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with their CEO Francisco Morales.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always. My name is James Gearing.
And this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show,
Army veteran and holder of one of the longest sniper shots in history, Craig Harrison.
So in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from growing up around horses,
his journey into the military, serving in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan,
the impact on his family's safety after the army released his name to the media,
his own very powerful mental health story, his book, The Longest Kill, and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of over 1000 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories
so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Craig Harrison. Enjoy.
Well, Craig, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
That's no worries, James. It's a pleasure to be a guest.
Thank you.
It's a pleasure to be a guest.
So where on planet Earth are we finding you your evening, my afternoon?
So I'm based in Southampton, north of England.
And yeah, just we had a horrendous storm.
So we're just getting over that at the moment. Everything was being flooded and sort of, I think, not like America.
I think when we get a storm or snow, I think our country just shuts down.
We can't handle it.
Yeah, my sister was flying back from Portugal yesterday back to England and I think their flight was delayed because of all that.
So I won't show you the skies outside my window in Florida because it probably won't help.
Yeah, probably not.
All right. Well, then the very first question, I'd love to start at the very beginning of your timeline.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what your parents did.
Excuse me. How many siblings?
So I was born in Chatham, Gloucestershire, which is near the Cotswolds in England.
And yeah, I've got one brother and my upbringing, my upbringing was good.
You know, my mum was a Victorian.
She she sort of ruled us with an iron fist sort of thing, you know.
But it made us better people, made us better adults at the end of the day.
And yeah, my father left when I was really, really young.
So it was a single parent family.
My grandfather was my father figure.
And he I sort of looked up to him hell of a lot.
And he sort of guided me.
I was closer to him than my brother was to him sort of thing.
You know, we had more in common.
I think now looking at it, my brother sort of got my my father's sort of like sort of aspects.
And I followed my grandfather's aspects as well.
So and yeah, very, very fortunate to have horses when I was younger as well.
And that's where my love of animals come.
You know, my mum was very into dogs and animals and all sorts.
And yeah, my brother really wasn't that way inclined animal wise.
He was more fashion sort of.
And I was sort of we're sort of split.
I went the animal side and he he went the fashion side and worried about going out and what it looked like really.
But he joined the army.
He's a year older than me.
And funny enough, he joined the King's Troop Rall Horse Artillery,
which was bizarre because he had no interest in horses when we were younger.
So yeah, yeah.
And I wish I knew that when he was younger, he could have given me a hand, you know, but here's what it is.
And I sort of like joined the Armed Forces, sort of like guided to join the Armed Forces.
My family have always been Armed Forces.
My my grandfather was REF, my dad was REF, my mum was REF.
So, you know, and I wanted to become a farrier and I wanted to get a trade.
And where I was in Cheltenham, there was no apprenticeships going around.
So I joined the army and I joined the Household Cavalry to become a farrier.
That's why that's why I joined the army for originally anyway, not to be a sniper or anything, but to get a trade.
And then once I've done with the army, leave the army, open my own business and become a farrier.
And that was the whole plan, you know, and I didn't have a plan B, C or D.
I just had a plan A, you know, and that's all I was focused on.
But it didn't work out.
I grew up in Bath, just outside Bath, and my dad was a horse vet.
So I grew up around farm. I was on a farm and grew up around animals.
So expand on that a little bit.
Talk to me about the relationship with the dogs and the horses when you were young.
Well, I think I had more relationship with the horses.
I was show jumping. I did a lot of triathlons, like running, swimming, riding and shooting.
I was very heavily into that.
But when I was younger, I did a lot of ginkgana stuff, you know, the sports on the horses, like vaulting off and on, doing games on the horses and stuff like that.
I got quite heavy into that when I was younger.
And then I started show jumping and then started doing triathlons.
And sort of like that's where my that's where my love for fitness came from as well, as well as horses.
And I just felt, you know, I used to get up in the morning, sort of deal with the horses and then go to school, come back again and finish off what I didn't finish off in the morning.
So I had a very shouted childhood.
I know I had a brother, but we never got I we never saw eye to eye.
So I never really done anything with him.
I was always on my own doing the horses, doing the animals and stuff like that.
So, yeah, and I think, you know, when school finished, I didn't do football or rugby or hockey or anything.
I just came straight home.
So, yeah, my childhood was very shouted.
But the love for animals was very strong with me, you know, to this day now, you know, when you look back now with this 2024 lens, knowing that equine therapy, canine therapy is helping a lot of our men and women in uniform.
What elements of that do you see in your childhood, especially if you like you said, you almost felt like an only child and you had that kind of companionship then?
Yeah, my first horse was he was called Kipling, you know, loved him to bits, absolutely loved him.
And he wasn't a show jumper. He was nothing.
He was just a heavy clobber hopper horse.
You get on and do a hack with him. Come home.
And, you know, and then as I progressed in my horse career, I had to get a better horse.
But I kept Kipling, you know, and it just I just they know animals know animals sense your vulnerability and they sense your what sort of person you are, you know, and they help you.
They calm you down. They calm your heart rate down.
You know, stroking animals or whatever. And it's funny because equine therapy now, they a horse won't go near you.
And when you're a rat, when you calm down and relax, then the horse will approach you.
So it makes you calm down because you're not going to experience the touch of a horse if you're quite erratic.
So you have to relax and calm down. And the same with the dog as well.
You know, my first dog, Betsy bless her.
You know, I had it for 17 years and I registered her as my emotional support dog and I took her everywhere because she was my my crutch that I relied on.
If I was having a moment or a flashback or anxiety or panic attack, she knew she wasn't trained, but she knew what I was like, you know.
And yeah, it's just animals, animals. I love them. Love them.
And some people say I love animals more than people. You know, it's probably right, really, sometimes. Yeah.
I had a guy on the show really kind of like the real world inspiration for the whole the horse whisperer story.
His name is Buck Braneman and he grew up. He was a boy.
He and his brother were his dad was extremely kind of violent and abusive.
And they were if you say like an old, old kind of serial commercial back in the day, you have these kids and they're doing that lassoing and stuff.
Well, his dad wasn't a cowboy at all, but he kind of forced this kind of entertainment element on his children and made money from their career.
And Buck found himself really being mentored by a police officer originally.
And he got onto the ranches and found actually about being a horseman.
And now he's an incredible, incredible guy. But when you talk about equine therapy, he's the one that I always think of.
But he always said that a horse is the mirror to your soul.
Just like you said, you know, if the horse is kind of being sketchy, that means that you're being sketchy and you have to calm yourself down.
Yeah, they sent you same with a dog.
The dog won't approach you when you're latic, but when you calm, then it will come up to you, you know.
But it's a shame because we got equine therapy in England, but it's so expensive.
It's so expensive to do.
And I don't know why it's so expensive because we need stuff out there to help veterans or people with mental health issues, you know.
But it all comes to a price at the end of the day.
Yeah, that's weird because I mean, on the farm, we were, you know, animals were staying while they were being treated or sometimes they were just boarding.
And so there's so many horses I know that need to be exercised and need to be ridden.
So you'd think that, yeah, you could bring a group in to a place that has a lot of horses on there and allow them to work with them.
And then you're killing two birds with one stone then.
Exactly, exactly.
But I suppose everyone needs to make a living at the end of the day, you know.
Absolutely. All right.
Well, then from the career side, you mentioned about what you were doing as far as, you know, your passions when you were young.
What were you dreaming of becoming?
Was it already the military with so many military members in your family or was there something else?
Yeah, I think I was just guided that way by my mum, you know, to join the military because she knew where we lived.
There was no prospects for jobs or anything, you know.
If anyone's been to Cheltenham, it's full of elderly, you know.
And I think this goes back years now, but I remember joining the army going back because I never went back at all after I joined the army.
I think I went back for a couple of weeks and met people that I met at school that seeing the same girlfriend they saw at school and doing dead end jobs,
but they haven't left Cheltenham, you know, and they haven't explored any avenues.
And I think my mum wanted the best out of me and yeah, and my brother.
And she said, look, I want you to join the army.
And I think at the age of 10 years old, I had aspects of joining the military, you know.
And like I said, I didn't have a plan B, you know, it was the military.
And then it was my grandfather said to me, get a trade, get a trade.
I wanted to be a farrier and something to fall back on, you know, when I left the army.
And, you know, because you hear so many veterans lead the armed forces and they've got nothing, you know.
And I wanted and I always say this, I wanted the army to work for me, not work for the army, as in to gather as much information,
as much courses that have benefited me in civic street.
But I was dyslexic when I joined the army and I struggled, I struggled in the forge, you know, when I joined the household cavalry.
I really struggled, but my practical skills were on par, but my written work wasn't.
So and I didn't make it. I didn't make it into the forge.
But that was my plan A. I didn't have a plan B.
What was it about blacksmithing that drew you in?
I had one of my dad's blacksmiths basically that would come to the farm.
Mick Strickland was his name. If you think about the stereotypical gypsy, you know, he had the neck chief,
he had the missing teeth from a flat nose from all his fistfights, he smoked rollies.
I mean, absolute classic, you know, and then a man's man as well.
But he was hard as nails, but that was his craft.
But when I think about what Mick did, I don't think about academics and book work.
I think about, you know, as you said, what you're actually doing in the forge.
So what was it that drew you to smithing specifically?
One, to get a trade. And secondly, my love for horses, you know,
knowing the anatomy, knowing the reveteries sides as well as riding and competing.
Just everything. I just wanted to know everything about the equine life.
And when you join the House of Cavalry and you can either become a riding instructor or you can become a farrier.
And, yeah, my love for horses, I should have become a riding instructor.
But I think my grandfather always guided me saying, look, you need to benefit from the army.
