#201 Jon Truett - Optimizing Human Performance

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Speaker 5 John Truitt, welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 Well, thank you for the invitation. Hey, you're welcome.

Speaker 5 You're welcome. We've been wanting this to happen for a long time.
So

Speaker 5 you'll be the second SAS guy on the podcast. And

Speaker 5 I'm just infatuated with your guys' life stories and career and

Speaker 5 looking forward to a really good discussion here. So we'll do a life story on you.
Starting at childhood, go through your military career all 20

Speaker 6 to 23 years.

Speaker 5 23 years, 19 deployments. That's right.
Wow.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 5 So we got a lot to cover. And I want to get into a little bit of the history of

Speaker 5 what you guys were doing in Ireland back in the day. So, because,

Speaker 5 you know, primarily it's American focused. And, you know,

Speaker 5 we're not as in tune with everything that's happened over there as as we probably should be. So I'd love to get a little history lesson on that.
But everybody starts off with an introduction.

Speaker 5 John Truitt, a man forged in the crucible of elite military service with 23 years in the British Army, including 19 operational tours across Iraq and beyond.

Speaker 5 A parachute regiment veteran who volunteered for the grueling SAS selection in 2002, a survivor of profound personal loss, navigating the deaths of your mother in 2004 and father in 2005 while serving in high-stakes operations.

Speaker 5 A pioneer in human performance dedicated to unlocking the potential, the potential of physiology

Speaker 5 through innovative technology and expert knowledge.

Speaker 5 An advocate for rehabilitation, working on initiatives like amputee football tournaments to help conflict survivors rebuild stable, meaningful lives. Engaged to to be married to your fiancé Ellie.

Speaker 5 When are you guys getting married?

Speaker 6 Leitu Nasier.

Speaker 5 Congratulations, man.

Speaker 5 Met her at breakfast today. Amazing woman.
Amazing woman. And

Speaker 5 so we have a Patreon account. It's a subscription account.
And they've been with me since the beginning when I was doing this in my attic.

Speaker 5 turned it into one hell of a community. And so one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.
This is from Stephen Casey.

Speaker 5 What do you see as the boundary between human endeavor and neuro-controlled robotics on the battlefield? And if there's no real boundary, does that mean we substitute robots for human wholesale?

Speaker 5 If we do, what does that mean as to the ultimate human cost of war, which has historically been huge metric, been a huge metric on warfare?

Speaker 6 Great question.

Speaker 5 That's it, yeah.

Speaker 6 And I wish there was only one line because in the middle there's the partnership of robots and human beings in one entity like exoskeletons.

Speaker 6 So starting off with human beings, you know, and you look at the ongoing conflicts right now, they're done human to human assisted by drone technologies, not yet robotics.

Speaker 6 There are elements of it. And if you go to the other end, you know, having robots just doing conflict, I think to me, me I can't envisage what that looks like.
I think it's a leap too far. You know,

Speaker 6 the conflict will become increasingly machine teeming and increasingly I can't see the sense of humans standing in defending positions where you can put automated machines to do it.

Speaker 6 And technology certainly allows you to do that in a responsible manner.

Speaker 6 So I think we can be a lot more judicious about how we put lives at risk, but I just cannot see a future where you will not need highest trained soldiers.

Speaker 6 I think soldiers are becoming more and more special and more and more enabled. One of the key points I've been looking at most recently is exoskeletons.

Speaker 6 It's all about the concept of human augmentation.

Speaker 6 And my worry with exoskeletons is you start putting robotics around humans to assist them in what they do, you start disadvantaging the human being themselves.

Speaker 6 And because we have a propensity to push for greater and greater things, so if, for instance, a certain type of exoskeleton is really, really powerful and it can be used a lot, it'll be overused.

Speaker 6 And if you know,

Speaker 6 take the concept of an R-man suit. If you put a human being in an R-man suit and it's not chiming you to do what you are trained to do, your muscles,

Speaker 6 you absolutely depend upon your own physiology to drive your health.

Speaker 6 And an over-reliance on something in the middle, like an exoskeleton, although it could mean a soldier can march with a 130-kilogram pack over 100 miles.

Speaker 6 You know, I have a problem with that because you will disadvantage the human being in making those sorts of choices.

Speaker 6 So choose where you put robotics in judiciously and save life by doing it, but don't compensate human biology. The art is to shift the human biological limit further to the right.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, it's man, warfare is just changing so fast right now. And there's

Speaker 5 all these different companies that I've been diving into, like Andural.

Speaker 5 We got this guy coming on that was a former SEAL,

Speaker 5 Dino Mervrukas, and he's doing autonomous surface warfare vehicles. And

Speaker 5 man, it's just we have unmanned subs, we have unmanned planes, we have unmanned surface warfare vessels. I mean

Speaker 5 it's gonna look, it already does look completely different than what I was in. And I don't know, you know, first I was

Speaker 5 pretty apprehensive, but that was probably my ego thinking no robot can ever do the fucking job that I did.

Speaker 5 But, I mean, these things.

Speaker 5 Now I kind of changed my tune. And I mean, it does, you know, it does preserve our lives and you know having kids and you have kids too.

Speaker 5 I mean

Speaker 5 I would rather a robot go and do the dirty work than have my kids out there.

Speaker 6 Absolutely. When you're diffusing a five-ton sea mine.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I'd much rather, you know, I'm an absolute supporter and advocate of unmanned systems that can look at threats as well as illegal maritime shipping and fishing.

Speaker 6 This is a real age of dual purpose technology. And these unmanned systems are incredibly advantageous for us.
We should look to preserve life.

Speaker 6 We shouldn't try to remove the challenges and hardship from human endeavor.

Speaker 6 And maybe it's not maybe

Speaker 6 not all conflict

Speaker 6 I can't sort of qualify this statement by saying emmetrically this happens, but I can't see that all conflict is going to be able to be handed over to robotic systems.

Speaker 6 And I think somewhere in the line, human judgment has to come in.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 I think that's kind of the

Speaker 5 so far with everybody I've talked to, that's the premise is that, is the final decisions will be made by humans, but especially with some of these things like scale AI and Palantir, I mean, it's

Speaker 5 the interesting thing is it's taking the

Speaker 5 Intel and all the things that go into the decision-making process, and instead of actually having humans do it where it would take days, sometimes weeks, maybe even months, I mean, it's literally displayed all the different outcomes and the probability of what could happen and your percentage of winning.

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 it's all handed to you through AI within

Speaker 5 hours or less. Yeah.
And

Speaker 5 so

Speaker 5 interesting subject.

Speaker 6 Great question. I'd just like to add, I mean, I was in a park watching a child play with a drone, one of those small drones that tethers to you, you know, and it can quickly, you know,

Speaker 6 the future is, it's already there. Now that drone can recognise a facial feature,

Speaker 6 capture it, lock it on and tether it. And, you know, I was sort of joking in my own head going, I wonder if I can outrun that.

Speaker 6 Go back and try and have a race with it. Yeah.
See if I can. You know, this technology is brilliant.

Speaker 6 It's already there and it's on the street. You know, it's like a drone that can tether to you and will follow you around, whatever.

Speaker 6 It's there. And you can buy it for very small amounts of money off the shelf.
I won't say the drone it was in that case.

Speaker 5 Have you?

Speaker 5 I mean, some of the ways they're integrating technology is just, I mean,

Speaker 5 have you heard about the helmets that

Speaker 5 Palmer Lucky's designed with Angeral?

Speaker 6 I haven't, but.

Speaker 5 Oh, man. So

Speaker 5 he's making,

Speaker 5 it's like an interface heads-up display. And it will replace all, not just special operations, which I love, because special operations always gets the cream of the crop.

Speaker 5 But I think what's really cool is that all military ground units will get this eventually. But basically, it almost looks like

Speaker 5 a pilot helmet, you know, with the visor.

Speaker 5 And he's integrated,

Speaker 5 I believe it, I could be wrong, but it's like the next generation of night vision, which integrates color and thermal and all these things. And not only that,

Speaker 5 there'll be a heads-up display of where all your guys are at if you're on the ground until you highlight them in blue or green or whatever color. It'll highlight bad guys in red.

Speaker 5 You'll actually be able to see through walls. So if you have somebody shooting at you from a lip, When they drop back down, you can see exactly where they're at.
Wait for them to pop back up. And

Speaker 5 it'll do. I mean, it's just insane, like the technology.
It'll even identify

Speaker 5 friendly and foe aircraft, and by the way that they're maneuvering, tell you what it's about to do. I mean, it's

Speaker 5 a whole nother, it's a whole nother game out there right now.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and it's really interesting because you can fuse all of that incredible technology.

Speaker 6 And I'm all for it, you know, but we've got to remember it's all going back into a human being, you know, and it, you know, and even in 10 years ago, you can get cognitive overload with all of this, right?

Speaker 6 And but I think all of that technology is good. We just have to be very judicious about how you apply it

Speaker 6 and what that human being in it can reasonably be expected to apply it for.

Speaker 6 Because you can get easily get overloaded with everything. And ours are chained JTAC and you've got multiple nets going on.
All good stuff. Your brain learns how to do it.
We call it 4D thinking.

Speaker 6 Absolutely brilliant. I I mean, the power of what's inside there is incredibly powerful as well.
You can build pictures and you can almost imagine where that aircraft is.

Speaker 6 To have it in a hood is absolutely brilliant. I remember, I think you have to learn to use it.
Remember, when you're putting that on, that's remapping neuronal pathways in your brain.

Speaker 6 So you're actually pushing the human biological limit along, in my eyes, as well.

Speaker 6 You know, your brain will learn very, very quickly to adapt to what that extra coding what our extra signals are you know and it's it's incredibly powerful and adaptive so human beings can take this you know and uh and definitely they can adapt to it um so i i'm all for technology i'd love to you know blue force tracking is absolutely uh critical you know it's one of the the hardest things you have to do.

Speaker 6 Be aware where

Speaker 6 each other are. But also remember the criticality of your own instincts and your own senses and not having an over-reliance on technology.

Speaker 6 And we used to wear a lot less protection because actually we trusted ourselves. You know, the power of

Speaker 6 sense and instinct is incredibly important to soldiers.

Speaker 5 Human intuition.

Speaker 6 Yeah, absolutely. Human intuition, instinct, sixth sense, gut instinct, whatever you want to call it, it's there and it's very, very real.

Speaker 6 And we need to ensure we keep that at the forefront of the people that's doing it. Empower them with technology.
I think Palm Lucky's Andrew, isn't he? Andreal?

Speaker 6 Yes. I mean, it's super, super exciting where they're going with some of their capabilities and technologies.

Speaker 6 And I think it's a good time to do it. You know, I think we're looking at a really, really interesting turn

Speaker 6 in our present day.

Speaker 6 We do need those autonomous systems skirting around

Speaker 6 in the waters.

Speaker 6 Resources can be finite.

Speaker 5 One other thing before we get started everybody gets a gift

Speaker 6 Thank you

Speaker 5 Vigilance League gummy bears legal in all 50 states. I don't know if they're legal in UK or not, but you'll have to find that out when you get home.

Speaker 6 I'll do some research

Speaker 6 I've got some gifts for you downstairs as well. I haven't got them with me.
Oh, perfect. Can I possibly run out and get them and bring them back up? Sure.
Perfect.

Speaker 5 What is this?

Speaker 6 It's just some

Speaker 6 something for the bookshelves.

Speaker 6 Thank you. And then I've got you some quintessentially British marmalade from a shop called Fornton Mason.

Speaker 6 Perfect. So I don't know, don't know whether marmalade's the same, but it's like

Speaker 6 a jam and it's called the monarch.

Speaker 6 Thank you. Pleasure.

Speaker 5 Oh that's awesome.

Speaker 6 Thank you.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 5 All right John, you ready?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 5 Where'd you grow up?

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I grew up in southeast of England

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 really I was born to parents. My dad was from a family in London

Speaker 6 generations back and they had a small business. It was actually a joinery company And so they came from an area called Thornton Heath in London.
It used to be lovely. It's pretty rough now.

Speaker 6 But before I was born they moved down to the southeast and moved down. They found a little cottage in the country.
My mum moved 14 times, I remember used to say. So she's very mobile.

Speaker 6 I think it's associated to her father's job. I'm sure he's an architect.
I think he's an engineer as well.

Speaker 6 So essentially when I was born, I was born up into a very small house that was always under construction. My dad was a builder, ran a building, small building company, a joining company.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 all I remember it is being a very happy childhood.

Speaker 6 But we were always outside,

Speaker 6 always tripping over stuff that building materials.

Speaker 6 My dad was always sort of building extra bits to the house. So it was quite big at the bottom by the end of it.
and really small at the top.

Speaker 6 And essentially, you know, it's a very outside life

Speaker 6 and sort of growing up even from a very very young age I spent a lot of time with my mother

Speaker 6 my father was a competition sailor so he actually sailed in the Olympics came second in the world championship oh wow built his own boats one of which went to the maritime museum there was a class called the flying Dutchman which I believe was deemed too dangerous it became Olympic class but then came too dangerous because it was the fastest of the racing dinghies, and it had a habit of going end over end in certain winches.

Speaker 6 It had a spinnaker. So he's a very, very strategic and technical person, a really, really brilliant person.

Speaker 6 But we spent a lot of time with my mother. My mother was an architect, used to get up at four o'clock in the morning.
She also did something called milk recording. So

Speaker 6 milk recording. So you go to farms and you record how much milk you're getting from the cows.
So me and my brother would wake up on a mattress in the back of a mini estate.

Speaker 6 It's a tiny little mini estate, very iconic to the UK. And we sort of

Speaker 6 open the back doors and sort of on a farm and go and find my mother and she's in this sort of cow shed and noting down the volume from each cow of the milk. they were giving every day.

Speaker 6 Very fastidious.

Speaker 6 But I remember very clearly, we we always used to take a silver urn full of milk back to the house and my dad one of my dad's favourite things was to eat the cream which was about that thick

Speaker 6 off the top of the milk so we had a growing up like that you know I was outside a huge amount we didn't have a TV in fact we didn't have a TV until very much much later on

Speaker 6 and so my dad read books and we listened to the radio.

Speaker 6 You know, I wish I could meet him at this age again because he's a very, very interesting person.

Speaker 6 But essentially, we spent most of our time with my mum. My dad worked extremely hard.
He's commuting a lot into

Speaker 6 London, running a small business. And in Britain, the housing market, sorry, the building market crashed in the 90s and essentially the business went with it.

Speaker 6 So he was always working extremely hard to try and keep this going. He had some employees that he deeply cared about.
I remember him talking about it.

Speaker 6 But, you know, I spent a lot of time with my mum, very, very close to her. I did a lot of hunting when I was younger, always with dogs, hawks, all sorts of animals.
Never guns. Ferrets, polecats.

Speaker 6 And, you know, more latterly, I realised that was all my mum as well. You know, my mum was organising for me to go out with someone.

Speaker 6 He had, I'm sure it was a Red American-tailed eagle. and a kestrel, I think it was.

Speaker 6 And we used to go out and the horse, the eagle was actually quite good, but the kestrel was awful it would basically give up it wouldn't even try and get mostly rabbits and squirrels we were after and they would go and sit on a power line and just sit there like that and just look down at us so we spent most of our time running around um

Speaker 6 like uh swinging around the lure to try and get it to come down sort of covered in rabbit pelt

Speaker 6 i just remember from really young age just looking up at this hawk just looking down at us going yeah okay

Speaker 6 do this all day if you like And eventually it came back. So all those experiences, you know, sort of occurred to me later, they're all through my mum.

Speaker 6 And she was an incredibly strong person, woman.

Speaker 6 Everyone faces challenges in their lives. She was holding down two to three jobs at a time.
Incredibly supportive of my father, although she didn't always agree. So

Speaker 6 me and my brother went to boarding school at seven. And

Speaker 6 I still don't know how much was this design deliberate strategy and how much was it just opportunity at the time. Light bulbs went off.
But we had a piano in the house, just like a small baby ground.

Speaker 6 I think it belonged to my grandma and she didn't have space for it. So it was in the house and by hook or by crook I started playing the piano.

Speaker 6 Next we started getting lessons. And then my brother took up the violin.
Oh really? Yeah, so all of this sort of started happening. And as I say, say, I'll never know whether it was by design

Speaker 6 or actually it was just like, oh, they're starting to play music. We could turn this into something.
But me and my brother went to boarding school

Speaker 6 at seven years old as Queen's choristers.

Speaker 5 Are you twins?

Speaker 6 No, so he's 15 months older than me.

Speaker 5 15 months.

Speaker 6 So yeah, so pretty close.

Speaker 6 A lot of people see lots of similarities. A lot of people see lots of differences.
I guess it depends where they look from. We're very, very close as people.
He's very, very busy himself.

Speaker 6 He was in the military himself

Speaker 6 as a commissioned officer.

Speaker 6 But when we went to boarding school at seven, and I remember my mum saying, you know, my mum did not support that.

Speaker 6 She wanted us to be at home. But my father saw it as the best opportunity he could give us.
And so we

Speaker 6 very, very funny stories from throughout my schooling. And it started early.
So I went to

Speaker 6 a school in London that provides choristers to the Queen's Chapel and essentially this was a feeder school or a preparatory school for Eton College so Eton College is a very significant

Speaker 6 well-known school in in in in

Speaker 6 England

Speaker 6 and so we started singing in the chapel and I found it very hard to concentrate. I wasn't a very good chorister, I'll admit, and we started learning music to a much greater level.

Speaker 6 I had a very good teacher actually, who's the mother of someone I'm very, very close to still,

Speaker 6 who taught me piano initially.

Speaker 6 But then we started scaling up the grades, and you had to be, and I don't know what grade it was, to be a seven or eight to sit a scholarship at Eton.

Speaker 6 But in that period of time, and you know, it's a corporal punishment school, and I believe there was only three left in the country at the time I went there.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 corporal punishment school is where you you discipline children using slipper, hairdraft, it's a very English thing.

Speaker 6 It doesn't go on now,

Speaker 6 quite rightly.

Speaker 6 I think I've got, and again, you know, it's funny because you pull sort of stuff out of your head.

Speaker 6 And I do remember on one night in this school, under that current management, I think it's a very good school now and very well run.

Speaker 6 But on a certain night, you were allowed a bath.

Speaker 6 And in these, you had these rows of baths.

Speaker 6 And in the bottom left bath was reserved for people who had been misbehaving. I'd invariably misbehaved at a certain point during most days, not even a week.
And it's full of cold water.

Speaker 6 So you're getting your cold water bath, and I think you had a minute to have your bath. So there's lots of that.
And it was a, you know, when you look back as a child,

Speaker 6 when you've got boarding, it was boarding and day, but boarding and you're sleeping in dormitories of 50 children, you know, there's, you know, as a child, you see some quite tough experiences.

Speaker 6 I was constantly what they called running away, which wasn't running away. So it was going to get a bit of chocolate out of the chocolate machine at the station.

Speaker 6 At one point, we made it miles away from the school. We were actually going to the cinema with my friend, but of course, every time they caught us, they said it was running away.

Speaker 6 And I was like, no, I'm not running away, I'm going to get chocolate from the chocolate machine. So a trend had started up already, right?

Speaker 6 You know, I was boarding school um my behavior was quite challenging um i didn't get it myself i don't remember being unhappy

Speaker 6 um i did miss home a great deal and um that was you know they did have very very strict rules you weren't allowed to see your parents any more than around three times a term i think you weren't allowed any other clothes unless they were school clothes

Speaker 6 it was all um school food you weren't allowed any any stuff brought in no chocolate huh no chocolate no nothing right so my dad

Speaker 6 you know this defines who he was that sort of person

Speaker 6 he's very strong and could be quite stern but he's very kind and he used to drive after work to the chapel because he could intercept us as we were coming through the cloisters and he used to have a flute case because I had to take up a second instrument so I took up the flute which I used to sort of refer to as a a sideways recorder and I think I took up the flute because it's the most easy instrument to learn to play quickly

Speaker 6 and again it's you know looking at it now it's it's really quite funny that at the time it was all sort of done and it was uh I don't know it was all perfectly normal

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 I ended up getting removed from the school because it had become untenable but actually the amount I was misbehaving I was getting beaten a lot oh really it's not like beaten as in beaten.

Speaker 6 You can't crush children by hitting them, right?

Speaker 6 They actually turn out to be much more resilient than you are. And I think that was part of the problem with the school.

Speaker 6 They resorted to the corporal punishment far too much, spending a lot of time in detention.

Speaker 6 And again, I don't remember being unhappy as such, but I don't think I was, you know, I was removed, but with the intention that it wasn't, you know, let's come up with a different solution for it.

Speaker 6 That was one year before I had to set my exams for Eton.

Speaker 6 How old were you when you got there?

Speaker 6 So I went there when I think I was just turning seven to eight and I must have come out there about 11 years old because I spent one year at another school much closer to home as a day pupil, which I loved.

Speaker 6 Played lots and lots of rugby. I was very, very sports orientated.
Loved my sport.

Speaker 6 Spent

Speaker 6 a year at another school much closer to home, sat my exams, scraped my entrance exams because that's kind of how I was academic

Speaker 6 but I got in with a music award so it wasn't a full scholarship but it was a pen it's something called an exhibition that you turn into a scholarship and I got there on sports awards as well so a fairly heavy bursary

Speaker 6 and went to Eton my brother already there and so Eton is that school with the penguin suits. Oh, okay.
Yeah, so we got obviously second-hand penguin suits. And they look very smart if they knew.

Speaker 6 But I was definitely the scruffiest

Speaker 6 child in the school.

Speaker 6 And it, you know, it's an incredible institution, right? It's one of the oldest institutions in the UK.

Speaker 6 It's a very, very big landowner. Therefore, they are wealthy enough to offer the types of bursaries that they do.
And they actually make a lot of opportunity to people.

Speaker 6 But there's also hereditary lines that retend Eton.

Speaker 6 And, you know, so it's basically a full town.

Speaker 6 And again, I was already, my mum always used to say when I was young, I'm right, we're just going to leave the keys out for you.

Speaker 6 Because I had a habit of leaving the house at night and going on walkabouts. And I liked to walk through the woods at night and everything.

Speaker 6 And every so often I do remember frightening myself and running home again. But to a larger extent, I had a habit of just getting up and just going for a walk, going out in the night.

Speaker 6 And I continued this trait at school, but they didn't really like it. They didn't really understand it

Speaker 6 I think a lot of the accusations of running away were just because I got in the habit of picking the locks of taking the window locks off and crawling down drain pumps and off I went

Speaker 6 so uh and you know

Speaker 6 again I guess I don't know

Speaker 6 we've grown a trend so I'm still at it eaten um I was

Speaker 6 I don't remember being like really badly behaved but I was always on the tardy book where you had to run up had to run very early in the morning and and sign a book, do it again at lunch and doing it again at night just before bed.

