:54,120
So after making that decision, I started reading books.

889
01:05:54,120 --> 01:05:55,120
It wasn't like self-help books.

890
01:05:55,120 --> 01:05:58,120
The first book I went through, I didn't read it at the time, I hated reading.

891
01:05:58,120 --> 01:06:01,120
The first book I read was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

892
01:06:01,120 --> 01:06:03,120
And fuck me, that is a marathon of a book if you don't read.

893
01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:08,120
It's like small writing, about 350 pages, and it took me bloody months to get through.

894
01:06:08,120 --> 01:06:10,120
You know, trying to do just 10 pages a night.

895
01:06:10,120 --> 01:06:14,120
And even then I struggled with it because I just couldn't bother reading.

896
01:06:14,120 --> 01:06:17,120
And I went online, I was like, what can I do for anxiety?

897
01:06:17,120 --> 01:06:22,120
And I found there's a company in the UK called CALMS, K-A-L-M-S.

898
01:06:22,120 --> 01:06:25,120
And they did a lavender capsule, a little capsule, gel capsule.

899
01:06:25,120 --> 01:06:29,120
You buy over a counter, there's no drugs in it, it's just pure lavender oil.

900
01:06:29,120 --> 01:06:31,120
And they said it can lower anxiety.

901
01:06:31,120 --> 01:06:33,120
So I thought, fuck it, what have I got to lose?

902
01:06:33,120 --> 01:06:35,120
So I bought a load.

903
01:06:35,120 --> 01:06:39,120
You can't overdose on it, you know, it's lavender oil, it's a bloody plant.

904
01:06:39,120 --> 01:06:43,120
So I did that when I got there, I double dosed.

905
01:06:43,120 --> 01:06:45,120
I was like, double dose on these and see how it goes.

906
01:06:45,120 --> 01:06:48,120
And literally within three hours, man, I was calm as hell.

907
01:06:48,120 --> 01:06:50,120
I was like, my anxiety dropped.

908
01:06:50,120 --> 01:06:52,120
I felt good, I was relaxed.

909
01:06:52,120 --> 01:06:53,120
I was all right.

910
01:06:53,120 --> 01:06:56,120
Now I know how to get rid of the anxiety or drop the anxiety.

911
01:06:56,120 --> 01:06:57,120
Now I need to work on the rest.

912
01:06:57,120 --> 01:07:02,120
So the next thing that was depressing then was obviously I put on weight.

913
01:07:02,120 --> 01:07:04,120
I didn't have any confidence going to the gym.

914
01:07:04,120 --> 01:07:11,120
So what I did then was I understood micro habits, like the military taught you micro habits.

915
01:07:11,120 --> 01:07:15,120
You know, if you do loads of little habits, eventually it becomes something bigger.

916
01:07:15,120 --> 01:07:19,120
And the first thing I wanted to do was get back in the gym.

917
01:07:19,120 --> 01:07:20,120
And I had no confidence.

918
01:07:20,120 --> 01:07:22,120
I was like, I ain't going in no gym.

919
01:07:22,120 --> 01:07:25,120
You know, I put weight on, I was out of shape, I couldn't do anything.

920
01:07:25,120 --> 01:07:27,120
So I thought, how can I at least start?

921
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:31,120
And I thought the only way of me getting in the gym is by going to 4 a.m. when nobody's there.

922
01:07:31,120 --> 01:07:36,120
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.

923
01:07:36,120 --> 01:07:41,120
So what I did for a little while, I got into the habit of just waking up at 4 a.m.

924
01:07:41,120 --> 01:07:44,120
and sitting in my room until I got consistent at that.

925
01:07:44,120 --> 01:07:46,120
And that's all I did, sit in my room.

926
01:07:46,120 --> 01:07:52,120
And then after that, when I was consistent for two weeks of that, every day I could get up at 4 a.m.

927
01:07:52,120 --> 01:07:57,120
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.

928
01:07:57,120 --> 01:07:58,120
Just play on my phone.

929
01:07:58,120 --> 01:07:59,120
I'm not doing anything.

930
01:07:59,120 --> 01:08:01,120
Just sit out there at 4 a.m. playing on my phone.

931
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:05,120
And then following that then I go in the gym and just sit in the gym on my phone, not doing anything.

932
01:08:05,120 --> 01:08:07,120
It was empty so it didn't matter.

933
01:08:07,120 --> 01:08:11,120
And then eventually I start doing 10 minutes on the cross trainer.

934
01:08:11,120 --> 01:08:13,120
No impact, not really pushing it.