And I think, yeah, to be the forge. And it's just, you know, it's a workout for one.
And it's good money. It's good money in city street.
And that's what I wanted to do. And I wanted to get married at some point and provide for my family.
And you never see a poor farrier, but you see knackered farriers with their backs and all of that, you know.
And I'm six four as well, but all farriers are quite small.
But like I said, it never worked out. But it was a shame because, like I said, my practical skills were really good.
You know, putting the shoe on, taking the shoe off, making the shoe and stuff like that.
But when it comes to the veterinary side of stuff and the written side and the anatomy, I struggled with my writing, my reading and my writing.
And they didn't want that. So when when they set us homework, I was doing more illustration work.
More than written work. And they didn't want it. So that's a shame because now you look at education and we're realizing that, yeah, we all learn in different ways.
Like people, you know, they'll read textbooks or they'll make flashcards. I can't do that at all.
I have to take practice tests, get a shitload wrong and then go back and go, why did I get that wrong?
Now it makes sense to me. Now I get it. So we're all different. Yeah. Yeah. I used to the other courses I used to in the army.
Tanya, my wife, she used to help me all the time, test me all the time.
You know, if I was on guard, I used to text her questions.
She used to text me questions and then I used to text her the answer back.
But it got to the point where I was sleeping with dictaphone in.
So I'd go into a lesson, I'd put the dictaphone on and the instructors talking so I don't have to write down.
And at night I'll just plug me in because they say when you're asleep, you take so much information in, you know, even when you're asleep.
And that's what I used to do. And I wish I knew that skill when I was going through the far East stage because, you know, maybe I wouldn't be where I am now.
Maybe my path would have gone a different way. But I want to met my wife because my path would have gone somewhere different.
So it's fate. We're destined for things.
Absolutely. Well, you mentioned about failing at the forge then. Where did that take you in the military itself?
So my regiment split into two. So we've got the ceremonial side, we'll do troop in the colour, Queen's birthday, captain's escorts and all sorts of things.
They do open the state of parliament, the galas and stuff. And then you've got the armoured side, which is armoured reconnaissance, which they've changed the vehicle now.
But in my time, it was Spartans, Simitars, Sultans and stuff like that. And I loved it.
And I think because I didn't have a plan B, I went AWOL and joined the French Foreign Legion.
And I didn't last long in the French Foreign Legion because I told them the truth.
I said I was AWOL from the British Army and they said we don't accept people that are AWOL.
It's not like they used to years and years ago if you're a murderer or whatever, they used to take you, but they don't do that now.
So they kicked me out. I came back and they said that I was getting in a lot of trouble.
Could you think I was a single kid? I felt like a single kid when I was younger, very shouted.
Next thing I'm in the army in the centre of London with money in my pocket. I've never been drunk, never been in a fight, very shouted.
Next thing I know there's lights everywhere. I'm getting drunk. I'm fighting.
So the regiment in Knightsbridge made the decision to take me to Windsor.
And do you know what, James, I fucking flourished, absolutely flourished. And I never got in any drama, you know, once I went to Windsor because I was so engrossed in what I was doing.
You know, I like being out in the countryside. I like being on exercise. I like being a sneaky bastard.
I like just the way the EFOS is running the regiment. It was fantastic. And, you know, and that was that was my goal.
I didn't have aspects of being a sniper. I, you know, I'm just bobbing around in a little tank and it was brilliant.
When I think about I went to the University of North London, so I went from rural Bath area to North London.
And, you know, it was good. I mean, it served a purpose and it was different. But I've always felt when I've lived in cities, I've lived in Osaka, Japan, all kinds of places,
that when you squish that many people in together and you remove a lot of the green, it's kind of a recipe for disaster.
So did you find that growing up on a rural part of the UK, once you got back to the rural area, that was a big part of undoing some of the things that you created in the city of London?
Oh, massively, you know, and a lot of regrets, a lot of regrets, you know, some stuff I'd done in London, you know, and I'm glad I got out of London, you know, and I don't miss it.
I don't miss it to this day now. Tanya is her family are from London, well, her dad and all that.
But she likes going into London and I absolutely hate it because I just it's not me.
I'm a country boy and I always will be a country boy, you know, and I think a bit of depression set in there and then because
it was just moving a thousand miles an hour, London cities move a thousand miles an hour and you ever see on films or when somebody stands stationary and all the cars are going like that and you just stood there going, what the fuck is going on?
You know, and I didn't want to lose myself and I felt I was losing myself a lot in London.
So I was very grateful of the regiment taking me to Windsor, you know, it's probably saved my life in a way, massively.
I wrote a book a few years ago and kind of touched on the fact that it's so sad that someone can feel so alone in a city surrounded by literally millions of people.
I think just because you've got people around you doesn't mean you have a connection with people.
And do you know what, James, as well, I bought a camper van not so long ago because I love camper vans and I had to get a train to go and pick it up and I went got on the train and as the train went by I counted the people at the platform and they're all on these.
30 people I counted with their heads down, just clicking away and I'm thinking where's where have we gone as people, you know, where have we gone?
And I just think it's very sad, you know, and yeah, I just people need to experience more in their life than technology.
And I think the countryside gives you that, you know, and gives you that release of depression as well. Absolutely.
I was listening to a stand up comedian not long ago and he was talking about mindfulness because I think I think we're roughly the same age.
I'm 50 now and he's like back in the day, everything you did was mindfulness, especially when you grew up on a farm.
You're like talking to the sheep was mindfulness, you know, having a poo and reading the the death toll bottle just so you got something to look at.
Everything was mindfulness, you know, and now and I say as a grown up, you know, I see that pull of that phone myself.
I run my business through, you know, a lot of it and I we communicated through social media, but it is it is such a pull.
And if you are not making a deliberate effort to not look at your phone, just like you said, you'll be you'll be in a supermarket.
And all you got to do is wait, you know, a minute and a half and you'll be there to check out and you whip out your phone.
You know, it's like we have become slaves to it and each and every one of us has to kind of really be deliberate and just leave it in your damn pocket or leave it at home.
I do that when I walk my dog, so I don't even bring my phone with me.
I don't. I'll leave it here. Tanya goes, you got your phone on you?
I said no, I haven't meant to get old of you because she goes her thing and I do mine.
I think it's one of those things I haven't got it stuck to me permanently.
So I think that's the older generation, you know.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, walk me through how you found yourself deployed in the Balkans.
So basically, that's my first tour was Bosnia and the regiment were doing a lot of Bosnia tours because there was nothing more going on in the world.
So we were just there to keep the peace, you know, and you get the odd firefight between the locals and stuff like that.
But mainly we were there to patrol the streets and to, yeah, to keep the peace, stop the ethnic cleansing, which was horrendous.
Yeah, so many memories of Bosnia itself, you know, when they got like crosses on the door and they got a blue one, they got the sympathizers will have a blue cross or something.
And the next one won't have a cross or they get pillaged.
And absolutely horrendous how they got treated.
And we had to stand by and watch that going on because we had hands were tied for certain stuff like engaging the enemy, stopping the pillaging and stuff like that.
We were there to keep the peace.
But there was a limit on what we could do.
And it was hard to see these people suffering.
You know, I ended up doing three tours of Bosnia because you do six months and come back and then go back out again, train for another six months and then go back out again.
So we're just bouncing tours. That's what we call it bouncing.
So, you know, I quite liked it, you know, I quite I enjoyed going away.
I was a single lad. I didn't have family.
My mum sort of like once I joined the army, she sort of lost that contact with me a little bit.
And I wasn't phoning home all the time. I was just just getting on my job, you know, and there was other lads in the army like that as well that didn't have family, didn't have girlfriends or anything like that.
So we just hung out, you know, and yeah, that they were the Bosnia tours.
So and then slowly the tours got worse and worse.
What did you see? And this could include Afghanistan, Iraq as well.
But, you know, in Bosnia, you're still in Europe, you know, supposedly was supposed to be more kind of westernized and, you know, civilized.
And I use that term empathetically, not talking ill of people in the Middle East.
But when you reflect on history, for example, I heard Sebastian Junger talking about being in Sarajevo and the regular people were trying to get on with their life while all this was going on.
And over and over again, to me, it appears that there's this repeat element of the tyrannical few, the really, you know, greed and power hungry few that caused death and destruction for the masses.
Look at Gaza, look at Ukraine, look at all these things.
I don't think most Russian people dreamt of entering the Ukraine.
They were just getting on with their life, you know.
So what would you especially with this interesting lens in Bosnia, what were you seeing as far as the regular people versus the people behind the violence?
There were genuine people, you know.
Sort of Bosnia, genuine people, happy to see you, but annoyed with you because we couldn't help all the time because our hands were tied.
Because if we got heavily involved and that's Serbia kicking off with us as well, do you know what I mean, with the Albanians.
And then Kosovo, you know, our job in Kosovo is to kick the Serbians out of Kosovo itself because they were invading it and pushing them back over to the Serbian border.
And then we're only meant to be there for three months as a fighting force.
And then another load will come in, another battle group will come in and take our place.
But because typical army way, there wasn't enough bots on the ground, we ended up being a peacekeeping force, you know, as well.
So you've got somebody down the road that was shooting at you one minute and the next day you're giving them a football and some colouring crayons and doing hearts and minds.
And then it goes to Iraq, you know, Iraq was all about oil.
Definitely all about oil.
And so Afghan was all about, yeah, getting the terrorism.
But at the end of the day, when you stop and think about Afghan, the 10 years of fighting and how how quick the Taliban went through everything in a month to take Kabul, it was all set up.
Everything set up, you know, and it makes me feel was it was it fucking worth it?
You know, Afghan, was it worth it? Not really. All to do with money or to do with underhanded table deals and stuff like that.