Speaker 6 So the school, we were all in boarding houses. So I think the nub of this issue was really I sort of had loggerheads with the boarding house.

Speaker 6 So certain traditions at Eton where the older boys come down to the lower floors where the younger members are and they do certain things like bed posting and you know that sort of yeah, what do they call it initiation things.

Speaker 6 It's basically another name for bullying.

Speaker 6 so we were the first year across our board I can't remember how many in the year like 10 or 13 but we were sports and music and it traditionally been an academic house and I think they just weren't expecting what what what difference we were like we were completely different you know and actually we ended up going upstairs and kind of sort of trying to dissuade them from coming downstairs a lot and they just didn't know how to manage this

Speaker 6 so essentially and it's really, really interesting actually, because, you know, Eton's a really special school. You know, they have really amazing people there.

Speaker 6 They have something called King's College,

Speaker 6 which Henry VIII, I believe, started the school with express

Speaker 6 intent to kind of shape academics.

Speaker 6 I think it's got heavy lines into political circles, so shaping government, that sort of stuff. So it's got a really amazing history.
And I remember there was a guy with, I think it was

Speaker 6 multiple sclerosis. He's one of the most brilliant mathematicians and not predicted to make it beyond his teens.
I think he did.

Speaker 6 But you know, he was given that opportunity as one of the most brilliant mathematicians there. So it's very, very special school.

Speaker 6 But essentially, because I was at loggerheads with my housemaster, I kept getting in trouble. I kept having to sign a tidy book, which was a lot of running, which made me very fit, and I didn't mind.

Speaker 6 But I wasn't getting my homework done, which which is again something that's left to you to be responsible for

Speaker 6 when I was getting when you get punished in Eton you have where you have to go and see the lower master in my case for the bottom years

Speaker 6 it's called the bill

Speaker 6 and I was on it again and again and again and you know they're having to put special reviews in because they've got certain rules for you're on the bill this many times then we have to review you for suspension

Speaker 6 and it was really really interesting because when we were clearing out my dad's desk we found some letters between him and the lower master and it exposed and highlighted how to what extent the school and my father were going to try and solve this issue which is you know you could see the intent and actually the lower master I think he felt quite sorry for me which is not not like I was feeling sorry for like I said I do not have a recollection of somehow having

Speaker 6 you know being sad about this or being unhappy as a child at all but I was just endlessly in bits of trouble and essentially I had completely the wrong house master to solve it.

Speaker 6 And I think it came down that, you know, so the lower master started giving me chores by doing his gardening in his house on a Sunday. And so I'll go and do his gardening.

Speaker 6 And actually what that was was so I could have Sunday dinner with him. So sit down with his family and have Sunday dinner.
So that's the sort of kindness they were showing around it,

Speaker 6 sort of managing it in a very, very interesting way.

Speaker 6 But essentially,

Speaker 6 it was going to go to one end or not and if they looked at whether I could move to another boarding house or not and whether that would change the things

Speaker 6 people believed it did but essentially it came down to do we break tradition this has never been this has never happened before you know so

Speaker 6 you know I fully appreciated

Speaker 6 the levels people had gone to and you know and when I talk about that sort of educational psychology report that was when it was done and I I found it much more latterly.

Speaker 6 There were two of them, and I found one. And it's really quite interesting.

Speaker 6 And I believe that was an agreement between my dad and the school that let's, you know, let's have a look and let's see what we can do to kind of sort of address this.

Speaker 6 Because, but in the end, I moved on from that school, went to another school

Speaker 6 on music and sports awards, but given a place.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I spent,

Speaker 6 I think it was less than a year there. I got um removed three days after the rugby season was unbeaten and finished.

Speaker 6 I do suspect it was done

Speaker 6 at least we've finished the rugby season, but I absolutely love my sport. And you know, it used to make me laugh actually at Eton because I said you've given me all these sports awards.

Speaker 6 And Eton's got two incredibly quite contact-filled games, one called the wall game, one called the field game.

Speaker 6 And the wall game's played in King's College and the field game's played by all the others, so the boarding houses.

Speaker 6 and it's a mixture of football and rugby with some quirky rules in it and you know obviously I was kind of breaking my fingers all the time which didn't sit well with keeping my piano scholarship

Speaker 6 so I remember like going to piano lessons and you know

Speaker 6 musical geniuses of which these teachers were tend to be quite sort of emotionally charged

Speaker 6 and so when I was turning up in these rooms

Speaker 6 and not able to play the piano

Speaker 6 becoming really, really exasperated with me. And I was kind of sort of perplexed by this.
I was like, well, you know, the house wants me to play all this sport.

Speaker 6 You're asking me to practice for hours doing this,

Speaker 6 which I did. You know, I do, I fully, fully realise right from the start, I looked at the other scholars and I was never going to be absolutely brilliant.
I was good.

Speaker 6 I wouldn't have got a scholarship before.

Speaker 6 But, you know, when you look at sets of people and you see, okay, well, you know you you will be something that is truly special in the future whereas for me i could have become good and your training does a huge amount but it only takes you so far yeah and there's individual ability that is it is even more important if you want to become part of that last one percent you know it's it's something in there that will do it.

Speaker 6 I think there's that sort of mode of 10,000 hours of training or whatever. It's absolutely right.
That final bit, there's something special inside certain people

Speaker 6 um so yeah i mean i sort of finished at that school uh the next school after the rugby season three days after it i went for a period of no school this was just before

Speaker 6 just before um

Speaker 6 my exams i was within a year of having to take my national exams called gcse

Speaker 6 um i spent some time in spain living with a navy family there and then came back went to my local state school where I should have gone.

Speaker 5 Holy shit! You went to all kinds of schools, yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so I had full range, and it was great. I was an amazing experience.

Speaker 6 But the irony is when you go to sit your scholarship at Eton, they ask you what your second school is, and obviously, you say Eton College and

Speaker 6 another

Speaker 6 very

Speaker 6 quite sort of, I don't know what you'd term it, but they're special schools. This community college.

Speaker 6 And yeah, I remember them looking at me and just being like,

Speaker 6 that's pretty extraordinary.

Speaker 6 So, you know, I sort of ended up back at this school. I did my exams, passed them okay, you know, particularly strong on languages at that point.

Speaker 6 I went on to A-levels, still playing lots and lots of sport.

Speaker 6 But within those six form years where I was studying A-levels, and I did two languages and sociology,

Speaker 6 I started working for a building company as a labourer.

Speaker 6 Sat my exams but

Speaker 6 my attendance levels weren't very good so my grades certainly didn't reflect what I could have done but really I didn't feel that those exams were really the key to the next step.

Speaker 6 And I became a building labourer working for a local company, loved it. There's something called the HOD.

Speaker 6 So the HOD is where you carry the bricks, you stack them up in different

Speaker 6 levels of brick, I think it's 8, 16 and I think there was one over 20 and I was quite good at that and so the bricklayers quite liked me being their labourer.

Speaker 6 And I sort of enjoyed it. And I enjoyed that at that age.

Speaker 6 Then I got an offer to become an industrial roofer. So I became an industrial roofer and I absolutely loved that.
But it was in the time when you could do roofing by walking the open steels.

Speaker 6 Really interesting job. I was travelling a lot around the UK

Speaker 6 and it was quite, you know, as you can imagine,

Speaker 6 certain people who get involved in roofing there's anyone's guess who would be in our roofing gang at any one time sometimes you didn't get paid and you have to sort of go and insist that you should be paid

Speaker 6 and but it was really interesting introduction into working life enjoyed it but i started doing jobs in london and i was getting up at like four o'clock in the morning playing rugby I was doing, I used to represent certain people's gyms or used to box.

Speaker 6 So I was doing doing those things at night and we were getting really quite small money. We'd put on day work so we couldn't really work hard.
There was no incentive for price work for the area.

Speaker 6 Plus they were bringing in safety systems because there's quite high rate of injuries and death in industrial roofing. They're bringing in systems that weren't very well designed at all.

Speaker 6 So they're arrest systems that would suddenly, you're supposed to clip and want to yourself. You're carrying sharp cheating.

Speaker 6 And, you know, it would suddenly stop you and all of a sudden the f the shit. So all of that factored in, just made me look elsewhere.

Speaker 6 So, you know, I kind of so that's what sort of led me through childhood, a very, very

Speaker 6 different range of schooling. Yeah.
I don't think I fitted too well at school. I didn't fit, you know, it's not like I was short of friends, but I didn't have

Speaker 6 it's not like I was part of a scene at school at all. I just sort of bimbled about, got a lot of chores.
I mean I used to love my chores at Eaton because they were building stages for theatre.

Speaker 6 I actually sort of spent most of my weekends. You don't get much time off Eaton, right? You have to study hard to

Speaker 6 stay the grades.

Speaker 6 But you know, all my passing time, but I actually quite enjoyed that. And you know, I don't, like I say, you know,

Speaker 6 I don't remember being unhappy as a child. And I remember their difficult times, you know, I used to come back.

Speaker 6 My father was incredibly sort of disappointed and frustrated that these schools weren't working.

Speaker 6 My mum didn't want us to go to boarding school. That was a very tough time for them.

Speaker 6 But she was ultimately extremely supportive to my father and recognised how much they were both giving up to offer us the opportunities that we could have been offered.

Speaker 6 And I did speak letterly with my father about it, you know,

Speaker 6 actually not long before his death. You know, and I think going into the military was a part of him.
He could see that he's sort of found some space.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 at the time, he kept coming up with these brilliant plans to offer us opportunity and they just weren't working out. That must have been incredibly frustrating.

Speaker 6 And you can see from the educational psychologist report at 14, you know, the effort and energy that was put into trying to get this in some sort of shape where it would go.

Speaker 6 Would the outcomes have been any different if I'd stayed at those schools? I don't believe so. You know, I don't think, you know,

Speaker 6 as a person,

Speaker 6 they would have been.

Speaker 6 I don't know whether they would or not.

Speaker 6 But that was, you know,

Speaker 6 again,

Speaker 6 every time I was at home, I used to have an absolutely brilliant time. And then the period of time when I was in my GCSEs and to my A-levels, you know, I spent an amazing amount of time with my mum.

Speaker 6 And that was her back central. You know,

Speaker 6 she was very, very happy to be able to see us, support us, and do things with us, you know.

Speaker 6 So, you know, there was, there was balances everywhere.

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Speaker 5 What what got your I mean, so you went from

Speaker 5 I don't know how many schools

Speaker 5 where you were very talented in music and sports. Then you became a construction laborer

Speaker 5 roofing.

Speaker 5 how the hell did the military get under your radar

Speaker 6 so whilst I was roofing and again you know they're long days in London I just like we're on day work we're refixing the same panels over and over and they're condemning the steels below us and that was nothing to do with this

Speaker 6 my brother had become a commissioned officer and he had joined the parachute regiment

Speaker 6 He deployed to Kosovo and I was watching in the background him doing all of this interesting stuff. You know, the parachuting, everything else.
So, when I did look elsewhere from roofing,

Speaker 6 that became the obvious answer.

Speaker 6 You know, and I didn't, I had no aspirations of being a commissioned officer as such, but you know, going into the military and seeing that, you know, that was interesting.

Speaker 6 It was like the parachuting is involved, you know, you've gone to an interesting place. I hadn't travelled a great, I used to travel with my mum a lot.
My mum used to drive my dad's boat in a trailer

Speaker 6 all over so he could compete sometimes with and sometimes he travel separately and they used to sleep in tents.

Speaker 6 He's very famous actually for getting up in the night and he'd shave like two millimeters off the keel because he believed he'd analyzed the tide right.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 actually he used to say

Speaker 6 I'm never going to win every race, only just the occasional one because I have a nemesis.

Speaker 6 And I remember him saying this and I said he said, my nemesis is a sailor, I believe, called Rodney Patterson,

Speaker 6 who I think it's Rodney Patterson, who's one of the world's most famous sailors, and he used to win everything. And I used to hear my dad say, it's just because he's got more ability.

Speaker 6 So my mum used to drive

Speaker 6 my dad's boats a lot, and we'd go with them if we possibly could. So we'd pop up in places like San Ramo in, I think it's Switzerland, San Raymo.
Beautiful places.

Speaker 6 We'll be staying outside or whatever. And it was brilliant, really lots and lots of fun.
And then I did some travelling with my mum to Spain.

Speaker 6 We went to Holland. My godfather was the person who designed the Flying Dutchman, the boat that was in the boat.
Oh, okay. Yeah, so it's called Flying Dutchman.

Speaker 6 And my godfather, Conrad Gulcher, used to be the designer of that boat. And I remember visiting him in Holland with my mum.

Speaker 6 in a campervan and he'd give us every time saw him he'd give us one bag of red licorice bootlaces so I did quite a lot of getting around and traveling with my mum but when I saw my brother going off to these places I never heard of you know I was like okay well this is interesting

Speaker 6 so I walked into the recruiting office

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 said can I join the parachute regiment and they said no

Speaker 6 you can join the engineers but I don't want to join the engineers of course that's when they get an incentive a set amount of money to fill gaps in other units for recruiting.

Speaker 6 So I sort of kept to my guns and I said, I want to join the paratrooper regiment. He said, do you know what you're letting yourself in for?

Speaker 6 I said, yes, my brother's a paratrooper. So,

Speaker 6 yeah, that's how I ended up in the military.

Speaker 5 How old were you when you joined?

Speaker 6 So 21.

Speaker 6 Actually, that's good, you know,

Speaker 6 in many aspects, that's a bit later. So people going at 18.

Speaker 6 That period in roofing gangs, things like that, I think stood me in very, very good stead for going into the military, just that slightly bit later, having worked in

Speaker 6 professional roles, like building labourer, roofer, that sort of thing.

Speaker 5 What year is this?

Speaker 6 So basically, I enlisted in November 98.

Speaker 5 And 98.

Speaker 6 That's when I signed something.

Speaker 5 What was going on in the world at the time?

Speaker 6 I think it was relatively...

Speaker 6 It feels like there's lots more now.

Speaker 6 Probably didn't feel like that to people.

Speaker 6 Mainly for the UK, it was Northern Ireland.

Speaker 6 The last big conflict had been the Falklands. and Parachute Regiment had played a really, really key part in it alongside the Marines and the Guards and numerous other units.

Speaker 6 You know, the Falklands War predominated British soldier thinking, certainly when I joined and there were still people serving that had served and fought in that war and it's you know incredible hearing them and you know

Speaker 6 the Falklands War was genuinely a very very tough experience for all of them a proper conflict

Speaker 6 so really you know I think I can't remember

Speaker 6 Two of the battalions had gone to the Falklands and one hadn't. So there was this thing going on in the parachute regiment.
But I didn't really pay that much attention

Speaker 6 um so really it was all about sort of northern Ireland and the Good Friday Accords had happened

Speaker 6 so it was really just support to you know

Speaker 6 presence basically can you can you describe what was what was going on in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday so I got again because I was quite young I can't really explain in massive detail but you know the history of Ireland and Northern Ireland is very very complicated and you you know very very

Speaker 6 you could set communities off against each other a huge amount you know and it's got an element in British history where an element want to be apart from Britain and an element want to be part of Britain and quickly this could turn into a great deal of violence.

Speaker 6 I don't know a huge amount about the British military history in there, but it goes back a long, long time. Oh, really?

Speaker 6 When I went there, it was good Thraday Accords, and therefore, there wasn't much going on,

Speaker 6 but there was some really intensive work and effort going on in more clever spaces, more covert operations, that sort of stuff, you know.

Speaker 6 Whereas when I turned up as a paratrooper, you know, and we I remember we did lots and lots of public order training because

Speaker 6 Northern Ireland could conflagrate very, very quickly.

Speaker 6 And so, part of our role was to support the police in trying to prevent public order and protests. Part of our role was patrols, so reassurance patrols, clearance patrols.

Speaker 6 It was all sort of pretty simple stuff. There was a huge amount of sentry and sort of guard duty.
You go around this sort of rotation.

Speaker 6 And, you know, in my round in the parachute regiment, I played a lot of sport for them. So I played a lot of rugby, played some of the

Speaker 6 some testing rugby, like I remember a particular game against the Marines.

Speaker 6 I played rugby league against Marines in what I remember to be some concrete stadium, a really, really tough

Speaker 6 competition games. And they sort of were trying to sort of encourage me into the boxing team.
Oh, really? So I did a lot of boxing in there, but essentially,

Speaker 6 the two tours of Northern Ireland, they weren't testing and challenging in that sense. You know,

Speaker 6 the environment you're in, you're in what we call a sub, so it's a hardened block.

Speaker 6 But, you know, I don't remember getting shot at at any point.

Speaker 6 There's a lot of rocks thrown at you.

Speaker 6 You know, you get spat at a bit.

Speaker 6 But essentially, you're cordoning off areas because you thought someone reported that there was a box that couldn't be trusted, and you're waiting until it could get cleared.

Speaker 6 But I was very, very aware that there was these forces that we didn't necessarily know we would stand up and be QRF to.

Speaker 6 And they, you know, a lot of the

Speaker 6 important work was getting done there.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 in a sense, it was a very, very good introduction to military service.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 when I was with the parachute regiment, and I'm not, you know, although I boxed and I was quite a successful boxer, I wasn't necessarily very

Speaker 6 good technically.

Speaker 6 I didn't lose, but it was only a matter of time until I was because you know I was winning more by force of will than

Speaker 6 than good boxing technique and army boxing is very points orientated and I've not done a long pedigree of boxing I've spent a lot of time boxing gyms you know sparring with people who they used to ask me to

Speaker 6 so it's not like I wasn't but I wasn't a boxer as such, you know, I wasn't seeking to be

Speaker 6 competition boxer.

Speaker 6 And there was sort of a push towards me going into the army boxing team and again there was the same suggestion for army rugby but I'd already kind of seen this at county level for rugby is I was good enough to get in but I was never going to be good enough to really excel at it and I was the wrong shape and size and wherever I really enjoyed playing they wanted me playing a different position

Speaker 6 I was never really going to enjoy it right and I actually never really got

Speaker 6 it's the county it's a privilege to play for for it, but not if it means I'm gonna be playing on the wing all the time or playing out of position all the time.

Speaker 6 So same with the boxing, you know, the boxing, even if I was really keen at boxing, which I wasn't,

Speaker 6 then

Speaker 6 you know, the style of boxing just didn't suit me. It was very much straight punching.

Speaker 6 You know, obviously I'm

Speaker 6 quite short, my arms are quite short. I'm never gonna really beat on reach and army boxing was all about.
So when they were trying to push me into

Speaker 6 the army boxing team for trials, you know, I was being held at a very, very low weight.

Speaker 6 And it was seen as a privilege to be on the boxing team. So when I pushed back and said, no, I don't want to, it didn't go down very well with certain people.

Speaker 6 Interesting. You know, and it's brilliant.

Speaker 5 What did you want to do?

Speaker 6 So I had already noticed, so on the bottom of one of my pay slips was a notice that, you know, it's essentially saying if get paid paid more

Speaker 6 and there was an invite to be considered for special duties. Special duties is a community, so an SF community as such.
So I already got my notice.

Speaker 6 I'd obviously been to Northern Ireland and saw some of the work that was going on, didn't fully understand it, but I knew there was something else and that's why I ended up

Speaker 6 how I ended up applying for selection and going on selection. And selection is our name for entrance into

Speaker 6 the SS or the SBS.

Speaker 5 Interesting. So

Speaker 5 they put a notice on your pay slips of who they want to try out.

Speaker 6 Yeah, no, I just

Speaker 6 pulling this out of the back of my eye. I just remember seeing a comment or a caption saying, you know, it is all about professional development or something like that.

Speaker 6 And it was something I'd noticed that said, you know, there's something else there. Now, to that point, remembering that you know, I joined the parachute regiment really to because of

Speaker 6 because it was interesting. I hadn't had a long period of time of knowledge of military.

Speaker 6 My father was very supportive of both of us going into the military. He was a huge believer in the military as an institution.

Speaker 6 He himself had served in the military, albeit only for a few years, as a bomb disposal person.

Speaker 6 So, mostly he was disposing of World War II munitions, did a tour in Germany and I remember he had sort of good memories of doing that and he'd learned to ski there and he'd learned to do all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 6 So I remember my father had a very positive opinion of it and I don't remember my mum being against it, although my mum was that sort of person, right? She was so strong.

Speaker 6 Even if she didn't like it, she wouldn't have said.

Speaker 6 So essentially whatever decisions we would make, she would quietly culture the way we went about them.

Speaker 6 Very clever in how she did it, but ultimately she'd support you, you know, as long as it wasn't a bad idea.

Speaker 6 But I don't imagine my mum would have been, you know, oh, brilliant, but not against either. So I know my mum was actually very proud of it as well.

Speaker 5 So the caption said you'd get more pay?

Speaker 6 Something about pay and something about development. I I can't remember exactly what it was, but that's what caught my eye.

Speaker 6 And that's what made me start sort of asking questions about where do you go from here

Speaker 6 from the parachute regiment.

Speaker 6 And the parachute regiment in particular is very supportive of other units. A lot of other units in the British Army don't like losing you, so they try and make it difficult for you to move on.

Speaker 6 Whereas

Speaker 6 I was lucky, you know, I got a lot of support. I was asking to go quite early.

Speaker 6 And essentially, I was, you know, I'd not spent a lot of time being graded as a soldier. So they could look at me and be like, okay,

Speaker 6 but obviously my performance was good enough. I did get champion recruit in training, which I don't know what that means, because I certainly wasn't for drill.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 clearly I was sort of capable. They were seeing that I was able.

Speaker 6 So when it came to me sort of saying, you know, look, can I have a go at that? um i got the support of the unit uh when i was in the parachute regiment

Speaker 6 i went to support company which is the machine gun platoon it's the anti-tank platoon and the mortar platoon and i remember um really as i was passing

Speaker 6 you know they are elite soldiers the marines and the parachute regiment are the elite infantry as such and the parachute regiment in particular is configured for airborne forces

Speaker 6 um not delivery by parachute really so much anymore but it's kind of sort of airborne delivery. But the mindset is all about, you know, an offensive nature.

Speaker 6 And we did, you know, platoon attack after platoon attack, company attack, company attack. That's what you excelled at.

Speaker 6 So I really enjoyed it. It was very, very tough.

Speaker 6 There's a lot of getting messed about. You know, on a Friday we used to do a 10-mile test.
And I remember if you didn't pass it, you wouldn't go home. So, you know, it's a good, tough existence.

Speaker 6 And I really, really respected it and some of the soldiers you served alongside are incredible people you know they are

Speaker 6 you see what real professional soldiering looks like and I remember looking across and

Speaker 6 in the machine gun platoon we became like any other

Speaker 6 company in the unit when we went to Northern Ireland because clearly there's no call for any of that so you'd just become a normal patrols company.