935
01:08:13,120 --> 01:08:15,120
Just getting into the habit of being consistent again.

936
01:08:15,120 --> 01:08:20,120
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.

937
01:08:20,120 --> 01:08:21,120
Like it was nothing.

938
01:08:21,120 --> 01:08:22,120
Didn't bother me.

939
01:08:22,120 --> 01:08:24,120
And I was happy to go when everyone else was going.

940
01:08:24,120 --> 01:08:25,120
My pull-ups had got good again.

941
01:08:25,120 --> 01:08:29,120
So instead of being able to struggle to do one pull-up, I was doing 10 again.

942
01:08:29,120 --> 01:08:31,120
And I got back into it quite quickly.

943
01:08:31,120 --> 01:08:34,120
So that's the micro habits, the only way I could get back in.

944
01:08:34,120 --> 01:08:39,120
And once I started the fitness, I started to feel better mentally and endorphins kicking in.

945
01:08:39,120 --> 01:08:42,120
And I started to lose weight and then I was able to sleep again.

946
01:08:42,120 --> 01:08:44,120
And that's kind of how I pulled myself out of that hole.

947
01:08:44,120 --> 01:08:51,120
But Jesus Christ, dude, it was a long journey that was to get out of that habit of not doing anything.

948
01:08:51,120 --> 01:08:57,120
So I'd got rid of the, or I'd lowered the anxiety with the capsules and then eventually got into the gym again.

949
01:08:57,120 --> 01:09:00,120
And then from there then I just started to work on the mindset really.

950
01:09:00,120 --> 01:09:04,120
And that's where I kind of fixed it for so long.

951
01:09:04,120 --> 01:09:08,120
I was all right for years, like I said, until the daughter issue came along.

952
01:09:08,120 --> 01:09:12,120
But yeah, and then it was, yeah, that's kind of it.

953
01:09:12,120 --> 01:09:16,120
I know I rewound there, but obviously I went into military recruitment after that and did that.

954
01:09:16,120 --> 01:09:26,120
And then came into, after military recruitment, I went into defense recruitment for BA systems who manufactured the military ships and submarines and aircraft.

955
01:09:26,120 --> 01:09:34,120
Did that for 12 months and then eventually, like I said, 15 years, I decided to finally take the leap into graphic design.

956
01:09:34,120 --> 01:09:38,120
And that was January 2022. I thought it's time to do something with it.

957
01:09:38,120 --> 01:09:43,120
So I started learning Adobe and all on YouTube, self-taught.

958
01:09:43,120 --> 01:09:46,120
And that's where I'm at now.

959
01:09:46,120 --> 01:09:50,120
So talk to me about that. What is it that you do in the graphic design world now?

960
01:09:50,120 --> 01:09:56,120
So at the moment we specialize in building LinkedIn profiles for business owners and content creators.

961
01:09:56,120 --> 01:10:01,120
So obviously the design element comes into like the banner, the photo, featured section thumbnails.

962
01:10:01,120 --> 01:10:06,120
My girlfriend's a copywriter, so she manages all the copy, you know, back sections, headlines.

963
01:10:06,120 --> 01:10:09,120
We do all the SEO for searchability as well.

964
01:10:09,120 --> 01:10:12,120
So that's what we do at the minute. That's all we specialize in.

965
01:10:12,120 --> 01:10:19,120
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.

966
01:10:19,120 --> 01:10:22,120
The same age as the girl in Afghanistan.

967
01:10:22,120 --> 01:10:34,120
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.

968
01:10:34,120 --> 01:10:41,120
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.

969
01:10:41,120 --> 01:10:45,120
So you've developed these habit habits. You mentioned meditation as well.

970
01:10:45,120 --> 01:10:55,120
What did you lean into again after that six months where it kind of had that resurgence?

971
01:10:55,120 --> 01:11:04,120
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.

972
01:11:04,120 --> 01:11:13,120
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.

973
01:11:13,120 --> 01:11:17,120
When you have real anxiety, it is like paralyzing.

974
01:11:17,120 --> 01:11:19,120
Like people don't realize they think, oh yeah, I've got anxiety.

975
01:11:19,120 --> 01:11:24,120
It's like you ain't got anxiety until you're like almost hitting the floor thinking you're having a heart attack.

976
01:11:24,120 --> 01:11:28,120
Do you know what I mean? You know, so I always used to keep some on me at the time.

977
01:11:28,120 --> 01:11:35,120
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.

978
01:11:35,120 --> 01:11:48,120
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.