Beyond my pay scale, I was just there doing the job.
You know, Iraq's the same. Do you know, they had no IEDs in Afghanistan.
So when Iraq sort of shut down, all the IEDs sort of emigrated to Afghan and it was just horrendous, you know, and go back to Kosovo again, you know.
What was that all about? I don't know.
I don't know.
Invading another country.
And then we kick them out and then we end up digging up mass graves and putting bodies in bags and stuff like that.
And it's horrendous, horrendous.
I think Kosovo was my worst toll for genocide was what would be Kosovo without a doubt and dealing with it and making it hard to see what a human being can do to another human being.
You know, I think this is this is the conversation that we need to listen to your voices the most the actual men and women of the military from around the world that were on the ground, because, you know, we're getting our news through arguably propaganda to say, you know, say, for example, because it's more pro war.
I would argue if you're watching Fox News here in America, it's like rah rah rah.
Yeah, you know, Team America, World Police, let's go. And but I remember after 9 11 listening to the response and going into Iraq and going, am I the only person that is questioning this is a completely different country?
I think if the US attacked the UK, and then the UK came after Mexico, you know, it's, it's close, but it's a different country. And so that was mind boggling. And then I just spoke to Tulsi Gabbard a few years ago, a few years ago, a few months ago.
And I was asking her as well, if, as we have seen, there are so many companies that make billions of dollars when we are war, where's the checks and balances to stop us going to war, you know, and you listen to the infrastructure, you know, Halliburton, Halliburton, I think it was, but you know, the Cheney and all these people in our, you know, government here, whose companies made billions and billions of dollars,
you know, while men and women come home in coffins draped in flags. At what point do we just that the human beings of the world, the regular citizens, take a step back and go, what is the common denominator? It's always a small group of people that initiate these conflicts, and it's our children that pay the price.
Oh, massively, without a doubt. And I think I looked into it, the Iraq stuff, and when Tony Blair and these head scientists guy went into Iraq to find the chemical nuclear weapons that he had, he come back to England, saw Tony Blair and said, they haven't got any.
And he goes, they have got any, go back and do it again. He went back over, couldn't find any, came back, written a report out, said, they haven't got any. And then two weeks later, he was found in the woods, he committed suicide.
And then when they did an autopsy on him, they found that he slit his wrist, but they were so shallow that they wouldn't be enough to kill him.
And a month after that we went into Iraq, and they've got nuclear capability. So, you know, and when we were going from Kuwait into Iraq, it was just full of oil pipes, as far as the eye could see, full of oil pipes, and they were ready to pump the oil out of Iraq into Kuwait.
But the Iraqis knew this, and that's why they knocked all the oil heads off and set all the oil fields on fire, because they're not stupid. They knew it was like that, you know.
It's so sad.
There's a question that I ask everyone who's deployed and won't want to get to your journey as a sniper and all that, but just while we're kind of on this more ethical conversation.
We, especially here in the US, get a very polarized view when it comes to news here on war. So either, as I mentioned, they're kind of more right leaning, kill them all, like God saw them out, or the left leaning, they're all baby killers.
And in the middle, as I mentioned before, are our men and women who actually go out there with the country's flag on their shoulder.
There's a two part question. The first part, regardless of the politics, sent you over there, and you've kind of touched on this with Bosnia already. Were there moments where you realized that, yes, there are some horrendous people that do need to be addressed in this particular country?
Yeah, because you're doing a job at the end of the day, and you're trained to do that job, you know. If you don't fight, they're going to shoot you.
And I remember my wife saying to me, she said, yeah, but they've got families as well. They've got a wife, they've got kids, you know, they've got a life.
And I said, yeah, but it's weird, isn't it? Say if I was Afghan and I was talking to you, I'd say exactly the same thing about the British troops.
You know, saying, yeah, I've got a family, they've got a family, and that's what it is, like, tit for tat, you know, but you've got to survive. And going back to what we were saying about the point.
So when we was in Afghan, we were going into villages and we were discouraging people to stop growing opium and we were giving them oats and wheat. And we were saying, there we go, there's oats and wheat.
Grow this instead of opium and you'll get, you know, we'll look after you. But you think we're in that village and then we fuck off for a few days.
And then we come back and everyone's dead in that village. All right. Because we speak to the elders and they said it's more profitable us to grow opium because the Taliban protect us.
And once we've got the harvesting, they give us money so we can live off, you know, so we're doing the wrong thing by encouraging them to do the right thing.
But they're suffering for it. And going back to what you were saying about how they approached us, how they responded for us being there, they didn't like us because we were encouraging them to do something they didn't want to do because the Taliban protected them.
And if they didn't grow the opium, they get all shot.
Talk to me about the opium. It's really interesting when I started this podcast and again organically in conversations just like this, you know, there would be it would kind of find itself on on that conversation.
And early in the podcast, the first probably four years, people were like super tight lipped about discussing that at all.
The reason why it would even go there is my lens as a firefighter paramedic was I see we see my community, the actual horrendous results of the prohibition of drugs, what that does empowering the underworld, the addiction, the homelessness, the sex work, all the things.
And we see it clear as day because we respond to it with the last person some of these people see.
But then you start hearing about four years ago, five years ago, maybe people started, you know, opening up and saying, yeah, it was, you know, it was supplying funding terrorism.
So to me, again, this prohibition conversation, if people understood that firstly, the psychedelics and MDMA that are helping our veterans are completely demonized and a lot of them have to go to different countries to get the therapy for their service for that country.
But secondly, that that same prohibition prohibition actually funded the terrorism as well.
So what was your lens on opium in this conflict?
Horrendous drug. Do you know what I mean?
Very addictive drug.
We never we saw it growing.
And we also saw a hell of a lot of it because the tours that I'd done were like winter tours.
So when it's still hot there, but when it comes to harvesting the opium, you know, it's all done in dusted and round the back of the buildings, you just saw stacks of dried up opium poppies with the scrapes on because that's what they do.
They scrape the head and then it bleeds out a white sap.
And that's what they harvest.
And that's that's the opium.
But a lot of cannabis out there as well. And they had massive fields of cannabis.
And we said to them, you can grow cannabis, but long as it's for your own consumption.
And they're going, yeah, yeah, of course it is.
But it was fucking fields of it.
You know, we used to patrol on our feet and we used to patrol through the fields of cannabis and stuff like that.
A funny story was we was on a patrol and our job was to keep the left flank.
And every now and again, we put a mini flare up and one of the mini flares went into one of the cannabis fields and set on fire.
And next thing you know, all the wind changed and it was coming our way.
And everyone was like getting a bit smacked.
So we were just lads were getting the munchies, everything.
So we go, come on, we need to move out of the way.
And we're going to put this field burn, you know.
But yeah, but you'll never stop it because once you stop the source, another source will take its place.
So these people saying, let's cut the head off a snake.
Yeah, but there's thousands of snakes out there.
Yeah. Yeah.
And yeah, it's money. It's money.
And the locals got good money off the Taliban for growing opium and protected.
We couldn't do that. We couldn't do that.
It was too a bigger job for us for the scale of the country to how many people we had out on the field on the grounds.
It was too big for us to cope with that.
Well, it's interesting with that head of the snake analogy, because how you actually cut the head off the snake is you take away the customers, the consumers.
And America, for example, consumes 75 percent of the world's opiates, and we only make up four percent of the world's population.
So by criminalizing addiction, we've empowered even the Taliban.
You actually put someone who's struggling with addiction in the hands of the medical community rather than a prison.
Now, all of a sudden, you truly cut the head off the snake because it's supply and demand.
And what a beautiful thing it would be that down the road, Afghanistan is sought after for coffee, avocados, oats, you know, whatever that crop would be, because there's just simply no demand for opium anymore.
So they can't terrorize the villages.
Yeah. Yeah. But it's money, isn't it? It's big money.
You know, it would never stop. Addiction is a horrible thing.
And your brains are a fantastic thing. And once it gets addiction, but you want more, more, more.
You like you just, you know, your feet, like you said, you're feeding that head of the snake.
Absolutely. That's why I think, like I said, you got you got to decriminalize addiction, not smuggling, not selling, but addiction and then start healing those people that are hurting.
That's the only way that we do it.
Well, I mentioned that other question was a two part question, the other side of it before we get to the sniping side.
What we also don't hear on these polarized news stations are the kindness and compassion of our men and women in uniform.
So whether it was, you know, the people that you worked, you were protecting the indigenous forces, your own people.
What was some of the memories that you have of kindness and compassion amid some of these combat zones?
The majority of the time is when children suffer, you know, children hitting IEDs, getting shot in a firefight and stuff like that.
And the insurgents do not stop and help. They just fuck off.
So the kids there with no leg or no arm or being shot and the locals sort of like take to us kindly because we ended up helping them.
And we call helicopters in to Kazevak the family out, take them to either Bastion or Basra or in Kosovo into Pristina, you know, to help them children and then give them prospective limbs and help them.
And people don't see that.
They just see we're fighting force trying to destruct everything.
But we're not. We're there at the end of day to stamp ourselves authority, but also to do hearts and minds for the locals, make their lives better, you know, to show that we're not just murderers or whatever they call us.
We're there to help you as well. We're here to help you if you get in trouble or drama or anything, you know.
I've been on helicopters before and, you know, lads, the helicopters landed and it's had families of Afghans or Iraqis in there.
And we put an hour wounded on as well. You know, we're not leaving them.
And I think that separates us from other insurgents massively.
I've heard so many stories like that, you know, whether it's PJs or nurses or doctors or, you know, the Cassavak crew, whoever it is, over and over again, you know, fighting to save the life even of an enemy combatant, you know, on occasion.