Speaker 6 When we came came back we got the opportunity to do the course which is the CADA to join the support company Machine Guns which is a tough course in itself I remember it being a month long carrying tripod mounted guns learning about gun lines and everything else you know but that's also where you know I started you know getting pretty beaten up by being in gun lines you know 50 cows and you're in amongst it you're lying right next to it

Speaker 6 and you know I didn't pick up on it at the time.

Speaker 6 So it was brilliant doing lots of sport, really, really enjoyable.

Speaker 6 But there are periods of getting back to barracks, and you just sort of start getting a sense of how challenging this job can be in certain respects.

Speaker 6 You know, I remember kind of losing my balance a lot. And this is only retrospective understanding of what was going on at the time.
You just all sort of sucked it up as tiredness or whatever.

Speaker 6 You know, some of the

Speaker 6 brigade exercises we'd do, we'd have really, really long taps carrying a tripod mount, carrying tons and tons of ammunition we knew we were never going to fire because the GPMG doesn't work very well on blanks.

Speaker 6 So it's a bit sort of soul-destroyed.

Speaker 6 You know, so and it really was very, very hard professional soldiering.

Speaker 6 Absolutely fantastic foundation to have built and come from.

Speaker 6 And the sport I think was really, really enjoyable. Although something in me was like you know I didn't join this to be all about sport

Speaker 6 so you know I enjoyed my time there but it was roughly about three years

Speaker 6 you know I can't pick out the dates exactly from when I entered or asked for selection you do some preparation particularly navigation because selection is very tough for navigation.

Speaker 5 So they get you ready for selection.

Speaker 6 Yeah so the parachute regiment are really professional how they do it right because actually they take a pride in you passing.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 so we did some courses. I remember

Speaker 6 so when

Speaker 6 I did drill and duties which is a

Speaker 6 lower

Speaker 6 echelon command course

Speaker 6 to become a Lance Corporal we had to do it and I remember on it and actually that was when

Speaker 6 I remember 9-11 happened. I was on the drill square at the time.
I remember becoming aware of

Speaker 6 this

Speaker 6 event that had happened. And I can't remember if we watched it on TV, but I remember then something sort of

Speaker 6 occurring to me. This is something really, really

Speaker 6 important.

Speaker 6 But I was on a command course at that point. And so they were preparing me to stay in the parachute regiment on the expectancy that you would not pass election.
because most people don't.

Speaker 6 But essentially they're also giving you courses to prepare you for it. And that was just simply how to read a map effectively.

Speaker 6 You know, selection is the type of course you prepare for it, you should prepare for it.

Speaker 5 How much time did you have to prepare for?

Speaker 6 I can't remember great. You know, I think it was about kind of sort of three to five months.
You still had to do all your duties, but you got appropriated time.

Speaker 6 So have two weeks here, have one week here. There's a course teaching navigation, go on that.

Speaker 6 And actually, that's really, you know, the units don't have to do that.

Speaker 6 But I think it's a good level of cooperation because ultimately, you know, people should want their soldiers to go on to the special forces community.

Speaker 5 Were you aware of what you were getting ready to try out for?

Speaker 6 Yes and no as in, no, I wasn't really aware of these units too much. You know, I hadn't paid too much attention.
Some people really are aware of it from a very early

Speaker 6 early

Speaker 6 point

Speaker 6 and they're working towards it i wasn't you know at each step i kind of did it and then reviewed what i was where i was and was like okay well you know is there an expensive where do i go next so i hadn't really considered it and i hadn't really considered their role

Speaker 6 it changes well their role doesn't change but what they're doing at any one time does

Speaker 6 but i simply just went on selection because it was a progressive step Gotcha. And it was a, you know, highly, highly, highly respected community, the whole community is within the military

Speaker 6 um so it was a natural place to go um and i didn't necessarily take loads of advice i don't think i sort sought it you know just instinct saying it's a good move to make um so go there

Speaker 6 and um yeah i mean it's uh

Speaker 5 what was what was it like checking in for a selection

Speaker 6 daunting because he got so many people there.

Speaker 5 How many?

Speaker 6 I think on my selection, I know, forgive me for the numbers, because I really can't remember how to be accurate on these, but

Speaker 6 240 or something started.

Speaker 5 240 people?

Speaker 6 I think so, yes. I mean, you get some that are 120, some at 160.
I think ours was particularly big.

Speaker 5 Because of 9-11?

Speaker 6 Potentially, yes. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 I'll do it. What did what was the I mean

Speaker 5 what was the pulse of UK when 9-11 happened?

Speaker 6 So absolute shock. As in, you know, I think everyone was universally shocked by it.
And there was a real feeling that this is something extremely important.

Speaker 6 That's across society and the public. I think there was a real nervousness about it.
It was just shock. You know, it's like, how has this happened? you know and

Speaker 6 you know within the military there was an anticipation of what was to come we knew it was going to be something no one was guessing what but we knew that there was going to be an extremely important part to play and I you know and again thinking about what people were feeling or whatever is a very kind of sort of inaccurate science but it really really got the sense that people felt threatened themselves by it.

Speaker 6 You know, why could this not as equally happen in this country? You know, and so I think it was took extremely seriously.

Speaker 6 I think there was an expectation of what was to come. And I think people, everyone was watching it very, very intently

Speaker 6 to see

Speaker 6 what was going to be the response. You know, would people capitulate and give the people that are responsible up,

Speaker 6 which they didn't.

Speaker 5 So you you joined at 21, spent three years, 9-11 happens in there, and then by the time you're 24,

Speaker 5 you're trying out for that's right.

Speaker 6 About mid-24, I think it was.

Speaker 6 And it takes six months.

Speaker 5 Selection?

Speaker 6 Yes, tested every day. So by the time, I'll probably 25 by the time I went in.
I mean, I can't feel if I got a pen and paper, I'd be able to work it out.

Speaker 6 I was either 24 when I became what's called badged, or I was 25.

Speaker 5 Okay, so what is what does day one look like when you go to selection?

Speaker 6 Just a mass of people,

Speaker 6 you know, and I can't even remember.

Speaker 6 It's very, very, very physical.

Speaker 6 And it's designed to be that way. And we

Speaker 6 always

Speaker 6 made a joke, you could turn up as an Olympian and be no better off than the next person in about two weeks because that's what it's designed to do is strip you down physically.

Speaker 6 Because what they're really interested in is what sort of person are you, you know, and how sort of mentally or tough and plied can you be.

Speaker 6 And you can't test that out when there's still such massive individual differences in physicality

Speaker 6 so you know it's not that you can reduce everyone down to a level platform how would they do that um just you know there's runs all the time

Speaker 6 carries up hills almost at every point you're getting run around to do something

Speaker 6 there's some tuition in it so they're teaching you some skills in how to then do test week and they're building you up and developing I mean let's face it, no one's succeeding in their job if everyone fails everything.

Speaker 6 You need to get people through these. So ultimately I saw what they were doing as it was helpful and the DS were extremely well trained

Speaker 6 and they essentially preparing you, although it didn't feel like it. What's interesting about selection is you don't get any encouragement at all.

Speaker 6 That's one of the tests. It's seeing what's inside you.
You know, it's like, you know, you don't get chowed out. They play a few games with you.

Speaker 6 You know, they'll give you, you call you a name or two, right?

Speaker 6 They're not necessarily trying to be your friend, but they're certainly not giving you any encouragement. And you don't really get shouted at.

Speaker 6 You know, if you've had enough, you get told to put your burger down.

Speaker 6 And that was very, very interesting because I think essentially what they're looking at is each individual to sort of demonstrate who they are themselves, you know.

Speaker 6 And I tend to see that the people who are there to try and just impress the the directing staff, you know, they'd be some of the first to go.

Speaker 5 Really?

Speaker 5 Do most people quit or do they fail?

Speaker 6 Most people quit.

Speaker 6 Well, no.

Speaker 6 In the first part, which is all physical, it's hills and tests over marches, test marches with weight.

Speaker 6 People will fail mostly at that point. So that's the big reduction in numbers.

Speaker 6 But when you go into the jungle, that's when people, more people will fail themselves by withdrawing when you go into the jungle yes so this isn't this isn't just a selection that takes place in uk no so you bounce only what that part is we go into the jungle for a considerable period of time and that's from the history of the unit having served in the jungle in malaya and seeing some of the challenges of that environment.

Speaker 6 So they look at you in the jungle and the jungle is a real great arbiter, right? You know,

Speaker 6 you get these people who make a good

Speaker 6 play of

Speaker 6 who they are and the jungle exposes you straight away you know it's very very tough environment where do you go

Speaker 5 so over by Malaysia so it's all over in the Malaya in the Malaya area so is is selection broken up into phases or is it yes it's how long is it aggressive phase

Speaker 6 yes it's six months I remember it's 182 tested days it's actually you know it is tested but at certain stages you then become expected to pass.

Speaker 6 But essentially, you've got your physical part, which is your hills phase, you've got your jungle part, which is when they start being interested in who you are.

Speaker 6 So they look at you as a character, and they start, most importantly, they're looking whether you support one another because you can go into

Speaker 6 you can be the biggest superstar, you know, the greatest physical

Speaker 6 specimen in the world.

Speaker 6 If you cannot work amongst other people and support one another, you are never going to be good. So, in my opinion, any special forces unit, definitely not that one.

Speaker 6 And that's a really, really key trait that they're looking for. And they're also looking for that thing in you that says, you know, it's got too tough.
I want some respite. I need a moment.

Speaker 6 And that's called voluntary withdrawal.

Speaker 5 What?

Speaker 5 So the first is all rough marches and physical tests. What are you doing in the jungle?

Speaker 6 Jungle is more operating in the jungle.

Speaker 6 It's basically used because it's such an amazing environment to see what soldiers are like and characters are like.

Speaker 6 But you're also starting to learn the SOPs that stand operating procedures, how to exist in a tough environment. You do a lot of patrolling.

Speaker 6 You do a small amount of

Speaker 6 survival. You do other bits, but essentially it's really used as a way of looking at you to see whether you're suitable for service.

Speaker 5 What kind of survival?

Speaker 6 So you just go without food and then it's up to you to kind of survive. You know, they bump you at one point like they usually do, see how you respond to things.
You have to go on long, long patrols.

Speaker 6 And, you know, the jungle is a very tough environment to exist in. You know,

Speaker 6 you only sleep at night.

Speaker 6 You get up in the morning in the dark, put cold, wet clothes on. You have to work hard to stop your body from rotting, you know.

Speaker 6 So, all of these things are very interesting things to look at when you're trying to

Speaker 6 evaluate someone for whether they're going to take the easy way out, you know, whether they're sort of nipping on their administration.

Speaker 6 You know, so you make a mistake in the jungle, you aren't coming back from it, right?

Speaker 6 Um, you just aren't.

Speaker 5 How long is the jungle phase?

Speaker 6 Uh,

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 six weeks, six weeks, no, but not all of that's in jungle. Some of it is preparation.
I'm sure it's six weeks.

Speaker 6 Something like six weeks. Close to six weeks.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 How long do you go without food?

Speaker 6 Not long there. Just I think

Speaker 6 it's just a kind of introduction to.

Speaker 6 Because I haven't had the chance to train you at this point. You know, I haven't had a chance to.

Speaker 5 Oh, so this is like light instruction? Like very little.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so most of all, they're looking at you. Okay.
Learn enough to be quite basic in the jungle, patrol, set up your camps, whatever you do. They're really just looking at you.
Serving you. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And ranges in the jungle are extremely tough. You know, the environment is really kind of quite oppressive.
You can't see far. You know, again,

Speaker 6 you have to rely on a lot of your instincts to tell you what's going on.

Speaker 6 You know, it's very noisy, it can be very wet.

Speaker 6 everything's trying to eat you and it's all really small you know and it can't can be very very uncomfortable if you take shortcuts on your administration you'll quickly become ill your body will start having problems and rotting you know so all of these things they can just allow to happen

Speaker 6 you know you do some really really tough physical tests it's very very humid you know the the the hills there are very very steep

Speaker 6 so you do some very very tough physical tests and they're looking for that moment you know looking for that moment you say look you know,

Speaker 5 I'm done.

Speaker 6 I'm done.

Speaker 6 And the vast majority of people who say that, they've kind of changed their mind quite soon after.

Speaker 6 But that's what they're looking for.

Speaker 5 Where do you go after Jungle Phase?

Speaker 6 So they do a review everyone and then they parcel for you afterwards, the ones that have done. And you go and do a series of different courses,

Speaker 6 sort of tuition courses.

Speaker 6 So you cover

Speaker 6 stuff like signals, I think. I might be getting the order mixed up here, but you know, you do your skills and you learn various things.
But the significant phase is then you start going into

Speaker 6 mastering basic OP.

Speaker 6 So living close with people in holes and mastering some sort of elementary

Speaker 6 elements of surveillance and reconnaissance.

Speaker 6 Then you,

Speaker 6 I think, do some parachuting for the ones who are not. So for us, I was a

Speaker 6 paratroop already, so I didn't have to do the basic part, just had to convert onto different parachutes.

Speaker 6 There's an element of starting to do sort of multi-floor, multi-room combat, which is, you know, CQB is very, very tough testing environments.

Speaker 6 The margins are very small, and the arcs are down, so that can be a challenge for certain people. And again, all of these things, if they deem you unsafe,

Speaker 6 then ultimately, they fail you. Last thing people want in this in these sorts of roles is people who are out of their depth all the time.
So that's why it's called pass or fail all the way through.

Speaker 6 But it's unlikely you're going to start failing after that. There's a...

Speaker 5 After CQB?

Speaker 6 No, so there's an escape and evasion phase.

Speaker 6 It's quite iconic.

Speaker 6 And it's split up into how to...

Speaker 6 survive out in the wild, out in an unsupported environment, and then there's a part where you just get chased around by hunt force and there's another part where you go and you know you have your introductions to interrogation phases and things like that you know at that point if you've passed that you're expected to pass oh okay

Speaker 6 but you know if you get through the jungle people

Speaker 6 that's the majority yeah you'd be like you know you don't want to lose people after that you know i did pick up on it it's like but it's not it's not supposed to be friendly but you kind of, oh, this is a joint effort.

Speaker 6 And there was a level of trust in it. You know, the way I went about selection is, you know, I was like, I'm just going to be here.

Speaker 6 I'm never going to question whether I'm good enough or not, because actually it's up to the DS to tell you that. And they will do.

Speaker 6 And actually,

Speaker 6 if you're going to be failed, and I found it was... a better way to go about it for me.
I didn't have to keep questioning, am I good enough for this? Have I done well enough?

Speaker 6 You cannot go through that period of training and have not have a couple of mistakes, you know, you have a couple of safety calls, all that sort of stuff, you know, and that can weigh heavily on you if you let it.

Speaker 6 So you just accept it, it's moved on. Do you know what? It's your decision.

Speaker 6 You know, at the end of the day, you know, you're either going to get carried off because you're injured or you're going to get felled because you're not good enough.

Speaker 6 And that was a good enough sort of stage for me, you know, and essentially, you know, it's not comfortable, it's not meant to be comfortable.

Speaker 6 And parts of it are enjoyable, but only very, very small parts.

Speaker 5 How many people disappeared from the start until after jungle phase?

Speaker 6 How many people disappeared?

Speaker 6 So, if I remember rightly, I think after the jungle, we're down to roughly about 36.

Speaker 5 Oh, shit.

Speaker 6 I don't know why 36 sticks out. Yeah, yeah, so, but the main

Speaker 6 loss of numbers is

Speaker 6 on the physical phase

Speaker 5 at the start.

Speaker 6 You know, and

Speaker 6 they

Speaker 6 I don't think selections change much. You know, it's a tried and tested pathway and it prepares people very well, but they may have adjusted certain parts of it now and the way they do it.

Speaker 6 But essentially, you know, there's a test at the end of the first week. And if you don't pass that, and a lot of people don't, then that's so you lose a lot of numbers in the first week and down.

Speaker 6 But you know, it's pointless staying on the course if you're never going to make it to the end, right? It's better to sort everyone out quite early, look at things.

Speaker 6 And I don't know why 36 stands ahead, but it does. I'm pretty sure it's 36 by the end of that phase, and then we only lost,

Speaker 6 I think, another 10. Wow, I think so.

Speaker 5 It sounds out from about roughly 240 people to 26 by the end.

Speaker 6 I think so, yeah. And they were split between the two units, you know, SAS and SB.

Speaker 5 How do you know? Well, we'll get there. So, what happens when you pass everything?

Speaker 6 I can't remember. So I think it's work as normal.
You get sent to a squadron.

Speaker 6 And I think...

Speaker 5 What do they tell you? I mean, is there a graduation?

Speaker 5 They tell you congratulations.

Speaker 6 I don't remember one.

Speaker 6 You get given

Speaker 6 that you get a visit from the commander who gives you your beret. And it's an enormously proud

Speaker 6 moment. Hugely proud.

Speaker 6 I remember passing the jungle and it was just like wow you know and bearing in mind I hadn't gone into this with the sort of knowing a lot about it you know so that sense of like really valuable will to be part of this was really from from my first interactions

Speaker 6 from going on there and I remember a huge sense of pride from you know

Speaker 6 from getting that beret

Speaker 6 and it's given to you I'm I'm pretty sure by the commander and the existing sergeant major I can't even remember where it happened I assume in Hereford somewhere and I think it's fairly sort of inauspicious but it's very very special moment so it's like well done but essentially everyone then joins their squadrons and off they go how do you know if you're going SAS or SBS

Speaker 6 in those days it was choice it was choice yes yeah yeah and it makes sense for there to be choice and I have this conversation quite a lot about you know paratroopers and marines you know you know that these they're both elite infantry and they're both incredible professional soldiers there's something within you that wants to be a paratrooper and an airborne forces and there's something in you that wants to be a marine and I think that is good to have that element of still I want to be that I think it's that final part of pride you know and it's interesting seeing what choices people make you know and you know SPS is a mainly maritime organization We share all the same roles, missions, and tasks.

Speaker 6 But their emphasis is maritime. The SS emphasis was

Speaker 6 air and land.

Speaker 6 Didn't mean that others didn't support one another in it, but essentially it made sense that people got to make the choice.

Speaker 6 But in terms of professionalism as soldiers and in terms of what you're asked to do, they're equals. There isn't a difference.

Speaker 6 And you do the same selection.

Speaker 6 You go into

Speaker 6 the same environment as such, totally different in locations and

Speaker 6 essence, but you have signed up to Special Forces units at that level, and that's what you're asked to do.

Speaker 5 And you pick SAS?

Speaker 6 Yes, yes, at the time.

Speaker 6 And you know, if I do it all again, I'd pick that again. You know, that was what was within me, you know, and I don't mind maritime environment,

Speaker 6 but it's,

Speaker 6 you know, at that time, it was all paratrooper and this, this, this, that, and the other. You know, and it's important to mention that both those units select, you know, from

Speaker 6 all over.

Speaker 6 Many have international

Speaker 6 people that join from, you know, New Zealand. I had a number of friends who were New Zealanders.

Speaker 6 You know, and

Speaker 6 that harks back to its heritage in World War II, which is essentially if we understand your background and you share our mission, then you're welcome to come and have a try. Oh, actually.

Speaker 6 So, you know, at the end of the day, it's not that you're precluded,

Speaker 6 but

Speaker 6 you would expect the SPS to be quite heavily Marine-orientated. Gotcha.

Speaker 6 The Parachute Regiment used to have a lot of people in, but I think it's more... definitely more sort of spread now between people.

Speaker 6 But let's face it, if you're a really decent professional soldier, soldier, you can learn the rest of the skills.

Speaker 6 And what's beautiful about Special Forces

Speaker 6 role is it is quite varied

Speaker 6 and it's multiple skills all applied. And most of those can be taught and trained if you've got the right characteristics apply to it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Well, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about how it was to check into the unit.

Speaker 6 Yes, perfect. Perfect.

Speaker 5 All right, John, we're back from the break. So I want to talk about what it was like for you to check into the legendary SAS unit.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, it

Speaker 6 it's really

Speaker 6 you enter an ecosystem that's already running hot.

Speaker 6 and essentially it's a constant process of courses, training and deployments when they happen. And for me,

Speaker 6 my team was already preparing to go away because Iraq

Speaker 6 was already in the process. So it just depends on where you, you know, what...
what squadrons you get sent to what you're likely to then be involved in first. But there's an element of courses.

Speaker 6 They catch up on your courses very, very quickly.

Speaker 6 You're meeting

Speaker 6 soldiers that have had lots and lots of experience in so many ways that you don't recognize in the wider military.

Speaker 6 You know, so immediately you pick up on there's lots of other skills that you've got to learn and master.

Speaker 6 So, I mean, I don't remember being overwhelmed by it. I remember enjoying it a huge amount.

Speaker 5 What do they, how do they greet you?

Speaker 5 Are they welcoming or are they treating you like an FNG? You know what I mean?

Speaker 6 No, no, so I mean it's welcoming. Yeah.
It is welcome. It's welcoming, but very, very grown up.

Speaker 6 Let's just call it very grown up, right? You know, essentially you're on

Speaker 6 a test and trial period anyway.

Speaker 6 Okay, so you always are.

Speaker 5 So you go through. All right, so just walk me through the pipeline.
So you go through a six-month selection process.

Speaker 5 You do, in there, you do CQB, land navigation, escape and evasion, survival,

Speaker 5 parachuting, pretty much all the stuff that it takes to turn you into a special operator, correct?

Speaker 6 At the lowest level.

Speaker 5 At the lowest level.

Speaker 6 So these are the very, very

Speaker 5 just the basic.

Speaker 6 Basic skills.

Speaker 5 So this is similar. I don't know how familiar you are with our pipelines, but this sounds very similar to me as Bud's.
Yes. For

Speaker 5 SEAL training, where we go through the first two months is a kick in the balls, where it's just you're cold, you're wet, you're miserable, it's lots and lots of PT and

Speaker 5 physical tests, and then you move into a dive phase for two months, then you move into a land warfare phase for two months, and then you go to jump school, and then you show up to the unit,

Speaker 5 which is roughly six months if you make it in one shot.

Speaker 6 That's exactly that.

Speaker 6 You turn up having learnt rather than really become very good at the bare elements of what you're going to need to do.

Speaker 5 So you're a guy that they just

Speaker 5 just like

Speaker 5 very similar to Bud's.

Speaker 5 You are a nobody when you show up to the unit and then the unit trains you into what it needs you to become.

Speaker 6 Totally. And they do it with urgency.

Speaker 6 So it really depends on what your squadron is next going to be devoted to, committed to,

Speaker 6 that will inform what immediate courses you're doing. But essentially it's, you know, and again, it's a great thing about education, education, education.
I did a mortars course very early.

Speaker 6 But they'll up

Speaker 6 train you. You immediately join in with squadron training where they are looking at you to see how quickly you fitted and how well you can sink into it.

Speaker 6 And people spend intensive periods of time training you individually, you know, to help you within your own teams.

Speaker 6 Another thing that they'll be under a lot of pressure to do is train you in your specific insertion skills. So each team has a real major in certain types of insertion.