979
01:11:48,120 --> 01:11:58,120
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.

980
01:11:58,120 --> 01:12:05,120
You know, so that's when I decided to leave, you know, and it was just purely just fitness.

981
01:12:05,120 --> 01:12:15,120
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.

982
01:12:15,120 --> 01:12:22,120
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.

983
01:12:22,120 --> 01:12:29,120
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.

984
01:12:29,120 --> 01:12:37,120
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.

985
01:12:37,120 --> 01:12:42,120
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.

986
01:12:42,120 --> 01:12:49,120
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.

987
01:12:49,120 --> 01:12:53,120
You know, I started doing that. Just started doing five mile off the bar. I struggled to do five mile at a time.

988
01:12:53,120 --> 01:13:00,120
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.

989
01:13:00,120 --> 01:13:05,120
I was like, right, I'm ready to go CrossFit. I went to CrossFit. Started doing that. Got absolutely beasted.

990
01:13:05,120 --> 01:13:10,120
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.

991
01:13:10,120 --> 01:13:16,120
You know, so, yeah, fitness really helps. You know, it's good.

992
01:13:16,120 --> 01:13:23,120
I should meditate more than I do. I know meditation helps a lot. I need to put more effort into that.

993
01:13:23,120 --> 01:13:32,120
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.

994
01:13:32,120 --> 01:13:36,120
That's a lot. What do you use as far as meditation? Do you use an app?

995
01:13:36,120 --> 01:13:39,120
Zen, Zen music on YouTube. There's some really good tracks on YouTube actually.

996
01:13:39,120 --> 01:13:48,120
And I've just had soundbathing meditation suggested to me with the, what they call them, the bowls.

997
01:13:48,120 --> 01:13:56,120
Oh, yeah, the prayer bowls. Yeah, the things that they tap like, you know, and it's quite nice to listen to.

998
01:13:56,120 --> 01:13:59,120
But yeah, the Zen stuff really, really puts me in deep. Beautiful.

999
01:13:59,120 --> 01:14:06,120
Because the reason I ask, I use Headspace and that one, I mean, they have as little as a minute meditation.

1000
01:14:06,120 --> 01:14:11,120
So on those micro steps again, that's kind of a good one because it's guided.

1001
01:14:11,120 --> 01:14:17,120
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.

1002
01:14:17,120 --> 01:14:21,120
No speech, because now you had time to be eased in and they just kind of let you focus on your breathing.

1003
01:14:21,120 --> 01:14:27,120
But that's a very good baby steps app to get you back into meditation.

1004
01:14:27,120 --> 01:14:32,120
Yeah, like if anybody's not done meditation before, I've heard a lot of people say, I've tried it doesn't work.

1005
01:14:32,120 --> 01:14:39,120
The problem with meditation and you'll know this if you meditate is when you first start, a minute feels like an hour.

1006
01:14:39,120 --> 01:14:42,120
It's like Jesus Christ, I've only been in a minute trying to meditate.

1007
01:14:42,120 --> 01:14:48,120
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.

1008
01:14:48,120 --> 01:14:53,120
You know, Jesus Christ, an hour has passed and you like your energy levels are just through the roof.

1009
01:14:53,120 --> 01:15:00,120
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.

1010
01:15:00,120 --> 01:15:08,120
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.

1011
01:15:08,120 --> 01:15:11,120
But yeah, I used to go so deep into meditation.

1012
01:15:11,120 --> 01:15:15,120
The only way I'd come out of it is I knew I'd stop breathing because I'd gone so far in.

1013
01:15:15,120 --> 01:15:20,120
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.

1014
01:15:20,120 --> 01:15:22,120
I don't know how long it might have been just a couple of seconds.

1015
01:15:22,120 --> 01:15:25,120
But I'd come around like Jesus Christ and I'd be buzzing.

1016
01:15:25,120 --> 01:15:30,120
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.

1017
01:15:30,120 --> 01:15:37,120
It was addictive. You know, so when you get into it properly, like all these monks and that they must love life.

1018
01:15:37,120 --> 01:15:43,120
Just meditating all the time like. And the Buddhas are like, yeah.

1019
01:15:43,120 --> 01:15:46,120
I want to hit one more area and then we'll go to some closing questions.

1020
01:15:46,120 --> 01:15:52,120
But when I when I talk to people about time in combat, there's two areas that we don't normally hear.

1021
01:15:52,120 --> 01:15:58,120
And you you organically let us through one, which was, you know, regardless of the politics that put you in a place,

1022
01:15:58,120 --> 01:16:01,120
you know, what was some of the horrible people that you encountered?