So these are the things that we don't hear.
And obviously the Taliban is spreading their propaganda.
You know, this happening in Gaza is happening again in Ukraine and Russia, Russia.
But it's also happening here. It's happening back home in the UK.
You know, we're only hearing the story they want us to hear like, oh, we need to keep fighting this war.
You know, there's weapons of mass destruction in there, you know.
And so all of us have to be aware of the propaganda that's being spouted.
And I think this is the enemy of that is hearing the real voices of the people that were there, whatever the event, whether it's the, you know, the hurricane that hit North Carolina or whether it's troops fighting in Afghanistan.
Yours are the voices that we need to hear, not some politician who's spinning things.
Oh, yeah. And like you said, it's propaganda.
You know, so the person sitting at home is going, fucking hell.
Yeah, I'll donate money. I'll do this. I'll do that.
But it's not really like it really is, you know.
No, absolutely not. Well, then walk me through your journey, even to even becoming a sniper.
And then let's kind of get to the the event that a lot of people like to talk to you about.
So I was in Iraq. This is my first tour.
And the Americans went to Baghdad.
We went to a place called Alamara and then we pushed on to Basra.
But we had to take over Alamara and fight in Alamara.
And we took over a massive football stadium, I think it was the Royal Irish and us fighting to get a foothold.
And it was like squeezing a tube of toothpaste.
You know, you squeeze it or the insurgent came out at one end and they all went off to Basra or Baghdad.
So I remember I had a bit of downtime from the lull and the battle.
And I went for a little walk and I went around the football stadium when I went up to the top.
And I remember seeing each post had about five snipers.
And I thought, you know, so I went up and I just started talking to this sniper and he didn't move his head or anything.
He just steady on the glass, you know, and he was just talking to me.
And I thought and every time I saw knocking around, the professionality was fucking second to none.
You know, and they got treated like adults as well because of the job they'd done as well.
And I thought this is what I want to do. This is what I want to become.
This is my fucking plan B, you know.
And so when you come off tour, you have to do career courses.
And when the Sergeant Major will come round near you end the tour and say, look, you've got to do this, you've got to do that, you've got to do that.
But if you've done them all, career courses, you can choose a course that you wish to do.
And I said, I want to become a sniper.
And there's no role in the household cavalry for snipers because we're armoured with reconnaissance.
And I thought fair enough. And I kept badgering, I kept badgering, I kept badgering.
And I remember going up to my squadron called Major and I said to him, I want to become a sniper.
And he just changed hands with the old one.
And I knew the new guy is a top bloke. And he said, OK, then I'll get you one.
I was like, brilliant.
But I sort of like didn't shoot myself in the foot really, because I thought fucking out.
I don't know much about sniping. I'm going down to the sniper school.
I haven't got no, I've had no pre-course.
Majority of these lads have been in the sniper platoons, in the guards or in the powers.
You know, they've been embedded with them for months, getting all the knowledge and everything.
Me, I've just got told, yeah, I can go down.
So I went down and with my kit bag and I didn't have a ghillie suit.
I didn't have off-board sticks, spot and scope, laser binos.
I didn't have a rifle, didn't have a scope. I didn't have anything.
And the caveat was that is that I supplied the minibus for the school.
So when we went to the ranges, the household cavalry supplied the minibus for me to get on the course.
And I thought, yeah, fucking brilliant.
But luckily there was a Coldstream guard there and he had loads of spare kit.
And he gave me a rifle, gave me a scope, finger spot and scope, wind meter, all the stuff that I needed.
And the ghillie suit that I made over the weekends, my off-board and my sticks and stuff like that.
And on your sniper's course, it's nine weeks or nine and a half weeks, if I remember rightly.
And you do a shooting phase first and that's two weeks.
And then after the two weeks shooting, once you've passed that, you become a sharpshooter.
And then you go on to the sniper phase, which is the sneaky beaky bit where you do the stalks,
where you do the seven skills to be a sniper.
And yeah, I fucking loved it, James. I fucking loved it.
And I excelled in it.
And 30 started our course and four passed. And that was me as well.
So yeah, chuffed a bit. And I went back to the regiment and the role of the household cavalry had changed.
And they started allowing snipers into the household cavalry.
And I was the first one in the household cavalry to become a sniper.
And it was my job then to give everyone a pre-course to go down to the sniper school to start, you know,
to start learning how to become a sniper.
And from there, I wanted to learn more.
So I did my basic snipering and then I did my section commanders and then I did my platoon commanders.
And then I did advanced snipering. So I couldn't go any higher than I already was, you know.
And then eventually after all my tours, I went down to sniper school while I learned.
And I was a teacher for two years down there. So yeah.
How much did growing up on a farm or growing up in rural Cheltenham factor into your success in the sniper school?
Oh, brilliant. Because I was used to being piss wet through. So I was all right.
I was quite happy with that. You know, I didn't mind getting dirty.
I didn't mind getting wet or anything like that.
You know, we used to say, saying, you know, they can't make you pregnant, can they?
Do you know what I mean? You know, and when you're crawling through a puddle, you're on your belt buckle and stuff like that,
it's got to end at some point. They can't keep making you and thrashing you.
It will. Everyone. Everything's got an end point.
And that's all focused in my mind. You know, I was.
Yeah, I was married. I met Tanya then and I was married and she gave me massive support, you know.
And I think having a stable relationship and a stable wife helped me through the course as well,
because, you know, she gave me inspiration, you know, to carry on my strength, to carry on.
Beautiful. I heard you talking on the Labbible podcast, which is a great interview, by the way.
And the other day there was a news article that Tupperware sadly has gone bankrupt now, it's closed down.
But I know that they would be moved to hear how they factored into your success as a sniper with your partner.
So talk to me about the importance of a partner, not only from the spotting side,
but from when you need to relieve yourself when you're in that prone position.
First of all, James, has Tupperware seriously gone bankrupt?
I believe so. But what a legacy they've left with what we're about to hear.
Good. My wife's going to be chuffed at this.
I think they said, at least on the article, they said that the downfall was that they were good, that it did last.
And so, you know, as we all know, we've all got those cupboards full of Tupperware or a version of.
So they kind of, you know, they outdid themselves by creating something that actually worked and lasted a long time.
So when you're a sniper, you work as a pair. There's no such thing as a lone wolf.
So in a section, you'll have 16 guys and then you'll pair off and then you'll have a one and two.
Now, number one is probably the better shot.
Number two is better at doing the calculations, your wind, your altitude, your biometric pressure and stuff like that.
But my number two, we were exactly the same and we went through section commanders together.
We did everything together and we've done a few tours together as well.
I'm not going to say his name, but he you become quite close, as in, you know, when you don't move for days on end,
you know, you need to rely on him to feed you to get your stuff out of your bag, to get you some biscuits or something, you know,
because you're in a ghillie suit and your camouflage and concealment needs to be 100 percent.
So minimal movement and slow as you like.
So if two of you are moving, it's it's not going to work.
So and then I used to.
For the spot in scope, it used to have the same grackle as my sniper scope.
But we used to have the same. We used to have two rifles out because maximum fire about the end of the day.
And. Yeah, when you need to go for a crap, he will hold the Tupperware tub and you roll over and you go for a poo
and then you roll back, he'll close it and stick it in your bag because at the end of day, ground sign is one of your biggest killers.
And if you leave crap around, there is people that specialize in tracking and they can see if you're hydrated,
what you've been eating, how your morale is, you know, if you're not thirsty, your belly's full.
You're going to be a highly trained alert soldier.
But if you're dehydrated, you haven't much your crap looks like crap.
You can see that you're suffering. It's got blood in it or whatever, you know, because you're suffering.
Your morale is going to be low.
You're going to be easy to track because your skills are going to perish, you know, go down.
So you've got to be pretty close.
But the top. Top tip is when the exercise is finished or your tour is finished,
remember to take the poo out of your bag. All right. Don't leave it in there. Or forget.
The brotherhood bond as well. Talk to me about how your bum gets clean,
because I don't think people realize the sacrifices that our military members make for their country.
Who is wiping your ass?
Yeah, he'll wipe your bum for you. Yeah, he'll wipe your bum for you. Yeah.
It's not the bestest wipe, but it keeps you clean.
So, yeah, you just work as a pair. You work close as a unit, you know, and.
That that's snipe for you, you know, snipe in is a it's an art.
It's a skill and.
The shooting, you know, James, I could take you on a range for two days and I could teach you long range shooting
and you'd be pinging the target down from a thousand yards to fifteen hundred yards. Not a problem.
It's the camouflage to concealment is getting into a location.
It's changing your camouflage when you go to urban to war.
You know, it's changing your camouflage after 24 hours because the photosynthesis of the greenery around you will start deteriorating.
So you will stand out. It's not having your vegetation sticking downwards, the roots sticking upwards because a root is white.
That would give you away. You know, there's so much involved of being a sniper.
You know, your observation needs to be on par.
You know, you need to have a 360 awareness around you because you're so far forward.
The enemy could be behind you, you know.
So before you get into we call it an FFP final fire position before you get into that final fire position, you need to have drop back points.
So if you do get bugged out, you know where you're going all the time, you know, going back all the time.
And it is so important, you know, and you become you become focused on it.
You know, I think it just overtook me, overtook me.
You know, it was always sniper in first, marriage second.
That's what it came to, you know, because I was just obsessed with it.
Talk to me about the the infamous shot then in 2009, kind of the build up to it and then how you even discovered that you'd done something even more remarkable than take out the people that were killing your men.
So we had a mixture of Afghan army and British troops and the British troops were teaching the Afghan army how to build patrols, how to do contract drills and stuff like that.
And we called them the omelette because British troops mixed in with Afghan.