Speaker 6 So it's air mobility, boat and mountain. So I was mounting.

Speaker 6 But essentially, you may be waiting quite a period of time to do that. And so you don't feel like you're properly accredited until you've sort of done those courses as well.

Speaker 6 but it may depend on what you're doing now I deployed quite quickly

Speaker 6 so how fast did you deploy I cannot remember but you know it's within months if not weeks within weeks yeah so holy shit basically it was because Iraq was underway already what year is this 2003

Speaker 5 oh so that that was the invasion yes yes

Speaker 6 so essentially that informed exactly your you know you you basically they look at where the numbers issues are and they just put numbers against it.

Speaker 6 You get preferences in, you know, what you want to major in. So I picked air of mountain.

Speaker 6 That would mean that I'd become very specialist in parachuting. We're all good at parachuting, but air, just that sort of step up.
Whereas mountain, you know, you

Speaker 6 I used to always sort of consider mountain as a bit of a an odd one because we do a lot of urban climbing and we do

Speaker 6 ridge navigating across ridge lines but you know when you're climbing a mountain to get to the top of it it's not really all about that although people do a lot of people go up Everest and do sort of amazing expeditions but it's not really role operated it's not really sort of operations orientated so mountain's quite an interesting one to pass

Speaker 6 But I was waiting quite a while because I did my first deployment first.

Speaker 6 I think,

Speaker 6 yeah, I'm not absolutely sure I did my first. And these are when our deployments were shorter periods of time.

Speaker 5 What is the, what is the,

Speaker 5 sorry, but how is, how is SAS broken up?

Speaker 6 So there's four main squadrons, and there's elements of departments and wings that provide various functions of support, tuition, instruction back in.

Speaker 6 A lot of, and I always used to say, you know, Special Forces roles, that unit's role, I'd probably subdivide it into 70%, 30%, 70% support to other.

Speaker 6 We support our emergency services, you know, on a national remit. We do a lot of support to other people, we do a lot of training to other people.

Speaker 6 And it's also important when you're talking about UK Special Forces to recognise that we don't have a tiered system.

Speaker 6 So we refer to our SES and SPS as tier ones to be comparative levels in communication, knowledge, and understanding with US special forces.

Speaker 6 But actually the unit covers multiple tiers of operations and ways to do things.

Speaker 6 And I think it is part of its strength because, you know, everyone is orientated differently. The resources they have are different.

Speaker 6 And certainly I enjoyed having that range of activity and operations that I took part in. So, but Tier 1 is a status where you can only be appropriated certain missions.

Speaker 6 You know, it would be unfair to, for instance, take someone who is a reserve and give them a hostage rescue to do. A hostage rescue is an incredibly complex mission to do.

Speaker 6 You have to train very hard and you have to be assured at so many skills.

Speaker 6 So, you know, the two units, the SES and the SBS, are comparative in that respect, but they will also deliver lots of other activity and support which will be recognised as tier two, tier three, tier four.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 the myriad of school skills we learn is also reflective of that. Okay.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 5 are you guys foreign and domestic?

Speaker 6 Yes. Yeah, yes.
We're global.

Speaker 5 What kind of stuff would you do domestically?

Speaker 6 So we support, so the UK has got an interesting construct that you don't see many, where there's something called military assistance that can be given to the emergency services. So this has happened.

Speaker 6 You saw it in the Iranian embassy siege.

Speaker 6 The unit has always had a very, very high priority to support our emergency services at times when it's to do with terrorism. So it's never anything to do with the criminal at all.

Speaker 6 It's always terrorism. And we have a remit to support everyone.
So we have to train very

Speaker 6 consciously with that. You know, it's the highest priority we've got actually.
And it's conditioned with dedicated teams constantly. And it's a role that you go through.

Speaker 6 So that forms a key part of our training and every role that we go through from a global remit to an operations window to a domestic CT remit, we will have a set of preparation exercises and currency exercises we'll do to ensure we've got the skills and we've proved ourselves up to a very, very thorough level to prove that we're good to take over that role and then they'll hand over.

Speaker 6 And essentially it was a two-year cycle. So if you appropriate six months to each and you cycle through that.
So it's a pretty relentless operational rotation.

Speaker 5 How is the cycle?

Speaker 6 So in what order does it go? Yeah.

Speaker 6 Can't remember exactly what order but it was a tier of domestic CT so support

Speaker 6 to

Speaker 6 our our services

Speaker 6 think operations window

Speaker 6 come back then you have your global standby remit where you'll go and you'll support anything that happens or there's something that happens they need to just deploy teams to so often they'll be small teams

Speaker 6 if there's a hostage rescue to do then you'll be stood up immediately for that and then there's a period of

Speaker 6 training where you'll go away and do some sort of environmental training Okay. So you'll share it and make sure because we have to operate in every single environment.

Speaker 6 So we train and prove in every single environment. So over the years, they'll prove desert, they'll prove jungle, they'll prove mountain.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 it's always an arrangement. It's got those three pillars in of domestic support, operations, global remit, and then a period of preparation that they sort of meld together inside.

Speaker 6 But taking over and handing over those different responsibilities is really non-conditional. You have to do it on a certain date.
You have to prove to yourself by a certain time.

Speaker 6 What that results in is an endless cycle of training and preparation and currencies that's very very hard and intensive on the

Speaker 6 on the unit to to keep up

Speaker 6 but essentially as a soldier you're gaining so many skills as you go along and you're taking on more and more you know i was um for instance i became demolitions trained and then emo e-trained so as a breacher on certain squadrons but also jtac joint terminal air controller

Speaker 6 attack controller

Speaker 6 So, in our parlance, that started off as an FAC, which became SubfAC supervisory FAC. So, you look at all of these ranges of skills, and I think that's one of the strengths of

Speaker 6 the members of the unit: they become multiple skilled in lots.

Speaker 6 But, you know, we always used to sort of laugh because it's very, very hard to stay good at these skills and current at these skills because they adapt and change all the time.

Speaker 6 So, within all of that rotation, they've built in other courses that you need to do. Gotcha.

Speaker 6 Every period of time, you'll go on a post as well. I'll either be support externally or to one of the instructors' wings.

Speaker 6 And then you'll take part in obviously instructing and ensuring that squadrons are prepared, selection is delivered, all of those sorts of things. Okay.

Speaker 5 Interesting. So you go to Baghdad.
Yeah. Or you go to Iraq.

Speaker 5 Did you go to Baghdad?

Speaker 6 Yeah, straight in, because

Speaker 6 I arrived just as I was actually doing courses to prepare. So I remember doing a mortars course.

Speaker 6 I can't remember what other courses, but because I was brand new, I was doing these courses all the way through. So I caught everyone up

Speaker 6 really

Speaker 6 not long after Baghdad had,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 people had got to the centre of Baghdad and sort of secured it.

Speaker 5 What was that like for you?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely a huge eye opener. You know, experience had been really quite sort of

Speaker 6 being a paratrooper, very, very exciting, but to be put into a complex environment like that,

Speaker 6 following up on something that was a war,

Speaker 6 was really sort of an incredible experience for someone so young. You know, really, really opened my eyes.
For the first time, I was meeting and

Speaker 6 often and interlocuting with US forces.

Speaker 6 and then gradually we became part of a comprised task force

Speaker 6 that was mostly US forces.

Speaker 6 I don't remember if there's any other nationales in there but we were part of it as well and that was an incredible learning experience but bearing in mind I had no experience backwards so I was quite adaptive.

Speaker 6 A state I could be quite adaptive but I was noticing difference in equipment.

Speaker 6 I was noticing difference in techniques, tactics and procedures and I was noticing very very big difference in equipment and at that time,

Speaker 6 Baghdad and Iraq was relatively safe. And I remember there being quite a sense of hope and opportunity

Speaker 6 there. But then, quickly, security started breaking down.
You know, you were noticing the looting, no one's interfering with us, but quickly there were no-go areas springing up.

Speaker 6 Like, I remember Haifa Street being one of the notable areas.

Speaker 6 And, you know, you just got a sense that, you know, things were going going to turn.

Speaker 6 But essentially, that first tour, it was very, very busy.

Speaker 6 You know, you had that deck of cards, you had the former regime elements, and I remember kind of sort of coming up against them, and most of them were relieved to actually not be tracked down by militias or things, you know.

Speaker 6 And I remember also...

Speaker 6 I don't think there were any suicide bombs going off at that period. And there was a sense of hope.

Speaker 6 But I do have recollections of I'm sure we went into Sadder City and we were kind of there was something to do an electricity substation something that was very critical that someone needed to look at

Speaker 6 and I bumped into I was standing on the corner and again you know it was actually quite not relaxed you're aware that it was all very I wouldn't say

Speaker 5 I don't know anybody that's been relaxed in Sadder City.

Speaker 6 No, no.

Speaker 6 But there was a sense and, you know,

Speaker 6 and I'm sure it is an electricity substation. There was a key of like we can get the electricity stable.

Speaker 6 And I bumped into a young Iraqi boy coming back, so I was speaking to him and he was speaking English. I was asked him saying, Oh, you know, how are you doing? Like, what are you doing?

Speaker 6 He said, I'm going home to do my French homework. And I was like, okay, well, I speak French when I see,

Speaker 6 help you.

Speaker 6 And essentially, I just sort of sat down and helped him do his French homework. And it just struck me that at that time there was actually quite an

Speaker 6 element of hope amongst the public. However, you didn't have to look too far to see between the seams of these collections of militia type organizations growing up and quickly taking areas of control.

Speaker 6 And I remember, you know, they called that deburcation sort of element quite early. I'm sure it was that first tour.

Speaker 6 And it sort of suddenly occurring to me that, you know, this is...

Speaker 6 I don't see how you you can remove the whole governance from a country it's it's very very hard to do it's not just about positions it's about people's loyalty and who's paying their their wages and you just got a sense that this was going to become very very complex very very quickly and by the second tour it had already did you

Speaker 5 did you go Connecticut on your first tour

Speaker 6 if we did I can't remember much of it you know I think I don't think it was particularly organized You know, the main threat is we were driving around in unarmoured vehicles.

Speaker 6 You felt quite exposed, and there was a lot of unrest,

Speaker 6 a lot of movement, and everything else. But I can't remember people firing us too much.

Speaker 6 I definitely noticed

Speaker 6 no operation sticks out particularly, but you did get that element of this will quickly become coordinated and complex.

Speaker 5 Do you remember

Speaker 5 your first operation, Moriwan Kinetic?

Speaker 6 So I can't really pick it out. I think it was on my second tour.
I think it was on my second tour. It might have been on the first, right? We did quite a lot of operations up into Crit

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 I can't pick it out if it was there. And on the second tour, you know, it was more about events that started happening.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 there were sort of exchanges at breach points and moving to but we hadn't been we hadn't got particularly coordinated in

Speaker 6 we've been shot at from roofs a lot you know it all started but there was not really any sort of coordinated

Speaker 6 action against us and the targets we started on

Speaker 6 al-Qaeda associated targets in the second tour and that's not because we that became our mission and task it's because we started coming across these these houses where you know they weren't that often armed but when they were armed they were heavily armed you know and um

Speaker 6 uh and the main thing that happened on the second tour is our own uh hercules getting shot shot down which we responded to extremely quickly uh and that was a very very significant moment in that tour your own what being shot down so our transport Hercules

Speaker 5 and essentially what is a Hercules?

Speaker 6 Transport plane.

Speaker 6 Because we have specifically trained aviation crews because of the complexity of what they're doing. And at that point, we were moving about a lot.
I remember there was

Speaker 6 on the second tour, there was a lot of moving around into different regions, contacting other forces, doing bits with them,

Speaker 6 a lot up to the west, up towards Ramadi. And you could see that funnel, and that's where we started coming across these houses,

Speaker 6 these groups that were dressed similarly. And

Speaker 6 mainly, I think we were connecting with US forces. I think the most significant thing in that tour, these were short tours, they were about three months at a time.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it was our Hercules. So the Hercules had just dropped off and it took off again, was heading for Balad.
And it's the time when they were flying low-level.

Speaker 6 We heard a Mayday call

Speaker 6 because it goes over international channels as well. So unhelpfully, Sky News reported it.
And it was a UK badged Hercules that was shot down in the environment of Iraq.

Speaker 6 So it was off towards the northeast or northwest heading towards Balad.

Speaker 6 I don't know the details about how they managed to shoot it down other than it was some sort of rocket pack. And the Herc probably was, you know, how

Speaker 6 it's very, very difficult to continue to break up your patterns if you're flying in and out with that density and volume of times.

Speaker 6 But essentially we got into the Pumas and responded very quickly to this.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 as you can imagine, responding to an aircraft crash like that

Speaker 6 is

Speaker 6 almost

Speaker 6 perplexing the scene you come across because there's nothing identifiable. There was only the tailplane.
There's nothing else that was particularly identifiable about it.

Speaker 6 It was coming in night. I remember there was a fire in a ditch because there was

Speaker 6 a water-filled ditch and there was a fire burning on top.

Speaker 6 And essentially we'd sort of cleared the air. It's in a very, very difficult area.

Speaker 5 How did you insert?

Speaker 6 On our helicopters. So we had our helicopters right by our house and essentially we could get on them very, very quickly, run them up and we just flew up flight line, found where that

Speaker 6 accident had happened

Speaker 6 that instant.

Speaker 6 And essentially if the aircraft is flying about 200 feet or below and it gets hit it goes in headfirst right

Speaker 6 it just tips forward and essentially it was a very very complex space obviously there's a lot of stuff on the Hercules that needed securing

Speaker 6 and we had to account for the people on board and that's quite a task right and you know sadly there's families involved and all those people were related to families so I won't go into the details about exactly what we had to do in order to account for them.

Speaker 6 But I remember a US call sign, a CSAR call sign, responding to the call ourselves. Now, at that point, we'd secured the site.
We were just looking at it like, where do we start?

Speaker 6 You know, and we did locate one

Speaker 6 person,

Speaker 6 but the rest, there's really no sign of what we were supposed to do next. This beyond our remit of like how you do this.

Speaker 6 And when the US call sign, CSAR callsign, turned up, you know, it was just

Speaker 6 they turned up and said, look, you know, you get on with accounting for your people and securing your equipment and we will get on with working out how we clear this site up.

Speaker 6 And I remember they turned up with equipment. I've got memories of them putting on,

Speaker 6 you know, like dry suits to get into the waterfill ditch,

Speaker 6 even as they're jagged metal in there.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I do remember some burning and things like that and um you know with their help we got back in front of what was really really perplexing problem that does stay with you you know it's like so when you you you were picking up sending off and saying look how how much more you know that's a a really sort of tough experience especially you know a lot of us were quite young That's the first time I saw sort of events like that happen.

Speaker 5 How many people were on board of that?

Speaker 6 So I think it was 10. I think it was 10.
We believed it was more at the time, but it was 10. And as you can imagine, you know, if you're sat near the bulkhead of the aircraft,

Speaker 6 it's gone straight in in its nose. And in fact, we couldn't find anything that resembled a nose of an aircraft, you know, almost like it had buried itself.

Speaker 6 So...

Speaker 5 Did you find the bodies?

Speaker 6 Only one.

Speaker 6 Only one. We had to account for everyone, which we did.

Speaker 6 You know, so that's a tough experience. But, you know, again, when I'm telling these stories, I'm absolutely, completely conscious that those people were members of families.

Speaker 6 You know, they're in relationships. That's really, it's something that's always stayed with me.
As I've gone through this job, the impact is more keenly felt.

Speaker 6 there and you know I always sort of have that consciously in my mindset you know and that was a very very tough night you know and we were we came off I remember we stayed out there for it was into daylight and it became too insecure too uncertain

Speaker 6 so we lifted off having accomplished that we had to account for people which we did and we had to secure all of the immediate very important equipment We came off and we left most lots of the wreckage there.

Speaker 6 And I think I remember we coming off the ground because it was very likely we were going to start getting mortared at the site.

Speaker 6 They picked up a lot of activity and comms that they're kind of sort of getting themselves together to make it a real problem for us. And you have sort of options there.

Speaker 6 You can either call in more air, and you know, so I think the decision was, hey, have we done enough here? You know, do we have to stay here?

Speaker 6 And the answer was no. So we lifted off.
And then we did return to the site. I can't remember how much longer it may have been the next day.
And by that time, they gathered up all of the

Speaker 6 metal because it was obviously valuable and piled it in piles but at that point you're looking at sort of useless metal towards people.

Speaker 6 So that was kind of the event and that really was the seminal thing of that tour.

Speaker 6 There's lots of other kind of operations and activity we got on but that was a really really significant one that stuck with me for quite a while you know

Speaker 6 and it you know highlights the complexity of these jobs. No one expected that bit.

Speaker 6 And I think as I go through all of this, you know, all of the operations, you just re-roll, re-roll, re-roll.

Speaker 6 We weren't as busy on that tour as we were on subsequent tours, but the numbers were absolutely huge, and you're just re-rolling, re-rolling, re-rolling all the time.

Speaker 6 And hardly any of it is sticking out. You know, it's when something like an aircraft gets shot down, and you have to respond to that.
And you're keenly aware of like those

Speaker 6 people that were killed were members of people's families, and that really, really highlights it to you that there is a big cost to this.

Speaker 6 You know, no one expects to lose aircraft, but they do.

Speaker 6 And we aren't the only ones to do it. And when it happens, it's large numbers.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 yeah, I mean, that's one of the seminal points in my career was responding to that. As quite a young

Speaker 6 member of Special Forces, and that was what we were asked to do. So we did it.

Speaker 5 Man.

Speaker 5 What other kind of operations were you guys doing?

Speaker 6 So as as a range, it still really hadn't sort of tidied up into the first one was former regime elements,

Speaker 6 none of whom, you know,

Speaker 6 there was, I don't remember any exchanges afar in all of that. The second one was a greater myriad of operations.

Speaker 6 Again, none of them particularly stick out, but they were tasked operations against buildings of known people that were starting to take part in insurgencies.

Speaker 6 There was some AQ-linked things, but we hadn't really found a proper form and function at that point.

Speaker 6 And I remember the country being dangerous, but it wasn't, we could go out during the day, you know, and by that time we had got armoured vehicles.

Speaker 6 And I think we were,

Speaker 6 you know, we were using

Speaker 6 Yep, we were using our own helicopters by that point.

Speaker 6 So we had found form and function, but it hadn't really entrenched into

Speaker 6 a program of operations as such. And

Speaker 6 the networks weren't clear to us either.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that was all right around 2003 timeframe.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so these tools used to come around quite quickly. First one would have been 2003, the second one 2004.

Speaker 6 Third one 2005, crossing into six.

Speaker 6 Was it 06 into seven that's

Speaker 6 05 into 06

Speaker 6 but that's when we were sharing

Speaker 6 uh the theatre between us so the ss and sps were re-rolling between us and then they started saying okay we'll appropriate regions because this is now going to be a you know a task that is going to go on for years

Speaker 6 and by that point we made our tours longer

Speaker 6 i think in order to suit the other parts of the operational role so we weren't taking risks against them. And so they became six-month tours by the third tour.

Speaker 5 And in 2004

Speaker 5 you lost your mother?

Speaker 6 Michael?

Speaker 6 Yes, so I still try and organise it out in my head and I have to look at the dates on the gravestone.

Speaker 6 to appropriate. And again, it's a kind of muddle as to what organization of these tours.
I did eight eight or up tours 2003 to 2014

Speaker 6 but it happened just before the second tour.

Speaker 6 It must have been the second tour and I was standing in the camp and I received a phone call to come up to the squadron block headquarters

Speaker 6 and I kind of knew that something was up. I was either going to get sent away on something which was exciting or there was something wrong.

Speaker 6 And as I walked into the squadron block I could immediately tell something was was up.

Speaker 6 So I went into the office and you know when you look at someone's face you can see that it's really whatever you're about to be told is pretty awful and they said that my mum had been hit by a car in a car accident.

Speaker 6 She's very very severely injured. So when someone uses those words you kind of know what this is leading to.

Speaker 6 But what happened next, and I can't remember a thing, you know, when you get told news like that, that,

Speaker 6 I think your head just goes on fire. You're very, very confused.

Speaker 6 But I had a car waiting outside and I was led to the car, I got took down to the HLZ on our camp and I got lifted out on the reserve helicopter for the teams that are on standby to respond.

Speaker 6 My mum was declared dead. whilst I was in the air

Speaker 6 and I was kind of phoning my brother and my dad to see they'd already got to the hospital. And I basically got dropped onto a village cricket pitch

Speaker 6 to a waiting

Speaker 6 police vehicle with blue lights. And they thought they were going to pick up something really, someone really important, and got an extremely upset SAS trooper.
They raced me to the hospital.

Speaker 6 They went and I remember saw my brother, my dad on the ramp, and I knew that life was not going to be the same again.

Speaker 6 So I went in, saw my mum's body, and you can see exactly what happened. And you know,

Speaker 6 I actually did a further investigation into her death because the police kind of sort of

Speaker 6 got some details wrong, not that it made any difference. But I remember looking at my dad, and I was just like, wow,

Speaker 6 this is this is going to change everything.

Speaker 6 He was utterly distraught, as you would be.

Speaker 6 Didn't make any sense to him.

Speaker 6 The car that hit my mum had about between 7 and 13 seconds to see what was happening. My mum had

Speaker 6 dropped something in the road and it just hit her and she'd gone underneath the car. Oh man.
And had

Speaker 6 really, really severe injuries, head injuries, compound fracture of the femur,

Speaker 6 massive brakes all over, right?

Speaker 6 And actually I'm very, very pleased that there was no HEMS team, like a special emergency team that could have come to her aid because her Glasgow coma scale was four out of fifteen.

Speaker 6 There was a massive, massive head injury around the occipital area.

Speaker 6 Big pools of blood in the road, because it was quite a small car, so she got caught underneath it and rolled under.

Speaker 6 And the final piece to the actual incident itself is that the lady who had hit her her was 80 years old and she knew her and she my mum used to buy eggs off her.

Speaker 6 So I know the situation intensely obviously because we looked at the police investigation, we looked at how on earth we're going to manage my father. You know, he was utterly distraught.

Speaker 6 He just shouted at my mum. They'd been married for decades and decades and decades.
And

Speaker 6 he had shouted out the door. She'd shouted and said, look, I'm just off to the butcher's.
So my mum used to run a very, very small

Speaker 6 beef farm, herd. That was her passion.

Speaker 6 And it was all really, really small enterprise. And there was a butcher's in a nearby village that she chose to manage the meat at.
And that's what was happening.

Speaker 6 What she's doing at the time said, I'm just off to see how we're doing with this.

Speaker 6 She tripped into the road carrying trays. and was picking up things to put back in the trays.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 you know, of course, this makes no sense. This is an utterly tragic accident.
This isn't a case of whatever the reason the woman did not see. There is a concept of looking without seeing

Speaker 6 in there, you know, that she may have seen and

Speaker 6 never took into account what should happen. But to my dad, this was

Speaker 6 like too much.