1023
01:16:01,120 --> 01:16:04,120
And obviously these people in this case are trying to murder you and your friends.

1024
01:16:04,120 --> 01:16:10,120
So it's pretty clear. But the other thing that we don't really hear on news very much is kindness and compassion,

1025
01:16:10,120 --> 01:16:15,120
which is something that you tried to do at that moment with that little four year old through your whole time in uniform.

1026
01:16:15,120 --> 01:16:19,120
What were some of the the kind of memories when it came to kindness and compassion,

1027
01:16:19,120 --> 01:16:22,120
even if you were in a combat heavy area?

1028
01:16:27,120 --> 01:16:30,120
So not necessarily on deployment, but.

1029
01:16:31,120 --> 01:16:39,120
But when we went to Oman for training, we meet a lot of people who live in Oman.

1030
01:16:41,120 --> 01:16:47,120
You know, you're mixing with the locals, you're sharing their culture, you know, and helping them out.

1031
01:16:47,120 --> 01:16:52,120
And it's an amazing like people. If you haven't been to Oman, it's an amazing country.

1032
01:16:52,120 --> 01:16:55,120
And it's crazy, right? So I'll just quickly tell you a little bit about that.

1033
01:16:56,120 --> 01:17:05,120
But when when they did several times throughout the day when they meditate, not meditate, pray, sorry, and they pray in certain direction.

1034
01:17:05,120 --> 01:17:10,120
And you'll see the roads, the bypasses, the motorways, everything comes to a stop.

1035
01:17:10,120 --> 01:17:16,120
Everybody gets out the vehicles. They go to the roundabouts because the roundabouts are massive like like like shrines almost.

1036
01:17:16,120 --> 01:17:21,120
And they all get on the on the on the roundabouts and outside the vehicles, put them out on the floor.

1037
01:17:21,120 --> 01:17:25,120
They do their prayer and they all get back in the vehicle as if it never happened and just crack on with the day.

1038
01:17:25,120 --> 01:17:27,120
And it's like this place is nuts.

1039
01:17:27,120 --> 01:17:31,120
It's so good to watch their culture and their food is amazing.

1040
01:17:31,120 --> 01:17:38,120
And we had a cut throat shave with the proper shave and they do head massages and just getting really into cultures.

1041
01:17:38,120 --> 01:17:40,120
I love it. I love meeting other cultures.

1042
01:17:40,120 --> 01:17:44,120
But yeah, that that's like kind of a little bit of a culture connection.

1043
01:17:44,120 --> 01:17:49,120
But the compassion stuff, obviously, the little girl tried to help.

1044
01:17:49,120 --> 01:17:53,120
You know, like another thing we did, I can't remember what year it was.

1045
01:17:53,120 --> 01:17:55,120
I think it's 2009.

1046
01:17:55,120 --> 01:18:00,120
There was a flood in the Lake District or a bridge collapse in Lake District.

1047
01:18:00,120 --> 01:18:02,120
And we had to go out and put a temporary bridge in as engineers.

1048
01:18:02,120 --> 01:18:04,120
That's what we do.

1049
01:18:04,120 --> 01:18:11,120
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.

1050
01:18:11,120 --> 01:18:23,120
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.

1051
01:18:23,120 --> 01:18:26,120
And the military do a lot of good stuff.

1052
01:18:26,120 --> 01:18:27,120
They do.

1053
01:18:27,120 --> 01:18:36,120
But there's just some things that happen in the very finer details that affect people in quite an impactful way.

1054
01:18:36,120 --> 01:18:45,120
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.

1055
01:18:45,120 --> 01:18:58,120
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.

1056
01:18:58,120 --> 01:19:14,120
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.

1057
01:19:14,120 --> 01:19:19,120
media does very poorly is they kind of just tarred an entire nation with the same brush.

1058
01:19:19,120 --> 01:19:23,120
So right now, supposedly, all Russians want to be in Ukraine.

1059
01:19:23,120 --> 01:19:25,120
I doubt highly all Russians want to be in Ukraine.

1060
01:19:25,120 --> 01:19:36,120
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.

1061
01:19:36,120 --> 01:19:41,120
But the thing is, so like one of the biggest things that the Navy do is humanitarian assistance.

1062
01:19:41,120 --> 01:19:46,120
That is one of their biggest, if not the biggest operation they do.

1063
01:19:46,120 --> 01:20:00,120
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.

1064
01:20:00,120 --> 01:20:07,120
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.