So we called them the omelettes and the Afghan army felt comfortable in having support on high ground before they went into any village.
So it was our role to be on the high ground to give them support going into the village.
And as I got off the wagon and onto the wall, because everyone thinks I was laid down when I took my shot, I wasn't. I stood up and I was laying against the wall.
I could see all the Taliban queuing up and attack for the patrol going in.
So the patrol was going in and they were going into a kill box and basic kill boxes where there's no cover, there's no escape or anything. And you cause the max devastation in this kill box.
And I had an interpreter with me and he had a radio and the radio was tuned into their radio.
We call it ICOM, ICOM chatter and the interpreter. You need a good interpreter that you can trust, you know, and he needs to be loyal to you to tell you the right stuff that the Taliban are telling the rest of the other Taliban.
And you could hear him chatting away and I was telling him what they say and what they say and he was telling me.
And then in the distance, I saw a glint and I thought, the fuck's that? So I looked through my scope and I saw a guy on a radio and he was on top of a compound wall.
So I thought he's a scout or a dicker. And I thought what I'm going to do is just take a shot to not kill him, but to get his head down.
Because I lasered it with my binos, laser binoculars, and I just had four lines come up. And so I was out of the range of my laser binos.
So I thought, fuck it, I'll just fire. So I fired my first shot. And as I fired it, it went down and I could see the splash.
And what I was doing, I was doing a thing called bracketing. So my first shot there, lifted my rifle up, lifted it again, lifted it again, lifted it again until I was shooting and I was lobbing the round in.
And it took me about nine shots to get there and I hit the compound wall. And then the icon chatter went quiet.
And then I heard one voice and I said to the interpreter, what is he saying? He says, I can't help you, I'm getting shot at from somewhere.
And so he says, I can't help you anymore. So now the Taliban in this village are blind.
But the patrol goes in and they open up and there's a mass firefight. I'm doing my job as a sniper.
And I made the decision to get the vehicles that I had with the lads in to act as a buffer between the patrol and the insurgents.
Because we had heavy guns, we had 50 cows, we had 40 mil cannons and small on Jim P.
So I made the decision to go down there and get my lads down there and act as a buffer so the patrol can get all their wounded out and also their dead out as well.
So my vehicles went down there and I stayed on the high ground.
Now as a sniper by wall, you take three shots max to one shot minimum.
And then you get out of dodge because they know where you are, you know, and I didn't have a suppressor on my rifle.
I didn't have one on the tool because usually when you fire with a suppressor on, you have to put four extra clicks on your elevation.
And because of the distance I was shooting, I didn't have any four clicks left. So I'll be hitting low all the time.
So I took this suppressor off.
And then my spotter, who was not my, he's just my driver, he said there's somebody over there.
So I looked over there and I thought there's a bloke over there.
Now, when we were training to go to Afghan, we always got talked to be 10 minutes ahead of the Taliban because it takes 20 minutes for them to flank you.
If you're 20 minutes into a firefight, you can guarantee the Taliban are trying to back onto you and flank you from the rear.
So I took the target out. He was 600 something yards away. I took him out and I realized that he wasn't a marker for the Taliban to go around.
He had knocked the irrigation pump off and he had flooded this field.
And if anyone's been to Afghan, it's like clay hole or sand. And when it's wet, it's like quicksand.
And all my vehicles are now wheel spinning in this mud trying to get out.
And the load of the battle went really quiet.
And then all I heard was ratatatat ratatatat ratatatat and I thought where the fuck's that coming from?
So I was checking everywhere that were engaged the Taliban. I was looking and I thought that's not them. That's not them. That's not them.
The only place I didn't check is where I shot for the Dicca earlier on that morning.
And I looked up and there were two guys laying down in machine gun and they were rattling away.
And it was a PKM machine gun, which is a Russian either belt fed or drum fed machine gun.
I think it fires like 700 rounds per minute. So it's pretty effective weapon system.
And so I said, fucking hell, my ladle taking cover and you can see all the rounds hitting the water.
Now I'm taking incoming as well. So it's pinging off the walls and stuff.
So I laid on the laid on this wall and leaning against this wall. Sorry. And I fired my first shot.
Now I knew I was pointing my point of aim because I shot there in the morning and hit the compound wall.
So locked it loaded again, fired my second shot. And as I fired my second shot, he stood up, the guy feeding the machine gun.
And it hits him in the chest. And he went backwards.
And then as I fired my third shot, I waited because it was a second time of flight.
So as I fired my third shot, I counted to three and I fired my fourth shot.
So now I've got two bullets, three seconds apart in the same airspace.
Third one missed, fourth one hit him and he fell backwards and I hit him in the side.
The only reason I knew where I hit him is because we're meant to get the weapon system to stop it going back into enemy hands.
And when we approached the bodies, I could see why I've hit him.
And an Apache helicopter came down and he lasered it. And as he came down, I pointed to where the engagement was happening.
And because usually when you're in a we call it a tick, troops in contact, when you're in a tick more than, you know, a couple of minutes, you usually get air on station.
But we didn't get anything for a long time when we were just fighting.
And yeah, the Apache lasered it and he lasered it at two thousand four hundred and seventy five yards away.
And I thought, yeah, brilliant job done. That's it.
Done the tour, got blown up, got bullet in the helmet, did loads of more sniper stuff, came home,
went to a medals parade and. Well, I got my Afghan medal.
My wife was there. My wife's family came down. Sue and Paul. Absolutely fantastic.
And then there was a freelance journalist there and he was just writing stories about what happened in Afghan.
And then the captain that was shown him around, he said, Sergeant Harrison, you know, call us out and take telling some of your stories.
And I said, well, it's get censored. My name and all that. And he said, yeah, it will do.
So I got some of my lads together and he was talking to the reporter.
And then I said again to the captain, I said, will it get censored? He said, yeah, all get censored.
I thought, brilliant lads carry on talking. And then on the Sunday,
my phone was going off the hook and people saying, get the paper, get the paper.
So I got the newspaper in the morning and it was nothing about my lads at all.
It was all about me breaking the world record, which I didn't even know about until I read it in the paper.
And it just went fucking viral. And then my wife said to me, I've got a bad feeling about this.
And everyone was like telling her, you know, don't be silly, let him enjoy the stardom and whatever.
And she's always right. She's got a gut feeling.
And she was right because the following day we started getting death threats.
And then from fundamentalists like IE doing in England, telling they want to cut my head off for the stuff I've done in Afghanistan.
And, yeah, just got out of control, got out of control.
So me, my daughters and Tanya, we went into hiding for three years.
My goodness. What was the reason that your name was revealed?
Because when a story, anything military wise, has to go to a place in London, it's called London District Media Ops.
And basically they redact all the names and they take everything away.
So your name is not on anything. But for some reason, it just went straight to print.
So my name was there, my dog's name, my wife's name, my daughter's name, where I lived, where I was born.
Everything was on this.
So we had to move out of our home and go into camp because we were just getting death threats.
So this circles around to what we were talking about earlier with the responsibility of the media to actually just tell the news.
And in a situation like this, your name doesn't need to be a British soldier, has this remarkable kill, saves.
Obviously, with the help of his men that were fighting as well, the Afghans and the British, it's a great story.
But I bet you the focus was ultimately, well, I'm more concerned about selling my newspaper than I am protecting this family's identity.
And I think this needs to be revealed.
I mean, the impact on your family from that one moment of selfishness by yet another self-serving news agency, for lack of a better word.
And if it's like the sun in the mirror, I don't think you could even use that word.
But this is what happens over and over and over again, the sensationalization versus the truth and just the ethics behind what journalism is supposed to be about.
Yeah, it is what destroyed us, destroyed our.
But I was just so I'm very fortunate to have Tanya in my life because she's a strong woman more than she thinks she is.
And she she was my strength for all of this, you know, because it could have broke me, you know.
And what pissed me off the most is that I didn't have any support off of my regiment at all.
No support, no, no sort of like protection or anything. It was it was more from the police force.
I was more concerned about me than anything else.
But, yeah, the army didn't give a fuck.
Well, I want to get to that because you are by far not the first person I've ever had that's given everything for an organization.
They turned their back on them when they needed them. But before we do, you glanced over getting shot in the head and blown up.
So let's just go back to that for a moment. Talk to me about those those elements, because as we know, TBI's themselves are a contributing factor to mental health challenges as well.
And that's what I've got. I've got to diagnose with a TBI, you know, when I got blown up.
So basically I was in another operation and this operation was to to build a PB, an operational base.
And it was my job to keep the left flank free from the Taliban.
And we were just constantly getting probed all the time, constantly in the firefight.
And one of the firefights, it was a lull in the battle.
And I moved my vehicle up to this ridge line where I could see downwards because it was blinded to me.
And there were three Taliban down there and they caught them by surprise and they opened up.
But from the right side, we got opened up again from the right side.
And I got hit in my chest by in my body armor.
And I had a man bag on where I keep all my ammunition and it got straight shot through the strap of the man bag.
And then I got shot in the helmet and knocked me out for about 20 seconds.
So I always tell people there's three three stages to a flight of a bullet.
So when you hear it come out the gun, it's going supersonic.
Yeah. So when it then it slows down to a thing called transonic weight wobbles and then it goes subsonic when it slows down even more.
So that transsonics force it to slow down to go subsonic.
And this round hit me going supersonic.
So he hit my helmet, went right round the top and it came out the top of my helmet and it knocked me clean out for about 20 seconds.
And the vehicle I was in was an open top vehicle.
It was a jackal. And as I fell out the pop the doors of pop studded.
So you can just pop them open and shut them again. I fell out.
My driver grabbed me. He pulled his arm out of his socket because all the kit that I've got on weighs a lot.