Speaker 6 It's like something he was never going to get over, ever.

Speaker 6 And at the age that it happened, which i think he was in his 60s he's very quite really healthy really good you know i remember chatting with my brother and i said no i've got to deploy um

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 what should we do right we made that decision at the time that we're going to both stay doing our jobs made a decision a conscious decision that living with my father during that time was not going to make a difference to the the levels of grief he had and the level most of all why on earth how how could this have happened you know and you couldn't resolve it for him and I actually went and investigated my mum's death myself

Speaker 6 and I've I know the details extremely well in order to try and provide some sort of closure to explain that you know there wasn't going to be a prosecution no one can you know and actually it's just a tragic tragic accident this lady that hit her it just destroyed her life as you can imagine

Speaker 6 Especially because she knew my mum. So when

Speaker 6 I was in the hospital, me and my brother had started working out, okay, what have we got to do? My brother helped my father with adjusting their arrangements.

Speaker 6 And my father started living alone. He didn't, he

Speaker 6 lived in a house. We had a couple of dogs.
And essentially, I think he went walking, he went travelling quite a bit.

Speaker 6 And he really was just trying to attend to himself. But we could see that he was just hollowed out.
Like, you know,

Speaker 6 he was going to struggle for the rest of his life. And the physiological impact of that grief was really, really dangerous to him.
And there was nothing that anyone could do about that.

Speaker 6 Because if no one can explain why or how that happens, that's unresolvable.

Speaker 6 So anyway, I deployed.

Speaker 6 I remember coming back.

Speaker 6 It's quite a few years actually, and I can't remember it's that particular tour that I came back with alopecia.

Speaker 6 And again, it's now what I know about this is that regulated stress.

Speaker 6 But what was interesting, I was working all the way through that tour, and I remember talking to my dad on the phone, which was really unusual.

Speaker 6 My dad didn't do the phone that much, but he did it more after my mum's death. But, you know, it wasn't like routine all the time.
It just wasn't like that. But he would check in.

Speaker 6 and I did a lot of you know when I came back I made a point of going to see him and he used to come and see me at home and in that period of time

Speaker 6 I sort of saw how he was living and he was living he you know he was just

Speaker 6 Is it a generational thing? I don't know. But he could barely use the washing machine.

Speaker 6 And he used to describe his darkest hour. And I remember I'm Special Forces trained medic.
And part of what we do is we learn off the hospital experts.

Speaker 6 And I remember driving home from hospital one morning. So he used to describe this moment.
So I thought I'll get home early because I was working in London.

Speaker 6 So I went back home to kind of try and have a cup of tea with him, cheer up with him. I remember walking into the kitchen.
It was really quite early. I remember it was just getting light.

Speaker 6 It was about sort of 5.30 or something like that. And he was dressed in his pajamas And he was just kind of, I walked into the kitchen, and it was almost like I wasn't there.

Speaker 6 He was just turned around and he started talking to me as though he assumed I was going to be there or not, you know. And I was trying to surprise him.

Speaker 6 And he was just kind of, just don't understand how this could happen.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 he used to describe this period, this darkest hour. And it's when he

Speaker 6 got up.

Speaker 6 And that's when he used to have a a cup of tea with my mum.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 one morning,

Speaker 6 in this period as well,

Speaker 6 I think I've got this right. No, that was later.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 my father got up one morning. He was due to actually come and see my brother.
It was the 23rd of December, one year later. It's almost one year to a month.
from when it had happened.

Speaker 6 And you imagine around Christmas when you're used to being with someone

Speaker 6 I think it was just loaded up and loaded up and loaded up on him and he got up one morning at exactly that time when he would be going downstairs to have a cup of tea

Speaker 6 he had a massive heart attack and we hadn't spoken to him for two days so I was at home and I rung my brother and said, hey, have you heard from dad?

Speaker 6 I hadn't spoken to him for a couple of days, but he's due to be coming to see you for Christmas. And he said, I haven't heard from him anyway.

Speaker 6 And a lady who held keys to our house went in and she found him. He'd had a massive heart attack and it fell over, his head had gone through the wall.
It was quite a sort of plasterboard wall.

Speaker 6 And that's exactly what happened, right? Just overcome with physical grief. And I believe

Speaker 6 what actually killed him was something called tachatsuba cardiomarpathy.

Speaker 6 When you're in an unrelenting, chronic loop of stress, the release of cortisol and epideftrine, for some reason, and no one really understands, stuns muscles in your heart.

Speaker 6 And the reason it's called tachod suba, cardiomyophy,

Speaker 6 because it was found in the 80s in Japan, and someone had died, and they'd done a post-mortem in time, and found that the heart, the left ventricle, had gone out of shape.

Speaker 6 And tachod suba tsuba means octopus strap, so

Speaker 6 adopted that.

Speaker 6 And of course, in most cases, you know, when you've got that level of grief, that level of shock that you have central heart pain, I believe that's that thing, that's that adrenaline, epinephrine, whatever it is, it's stunning those muscles, one of those number sets of those 18 autonomic muscles that govern your heart.

Speaker 6 And because it goes slightly out of shape, it leaves its, it loses its integrity with blood pressure and other harmonies within your physiology.

Speaker 6 And in most cases, that's not dangerous, right? So in people that have no no heart conditions, whatever, it just goes back to a normal shape at the point where the point of chronic stress had gone.

Speaker 6 But with my dad, he was in his loop every morning, just crushing

Speaker 6 period of stress that he was

Speaker 6 undergoing. And because of his age, which I think he was late 60s at the time he died, you know, he was just slightly more vulnerable.

Speaker 6 And I absolutely believe in the post-mortem, you know, the toxicology reports, there was nothing that

Speaker 6 could explain for the fact he'd had a massive heart attack.

Speaker 6 He's very healthy, he's very fit, he's an intelligent man, you know, he ate, you know, and one of the things I looked at in the fridge, I was seeing what he's eating. He had mackerel and cold fish,

Speaker 6 tomatoes,

Speaker 6 sort of various good diet, but absolute staple and things he didn't need to cook.

Speaker 6 So I think he was living in this sort of period.

Speaker 6 And you know, I don't think

Speaker 6 either me or my brother living with him during that period would have changed that outcome at all because nothing anyone could have done for him at that point would have prevented him from having that moment, that extreme moment of vulnerability first thing in the morning.

Speaker 6 And again, you know, what I'm sort of involved in now, I'm really, really interested in the physical impacts of grief, you know, professionally related stress.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 that was, you know, how my parents were connected to that. I continued working all along, and the people who are managing me, you know, first of all, I mean, hold on.

Speaker 5 So, you lost your mom and your dad in a span of a year and a month.

Speaker 6 Yeah. 13 months.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, if you had anything to say to them right now, what would you say?

Speaker 6 So they left an amazing legacy behind them. And, you know they were proud of what we were both doing at the time and I don't know what I would say to them.
You know, I'd just say hello.

Speaker 6 You know, it's like

Speaker 6 I look at that period, it's all connected, but it started with an accident like no one could predict and that could happen to anyone.

Speaker 6 You know, when we're talking, I was sitting down and talking to my dad and trying to explain that there was no closure. There was never going to be an explanation that was going to satisfy him.

Speaker 6 So I don't know what I would say to them now.

Speaker 6 But if I could see them again,

Speaker 6 a lot of people asked me about who they were. They're very special people.

Speaker 6 Then most people are special people.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I don't think I'd tangle over what I'd say to them at all.

Speaker 6 They were great people.

Speaker 6 And the last chat I had with my dad

Speaker 6 was on my sofa at home and very connected to him. But it wasn't like,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 he didn't lean on people at all. You know,

Speaker 6 and he was very

Speaker 6 wanted to understand everything.

Speaker 6 So I think he was always going to struggle with what had happened.

Speaker 6 I don't know whether he had any regrets over it.

Speaker 6 I am and I genuinely don't know what I would say to them.

Speaker 6 You know, they're both people I absolutely loved.

Speaker 6 My mum I was very close to, just because of the nature of what we did, but equally connected to my dad in a different type of closeness. Hugely admired him.

Speaker 6 And again, you look at what he did through his life, making the opportunities for me and my brother, working extraordinarily hard.

Speaker 6 You know, he had a business that went bust when the market just, you know, there was no saving it and I remember him saying and he was a it really really he what he really stuck out as someone who was very strong and good

Speaker 6 and he wasn't necessarily easy to deal with at times you know because he was very he knew exactly what he thought was you know right to do I remember his his biggest entanglement over the business and the fact that it couldn't be saved is the fact that he had employees people that had worked in the joinery works for so long.

Speaker 6 So that was the sort of man he was.

Speaker 6 I remember, you know, seeing him during that year, he started doing a lot of walking. So he said, oh, what do you think I should get for walking boots? I also remember him having a Nokia

Speaker 6 2210 phone. He'd never had a mobile before.
We now said, look, you have to have a mobile. We need to be able to talk to you.
We need to understand that you're right.

Speaker 6 He wasn't used to taking calls. He didn't, you know, if it wasn't working, he wasn't, you know, making phones, phone calls to people.
So trying to impress upon him that he needed to answer this.

Speaker 6 You know, and it was all those things. I think over the board, life was an impossible challenge for him

Speaker 6 after my mum was killed.

Speaker 7 Man.

Speaker 5 How did you overcome that?

Speaker 6 Well, I mean, it's whether those two are linked or not, you know, a lot of other things were were happening at the time within my family.

Speaker 6 Those were absolute seminal points in my life. And I talk about this in a very, very,

Speaker 6 you know, that's not unusual, actually. There's lots of people that have these tragedies happen to them.

Speaker 6 Thankfully, that is not frequently the way. But, you know, I look at other people's circumstances and they're caring for elderly parents.
And some of them, you know, that's very, very tough period.

Speaker 6 And I think, you know, intuitively, i saw my way through it and you can see the response my body had i've still got alopecia now and you know you can see that i'm under stress now because it comes back and i've just got it in patches here

Speaker 6 and as i understand it alopecia is an autoimmune response to

Speaker 6 to link to stress so you can see that my body was really sort of struggling under the strain to to kind of sort of re

Speaker 6 reorientate itself back but it was doing that you know and I actually got beyond the trauma of that happening I don't know when now it definitely had a massive impact on me, huge impact.

Speaker 6 And I always say it, like, what happened with my mum and subsequently to my dad, but I see, you know, the dad, what happened to my dad is less of a shocking trauma because it was almost connected.

Speaker 6 We didn't expect that to happen. We were shocked when we were told it, but it made sense.

Speaker 6 And so what happened with my mum, you know, it was actually, it will always be tragic and arguably it's going to be sad, but it's not necessarily traumatic for the rest of time and i think it's the first and again i only understand this by looking back on it now your body's actually quite powerful in getting yourself through these traumatic periods

Speaker 6 and i think you know i went back to work and i was given the option not to you know everyone managed me the levels of leadership i saw at that point in the management of me i'll never forget you know and the people i was working to uh in my squadron incredible people right you know and they were saying it's your choice.

Speaker 6 You know, and I was saying, this is the grown-up world of SF. You know, it's like, you know, you tell us what you need, it's your choice.
And I said, no, no, I can't remember.

Speaker 6 It was day one, but it was very soon after if it wasn't day one. But I was on the tour and did the whole tour.

Speaker 6 But I hugely appreciated how they managed me, especially, you know, you look at the response that they gave me to get me to that hospital. Actually, everyone knew that those injuries were fatal.

Speaker 6 I should already been intubated. You know, that

Speaker 6 there was really no difference other than shaving off tens of minutes by using a helicopter versus, you know, if they'd asked the police, they'd have blue-lighted me there.

Speaker 6 You know, we get tremendous amounts of support from people when we've got times of need.

Speaker 6 And I've always, someone took a decision to use that helicopter that was a reserve helicopter. There's an element of risk there.

Speaker 6 They looked at my situation and time of need and I've always been hugely appreciative of it ever since. I think it's one of the finest examples of leadership you can ever show.

Speaker 6 And actually, you know, they know, you know, all of us collectively, apart from me, knew that wasn't actually going to change the outcome at all.

Speaker 6 But they got me back to my father and my brother's side the soonest they possibly could. And there wasn't ever anything and not a minute could have been shaved off it more.

Speaker 6 You know, now that really, really stuck with me. And I think how I was managed through that period has been absolutely fundamental to remaining through it.

Speaker 6 You know, and you know, you come out sort of bruised, of course, you do, right? You come out thing, but you know, I didn't see the point of missing work.

Speaker 6 Not when it, you know, I had these chats with my brother. I think that's very, very fundamental.
And then more latterly, you know, we lost more people, you know, sort of godfather to my,

Speaker 6 he

Speaker 6 was killed.

Speaker 6 And then, you know, over the time, and I've always been surprised how few people close to me I've lost, but over the time you realise they have. So a next-door neighbor was killed.

Speaker 6 A godfather was killed.

Speaker 6 You know, my next-door neighbor was very, very badly injured. And you look over the period of time this happened.

Speaker 6 So, yeah, what happened to my parents was it changed forever. You know, there was really, really

Speaker 6 big, big challenges in it. It was a building company.

Speaker 6 There were open mesophilioma claims related to use of asbestos. And of course, no one can prove

Speaker 6 that there was insurance in place. And no one can prove the veracity of the claims, you know, and two of the claims actually, they'd work days in the company, but one particular, very, very sad case.

Speaker 6 Someone had worked there for a quite considerable period of time. And I remember looking at it, because we inherited these cases, me and my brother, because we were de facto

Speaker 6 now become inheritance of

Speaker 6 all these complicated businesses around the business. So we had all that going in the background.
I investigated my mum's death myself because the police got it wrong.

Speaker 6 And it wasn't actually the details of where she'd been hit and how far she'd been rolled down the road. But it was enough for my dad to really just...

Speaker 6 go into almost like a grief-stricken frenzy over it. They've got it wrong.
Why could that, how could they ever? So I went and did it myself.

Speaker 6 I explained how it happened and I said, look, just because they've marked it here rather than here, it just doesn't change anything. So we're doing a lot of work around that.

Speaker 6 I ended up managing one of the mesothelioma cases assessed and it was, you know, an absolutely tragic consequence. But do you know a lot about asbestos-led mesothelioma?

Speaker 6 The shards go into the lung and then they activate about sort of 20 years later and they get sharp. It's a really, really horrible, tragic situation.

Speaker 6 You know, and whether there was safety or not, knowing who my dad was now he ran the company i would almost be certain that there was whatever it was at the time was available to use but that wasn't the point you know they would have always had insurance and that's what insurance was there for but we could not could not prove uh

Speaker 6 who had the insurance

Speaker 6 And I remember dealing with this and we worked out which company it was. It was after 16 buyouts of one particular company.
But they were just barn walling us.

Speaker 6 They're saying, no, no, you can't prove it. You haven't got a policy document, la la la.

Speaker 6 We've found scraps and there's a place in Norfolk where they hold miles and miles of old paperwork of insurance.

Speaker 6 We're getting people to go through this because the levels of money, you know, the compensation that was due to this person, 100%

Speaker 6 and three times that should have been given to his surviving widow. because he actually died during that.
I remember it was under a year, but it was nearly a year of dealing with this.

Speaker 6 and I remember at the point where me and my brother had finally kind of just found a portion of a policy number or we found enough to say we know it's you right

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 they literally over one phone call said okay

Speaker 6 leave this with us it's no longer your business you know and if we had had if that had gone to arbitrary and it would definitely have been ruled in favor of mesophilia and cases and I absolutely am complete support of that right you know what's the point in looking back through time and going did you have access to safety equipment or not?

Speaker 6 You know, extraordinary thing to try and address when you're doing that. The concept was

Speaker 6 we knew insurance was in place, it was a responsible business.

Speaker 6 You know, so we inherited a lot of that. And it was, I remember at the time, it was really, really stressful,

Speaker 6 really stressful. We're doing all our jobs all the time.
But fun, you know, you instinctively pick your way through it.

Speaker 6 You know, and I do remember at a time chatting with my brother, and you know, if we'd had to kind of sort of find the money for that misfinion case, we'd both lost our houses, no,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 lots of people around us would have been hugely impacted by that.

Speaker 6 So, there were real, real challenges that I even have to just sort of remind myself of now of what was going on and what were the consequences of those untimely deaths.

Speaker 6 You know, and everyone looks in their lives and they think they can picture when they'll die, they think they can get ready for it and make good plans.

Speaker 6 And very, very often, it doesn't work out like that at all.

Speaker 5 Man,

Speaker 5 what a tough girl, man.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's

Speaker 6 you know, I reflected back on it healthfully. Now, you know, I understand it as a process.

Speaker 6 You know, and you know, I also recognise that this is life and this happens to lots of people in different ways.

Speaker 6 And I'm deeply thankful for who my parents were.

Speaker 6 You know, they're incredibly special people. They left an amazing legacy.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 for what we had, it's more than enough to be grateful for.

Speaker 6 The way it happened, I just simply don't have any regrets over it.

Speaker 6 It's just that's what happened.

Speaker 6 And I think, you know, it's such an important aspect of life is this acceptance that these things will happen you know and you will go through a period where you'll have to come to terms with it that's a normal process you know but you are really you know I think back on how special my mum and my dad were in particular I spent tons of time with my mum And you can think back and I read through her post-mortem reports.

Speaker 6 I have to understand it. I had to understand it to adequately deal with my dad.

Speaker 6 And I still

Speaker 6 look at those reports now.

Speaker 6 And I had to remind myself of that because I'm coming here and it's such a seminal point of my life.

Speaker 6 My life does not make sense if I can't explain that.

Speaker 6 And I read through those reports and you look at it and you just think, oh my goodness, but then I've worked as a medic.

Speaker 6 And I've seen this happen to people's families. And I've seen the consequences of it.
And I've, you know, I've got friends who, emergency responders in the UK.

Speaker 6 One's

Speaker 6 a cardiac specialist, you know,

Speaker 6 CPR and recovery of people from heart attacks.

Speaker 6 And it happens in the street, but no one's present to pronounce death. And

Speaker 6 I don't understand their particular mechanism.

Speaker 6 She said one of these sort of quirks with COVID is people go into cardiac arrest, but they neither go down or nor do they, and you know as an expert, they're never coming back.

Speaker 6 So they're stuck and you know, all too often they're surrounded by their families and they're witnessing this tremendously traumatic event.

Speaker 6 And this person is having to manage this and doing it day after day after day, you know, and internally they have to manage the reality, the knowledge that they know this is already a death.

Speaker 6 But these people surrounding them, they are watching it. And they are hoping that it's a life.

Speaker 6 And I think this is an intricate pattern in life that we have to kind of sort of accept.

Speaker 6 These things do happen. And we all hope that our loved ones are going to be safe and secure.

Speaker 6 But, you know, and again, I remind it, I had an interesting chat just recently, is you could go into any doctors tomorrow and find out about a diagnosis that will bring your life to an end tomorrow.

Speaker 6 Something's been lurking within, you've not detected. It's not anything you've done wrong.

Speaker 6 And you will try and make sense of it, but it won't. So my mum very much sits in that bracket.

Speaker 6 There's actually no reason to try and make sense of it. No, it's a particular story, the fact that that lady knew her.

Speaker 6 She used to buy eggs from her.

Speaker 6 That is,

Speaker 6 if you can't get a story about how life can be

Speaker 6 that is as stark as that.

Speaker 6 And it's really interesting, you know, because when I was speaking to my father about it you know I was saying this lady's 80 I think she was 80 at the time

Speaker 6 it has ruined her life irreversibly

Speaker 6 this is a tragic tragic accident

Speaker 6 so you know managing was very very tough I came back with alopecia

Speaker 6 it's like

Speaker 6 that it's still there it's never gone i can see it's like a little radar now to when life is becoming quite tight and complicated. And always, it comes back.

Speaker 6 It doesn't bother me, but it's a mark that you'll wear seemingly for the rest of my life.

Speaker 6 You know, so

Speaker 6 again, when that's put against and overloaded with related professional stress, I used to call some elements of what we do pager syndrome. You know, you're always on call.
in some way or form.

Speaker 6 When you're out in operations, you're constantly re-rolling, re-rolling, re-rolling, re-rolling, re-rolling, re-rolling.

Speaker 6 As soon as you're back, we talked about that story about supporting a team out in Ramadi, immediately back and out again.

Speaker 6 I don't think that was unique in us. You know, lots of other units did it as well, but the tempo was extraordinary at times.
You know, 182 operations on the third tour in six months.

Speaker 6 It was just extraordinary.

Speaker 6 In all of these times, they're complex operations. You know, you don't know what you're going on half the time.

Speaker 6 You've got a good idea of the broad structure of the intelligence, but the buildings change, there's aspects that you haven't seen.

Speaker 6 You know, it's the ultimate in adaptability that you need to have in order to do that.

Speaker 6 When things aren't going to work out the way you want them, you have to just take a deep breath and accept they aren't the way you want them.

Speaker 6 When you're sitting on the back end of a charge because you can't get around the corner and you've run out of detonators with a particular length, you know, it's that deep breath.

Speaker 6 You know, it's going to hurt. And in that particular instance, one of my friends

Speaker 6 got hurt in his groin

Speaker 6 and had to

Speaker 6 be

Speaker 6 Kazavakt for that, you know, and you kind of in that situation, you're just looking at it. You know, you're going to set that thing off and it's going to hurt.
Right.

Speaker 5 So did you go up back to Bad Dad after your father passed?

Speaker 6 Yes, so yes. I mean, it just,

Speaker 6 and again, and I didn't miss any operational days, maybe five days at the beginning,

Speaker 6 I cannot remember, but I did not miss an operational tour or consciously any days, right? But I was being extraordinarily well managed. You know, it wasn't like people were telling me to be there.

Speaker 6 They were saying, you tell us what you can do. You know, my compass point was

Speaker 6 unless I've got an extraordinarily good reason not to be, I will be there.

Speaker 5 Do you feel like you went to work early just to

Speaker 5 put yourself back in that environment so that you didn't think about the passing?

Speaker 6 I don't think I did that as in I didn't use it in that way, but I didn't see a good enough reason not to be there. And that was because I was talking to my brother.

Speaker 6 We believed that there was no changeable outcome. for my dad, you know, that it would find its way, whatever.

Speaker 6 The fact that we could be in the house more, you know, we had made a conscious decision to stay in our jobs.

Speaker 6 Standing out of our job, we couldn't afford to do that.

Speaker 6 There wasn't a viable alternative to it, and I don't think the support would have made any difference. So it wasn't like our sort of finding solace in work.

Speaker 6 It'd be an extraordinary place to look for solace in work with that level of overloaded professional stress that comes with it.