1065
01:20:07,120 --> 01:20:15,120
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.

1066
01:20:15,120 --> 01:20:28,120
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.

1067
01:20:28,120 --> 01:20:31,120
Yeah, you get brainwashed in the military and it's all about killing. It's like no, it's bullshit.

1068
01:20:31,120 --> 01:20:44,120
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.

1069
01:20:44,120 --> 01:21:10,120
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.

1070
01:21:10,120 --> 01:21:15,120
A lot of the time, you know, especially if you've been to like operational deployment.

1071
01:21:15,120 --> 01:21:19,120
But the stuff the military can do is phenomenal.

1072
01:21:19,120 --> 01:21:32,120
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.

1073
01:21:32,120 --> 01:21:46,120
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.

1074
01:21:46,120 --> 01:21:58,120
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.

1075
01:21:58,120 --> 01:22:02,120
Beautiful. Well, one more thing just before we transition.

1076
01:22:02,120 --> 01:22:10,120
You kind of walked us through, you know, the challenges that you had the tools that you found to apply to yourself.

1077
01:22:10,120 --> 01:22:24,120
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

1078
01:22:24,120 --> 01:22:37,120
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.

1079
01:22:37,120 --> 01:22:47,120
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.

1080
01:22:47,120 --> 01:22:57,120
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.

1081
01:22:57,120 --> 01:23:05,120
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.

1082
01:23:05,120 --> 01:23:22,120
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.

1083
01:23:22,120 --> 01:23:29,120
You know so it's hard to, I think it's almost impossible for the military to manage that.

1084
01:23:29,120 --> 01:23:45,120
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.

1085
01:23:45,120 --> 01:23:48,120
So, it's not going to, they're not going to be able to do that.

1086
01:23:48,120 --> 01:24:01,120
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.

1087
01:24:01,120 --> 01:24:10,120
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.

1088
01:24:10,120 --> 01:24:18,120
And people have been suffering for over 10 years have been almost fully recovered within six months so they're trying.

1089
01:24:18,120 --> 01:24:35,120
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

1090
01:24:35,120 --> 01:24:51,120
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.

1091
01:24:51,120 --> 01:24:53,120
And that's why I focus on men.

1092
01:24:53,120 --> 01:25:07,120
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.

1093
01:25:07,120 --> 01:25:17,120
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.

1094
01:25:17,120 --> 01:25:23,120
They tend to take their time and plan a bit better when they come out and they use the resources that they've got.

1095
01:25:23,120 --> 01:25:31,120
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.

1096
01:25:31,120 --> 01:25:58,120
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.

1097
01:25:58,120 --> 01:26:03,120
I was like, I'm in a bad way.

1098
01:26:03,120 --> 01:26:11,120
And I talked about my struggles and PTSD and what gone on on deployment in the video just came out public.

1099
01:26:11,120 --> 01:26:19,120
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.

1100
01:26:19,120 --> 01:26:23,120
And they can't, they haven't got the confidence to talk about it.

1101
01:26:23,120 --> 01:26:38,120
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.

1102
01:26:38,120 --> 01:26:49,120
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.

1103
01:26:49,120 --> 01:26:55,120
I've started off with speaking to any men who have faced trauma and now suffer with PTSD and depression.

1104
01:26:55,120 --> 01:27:04,120
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.

1105
01:27:04,120 --> 01:27:14,120
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.

1106
01:27:14,120 --> 01:27:19,120
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.

1107
01:27:19,120 --> 01:27:36,120
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.

1108
01:27:36,120 --> 01:27:53,120
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.

1109
01:27:53,120 --> 01:28:04,120
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.

1110
01:28:04,120 --> 01:28:08,120
And then I'm going to drive around the UK and I'm going to go and interview these people face to face.

1111
01:28:08,120 --> 01:28:21,120
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?

1112
01:28:21,120 --> 01:28:34,120
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.

1113
01:28:34,120 --> 01:28:44,120
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.

1114
01:28:44,120 --> 01:28:51,120
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.

1115
01:28:51,120 --> 01:29:03,120
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.

1116
01:29:03,120 --> 01:29:15,120
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.

1117
01:29:15,120 --> 01:29:20,120
So I'm trying to get as much of the funds together to get everything covered as I can.

1118
01:29:20,120 --> 01:29:38,120
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.

1119
01:29:38,120 --> 01:29:53,120
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.

1120
01:29:53,120 --> 01:30:02,120
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.

1121
01:30:02,120 --> 01:30:15,120
Thanks for having me on then, I really appreciate it.