He pulled me back in and then I came around and I can't remember anything.
And my driver said to me that I stayed on the hill.
I extracted everyone off the hill because we had another three vehicles there.
I made them go into dead ground. I stayed on top of the hill.
I fired my machine gun, my Jim P. GPM machine gun.
The ammo box got hit so it squashed it. So the belt got snapped.
So I grabbed my SA80. I started putting rounds down my SA80 because I was so delirious.
I changed my mag. But as I changed it, I dropped the mag.
So I just got my pistol out, started shooting my pistol and then I told my driver to reverse.
So he reversed, but he reversed and we popped smoke and they're designed to go like a dome shape.
We popped the smoke and then we extracted down into dead ground.
And then from there I went into a field ambulance because we were so far forward.
And I was being sick and I was a bit out of migraine, headache and everything.
But the third thing is, James, is I had an old helmet on, Mark 6 Alpha helmet,
because I've got a big head that didn't have my size in the store.
The new helmet's coming out for Afghan.
And so they said you're going to have to go on tour with your old helmet.
And I said, yeah, no worries. So I went on tour.
Now that the old helmet sits lower on the ear, but the new helmet sits an inch higher on the ear.
So if I had the new helmet on, I wouldn't be speaking to you now.
I probably would, but through a computer or something.
I wouldn't be here now.
And then in the morning I sort of lied to the medical officer because he said,
how do you feel? And I felt shit and concussed.
And I went to go and join my lads and we carried on the operation that was going on.
Got back into the fight, as they say.
And then three days after that, we was on another op,
giving over watch for the raw Yorks going into the green zone.
And the green zone's like a straight green bit of land.
It's all desert and you have a random bit of straight greenness.
And it goes on for miles and they were clearing it full of Taliban.
And I was doing my snipering and at the end of that op, we were going back and my phone call sign stopped.
And I ran forward on my feet because as a sergeant, you're not meant to lead.
Your junior call sign leads.
It gives them experience, do you know what I mean, for when they become a sergeant themselves.
So I ran forward and he turned around to me and he said, I've got a bad feeling about this, Craig.
And he said, OK. He said, I've got wife and kids at home.
I went, right. I said, no worries. I'll lead.
So I got in the vehicle. We overtook all the rest of my vehicles and we got to the front.
And I stopped to get my head in the game.
And I said, I don't want to go for the village because there's too many vulnerable points.
Let's go around the edge. So I skirted around the edge and I hit a 30 kilo anti-tank mine.
Hit the right side of my vehicle.
So I've had a bullet to the helmet on the right side and then the vehicle's blown up.
So I've got another shockwave to my brain as well.
My driver nearly lost both his legs.
The steering wheel kept him in, so he catapulted out, catapulted back in again.
And his legs were like all broken.
He broke all the bones in his legs and his ankles and everything. It was horrendous.
And then we got Kassivak out.
And I remember just waking up in Bastion in the hospital.
And then we got Kassivak to Kandahar and then airlifted to Birmingham, Salirk Hospital,
where they deal with the veterans there in Birmingham.
And then I broke both my arms, my thumbs.
I broke everything in my arms, my radius scaphoid thumbs.
I was full of cuts everywhere. My finger.
After a while. And then I was in plaster for six weeks.
I come out of plaster. They made me do 10 press ups and send me back out.
Oh my God. That was your ready for duty test that they gave you?
Yeah.
Well firstly. To see if my arms are strong enough.
You just showed me your hands and I don't know if we're mirror image or anything.
Is that your ring finger that was blown off?
Yeah. How does your wife feel about that?
Oh, I've got a name on it. Tanya.
There we go. It's got a tattoo.
Yeah, she's good.
So we've accumulated so many elements up to this point from your father leaving when you were young.
And there's a lot of people that have come on here. When we reflect back now, that in itself can take an impact.
Like why wasn't I good enough for my mom, my dad to stay to stop drinking, whatever the thing was.
Then you progress through and you've got obviously the losses that you've seen.
Now you've got these concussions.
And then you've got this story coming about the longest shot.
And now your own unit isn't supporting you. So you've got an element of organizational betrayal.
Talk to me about when you started seeing mental health challenges within yourself.
And then what was that transition like for you?
Because that that on its own can be so crushing for someone who's had purpose, have been part of a tribe.
That was our identity. But you've got all these other elements compounded as well.
I didn't realize I had PTSD. I didn't realize at all.
My dog Steve. I didn't realize I had PTSD.
Tanya noticed first. She noticed a change in me when I came back from Afghan.
I think she noticed a change in me when I got blown up, really.
And she noticed that I lost my drive and everything.
You know, libido. I was on my own all the time. I slayed myself, my anger.
I was crying for no reason at all. But I just thought not to get on with it. I'm just getting on with it.
I just thought it was normal, you know, because I've never experienced this.
Or you don't get told it when you go on tour. You know, these are the symptoms of PTSD.
If you start suffering from these symptoms, get help. You know, you don't get told that when you go on tour.
It's do the fucking tour, go home, do a medals parade, go and leave. And that's it.
Start off again next morning or the next couple of weeks, go back to camp, start cleaning vehicles, get ready for the next tour.
And but when we were going on exercise, I was still in Afghan.
So other regiments that were playing the enemy or different squadrons that were playing the enemy, I was taking it a little bit too far.
You know, as in when I caught them cable tying and blindfolding them, kicking them, fucking just losing my fucking anger with them
because I was back in fucking Afghan. And this is when the army noticed.
And Tanya didn't really tell me because she knew how dedicated I was to the forces.
She didn't really want to say, I think there's a fucking problem. But she said she definitely noticed the change of me.
And then I got a call to the medical officers, the MO's office.
And he said to me, he goes, you need to go to DMH in mental health department in Old Shot and we just want you to get assessed.
That's it. So I went there, got assessed for CPTSD, chronic PTSD or combat PTSD.
And as I left a couple of days later, he called me and he said, you're done. You're done.
I went, OK. He said, these are your issues, these are your problems.
And I was getting migraines all the time and I couldn't work it out while I was getting migraines all the time.
Still now I get migraines. And I had a brain scan and it turned out that I had a TBI as well.
My brain was pretty rattled. And I went to a place called Headley Court where all the wounded soldiers go.
And I sort of like did a two week intense TBI course there, how to cope with my brain injury and stuff, which is good.
But I had no support for the regiment. Once I left that gate, because I said to the MO's, what happens now?
And he said, you'll go home and we'll be in contact with you to sort things out.
Went home, didn't hear nothing of them, left a rot. And you think I'm at home.
I've got PTSD, I've got panic attacks, I've got depression, I've got a TBI and I'm left like a boiling kettle.
And I'm fucking just winding myself up. You know, I'm snappy at Tanya. I'm fucking I just want to be on my fucking own.
You know, I'm jogging still, but I seem to have hip problems and I'm thinking, what the fuck's wrong with me?
And turns out both my hips are false now. I've had two hip replacements due to the explosion.
And yeah, Tanya stood by me for all the shit that I gave her.
She stood by me, you know, because I know Sony marriages with people with mental health issues or PTSD, especially veterans, their marriages do not last.
You know, and especially veterans coming out the army who haven't got issues, their marriages never usually last because you're with that person 24 seven.
You know, it takes a special person to be and luckily I found one with Tanya, you know, and she supported me and my dog supported me.
And now, you know, Betsy passed away and I've got Steve now just ones around.
Firstly, I mean, again, this this this illustrates what we did wrong.
And I hope that in 2024, the British Army is doing things differently now.
But this is what you see in the fire service, especially here in America. You know, we will serve for I serve for 14, but a lot of the full career is 20 or 25 ish.
And then one day the door just closes behind you. There's no health care.
You know, you might have a pension if you're lucky, but that's it.
You know, and a lot of these retirees have forgotten.
And what's so sad is if you look at the statistics in the fire service, they're already fucking horrendous.
But that's not taking into account everyone that retired because the moment you walked out the fire station, you cease to be a statistic.
And that is when you're going to see the worst, you know, mental health problems and the cancers and the heart disease and all the things that come along with it.
And to have someone who's who served for so long, who literally, you know, was willing to die for your tribe, your organization.
And then you turn your back on them. That, I think, is one of the big elephants in the room with the first responder and veteran health, the veteran suicide conversation is, yes, there's all these other factors.
But that was our entire identity. You know, as as a ancient human civilization, if the tribe ostracized you, that meant death.
You know, you were out wandering the plains on your own now and you're probably going to get eaten or die of starvation.
And that's still in us now. So that is what's so horrendous.
And I hope the Lottie's organization is starting to change now is if someone has served in your uniform for X amount of years, you have a duty to take care of them.
I would argue the rest of their life. Yeah, I wouldn't say I would say the rest of their life.
But I say for veterans, especially in the UK, I recommend she get monitored for two to three years after leaving the service to make sure they get interacted in the right way massively for life.
That'd be a logistical nightmare. You know, I mean, but to monitor somebody for two years or three years would not be a logistical nightmare because obviously the world keeps changing all the time.
So you're looking at you end up looking after zillions of veterans, but looking after two to three years is not an issue.
And yeah, it would it would sort homelessness out. It would sort drug addiction out.
It would stop alcoholism and homelessness and everything like that.
You know, but has the army changed as it's fucked James, right, because I know this for a fact because I know people that are still serving and I know how shit people have got.
It's got more PC more than anything.
So it's gone the fucking wrong way with anything because they're more worried about their image more worried about what the regiment's going to look like more than that person's going to like, you know, so I, I know of suicides in the British Army.
You haven't heard about it, have you James? It hasn't been told in the media, because it all gets fucking hushed. That's why, because of the pristines of these regiments they're trying to keep their recruiting up and recruiting has been the lowest since 2010.