Speaker 6 But I think I was quite young, and I was really sort of tuned into the fact that, you know, I looked at at each one

Speaker 6 and I said you know do I need to miss it no I don't and so I did I turned up and continued to do it and I wasn't wrong you know I was reported on all the way through that

Speaker 6 you know I make a comment about decorations and commendations people you know I've seen people do extraordinary

Speaker 6 brave things that they've never been written up for but in those periods of time you've done 19 operations obviously you're going to get written up for certain actions if you haven't come across something extraordinary at certain time then you would be in a highly unusual position for that operational exposure so

Speaker 6 you do get written up for stuff and i receive commendations for stuff i was doing on those tours

Speaker 6 um which is also that all that is to me is a validation that i was doing my job so it wasn't like i was sort of running at a deficit But what you know, I was really, really conscious of is that was building up inside me, right?

Speaker 6 And that stress was starting to load up and load up and load up and load up. It doesn't necessarily happen when you're there, but it will come in the future.

Speaker 5 What are some of the operations that you're a part of that really stick out in your career?

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 I mean, it's the stuff on the front line, because they were different.

Speaker 6 You know, when we were re-rolling and going onto compounds and constantly, constantly, constantly, none of that stuck out as abnormal.

Speaker 6 You know, every so often there was an engagement here in a corridor, whatever. None of it really, really sort of resonated particularly with me.

Speaker 6 Living on a front line in a small team really, really stuck out. There was a operation I was involved in.
I can't say the place of it, but a large device was set off.

Speaker 6 in an engagement in the breach point where they didn't use an explosive charge in the end, but it set off a very large triastone triperoxide device that ended up the house falling on the injured who'd been used in the engagement.

Speaker 6 These are, I mean,

Speaker 6 that's a good one to talk about. The numbers in that, you know, 28 people went out the door.
As I remember it, there were 13 left standing by the end of it.

Speaker 6 When these special forces operations get complex, they get extremely complex.

Speaker 5 28 of you guys went out and 13?

Speaker 6 No, so this was a part of the force that we were supporting. So I was about 25 feet away from the triaste and triperoxide device but around two corners and up some stairs.

Speaker 6 So all I did was get covered in dust. But

Speaker 6 two people had been shot in the head in the initial engagement and a number had picked up other injuries from the device going off.

Speaker 6 But essentially we were still trying to work out how we were to extricate them from that breach point position.

Speaker 6 without exposing ourselves to further fire from this this this building that was two-story and they'd survived in the second story because I was 25 feet away, no reason they hadn't.

Speaker 6 And actually the firing went on for over two hours after that.

Speaker 6 But essentially four stories of half the house fell on top of the wounded bearing it and some of the injuries were like earthquake injuries when we did finally recover them.

Speaker 6 And the trouble is, and I've done a lot of sort of days in urban areas that have been partially destroyed.

Speaker 6 And what wouldn't be immediately obvious to people is when you're operating in an area where buildings have fall down it acts like camouflaged material right there's nothing ordered or patterned in which your eye can make sense of so you don't know where you're going to get shot at from next and actually when it's a doorway or where it's a window you can see see when something breaks it you know and you can take a position or you could be much more safe in how you're going about it

Speaker 6 And for the next few hours, we had to try and stop these people from breaking out because the situation was going to get a lot, lot worse. They're heavily armed with

Speaker 6 PKM type machine guns one out of minimi

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 they had a large store of explosive devices that we found out later but somehow we had to extricate and another badge member that I was with he went and rescued someone from the access point at Breach Point which was incredibly brave thing to do and the person they rescued took a bit of frag through it partially severed their spinal column so he had to learn to walk again.

Speaker 6 And so the people we could get out, we could get out. There was one personal member.
I kept going down and listening over the wall. And obviously he'd been buried just right by the breach point.

Speaker 6 And he was screaming, but we couldn't, you know, we were trying to assess it together to say, how are we going to get this guy out? You know, he's completely buried.

Speaker 6 without exposing ourselves to the fire that is coming out there. It's pretty random at that point.
We went on for two hours after that,

Speaker 6 and essentially he stopped screaming at a certain point. And we made a decision to say, Okay, well, you know, this outcome is really, really tough.

Speaker 6 We don't think it's worth taking the risk anymore. We completely overloaded the medevac chain.
You know, people were treating themselves in the street.

Speaker 6 You know, we

Speaker 6 put out,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 edicts as such. They weren't orders.
I wasn't in command list, but we were helping support them in this very, very complex situation. And I'd said to them, you're not to take any more casualties.

Speaker 6 Must, must not take any more casualties.

Speaker 6 And there were people that are just tremendously brave. I remember one that had been shot in the chest, no one really realised.
And it was some time later until he just fell over backwards.

Speaker 6 And you're just like, wow.

Speaker 6 No one even picked up on the fact you'd been shot. And there's some of the injuries these people would take on.
Incredibly, incredibly brave people. And

Speaker 6 the person we left buried,

Speaker 6 and we made a conscious decision to not try and get him out because he was completely buried and risk more casualties.

Speaker 6 He turned out to be alive. You know, it's about three or four hours later, and it took 40 minutes to dig him out.

Speaker 6 But when they did get him out, he was alive. He had absolutely horrible injuries.

Speaker 6 He'd already had horrible injuries, but you you know, there were also quite crush injuries, injuries associated to earthquake type injuries.

Speaker 6 And it's sort of jobs like that, they come up.

Speaker 6 And I remember thinking at the time when the large explosion went off, you're like, okay, well, we're still in this, but as soon as the house falls down, it's like the aircraft gets shot out of the sky.

Speaker 6 It's unbelievable complexity that's attached to it. I think, you know, I remember the centre point of just saying, okay, well, this is going to take a long time to get out of now.

Speaker 6 We have to control the situation. You know, it's not like you can just get up and leave.
You have to control it.

Speaker 6 You have to contain everyone to the house so the threat isn't going to get worse and bit by bit unpick it. What you're left with is

Speaker 6 a ton of decisions you could question afterwards. So should we or shouldn't we? But that's not the right process to go along.

Speaker 6 Because how you went about it was bit by bit, stepway down the path, finding a way through that complexity that

Speaker 6 in that particular instance it's how on earth do we guarantee there's no more threat from that building by assuring those people they would they were injured themselves by the explosive blast going off you know and trying to clear into a destroyed building is very very difficult you know

Speaker 6 and so we were trying to make good conscious professional decisions based upon what we needed to do and trying to implore you know the people that are injured, trying to employ them that were close friends of them.

Speaker 6 These are people that we looked after and mentored incredibly closely, and trying to get them not to take massive risks, like stupid risks, in order to do something that

Speaker 6 we looked at and said it's not going to be successful. You will not get them out.

Speaker 6 And it's a testament to when things get that tough, you know,

Speaker 6 people step up. The training is important, but you see the bravery and the strength of these people and how they step up

Speaker 6 um so you know it's it's it's operations like that that really really stick with me and in that particular instance you know i came off the ground

Speaker 6 it's dark really early morning and we'd been there we'd gone onto the ground about sort of 12 o'clock the the previous day

Speaker 6 implored for night time but for some reason we weren't given the reasons why they said look please can you do it during the day you can't wait obviously there was ongoing threat from these people they'd already committed attack against some police

Speaker 6 and i remember going home and sitting in my flat and just staring out just the exhaustion you feel you know and I've felt it so many times you've been exposed to loads of explosive blasts, you've been run out of water,

Speaker 6 things that you thought were going to take a day have took two days. You know, there's all sorts of reasons you get back here, you feel completely hollowed out.

Speaker 6 You know, you literally are just sitting there taking it all in. And I always found I just sort of pressed play on the music.
In that particular instance, I had to write someone a letter to explain

Speaker 6 going, listen to the noise, this is what happened. And you can be proud of these people.
So I did this. I'm unbelievably brave.

Speaker 6 And then, as soon as I had a plan to deliver that letter, I went straight to the hospital and I seen the guys

Speaker 6 and everyone involved in that would question what did I do? Did I do the right thing? Could I have done that?

Speaker 6 As soon as I walked into the hospital and I saw their faces, it was like a friend has come to see them, like made the effort to go there. And it is hard when you're facing up with people.

Speaker 6 You know, you're like, you're looking at them, you're like, wow, you know,

Speaker 6 you got injured.

Speaker 6 and now

Speaker 6 some of them very very seriously some of the breaks uh there was one guy stood by the wall when the blood the wall blew out and a block went straight into his his leuphema and the break was just astonishing it was like i remember looking at it and just going well when you see these people and they're very very badly injured he's never going to walk properly again There's no way you can fix a fracture that big sensibly.

Speaker 6 You know, and they're still pleased to see.

Speaker 6 it's just like wow okay we are in this together you know and people won't judge you overly as long as you are

Speaker 6 all the time putting the effort the attention and support into people that when they need it and it's exactly what happened to me right if you think about what happened around my mum people giving me the support and my absolute hour of need And I didn't even know how

Speaker 6 critical that need was. In that particular position, you just had to find a way out for these people,

Speaker 6 which meant handing off that,

Speaker 6 trying to persuade them that they weren't going to get the job done at that point, you know,

Speaker 6 hand it off.

Speaker 6 And, you know, a lot of the young soldiers, they're very, very much driven by a sense of duty, sense of proof,

Speaker 6 and trying to sort of

Speaker 6 really explain to them, you've already done your job here, and you've done an immense job.

Speaker 6 We've suffered, and as has happened, these devices do go off.

Speaker 6 We don't plan to be here when they do.

Speaker 6 You know, in that respect, our advice has always been do this at night. You know, we always like surprise.
We always like

Speaker 6 to be quiet in what we do. It's inbuilt into us.

Speaker 6 But when you're forced to go, you're forced to go, right? You know, and you may not know the full picture, in which case, we didn't.

Speaker 6 You know, I know I found out later about that particular incident that they had planned two

Speaker 6 further very very large attacks all against kind of sort of key aspects of the institution

Speaker 6 and they had large stores of IEDs that were uncovered as well and so you know and I come across a lot of these people and they're very very dangerous you know when they're turned they're extremely dangerous

Speaker 6 and some of those countries in the Middle East have got very very complex counter-terrorism threats domestically.

Speaker 6 And, you know,

Speaker 6 you have a certain pride of serving alongside them. Because actually, when I look at people, we're all human beings faced with different but relatively the same aspects of problems.

Speaker 6 Safety is not the same as security. You know, to keep security, you have to be prepared to leave.
You know, and if you hug, you hold on to safety too much,

Speaker 6 the security goes, you know, these institutions, these units, these services that do this job are extremely important, extremely precious. And they protect security, not safety.

Speaker 6 I mean

Speaker 5 19 deployments.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 You saw a lot.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean

Speaker 6 the exposure is massive, right? And it's hugely varied.

Speaker 6 I was a breach of three of them.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 it's

Speaker 6 yeah,

Speaker 6 it's a lot. But that's because of the roles I took.

Speaker 6 A lot of the time, you know, I got trained as a JTAC early.

Speaker 6 And a lot of those appointments were trained as a JTAC or because I had that specialist specialization in airspace management, understanding of assets and weaponry.

Speaker 6 I'll go and support other people in what they did.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 a lot of the time, and again, it's what's great about being in the unit is you spend a lot of the time on your own or supporting or going towards a country to kind of try and understand a hostage rescue.

Speaker 6 Some of the key, key areas of what I did were unsupported. And actually we were just sent to understand the situation.
Because lots of people scream genocide very quickly.

Speaker 6 It's one of the fastest ways to attract

Speaker 6 countries to come and

Speaker 6 take control. So you have to understand it.
And when situations are so, so unsettled, so insecure,

Speaker 6 often we're asked to go in and understand situations just to say, look,

Speaker 6 yes,

Speaker 6 this is really grievous, or no,

Speaker 6 the threats to national interests are this.

Speaker 6 We do not see evidence of there being a genocide or a risk of mass killings of such sorts.

Speaker 6 In those

Speaker 6 particular situations, they've probably been the most risky of all.

Speaker 6 And in those situations, you're largely unsupported. You're surrounded by people you don't, you know, don't trust or understand particularly.
You have a huge amount of faith, but of judgment as well.

Speaker 6 In that particular instance, we were washing in salt water for about six weeks, running out of food regularly.

Speaker 6 You know, and open battles were going on constantly you know recallless rifles like 15 foot away from you

Speaker 6 shooting out tank barrels you know people weren't even trained to use tanks just blasting away with tanks and it's just massively you're getting no sleep you know it's

Speaker 6 you'd be lucky if you got two hours in 24

Speaker 6 erasing against margins, sleeping in locked rooms because you fear for everyone around you, being warned there's plots to kidnap you. You know, it's really, really

Speaker 6 a very, very tough environment to remain steady. And, you know, we've got to maintain our position here.

Speaker 6 We've got to understand what's going on and give an accurate thing so people know what to do in these situations. It's probably those periods of time that have left the biggest mark.

Speaker 6 You know, my time in the squadron, it was quite comfortable.

Speaker 6 It's like actually, I did a series of years of different operations connected all up.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 much of the time spent on my own and much of the time spent in small teams and bringing people together when we needed to do something.

Speaker 5 Have you ever done a have you ever done a hostage rescue?

Speaker 6 I haven't done a hostage rescue. I've moved forwards to prepare the ground for one.

Speaker 6 I've not done one myself. I've probably done some in Iraq, you know, which were kind of sort of, they're not the hostage rescues I think about.

Speaker 6 The hostage rescues I think about, those really, really highly critical ones done. The insertion is extremely complicated.
It's a zero-sum game.

Speaker 6 So I've gone forward and prepared the ground for those particular operations. I've took part in planning of numerous.

Speaker 6 But, you know, and again.

Speaker 6 Hostage rescues do not, thankfully, do not happen very often because they're a very, very difficult operation to pull off.

Speaker 5 Downstairs you had mentioned that you had

Speaker 5 worked with Delta. Yeah.

Speaker 5 What were you guys doing?

Speaker 6 So it was essentially, you know, we used to share lessons and TTPs, techniques, tactics and procedures when we were mitigating a risk.

Speaker 6 So if something had happened on the ground and essentially I was going over to learn an element of how they do their operations

Speaker 6 and that particular operation was expected to be a very, very tough operation.

Speaker 6 What had been seen in the development of the target, multiple weapons, the activities around the target were pretty horrible.

Speaker 6 And so there was an expectancy it was going to be hostile. But it ended up

Speaker 6 with

Speaker 6 a very large firefight.

Speaker 6 that went on for hours and hours and hours, five casualties in the first window, trapped in a street with houses overlooking one another that could fire down onto the the roofs and the street.

Speaker 6 And essentially in the first period as I remember it, you know, as people are taking positions, an adapted mortar bomb was thrown off the roof and it hit the team forward enough.

Speaker 6 So essentially then a very, very large weight of fire came down from three wider firing points.

Speaker 6 And because it was an urban target, it was very, very difficult to deal with.

Speaker 6 You know, you're not allowed to use the things that you would use if you're deployed into rural areas or in more safe areas and there were certain sensitivities about the area people living there that made it even more difficult to bring to bear the things that you would usually do and again you know i mean i just tremendously admired the people that i worked alongside they were really really professional and i served um i think we we were pretty much out for about eight hours

Speaker 6 um and essentially as we approached this target one and remembering this wasn't my target, I don't know the details of it, you know, the development of it, I just know we expected it to be complicated and

Speaker 6 go noisy.

Speaker 6 But essentially as we come towards the target about 1k out, came through a checkpoint, there was a massive burst of gunfire in the air, which wasn't unusual, let's face it. You kind of

Speaker 6 expect that.

Speaker 6 And so everyone was infiltrating on, and that was actually a warning to the target that people were coming.

Speaker 6 So they were waiting in effectively a free lane ambush

Speaker 6 and that was you know problematic it out. And that was in 2006, a very, very kinetic tour.
And actually about two years after that I was given accommodation which I've always been hugely grateful for.

Speaker 6 It takes a lot of time to write people up.

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 for that night but it was also a what did you get the accommodation for sorry what did you get the accommodation for? It was essentially so sort of approaching

Speaker 6 and dealing with an armed

Speaker 6 part of the attack and I wasn't the one that dealt with it, you know, I was supporting other forces that are doing with it, but essentially as they saw it I put my face, put myself in direct face of the enemy fire for a period of time to close on the target building.

Speaker 6 There was also an access point that was overlooked that was getting shot at and it was to do with movement across that as well.

Speaker 6 I've got the commendation which I reread very simply put and I just really sort of was thankful that people sort of recognized people and positions. Now I have never

Speaker 6 done anything that I think sticks out in an extraordinarily professional way.

Speaker 6 I've seen people equally across the length of time that we've done it on different operations and different nights do extraordinarily brave things.

Speaker 6 Sometimes they have to, and sometimes they're rescuing people. It's incredibly brave.
Many of the times they're not recognised for it.

Speaker 6 You know, I'm not hung up on commendations and recognition at all. But when people do and they make the effort to do it, you know,

Speaker 6 to me it's notable. They've gone to a lot of effort to do that.

Speaker 6 But essentially, you know,

Speaker 6 in particular through Iraq, we're working very closely aligned with US forces.

Speaker 6 And whilst we're, you know, cultured very differently we very much share this unity and you know some missions and aims and it really really highlighted the closeness

Speaker 6 of us all and you know I was telling a story

Speaker 6 before about a really great friend of mine Duncan Slater he's a W amputee and he got injured in Afghanistan but we both used to work for a company satellite company actually and we've sat together having a wine at night and I've you know we talked about sort of the time there was a breach point.

Speaker 6 I wasn't on this operation for instance but my neighbour was very badly shot, hit three times.

Speaker 6 One went his MVGs and bounced off, head, helmet bounced off, but the other one hit his weapon and tracked up his arm and left him with a really horrible

Speaker 6 everything's locked up so it's incredibly painful as my neighbour. So when I used to come out I used to sit down and have a coffee with him.

Speaker 6 And at the point where he's wounded, he you know wanted to walk to the helicopter. He's losing a huge amount of blood.
And we were just talking in general about

Speaker 6 the experiences with Duncan. And I didn't realise,

Speaker 6 you know, because

Speaker 6 this person, my neighbour,

Speaker 6 he didn't want to get on the stretcher, but you could see how much blood he was losing. He was not going to make it to the helicopter.

Speaker 6 So instead of having a sort of, you must get on the stretcher or trying to force him onto the stretcher, he just...

Speaker 6 gently put underneath his arm and took the weight off him just so he could walk to the helicopter. There's those moments of compassion and understanding and humanity that really sort of sit with me.

Speaker 6 And Duncan's story is pretty incredible in itself because he's a very special person long before he got injured, right? And he's an incredible guy.

Speaker 6 But at the point of injury he got injured in a complex ambush in Afghanistan in driving a jackal. So Jackal, obviously, the problem is the wheels are back, so you sit forward of the wheels.

Speaker 6 And the command wire AD got set off

Speaker 6 and essentially his rifle went straight through. The rifle's held right there, went straight through his arm and his legs took an enormous amount of damage.
It got thrown out of the vehicle.

Speaker 6 And it was like I say the ambush was still ongoing. They were shooting and you know, it had all the, you know, what we call the shooting ports all the way through the compound walls.

Speaker 6 And essentially they were trying to call a medevac in nine-liner and the UK asset couldn't couldn't respond

Speaker 6 for whatever reasons and a dust-off call sign was on its last day of operations of its particular tenor and overheard the nine-liner over there they couldn't respond and they went and picked up Duncan and saved his life.

Speaker 6 Wow. So Duncan

Speaker 6 got off his work come back to the UK. His legs were so badly damaged so

Speaker 6 They amputated.

Speaker 6 He's got an incredible story about and I won't talk about it. I saw him just before I came out here actually, and he's involved in some of the things I'm involved in now.

Speaker 6 Essentially, he was up at Balmoral a little bit later, and he knew he'd been evacuated, medevac, by one of the dust-off core signs.

Speaker 6 And he was doing a speaking, and there was a running event around Balmoral up in Scotland. He saw a lieutenant colonel from the US Air Force.

Speaker 6 So he went up to him and said, Look, you know, I got medevac.

Speaker 6 Would you find out who it was?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 so they swapped details and Duncan thought nothing of it. And then he got an email from the crew chief of one of the dust off crews.
And they said, look, you know, we were dust off about that time.

Speaker 6 One of the dust off call signs.

Speaker 6 I kept a book of the things we did. So we'll know immediately.
I said, so who else was on the helicopter? And Duncan was like, I was alone. And he was like, oh, this can't be, can't be it.

Speaker 6 can't be it.

Speaker 6 And obviously Duncan, very horribly injured, his incredibly complex injuries that he had.

Speaker 6 So then it really perplexed Duncan because he knew the exact time, the exact date. So he went back to his unit, which was one of the other Special Forces units.

Speaker 6 and said, look, what happened when I got medevaced? Was there other people on the helicopter? They said, yeah, there was, I think there was two more lesser wounded people. They chose to get them out.

Speaker 6 And the reason this definitely saved Duncan's lives is to try and move back even by vehicle. It took over two hours from where they were,

Speaker 6 where they had the ambush.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 he phoned back to the crew chief and said, look, I was wrong.

Speaker 6 There were two other people

Speaker 6 in the cab with me. And what's more, I was singing.
Because he was tall,

Speaker 6 when they put him on a helicopter, they put ketamine into him really quickly. And because he's Scottish, a very, very volubly Scottish.
He started singing in Scottish.

Speaker 6 And apparently the pilot looked back at this Scottish singing coming from the back of his cab, this relatively mortally wounded person.

Speaker 6 And it really was really quite sort of, you know, things were very, very complicated. So that was the confirmatory.

Speaker 6 that it was that dust off course. That is, we cannot forget this person who was singing Scottish songs

Speaker 6 in the back of the thing.

Speaker 6 And I just thought, as an absolute, but point being, it's like Duncan went back and he's met those dust-off call signs, you know, and he said to them, you know, he's thanked them.

Speaker 6 And I think it's

Speaker 6 just yet another example of how closely aligned these forces have been and how many lives have been both sides, you know, but you know, deeply thankful for support like dust off when they come and pull you out of a situation like that, which is essentially still an ongoing ambush.

Speaker 6 It's an incredibly brave thing to do. And I know what the last day of tour feels like, right?

Speaker 6 It's like Friday the 13th over and over again.

Speaker 6 You always think,

Speaker 6 you know, Christmas is another one. Big things seem to happen at Christmas.
And I've always wondered about this, right?

Speaker 6 You know, we seem to have some of the biggest complex periods of work, loss of helicopters, you know,

Speaker 6 big problematic problems on target

Speaker 6 around Christmas time. And I thought, well, you know, actually there's a reason for this.
There's longer, darker hours.

Speaker 6 Given the heat is complicated for aircraft, but also the winter is very complicated for aircraft as well. And I think the margins for error go up a lot more in those winter tours.

Speaker 6 And predominantly through the rotation, we were doing winter tours a lot.