You know, and they can come on join the army, join the army.
But there's no, I'll tell you one thing, I, when I joined, I was on a pension scheme. It was 2000, sorry, it was 1974 or five pension scheme.
And when 2000 hit, they encouraged us to change over to the 2000 pension scheme, but none of us wanted to. We said no, we're not going to we're going to stay on the old one.
So when you do your 22 years, and you're on the 74 75 pension scheme.
What soon as you leave your pension starts straight away.
Okay, and you get a thing called maturity. So you'll get a lump sum of money say thank you for your service. So your pension started, you don't have to work.
So this new pension scheme in now. So when you join the armed forces now, your pension does not start your 65.
So you do 22 years, and your pension will start to your 65, because they worked out that a veteran's lifespan is between 60 and 70.
Same here, same here in America.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of firefighters, we, you know, it's not even been studied because everything that should be studied there's no studies for like sleep deprivation shift work, you know, longevity in our profession, but we all have the same observation that we normally die within five years of retirement, not all of us, but you know, on average, a lot of them do.
And so yeah, you've got them, you know, chasing this carrot on a stick and then you got this thing called drop where you work an extra few years and you get even more money. But then you fucking die. You know, what is the point?
As funny when we go back to that taking care of them for life. The one philosophy that they have in America that I love the idea of it is the VA.
They do take care of the veterans. My wife's almost become a optometrist and eye doctor, and she's in the VA right now working with veterans that are in there, you know, a lot of them are 70s, 80s.
So they're still taking care of them. If you actually charge people that take care of our veterans for the rest of their life. Imagine what a resistance that would create to sending our young men and women to war in the first place.
You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think it would be a kind of win-win. You know, you'd have to you'd only go to war when you absolutely have to because you know how expensive it is to take care of the people that you send.
Yep. Yep. Massively. Massively. You know, it's a rabbit hole that there's no light at the end of the tunnel. You know, you could talk about it all the time.
And do we learn from it? I don't know. The kit's got better and that's about it. You know, the kit's got much better.
But so I haven't the kit, but you've got to worry about your brain at the end of the day. That's the damage product.
You know, and I say to people, I say to my wife, I wish I lost an arm or leg. I really do. I wish I lost an arm or leg.
So people can see me and go, that's why he's got mental health. You know, but they don't see that. They just see me, you know, and think that I'm okay.
I'm not okay. I wear a mask and I let people think I'm okay. But inside I'm fucking broken. Absolutely fucking broken.
What's the darkest place you found yourself?
When I nearly shot myself. Yeah, I nearly, my dog saved my life. Tanya was away and I got a gun.
And yeah, I was going to, I was practicing where to put it. And Betsy was in the back of the seat and she looked at me and I stared right at her.
And I put the gun down and there's been other times as well. But that was the closest, you know. And yeah, Betsy saved my life, bless her.
And me and Tanya has taught me to tell the truth, not even white lies or anything. Just tell the truth.
And then you've got no skeletons in the closet for anyone to find out. And so I'm very open with her and I said, look, this is what happened.
You know, I tried to shoot myself. She thanks that Betsy was there to stop me doing it because I felt there was no, I tell what it feels like.
It feels like, someone tried to explain to me the other day and I thought, yeah, that's what it feels like. It feels like you got sandbags attached to your arms and legs and you're trying to run.
And everyone's running past you and you're just running. You can't move. That's what it feels like. You're just stuck in this darkness.
And there's no light at the end of the tunnel. And you become quite selfish in yourself because you don't care about anyone.
People think it's a selfish way out. Is it? I don't know. Because it takes fucking balls.
And you do become selfish in yourself because you don't think of others. I do. I suffer from suicide, adlation.
I think about it all the fucking time, all the fucking time. But will I carry it out? No.
Because I've got a good wife behind me to stop me doing that. And then somebody's got to find me.
And once that person's found me, I've infected them with my misery. I've infected them with my PTSD. Now they've fucking got it.
It's like a plague. You know, they've got it now. And they end up committing suicide.
So it's a never-ending fucking ever decreasing circles in a pond. You know?
But when life gets too much for you, you need to stop and talk. You know?
And that's what I encourage people to do now. I say you need to talk. You need to talk.
You don't have to talk about the issue that you're going through. Just talk to someone. Have a giggle. Have a laugh.
You know? And that's what it's about. Opening up.
And eventually, once you feel comfortable around that person you're talking to, you'll open up without you even realizing you're opening up.
And you end up talking. And it's like I say to Tanya, I say to her, no one will understand somebody with PTSD unless you've gone through PTSD yourself.
You can't. You can't learn it from a fucking book. You have to experience it yourself.
You have to experience that darkness, them fucking low points, them suicidal thoughts.
You have to experience them before you can go to somebody with tips how to control it, how I'm a survivor.
And that's what I do. And that's what I do in my school. That's what I do.
One of the things that really just came up over and over and over again, because I've interviewed over a thousand people now,
and a lot of them are military first responders, medical professions where there's a lot of PTSD attached to it.
But then there's also people that are supposed to be talking about strength and conditioning or nutrition.
And we end up going down a mental health story because they've been impacted by it, too.
But this was something that is never discussed, like never at the front of these mental health posters or commercials or whatever it is.
When you and I were young, there would be the conversation that suicide was selfish and cowardly.
And how could you think of your kids? And then you listen to people like you and hundreds of other people.
And it's amazing how many dogs have saved lives, by the way, so many.
But when the brain gets to a point of crisis through the multiple elements,
the perfect storm of childhood trauma that was never addressed, sleep deprivation, TBIs, psych meds, alcohol, all the things, organizational betrayal.
At that point, the brain is miswired. The brain is broken. And I use that term affectionately, not judgmentally.
Physiologically, it's not working how it's supposed to. And people's reality becomes distorted.
And a lot, a huge amount of people report to feeling like they are a burden to the people that they love.
And if they just remove themselves, then their family would be happy.
And that makes at that moment in that broken mind, that makes that suicide thought courageous and selfless.
But the problem is, if you say, think about your family, you're actually kind of pushing them towards it.
So the conversation, I think, needs to be if you believe that you are a burden, that is exactly a red flag when you need to pick up the phone and have those conversations.
Was there any element of that thought process for you?
Yeah, I've said to Tanya, I think Tanya was there, my daughter was there, and I've said, you're the selfish ones.
You're the selfish ones for keeping me here.
And Tanya turned around and goes, good, I'm glad I'm fucking selfish.
You know what I mean? But what you said is spot on.
You know, you become a burden. You become, you've got no purpose.
You've, people are better off without you because you're so fucking miserable all the time.
You drag people down. You know, you're just better off without me.
And, you know, there's one way, one way that I can only think of.
And yeah, it's hard to think of. But, you know, but you end up, once you've done it, you can't look down, can you?
Say, fucking hell, look how devastated she is. Look how upset she is.
Fucking hell. I said to my therapist, I always wonder who will come to my funeral.
Who will come to my funeral? It's not like I can hover and go, fucking hell, I haven't seen him for years.
I haven't seen him for years. You're dead. You're dead. You know?
Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. It's hard if you haven't got that person you can rely on to get you out of that darkness.
You know, and I'm lucky. I'm lucky I've got Tanya. I'm very, very, very lucky.
You know, I found her at the right time.
Well, I think the other side of that desperation conversation is hope.
Just the concept of hope. And I think where hope is really kind of nourished is the toolbox is actually available for people to improve.
And again, you know, after these brain injuries and other things doesn't mean that it's going to be like you were 20 again.
But you're hearing amazing success from equine therapy and, you know, talk therapy, but also psychedelics and MDMA and all these other things.
And I think that's the thing is that, you know, you.
You will absolutely devastate your family.
So the only other alternative from, you know, taking your own life is to figure out what is what are the things that would work for me, James Gearing or you, Craig.
So in this journey, what are what are some of the things that you found work for you specifically?
And then we'll obviously get to what you're doing now.
Medication without a doubt, you know, medication is not the answer.
And I've always said that every time I spoke to somebody who's done something, I've always said medication is not the answer.
But if it stops me dipping and puts me on a straight line, I fucking take it any day, you know.
But on the other hand, it's an antidepressant.
So you have to keep getting evaluated all the time and assessed all the time to antidepressants become redundant after a while.
So you have to keep, you know, and it's took them.
It took. I said, I feel like I feel all right.
You know, my medication at the moment, because they've got me on the right medication.
And it's took, I would say, nine, ten years to get me on the right medication that I feel that I could motivate myself through the day, that I'm not on the phone crying all the time to Tanya.
I'm not thinking constantly that I need to die all the time.
You know.
Also, little things like I shower a lot, three times a day, four times a day.
If I feel depressed, I feel dirty and I need a shower.
So I go and have a shower and I feel much better afterwards.
Cold water bath, you know, I've got a cold water dip bath in the garden.
Absolutely fucking freezing. But jumping there in the mornings, you know, fantastic.
Revitalize your brain. The dopamine lasts for three hours, puts you on a high, you know.
A weighted blanket. Sleeping with a weighted blanket.
Tanya, I think my daughter brought me it for Christmas.
She brought me a 10 kilo weighted blanket. And when I feel really shit, I will sleep with the weighted blanket on.
And it gives you that support, you know, that that weightness releases the stress.
I go to the gym.
You know, the gym's not for everybody, but I've been fitness all my life and the gym really helps me.
I get up half way every morning and I'm in the gym at half three in the morning and I train.
And I train for a couple of hours and I go to work and it makes me feel good, you know, especially shower afterwards, mixing everything up.
Camper van. I bought myself a little camper van, you know, and I get out and about in my little camper.