Speaker 6 So, you know,

Speaker 6 you know, there's rhyme and reason in everything. If you sort of

Speaker 6 pin it to

Speaker 6 what is the reason why, why does this happen more at this point of time? Well, you know, people are in their houses for longer periods of time during those winter months when it's dark and it's wet.

Speaker 6 And it's the infiltration targets can be very, very complicated, right?

Speaker 6 So I guess that sort of defines me as a person. I always sort of wondered why.
And I like to make sense of things.

Speaker 5 In 19 deployments and

Speaker 5 20 years at the unit,

Speaker 5 have you ever had to kill anybody?

Speaker 6 I wouldn't answer that.

Speaker 5 You wouldn't answer that.

Speaker 5 Do you have any idea how many missions you've been on?

Speaker 6 Well, you know,

Speaker 6 I cannot add it up, right? So the different variations of types of missions, but on the third tour, we did 182.

Speaker 6 That was at a particular time when the governance was really, really contested in Iraq. It was like, you know,

Speaker 6 I think at the time it was General McChrystal who was leading the task force, and it was absolutely critical.

Speaker 6 You know, it was at that point where people really believed that the country could go into a full civil war.

Speaker 6 There were bombs getting driven into markets that were killing hundreds at the time.

Speaker 6 You could not go out during the day. The threat was so, so high.
And the rotation was just on, on, on, circle, circle circle

Speaker 6 um

Speaker 6 and you know

Speaker 6 that's the most pronounced on a lot of the others maybe 30

Speaker 6 some 70

Speaker 6 so if you add it all up it's a huge array yeah but I've also spent extended periods on front lines you know and that's one

Speaker 6 but it's lasted for weeks yeah when we're on that front line we are the top target. Yeah.

Speaker 6 They're trying to and you know we've we've had some fun and games with particular brilliant snipers and mortar teams before you know been pinned pinned down by a very very good sniper who remained a problem we never found a solution for him but he kept on being effective wow you know and uh another one was a mortar team that seemed specifically to be orientated towards us and um One evening we're just down there monitoring and seeing whether threats building up and ensuring that that front line can't be broke, you know, it's like constant, constant where's it going to happen next and uh we had a particular member in our in our team who used to be three-pound mortars and he used to be like a walking human mortar radar he could literally it's absolutely astonishing and i was sat there and i was on the radio talking to the air and uh and uh we usually it's that ubiquitous white truck right

Speaker 6 and we could kind of pick it out from its movement we'd all be like is that mortar team is that that mortar team

Speaker 6 okay fine so anyway whatever didn't really see the truck that time perhaps concentrating somewhere else but we heard the mortar report and uh this member of the team was like that

Speaker 6 that's over there and the round landed about a k short further down the hill and he turned round and said

Speaker 6 that's that's for us

Speaker 6 and we all looked at him a bit like and I just continued talking on the radio And the next one landed at 180 feet away, further down this ridge line.

Speaker 6 We've got like a bunk, we've got like a position that's all pushed up dirt. And it's about probably at the base,

Speaker 6 three to five meters wide.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and it comes up. You know, when they push it all up into a berm, and it's got like sand, sandbagged positions, but it's all really sort of not very well constructed.
The next one

Speaker 6 landed about 180 feet away, and I remember looking up and looking over at the plume coming out and I just heard down and then nothing and it was black.

Speaker 6 And one had landed, they'd just done two.

Speaker 6 Very, very good, very accurate. And one had landed literally coming to the other side of the berm.

Speaker 6 Because these mortars are not very well fused, right?

Speaker 6 it buried itself in the ground, gone off and just covered us in dirt. And I was talking to the air,

Speaker 6 and I remember just sort of coming back into sort of like realisation that that was awful. That would have taken the whole team out.
We were all in the vicinity of the radio.

Speaker 6 Thankfully, most of them up against that side of the berm. I was the only one standing up.
And it's just that realisation that had gone in the other side of the berm.

Speaker 6 The fusing's really bad, innit? That's really what saved us.

Speaker 6 And it had gone and buried itself before it had gone off and I remember looking down at one of our partners Northern Iraqi partners and he's dusting like dust off all of us

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 and I just remember looking down and we had a house not far back

Speaker 6 and I've just looked at the team I was like and bearing in mind they were still there we had a choice to try and work out where they were and try and get some air onto it We're just like, do you want to call it a night?

Speaker 6 Yeah. And they're like, yeah.
You know, and that was what life was like on the front line. You know, it's kind of sticked out to me a little bit more.
Especially when the clouds are coming in, right?

Speaker 6 And you know, the air's not going to come and help you then. And there's constant attempts to find out where you were.

Speaker 6 Constant wonder, like, who's up? What's happening? tunnelling, whatever it was, there was something going on.

Speaker 6 And it was a real sort of realization.

Speaker 6 And when you woke up, you'd see like the sun come up and we had our times and you know our partner force would run out of food quite often and they'd come and bring you a dish of fried aubergine which is not the most nutritious thing I've ever been fed and often they'd run out of ammunition not often but worryingly enough they wouldn't have ammunition you're just looking at it like wow you know

Speaker 6 you're just trying to hold it together ensure that the situation is not going to break, no one's going to come through that front line. Because when they did, the attacks were absolutely awful.

Speaker 6 You know, the consequences to the villages behind them. And these were

Speaker 6 Kurdish forces, a lot of them, they're you know, different factions of the Kurdish.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 you know, once when they managed to infiltrate through, because there was lots and lots of people talking to them on the other side,

Speaker 6 you know, and they were constantly attempting to do that. And it was quite extraordinary the level of effect and training some of these people had, you know.

Speaker 6 And I think that's sort of that's migration. There's always been, it's always struck me when I've been on operations, there's been a certain pattern we've had.

Speaker 6 There's certain groups that kind of sort of share the ethnic identity, religion, whatever, they're part of the population.

Speaker 6 And then you've got this element of foreign fighters that come in and they're either full of further, but they've got no baseline support, or they're extremely well trained.

Speaker 6 And I've always detected the level of state help that these groups have got.

Speaker 6 So, whilst you're operating against known terrorist organisations, they're prescribed organisations, they're recognised, they have always been receiving facilitation, support.

Speaker 6 And people are looking at the whole situation and trying to find gaps in the strategy and go against it. And, you know, pick those vulnerabilities.

Speaker 6 And it's not these people you're facing that are necessarily the people that are orchestrating all the finance and all the facilitation that gives them the ability to operate in the way they do.

Speaker 6 And that's the enormous complexity of going up against these groups.

Speaker 6 And almost the front line was quite refreshing because the front line was set and you had this period of ground which everyone was trying to sort of find the gaps in and get.

Speaker 6 You did get infiltration a lot, but when it happened, it was much more understandable. And it wasn't the same as some of the other situations I've been in.

Speaker 6 So, you know, the front line was really, really interesting. Done over ranges and distances, you know, unless they got close, and they rarely, rarely, rarely ever did that.

Speaker 6 All of the ranges, we had to look at our weapon systems and go, okay, well, these things that we're carrying aren't much good for this. So let's swap them out.
So I swapped to

Speaker 6 a 417, it's a 556 version of HK, isn't it? So I was swapped to a 417 with a tripod.

Speaker 6 And so you saw different choices getting made. But we were sleeping outside on the front line a lot at the time, very, very exposed.

Speaker 6 But it was quite an interesting period of operations for me.

Speaker 6 Learned a lot about human beings, learned a huge amount about trust, especially with traditional cultures that don't understand about advanced weaponry. And when one fails and you get Finlock,

Speaker 6 and trying to explain that, and they're just saying,

Speaker 6 can you make sure it doesn't come near us? And you're like, look, you know, this is not how you think it. And understanding about how you deal with people as well.

Speaker 6 You know, I always used to carry a covert weapon on me. I also used to carry two Glocks because as you're going into meetings, it's a level of trust.

Speaker 6 A lot of them have very, very traditional cultures. But you could never be 100%

Speaker 6 sure. that you knew who everyone was or what you had.
So I'd make a very visible display of putting that weapon down on the table and talking. But I'd always have something on me.

Speaker 6 And thankfully, you know, I've nearly been caught out once

Speaker 6 really badly. And that was not trusting my instinct.
But otherwise,

Speaker 6 it's pretty much held up. Reading people, judging who they are, what they want,

Speaker 6 has really kind of sort of held up in that respect when you're dealing with partners. And as you know,

Speaker 6 you're never sure of who is talking to who and who is doing what. You know, there's risk and uncertainty everywhere.

Speaker 6 But to get the job done, you have to at least look like you're a simple person to deal with, you know, and sometimes you haven't got the resources to check everyone out, you know, you just simply won't be able to.

Speaker 6 You know, so getting trusted partners, you know, who can say, you know,

Speaker 6 this is my place,

Speaker 6 you know, people who are fixed as translators, people who are able to say to you, look, this doesn't fit, are just invaluable.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Well, John, let's take a break.

Speaker 5 When we come back, we'll get into

Speaker 5 your retirement and and what you're doing now.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 perfect.

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Speaker 5 Let's get back to the show.

Speaker 5 All right, John, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into retirement, but before that,

Speaker 5 you had some other issues.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and these are the things that have dawned on me. You know, the intensive nature of deployments.
You know,

Speaker 6 I've had an intensive operational career, as have others. It's It's a period of time.

Speaker 6 It may or may not be repeated in that same sort of similar vein.

Speaker 6 But for me, there were two certain points.

Speaker 6 And again, I didn't flag it or report it.

Speaker 6 I'd noticed it in time. I think it was intuition that told me.
But I had two distinct periods in a change of behaviour, which is probably

Speaker 6 the best indicator for me that things were getting very, very tough to hold together.

Speaker 6 Now, notably, I never didn't work and I necessarily flag them up. So, I don't think they come to a point where they were a particular risk or danger to others, but they were significant.

Speaker 6 You know, there was those periods of time where you're like, this is not me.

Speaker 6 Why am I thinking like this? Why am I behaving like this? To other team members, it was like, why are you being so hypersecurity aware, right? Can you stop going on about a roof door?

Speaker 6 We don't need to put a guard on it. You know, la la la.

Speaker 6 And I think that was like symptomatic of the overloading professional stress that's just laid and laid on top, the personal aspects of stress, you know, allostatic load as such.

Speaker 6 And in one particular time, I'd had a really intensive period of operations, really intensive. And some of them were those unsupported operations that I alluded to earlier.

Speaker 6 You get no food, no drink, couldn't trust people around you, you know, running out, washing in salt water.

Speaker 6 And when I noticed it, I was on a period of domestic support and training.

Speaker 6 We're running some stuff in London and I became quite sort of malaligned, quite sort of distrusting and really kind of quite neurotic about who was watching.

Speaker 5 Like paranoia.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's like, you know, that's not me, right?

Speaker 6 I'm actually really kind of sort of measured, trusting person, you know, and that's a good way to be in life, you know, be advised and be, you know, use your judgment well.

Speaker 6 But essentially, I believe in trusting people, and I do believe that people are essentially good.

Speaker 6 And so, I was, you know, it was really, really sort of quite sort of something that caught me.

Speaker 6 And in a particular time, shortly afterwards, I was having these sort of mini seizures as well. And I think this is just the nature of the intensive training we're doing around explosives at the time.

Speaker 6 So, if you added all of it up, you know, the uncontrollable spaces where you're very near to recall us rifles and you know mortars and everything else and not necessarily with the best equipment

Speaker 6 whatever it was that led to those things they happened over a concentrated period of time I never flagged it at the time because they used to go away used to happen in the morning a little bit in particular I was sitting down and it was just sort of like sort of fixed up and my leg used to lift a bit So the changes in behavior,

Speaker 6 you know, thinking, real negative thought patterns creeping in,

Speaker 6 was enough of an indicator to be like, I've got to get a grip of this somehow.

Speaker 6 And I did find my way through. If I remember, and nothing's sort of like, oh, it was until this date, or like, I didn't go and see someone about it.

Speaker 6 But it took a couple of years to re-level.

Speaker 6 I was still working operationally. The nature of the work changed.
because I've moved into the wider sphere of operations. So there's a lot of deployed but living and advising.

Speaker 6 And I think that was enough space to sort of take it back under control.

Speaker 6 But I used to remember, you know, a lot of these space, the places we go aren't that dangerous, you know, and you can go walking around and I used to walk around a lot and do a lot of thinking, a lot of wondering.

Speaker 6 And I think it's that space plus the training and plus the realization that, you know, these thoughts are not me. You know, they're kind of sort of this paranoia about, you know,

Speaker 6 who's doing what.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I sort of make jokes around the loony tunes it's like sort of tweet bird shouting what's going on behind me sort of thing that's just just not me right so and I think this was my first realization that professionally induced stress and personal and the bigger bigger part actually I believe is in the personal things that you'll face in your life and the medical pillars of bereavement, financial stress, exposure to trauma and separation.

Speaker 6 And I like to add,

Speaker 6 separation doesn't mean a divorce necessarily it can mean separation from your loved ones whilst you're doing a profession where they're they're they're wearing even more stress than you but you know when you're not there to support people and help it comes with those feelings that you should have been right it takes strength on both sides to not have that become a context and relationship so separation is quite an interesting one but those are the medical pillars for when you need to be conscious about the levels of stress that can change and physiologically impact you.

Speaker 6 Physiologically impact you means a change in behavior.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 5 I'm just curious though, I mean, you're talking about 19 deployments, 20 years with the SAS. I mean that also builds

Speaker 6 your

Speaker 5 psyche, that builds your

Speaker 5 I mean, that's who you are.

Speaker 5 You know, I mean, it's something you did, but it forms

Speaker 5 you

Speaker 5 through the time that you spend in that type of environment. And so, you know,

Speaker 5 paranoia,

Speaker 5 wondering what people are doing behind you, always looking in the rearview mirror to see if you're being followed, never sitting with your back against the door or the entrance.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's stuff that's stuff that I deal with. That's stuff that I think that anybody who's operated at that type of a level experiences that.
And it just

Speaker 5 maybe you're different, but for me and everybody I know, that you will carry that with you, likely, until

Speaker 5 for the rest of your life. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Have you managed to take that paranoia?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I have, you know, to a certain extent, but I'm really, really conscious that, you know, I don't want to be that paranoid person. I want to be that trusting person, that's deeply me, right?

Speaker 6 And so, I actively refute it.

Speaker 6 But what I've noticed, and I think you're absolutely right, is having been exposed in those professional terms, and as a consequence of things that can happen in your personal life as well,

Speaker 6 the move

Speaker 6 through to normal and stable,

Speaker 6 through to you know, chaotic and you know, like hyper-aware is much, much quicker.

Speaker 5 I want to rephrase what I was saying, too. I mean,

Speaker 5 because I think that there is a, well, I don't think, I know there's an element that comes from operating at a level like that where your ego gets involved and that becomes who you are.

Speaker 5 And that's not what I'm talking about. You know, being

Speaker 5 an SAS operative or operator, you know, that's not who you are today.

Speaker 5 And a lot of people can't set that down and move on and find the next thing.

Speaker 5 I think that's a

Speaker 5 very challenging

Speaker 5 time

Speaker 5 in our lives is to find your new identity. But what I'm talking about is the experiences that you amassed through your lifetime and

Speaker 5 the experiences that

Speaker 5 you've had. in that type of an occupation form who you are.

Speaker 5 Does that make sense?

Speaker 6 Yes, it does.

Speaker 5 Because you've experienced things,

Speaker 5 a lot of things, that

Speaker 5 99% of the population

Speaker 5 will never even come close to those type of experiences.

Speaker 6 Yeah, absolutely. Right.
So this is a job, a profession.

Speaker 5 And so what I'm saying is for those type of, for those people,

Speaker 5 That 99 percentile that never experience what you've experienced or what I've experienced or a lot of other people that sit across from me in this room experiences

Speaker 5 I Be they just people that have not experienced that they don't

Speaker 5 It doesn't register what could happen. It doesn't register the

Speaker 5 they have not they have no

Speaker 5 They have no database to understand

Speaker 5 the potential threats and

Speaker 5 to formulate a new way of thinking, which

Speaker 5 I'm not saying it's a better way. I'm just saying that

Speaker 5 I don't necessarily

Speaker 5 know if it's from trauma. I think it's just from

Speaker 5 experiencing threats

Speaker 5 that most people never have to experience. Does that make any sense?

Speaker 6 It makes absolute sense, right? So, and I deeply feel that it's not trauma that leads to these issues.

Speaker 6 You know, and this is a job, remember, where you will go back and sit in your location covered in someone else's blood. Like, it is tough, tough times sometimes.

Speaker 6 You go back so tired, your brain doesn't function.

Speaker 6 It's like an out-of-body experience, and you wake up the next morning, but your body's actually very resilient in recuperating from that and the exposures to trauma.

Speaker 6 You know, I've always reminded myself that, you know, these are volunteers, the professional soldiers that do this.

Speaker 6 And they live in an extraordinary environment where threat is all around them all the time.

Speaker 6 You have to make judgments and calculations all the time. I used to call it like Pager Syndrome.
Operator Syndrome is something different. A Pager syndrome is always on call.

Speaker 6 Always on call. And if you don't turn up, you haven't done your job.
And rightly, you should be disciplined or get the sat. you know these are pager syndrome

Speaker 6 got to be there on time all of that loads and loads up on you you And I think you're conditioned to deal with it almost throughout.

Speaker 6 I don't think trauma is responsible for the neurological deficit that builds up. You know, that's the thing I'm talking about.
You know, I'm really, really conscious.

Speaker 6 The outcome for me has been pretty good.

Speaker 6 I

Speaker 6 do feel stable, happy.

Speaker 6 I know in my relationships with people, they're fulfilled and good. You know, and I don't struggle in that sense, but I'm very very conscious how quickly things can change.

Speaker 6 And I think a deficit is built up. And I think it's your exposure to extraordinary conditions.
It builds up over time. Your physiology isn't set, it learns.
And it can go way out of cue.

Speaker 6 And if you've got problems within your physiology, you will become paranoid, anxious. You know, the whole thing is out of cue.

Speaker 6 and it will change your behaviors and all the things they give a PTSD diagnosis for. And I believe that a lot of people are given PTSD diagnoses.

Speaker 6 It's an entirely subjective diagnosis in my eyes.

Speaker 6 And actually they're more down to the physical conditions that these people have been enduring that ultimately challenge human biology, right?

Speaker 6 And ultimately over the years you will go out of cue.

Speaker 6 It's like getting a weapon site, moving it through a different temperature. banging it around in a box in transit.
You know, you need to go back and re-zero it.

Speaker 6 And then if you're not re-zeroed, the thing will slide.

Speaker 6 And that's what I put my changes of behavior down to I put like the mini events I was having the seizure whatever it was down to intensive periods of explosives that's when they happened no so I look for the simplest causes every single time and for periods of time I was getting no sleep I was just intensively involved in operations and I think that has resulted in that that period of change in behavior

Speaker 6 but more significantly and something i'm really sort of grateful for is through i think intuition because i never sat down when i left the army i did something else and that was for different reasons but i never sat down with any experts said what's going on and i deliberately didn't declare losses of balance

Speaker 6 uh lost you know certain seizure type event i can't even describe them i i described to a neurologist like a trans transient ischema and she said no it can't be because that's like blood going wrong.

Speaker 6 You know, so I don't know what they were, but they were happening, and I know when they were happening, and they were happening because I was very, very close and intensively training on explosive devices time and time and time again.

Speaker 6 And, you know, and that's what's led to my fascination in not just

Speaker 6 the consequences of operator syndrome, which I think to a relative degree, everyone will end up with

Speaker 6 in some degree.

Speaker 6 And this is a job that leaves a legacy, right? It does leave a legacy. And I think, you know,

Speaker 6 i used to say it to everyone no one wins if you break right you really really got to stay on top of this if you're seeing indications in behavior defensiveness you know all of this sort of stuff these are the first indications these people are very very well trained they're volunteers doing you know something that they have given up so much to do that takes more than just trauma to get these people completely out of queue.

Speaker 6 The normal response to trauma is two weeks to four weeks suffering acute stressor.

Speaker 6 You process it through and it will really just start fading in two to four weeks.

Speaker 6 The trouble is, and again if you've got people who are demonstrating really concerning behaviours internally to themselves, someone sits inside them and recalls the last thing that may have happened.

Speaker 6 There's this kind of self-expectation of trauma now. Not just in these really hard professions, I think in wider society now,

Speaker 6 is becoming unhelpful in working out the real problems.

Speaker 6 I'm not saying people don't get PTSD but it's not always the reason and when you're looking at these people that have been using explosives they've been in conditions where they don't get fed properly for a while they don't sleep or they've lacked a pattern of sleep

Speaker 6 then

Speaker 6 for me they're much more compelling reasons for your body to be completely out of cue. I mean I sit here with alopecia.

Speaker 6 It happened after my mum's death.

Speaker 6 Right?

Speaker 6 That's an informational autoimmune response for me that's simple yeah yeah it's directly due to that doesn't surprise me you know part of the art i think of this and coming out of this and again you know i left in 21 and that was a part of a 40 45 50 year professional career a very very formative part a part I was extremely proud of.

Speaker 6 Now I'm proud of my service. It's one of the, you know, I served for 23 years.
You know, we sign an oath, you know, that's something I'm incredibly proud of.

Speaker 6 But it doesn't have to be my defining thing for the rest of my career. And I've actively sort of switched and moved on.

Speaker 6 And you're right, the transition period, right, is, you know,

Speaker 6 for my own belief is if you hold on too much to that, it actually makes making the step more complicated. But this step is years.

Speaker 6 I think the first step is four years to even start shaping your behaviours.

Speaker 6 You know, when I went to go and speak to people about what made me valuable for them for employment, I used to say, oh, you know, I can be at an airport within three hours of notice.

Speaker 6 You don't have to tell me when I'm coming back.

Speaker 6 You know, I'd not ask him for like months away, but if you have weeks and you have a problem that needs solving, I can do it. And it sounds mad, right? And these people don't need people like that.

Speaker 6 But, you know, that was the way I was sort of hardwired to think. You know, that's what, you know, on a call, I can go somewhere.

Speaker 6 And, you know, and gradually I've sort of learned to talk a different language a more recognizable language for me you know because the further away you get from it the more you you deal with you know there's some real challenges in transition and I think they're further further complicated with these unhelpful diagnoses in people you know and

Speaker 6 there's an over-reliance on medication and very simple approaches to complex problems, complex diagnoses.

Speaker 6 But you can actually see the risk factors, the exposures there within the profession.

Speaker 6 And I've noted a lot, you know, I take a lot of notice about the SEAL teams, you know, and

Speaker 6 you know, water, for instance, when you're traveling fast in a boat and it's constantly, constantly banging, and you know, professional boat drivers in the Marines, you know, really interesting group to look at.

Speaker 6 There's all sorts of mechanisms through that profession that are very, very challenging for you. And a significant minority.
And I make the really important point, right?