But the two things are the most is my wife, Tanya and my dog Steve.
Brilliant. And they're my purpose.
And when I say to Tanya, I feel like I've got no purpose. She says to me, I'm your purpose.
Steve's your purpose. Teddy, Wilma is your purpose. Danny's your purpose. Lesley's your purpose.
They're my daughters. Imogen, my little granddaughter, she's your purpose.
And it sort of kicks you straight on the narrow again.
But the main thing is the medication. You need to put that stability back in your life.
And these people trying drugs or micro dosing or whatever. Yeah, it works.
It works for some people, but your body will change after a while.
Your body will get used to it. And that's why you're off of that big hit all the time,
because you want to take fucking more and more and more, you know.
And that's why you need to be closely monitored with your medication.
And I say, I think the army needs to step in.
And when I said you'd be monitored for two to three years after getting out the army to sort your medication out, you know, to sort everything out.
So there is stuff that I do to keep me here.
You know, I write things down as well. I've got a book that I write everything down.
All my negative thoughts I write in this book. You know, it's a fucking horrible book. Horrible what's in there.
But I just write stuff down in it. What I'm thinking. Horrible thoughts. Fucking jot it down.
You know, but yeah, I think medication, my wife is one of the top one. You know.
So talk to me then about survival. I had one of my school friends, Will Bundy, is one of the teachers in the army.
I had John Hudson on the show. I think he's one of the kind of survivalist gurus in the military, I think, in the UK.
How did you get into that side? And then let's talk about maverick survival and what you're doing to combine all the things that we've discussed, you know, the outdoors, kind of, you know, sniper element, but also the mental health element.
So I did the school because I call it maverick because it was my call sign on my tools. I was maverick for one as a sniper.
So everyone knows me as maverick for one. So that's why I call it the maverick survival school.
And always been interested in bushcraft through the army, doing survival stuff, civilian bushcraft stuff as well.
And I wanted to combine all so that I could teach people bushcraft.
But I wanted it just for veterans, you know, and I wanted it so it was a getaway, not for learning bushcraft.
I suppose bushcraft is secondary thing. But the first thing is getting away from reality and getting in a wood of an open fire, sitting on a log, talking shit, you know.
And veterans have got a black humor and it's fantastic to sit there and just laugh and joke and just talk about stuff.
You know, there's no phone signal, there's no alcohol. You're just talking, you know, and it fucking works.
And then we do a bit of bushcraft. Yeah, we throw a bit of bushcraft in as well. And that helps.
And then me and Tanya sort of came up with the whole idea of it's just not veterans that suffer, you know, it's first line responders, ambulance, police, fire brigade.
And then we thought it's just not them either. It's actual civilians with childhood trauma and stuff like that.
So we just opened up to everybody to come down to the Maverick School and just relax, depressurize, learn a bit of bushcraft, learn about what we used to do back in the Neolithic times, you know, and then go back with a different attitude.
And it works. And what's special about the school is a therapist will come down and my therapist comes down on a Saturday evening.
And if you wish to talk to him, he'll take you for a little walk and you go and talk to him and he will give you support and he will give you ideas how to cope with your depression, your PTSD.
But he won't just give you support. He will follow you up. You know, he won't just dump you on that day. He will follow you up and make sure you're getting the right support and help.
And it's fantastic how it works. And I don't know any other school that does that. I know bushcraft schools, but I don't know any other bushcraft schools that lend support to veterans like First Line or civilians.
But the schools have gone strength to strength and it helps me, you know, because I love teaching. I love passing my knowledge on to others and seeing them gain from my knowledge.
I love it. And to see that, it helps me with my mental health, my PTSD, you know.
And Tanya always says to me, she sees a change in me when I come back, you know, I'm more on a high or more, you know, this is what we've done, this is what we've done. And then through the week, my depression comes back again.
And then the weekend I'm teaching again. So I'm back up there on my high again. So it does give me a bit of stability. But yeah, the school's been going for about three years now, three and a half years.
And I've just got charity status. So I'm a fully fledged charity now. And so people that come down to the school, you know, they experience everything and they don't have to have prior knowledge.
You don't have to have the equipment. I apply everything for you. I'll give you all the kit so you can have a nice weekend down there. And that's what the survival school is all about.
You know, escapism and nature, trees, just they ooze calmness, you know, and people see it and they go, yeah, I've had many an email. Tanya answers my Instagram and does emails for me.
And she sees how I've changed people's lives, you know, with the school. And, you know, it just makes me happy. Just makes me happy.
One thing I hear I told you is a lot of common denominators that come out of so many conversations. And again, going back to hope, when people have figured out how to work through these struggles, you know, and obviously some things are going to be easier than others if there's a anatomical change in the brain through trauma, I mean, they're hoping that the psilocybin actually shows good results of fixing, you know, that damage, but whatever the combination of tools that they've used to go through it on the other end, they become a better version of that.
A better version of themselves, a more resilient person, but also they become a beacon of light for other people that are healing. And the ability then to give back is what I tell a lot of, you know, first responders, you went into this profession because you were a good person, you wanted to help people, you went into the army because you wanted to protect people, you know, and become a farrier.
But you know, so that purpose hasn't changed at all. That's who you are, not what you did. And so when you come out the other end, you're still helping people. So it doesn't surprise me for a moment that between the combination of being in nature, and obviously you're kind of rural upbringing, and refinding that purpose outside of the uniform, that when those two come together, it's healing for you as well.
Oh, massively, massively, you know, and I love to heal everybody. Yeah. And yeah, I think the school just got stronger and stronger, you know, and it get better and better. More, more people are trying to reach out to.
Absolutely. Well, while we're on that subject, then where can people find the website for the school? How can they donate? How can they participate?
So if you go on to Google type in the Maverick Survival School, it will come up on the Google search, tap on there, the website will come up and at the bottom there's a donate button, and it will take you to a donate page. Every donation that is given always go to somebody suffering with mental health.
It's a non profitable organization, the Maverick School, so no one takes any money. It goes to getting food kit and helping people that are struggling with their mental health massively and more support I get would be the better, you know, and it just goes, it goes a long way.
It goes a long way. You know, before I was a charity, me and Tanya were funding ourselves, you know, because we felt so passionate about the school and passionate about helping people, you know, but now I'm a charity, you know, I do depend on people's generosity to donate, you know, because it does go a long way to help in a veteran and to see a veteran change or first arm responder or civilian, see their faces change and everything.
Everything is priceless. It's priceless.
Beautiful. Well, I want to get some closing questions but just before I do, you wrote a book as well about obviously the journey that we've discussed today called The Longest Kill. So where can people find your book?
So my books on Amazon, The Longest Kill.
So yeah, just go onto Amazon and get my book. Apparently it's an interesting read.
It's also an audio book as well and I'm not sure the guy's name that narrates it but he's, he does a fucking fantastic job, you know, really how to sort of thing, you know, but yeah.
Yeah, go go on to Amazon and see if you like the read.
Beautiful. All right. Well, the very first closing question related to what we just said, are there books written by other people that you love to recommend? It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated.
There's a book that I love. There's two, do you know what, there's only two books I've ever read in, no, three books that I've ever read in my life.
One of them is the Hulk Hogan autobiography, which is absolutely fantastic. And the second one, well, this would probably be my top read. It's by an author called Tom Reed, it's called Freefall.
And it's not his real name, his real name is not Tom Reed, it's a pseudonym.
But he's the next Special Forces guy who wants to do the highest altitude jump. And I'm not going to tell anymore because it's a fucking fantastic read. Yeah. Also my book as well. That's a good read as well.
Absolutely. All right. Well, then what about films and documentaries that you love?
My favorite film is Heat with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. That's one of my bestest films. Raging Bull of Robert De Niro. I love that film as well.
But yeah, they're two top films I really enjoy, you know, watch over and over again.
Brilliant. All right. Well, the next question, is there a person that you'd recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders, military and associated professions of the world?
Somebody I'd recommend probably, he probably doesn't know me, but Foxy, the ex Special Forces guy. Jason Fox. Jason Fox, yeah. He'd be a good bloke to get on your show. One because he suffered with PTSD. Secondly, he's experienced combat, you know, and it'd be good to get his view on how he tackles his PTSD and how he helps others.
Beautiful. Yeah, I've got lots of mutual friends. I've never actually kind of pulled the trigger on reaching out to him. So I need to. Yeah. All right. Well, then the very last question, just to reaffirm, where can people find the survival school and or you personally on social media?
On Instagram, which is COH Craig Harrison, my Instagram and also on my web page as well. There's an email address on there. So if you tap on the email address, that will go straight to me and me and Tanya.
We answer every single message that we get sent through Instagram or through email as well. And if you're struggling, you need someone to talk to, just reach out to me anytime, anyplace.
Tanya will talk to you. I will talk to you and I'll give you sort of coping mechanisms how to get through your day. All right. But they're the best. They're the best way to get hold of me.
Beautiful. Well, Craig, I want to say thank you so much. Instagram almost derailed this conversation by shutting down the page when we were communicating. But it's been an incredible conversation. And I reiterate this.
The voice of someone who we would consider an alpha, you know, and obviously that's kind of got a negative connotation sometimes when we use that word. But, you know, someone who does a masculine profession, those are the most powerful voices when it comes to courageous vulnerability.
These men in this case saying, no, I do struggle. No, I have gone through these things. No, I did almost take my own life because then I think it debunks all the ridiculous bullshit that our generation came up with. Like, boys don't cry, rub some dirt and it's suck it up because that's not how humans are. We yin and yang.
So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and courageously vulnerable and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
No, it's a pleasure, James. And thank you for letting me talk and thanks for letting me on the show.