Speaker 6 Because service is really great, you know, and service, you know, doesn't mean your outcomes are going to be bad.

Speaker 6 The majority emerge and find a space to be happy and successful later on in a second career. But it doesn't happen by magic, it's very, very tough getting there.

Speaker 6 There is a very significant minority where the outcomes are really, really tough and they're tough for them, but they're also

Speaker 6 difficult to watch. Because for me, there must be solutions to it.

Speaker 6 It's not good enough to be like you're traumatised for the rest of your life.

Speaker 6 Go back to my mum.

Speaker 6 I'm sad about it. It's tragic.
It's not like I was traumatised. I probably wasn't traumatised after about two years from that.

Speaker 6 And that's something that's really, really, really significant because it impacts you so much.

Speaker 6 You know, when you're kind of sort of desperately thinking, I've got some really interesting stories about looking after cows, a small herd, but they're woodland cattle, so quite spirited.

Speaker 6 We had a bull called Formidable, and I made the mistake of not feeding them. So, before we could get a farmer in to look, and he just added that small contingent of cattle to his herd.

Speaker 6 I didn't feed them, fed them too late. And one had the cow had stuck their head

Speaker 6 through to try and get one of the big half-ton hay bells, and it was laid there. And because of its heavy head, it was stuck it through

Speaker 6 metal

Speaker 6 gates that they were had. And as it got more tired, it's pressing down on its windpipe.
And I don't know what, you know, this is a post my mum. I don't know what told me to check on the cattle.

Speaker 6 But I went in there and it's pandemonium as they're not.

Speaker 6 I think I'd given them too little food. So it stayed hungry.
And they're trying to get this head.

Speaker 6 I don't know how the head, the cow managed to get its head through this really small space in the first place, but it did. And

Speaker 6 it was incredibly difficult pushing this cow's head back through

Speaker 6 and um

Speaker 6 you know um

Speaker 6 those sorts of experiences you can easily turn around and be like how on earth did i get here this is just

Speaker 6 in that case i ended up covered in the cow's blood because they're all de-horned they're all depoled cattle But I don't know how it wiggled its head through.

Speaker 6 But in the end, the solution was to kind of sort of just flatten out the pole of the cattle to just change because it's fibrous the horn of the cow and somehow and the cow was sort of quite furious at me because I was kind of sort of flattening out its horn so I could just wiggle its head through and it actually sort of pushed against the gate and it just had enough perches to push me up again this half-ton bale it was um you know you could hear your ribs like

Speaker 6 and i but eventually the cow seemed to just figure out I was trying to help it and then wiggled its head back through itself. I was like, oh, here we go.
Brilliant.

Speaker 6 But anyway, you know, and it's those periods of time when you've been exposed to these really, really impactful events when you could be like, Do you know what? Why? Why am I in this situation?

Speaker 6 And I've really kind of sort of been disciplined to not go that way. There's no solution there, there's no recourse.

Speaker 6 You know, what's the use in it? And I think that's a very good indication of whether you're traumatized by something further, is how much

Speaker 6 you can just center yourself back to what's important.

Speaker 6 And, you know, and you know, to a great extent, the people I served alongside, they're remarkable people. They've all passed the same course I did.

Speaker 6 You know, they're volunteers, they're very duty-led, you know, and you know, I'd expect them to not be so susceptible to trauma, although the exposure is massive, right?

Speaker 6 You do turn up at events and see a lot of trauma. You know, it's like

Speaker 6 in certain circumstances, it can be overwhelming, like plane crashes,

Speaker 6 but you quickly move on and you recourse. And, you know, in some of the most recent work I'm doing with experts say that's right.

Speaker 6 You know, your physiology is actually more powerful than you'd ever believe in ensuring that yourself,

Speaker 6 your body makes it through.

Speaker 6 readapts.

Speaker 5 And this led into what you're doing now, today.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so I mean, I've got lots of interesting experiences, mostly funny, about how I... So I left the military very quickly.

Speaker 6 We do have a certain way of going when I left in three months, which is not necessarily what.

Speaker 6 But essentially,

Speaker 6 I separated from the children to my mum, which was all done without lawyers. It was all done very

Speaker 6 well.

Speaker 6 in that you know the whole thing is very uncertain for both it costs a lot of money to do it, to try and find individual decision-making positions.

Speaker 6 But essentially, we never had to resort to a contest, we never had to use legal people, which costs a lot of money, money we did not have.

Speaker 6 And so we used the money to kind of shore up everyone's existence. And the biggest thing was to ensure that people didn't leave that with a ton of regret they weren't going to come back from.

Speaker 6 So that's one of the reasons I kind of left the military quite quickly. I'd come to the end of my contract.
I was on extension. Essentially, I knew I wasn't going to be operational anymore.

Speaker 6 So I chose to move on. Before I went I sat down with the psychiatric nurse.

Speaker 6 It's no harm to check inside right.

Speaker 6 I thought you know I know you know in in the course of my career I know the things that have challenged me plane crashes you know being in situations where you had no control whatsoever right and those are the things that I've remarked upon and I've largely dealt with them.

Speaker 6 I had my change in behaviour around 2014, so I'm not, but it was a good thing to do to sit down and do the seven-hour

Speaker 6 course.

Speaker 6 The other two reasons I did that is to reassure the people I've been working with so long that when I was going, I was in a fairly stable state because obviously people worry about you.

Speaker 6 Not me personally, but generally, you know, they worry about you're just about to go into a sea of change, really fast-moving change.

Speaker 6 And people don't realize the challenges that are presented personally, the sleepless nights you'll have, and that can quickly revert you back into something, somebody that's concerning, right?

Speaker 6 Your behaviors, testing, whatever. So, I did it to reassure people, and I did it.

Speaker 6 So, when I go and sit in front of these same people, I promised to be at the airport within three hours if they needed me to.

Speaker 6 I was perfectly fine, right? And I, yeah, I'm going to say, look, you're never going to get to see it, but I've done that file

Speaker 6 I am not that stereotype I've not got PTSD and I'm not also not making that up because you'll also think I'm just saying that and I absolutely haven't I've checked I'm good just need to work out work which is going to be messy I get

Speaker 6 so I did that and then I left And in the course of doing that, I thought I could set it. It was at the back end of COVID.

Speaker 6 And obviously everyone had been sort of confined to their houses and moving out a lot less so I made an assessment that everyone would want to train outside in the parks

Speaker 6 and this was still in the course of me leaving so I set up three areas that I could sort of train people and the assessment couldn't have been more wrong right people have been confined to their houses tested mentally to a severe degree and the last thing they wanted to do was go and do physical training in parks.

Speaker 6 So okay, I was wrong. I detected I was wrong.
But when

Speaker 6 running free areas, I was getting up at like five o'clock in the morning and doing these physical training sessions for what should have been 20 in a class and it was like ones and twos if anyone turned up at all.

Speaker 6 And so I was having a ferocious schedule of honouring my things. So I didn't have any money to bring on further instructors.

Speaker 6 The end game with that was like to set up something that was fairly stable that I could get local management to overlook so I could then quickly move on.

Speaker 6 And again, this is part of the naivety of kind of, you know, I've got no pedigree in business. I don't understand how marketing works.

Speaker 6 And so I've kind of sort of bumped off all the things, but quite hilariously, I was messing around doing, I trained calisthenics quite a bit, or at least in a very amateurish way, right?

Speaker 6 And something called planche that you do. And I was sort of

Speaker 6 binding my time waiting for these people to turn up that probably wouldn't anyway. And I saw like a beam in a car park.
So I was like, I'll just try planche on that if that was a really good idea.

Speaker 6 And the beam wasn't fixed, right? so it tipped forward and as it tipped forward I had to quickly kick my legs through and as I did I heard the old Chris packet

Speaker 6 sheet white I was with a friend actually has come to help me out I know I broke my arm

Speaker 6 and I was waiting to have a medical discharge right and I was desperate to move on and so I was like, in the way I was thinking at the time, based in the mind that I was in the middle of a separation, I was leaving the army so probably my decision making probably looked very very different from what you would naturally be doing if you're sitting around the kitchen table after dinner and going you know it's like go on holiday.

Speaker 6 So when I broke my arm my first thought is I can't get plaster because then they won't give me a medical discharge because they'll see that I'm injured.

Speaker 6 And I suspect militaries won't let you go until you're absolutely fully fit.

Speaker 6 So I decided not to have a cast. I was fairly happy it was stable and I've got pictures on my phone of what this looked like.
And it was like a spiral fracture of the outer layer of the arm

Speaker 6 and at this point I was sleeping on a camp cot,

Speaker 6 on a metal frame camp cot, right?

Speaker 6 So again, you know,

Speaker 6 I was implored to go and get a plaster on it, you know, and I was like, what's the point? It's stable, you can see it's stable, right? You know, it'll heal quick enough.

Speaker 6 It was really disgusting, color, and I was doing fitness training sessions.

Speaker 6 I think it was like the next day, I was like throwing up in bushes because every time it sort of clacked again, obviously, it would have this sort of immediate shock response, like throw up in a bush, utterly mad, right?

Speaker 6 If you look back on it, you're just like, What did they think? The people thought I was taken for fitness.

Speaker 6 So, anyway, I've sort of in the end, I found something on the internet, you know, the buckets of gravity that pushed their ice water into, I bought one of those and that acted as a really, really good cast.

Speaker 6 So I used to sort of,

Speaker 6 obviously

Speaker 6 going around with my bucket.

Speaker 6 So anyway, I turn up to do my final discharge stuff. And you go around and they say, where's this jacket? You give back the jacket and all that sort of stuff.
The last thing is this medical discharge.

Speaker 6 And I walk into the medical

Speaker 6 unit and who are all amazingly lovely people, brilliant people as well, you know, all nurses all by now.

Speaker 6 And I've said, I'll come in for my discharge and

Speaker 6 the lady at the desk says like that,

Speaker 6 oh no, they go on on the phone since COVID. So I'd gone to these extreme limits to not have her cast

Speaker 6 on my arm. in order to be present a discharge that I never needed to be present for.
So there was plenty of those sorts of experiences, and it would just pick yourself up and find the next problem.

Speaker 6 Don't try and find it, you'll trip over it anyway. And but that all healed nicely.
I was absolutely right, you know, actually, there was no reason for a cast.

Speaker 6 Once I'd worked out that thing, it was brilliant. You know, it was just like funny.

Speaker 6 And but if you just picture sleeping on a camp cot with its metal frame, waking up in the night, you've rolled onto it, and it's extraordinarily painful.

Speaker 6 So that was the immediate process of sort of breaking free as such.

Speaker 6 And then I did some work as a sort of consultant, but it's really, really low pay, right? And you know, I've got sort of fairly

Speaker 6 it was never going to be enough, and also it wasn't the right type of work, but it was in performance.

Speaker 6 Then I got offered a job as a CPI in a fully employed role, and it was extremely well played.

Speaker 6 It was actually working in a pretty decent rotation

Speaker 6 It came with a

Speaker 6 full medical package.

Speaker 6 It's working for someone who did a huge amount of travel. So the days that you were on, you know, very, very, very long days, like 18, 20 hour days.
But essentially, the atmosphere was not good.

Speaker 6 You know, and

Speaker 6 I just wasn't in tune with it and I knew I wasn't in tune with it.

Speaker 6 And then I got offered a job by a company, Satellite Connectivity.

Speaker 6 And I worked for them for a period of time. And they wanted to break into new markets.
And they were assessing Ukraine for its, you know, its needs for energy resilience, that sort of stuff.

Speaker 6 So building up connectivity. So I went for a period of that.
And actually, it was quite enjoyable. I was in and out of Ukraine quite a lot.
And

Speaker 6 very visibly. connected with the business.

Speaker 6 But actually, you know, you could see beyond the valuable work I got done, which was the forward-led work of that, that it was nothing to do with business, right?

Speaker 6 And when it comes to the business piece, it was all too uncertain.

Speaker 6 And through that period, that's when

Speaker 6 the reflection came on me as like, hang on a minute, you know, in these employed roles, people are having to justify my existence.

Speaker 6 You know, and when they can justify the existence, it's all for these exceptional move into a new market. It's not for the normal everyday functioning of the business.

Speaker 6 And that's where people sit comfortably.

Speaker 6 If you try and move into the new market with a business,

Speaker 6 you know

Speaker 6 it happens very rarely.

Speaker 6 People will usually test it and then come back. So I think the employment opportunities that people

Speaker 6 from special forces background need to be really really carefully looked at because it's not about getting support.

Speaker 6 It's not getting

Speaker 6 people to bring you into companies and employed having felt that they want to give you a chance because you're on a ticking clock.

Speaker 6 Actually,

Speaker 6 the skills that you have are very, very effective. I've proved that.
I'm a very, very supportive person and I love doing it. I love seeing something.
I sort of call myself

Speaker 6 a very effective minion.

Speaker 6 So I get involved in people where things are going on. And I'm very, very happy to do it just because of time, just because I believe in it.
I've got lots of examples coming up.

Speaker 6 But essentially, if it's an employed role, people are struggling to explain what your role is in certain sectors.

Speaker 6 And in the security sector, from my brief interlude in that, and I do draw a distinction between the US market and the UK market, very, very, very different.

Speaker 6 You know, the US market has got a massive area where people from ex-military backgrounds, and it's especially pronounced in SF backgrounds, actually, not military, slightly better.

Speaker 6 Whereas you don't have that in the UK.

Speaker 6 So I bumped through, I got made redundant in May last year and I was expecting contract work to come in.

Speaker 6 In the background I've been trained as a speaker.

Speaker 6 So that's led to sort of two things. One I did a, you know, I define it as professional speaking, although that sounds sort of quite sort of

Speaker 6 sort of high up there, but it's speaking where you've studied it for a course. And I did a course called with the bespoke elite speaking training.

Speaker 6 It's an ex-professional rugby player called Leon Lloyd who's actually very, he's quite involved in transition of veterans.

Speaker 6 And so from having done that course, I thought I would get enough of a programme of speaking events to be able to kind of stay positioned, ready to take this contract work and ready to be where the main things i was involved in do break but actually that's again it's quite naive you know if you think about how i do my speaking and i love doing it i'm really really passionate about it i just did one for the london fire brigade eight different sessions and it was absolutely brilliant you know not an easy set of people to talk to as well it's it's you know it's really great you know it's i like being on my toes sometimes right and it's uh it's it really develops you as well you have to study what does the audience need and there's absolutely got to be an element element of performance in there which is where this course came very important

Speaker 6 you're working with professional comedians you're working with people who worked in sort of stage shows in this course so the course itself was very valuable to do but it didn't necessarily lead to more work and the speaking i do is always in person

Speaker 6 you know it's always going to be specifically impactful that i can do behavioural adaptation i've got a program for that um you know i can do any type of speaking and i've proved that you know from speaking at cadets' dinners, which I absolutely love, through to speaking to defence primes.

Speaker 6 And actually, the thing I've probably cherished the most is I did one for a scaffolding company, which is absolutely brilliant, big scaffolding company in Wales.

Speaker 6 and a roofing company, so it's almost sort of going back to my heart. But they were brilliant.
And,

Speaker 6 you know, doing something for the services like London Fire Brigade and sort of getting across those experiences. But again, it's just reassuring people that you're like,

Speaker 6 sometimes ignore the clamour and the noise.

Speaker 6 Society has become very noisy and it's got real high expectations and actually concentrate on what you've delivered because every single time you turn up and you are doing your job to exceptional standards and just focus on that, you know.

Speaker 6 And some of it, I know, it was quite interesting because I asked some people, you know, what do you worry about?

Speaker 6 They would say, oh, you know, it's the opinion of this

Speaker 6 or this you know

Speaker 6 has been seen as a an incident where it should have been betterly managed you go but really is that

Speaker 6 your job to worry about that actually there's a person over there who's paid to deal with that

Speaker 6 you know and again it's all around this sort of slight sort of

Speaker 6 shouldering of stress and responsibility.

Speaker 6 It all comes from listening to the noise, right? And I say to people, protect and preserve your own perspective. Your own perspective, you own that.

Speaker 6 Doesn't matter how hard you've got to sort of close off the clamour sometimes. If you've got to get into that,

Speaker 6 in their case, their fire engines and go and respond to a job, you turn up and you do it every time.

Speaker 6 And it's remarkable the standards expected. of all of these things.
So I really enjoyed that bit of work.

Speaker 6 The other, I'm ambassador to a performance company. so these this is a company called Planet K2.

Speaker 6 This is quite new so one of the first things I did I was put in touch with a guy called Keith Hatter

Speaker 6 and goodness knows what I sounded like when I had my first conversation with him because I was still speaking in a language that people really didn't understand you know I was struggling to explain my skills and in sort of words where they're just like well okay

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 slightly after that,

Speaker 6 you know, Keith Hatter asked me to do, they have something called Performance Fest, and it's run at Soho Hotel. He asked me to be a speaker as a number of four.

Speaker 6 And the title was Using Data for High Performance.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I said I'm not a nominal data expert. I've got a lot of experience with data and everything else.
And the other people on the course was a very high-up

Speaker 6 person in IBM for Energy,

Speaker 6 the head of

Speaker 6 EMEA marketing possibly for Meta and the chief analyst at Gusto, chief analyst at distribution at Gusto. So it's quite a sort of considerable kind of professional experience there.

Speaker 6 So it was one of the first sort of speaking events where I sat down and really tried to apply myself and it seemed to go very very well.

Speaker 6 And it proved I could do it, you know, alongside. And more latterly, and a few years went by, and I talked to Keith every so often you know he's extremely experienced person

Speaker 6 and sometimes just talking to people you get the best bit of advice that they never intended to give and some of my interactions are very lucky I've got really great friends when I talk to them it just sort of reminds you keep on your center point things are good they're held in together they may not look pretty pretty But Keith in the end has asked me to come ambassador to Planet K2.

Speaker 6 And there's a different type of performance we're talking about. I've done a couple of speaking events for them.

Speaker 6 And I think they're sort of increasingly looking at hopefully a growing relationship where I'm included in their offers.

Speaker 6 And they do performance as a culture. So they have 21 rules that they stick by.
And so it's not immediately something. I have something to add to their offer, but I also have to learn.

Speaker 6 their offer and their culture. And they've got two decades of experience of delivering this.
So through these types of interactions I've learned a great deal and developed very fast, right?

Speaker 6 Because if someone asks you to sit on a stage,

Speaker 6 you take it seriously, you go and learn, you educate, you develop, and that's been absolutely fundamental to keeping my progress going.

Speaker 6 But the speaking is really yet to take shape. And I've got a strong suspicion that speaking comes from doing, becoming involved in other very important things

Speaker 6 so i hope that in time but the last thing you want to do is rely on people unless it's their pattern of business that allows you the opportunity to join in you can't immediately sort of turn and say things are getting really really tough i really really need more work you know you've got to let them develop at their own pace and it may not necessarily suit you

Speaker 6 So I've had other, you know, extraordinary asks. You know, I tend to like to support people.

Speaker 6 And, you know, friends, a friend's father came to me and said, a very, very high net worth person was getting threatened you know I went and sat for quite a long time with her looked at the messages they were receiving essentially it was down to what do these threats constitute are they real or perceived I said well you know written that in my view it's perceived

Speaker 6 but you can never rule out real yeah so but instead of hiring huge arrays of security just because of the possibility of real you just need to understand how to control the communication, the means of communication, these threats, right, and understand where that is located.

Speaker 6 And in my view, right, that's a threat that you can report.

Speaker 6 So it was actually a no-money solution. And it was worthwhile in terms of one, you know, one of the key ones is

Speaker 6 reassuring these people so they're not walking around feeling threatened by everything and everyone.

Speaker 6 But essentially, again, it's taught to me when I look at the solutions solutions to things, they don't fit what people want to say.

Speaker 6 You know, it's like these days when you say, I need a, you know, what should I do about my CCTV? We're like, well, get a machine learning program.

Speaker 6 These two people don't need to be satisfied.

Speaker 6 Right? So it's not necessarily the solutions that other people want to see as well.

Speaker 6 But I have had sort of interesting interactions. There's a company called Cocoon,

Speaker 6 excellent in digital privacy. I hope that this sort of grows, but who knows where it will.

Speaker 6 You know, consultancy, I think, is going to be something I'm going to have to push really really hard for when I get home

Speaker 6 speaking is definitely not something I can massively rely on but I absolutely love and I think it will become big

Speaker 6 but quite early on and I was looking to get on a course at Imperial College bearing on my last time I did proper study I do have a certificate in international relationships international security so a PG approach PG 7 as such qualification fell short of a master's but otherwise it's a levels and you you know i went to imperial college to try and understand whether there was a course in coding i could do or some element around sort of cyber or or that that side of things they did up in the end offer me a place on a master's in resilience and security but on our walk around a guy called professor deep channel who's the head of the institute security and science security science and technology at the Imperial College.

Speaker 6 So really, really significant. Imperial College is an incredible institution.

Speaker 6 In the walk around of the Innovation Hub, I was introduced to a guy called Richard Staffam.

Speaker 6 And he, eight years ago, met, I don't know how long he had known Vincent Tellenbach, who's an engineer before. But Vincent Tellenbach had been writing waveforms.

Speaker 6 And he did it in cooperation coordination with John Hopkins and Kennedy Krieger Institute, John Hopkins University. So medical grade waveforms when they were written to deal with

Speaker 6 pediatric neurological conditions, very, very challenging ones. And in some cases, sort of nothing to lose type stuff to sort of affect neurology.

Speaker 6 So Richard Staffam started a company called what's now called NMES Groups, a neuromuscular electrostimulation group. And over the next eight years,

Speaker 6 through a process of engineering, so none of this is brand new in terms of it's a trusted technology, it's an EMS background. But they've

Speaker 6 found a way of making a superconductive membrane that can be rendered into cloves.

Speaker 6 And therefore the platforms you can put it in are endless.

Speaker 6 And these are trusted technologies that have already been used. Same fally as TENS, although TENS is just for pain reduction.

Speaker 5 Is that what you have here?

Speaker 6 Yes, yes.

Speaker 6 This one's the suit. You can make it into bands or anything you want.
I mean, the key thing and the really, really clever thing that's happened here is it's

Speaker 6 innovative applications of trusted technologies. These technologies are very, very safe, but they can be made to be very effective and quite powerful.
And essentially, there's a membrane in here.

Speaker 6 This is brand new and it just got arrived from Taiwan. And this is a next generation suit.
I've got my Generation 1 suit down here that I used this morning.

Speaker 6 And this membrane's even more effective than that one. So you've got the membrane, you've got the waveforms that are medical grade authored.
And that's really, really important.

Speaker 6 You know, it's all about the person that creates these waveforms that signal into your motor neurome points.

Speaker 6 And then you've got something called a stim, which is a gateway.

Speaker 6 It just clicks on

Speaker 6 and you press that button and it connects to an app on my phone. And there's banks of programs of waveforms in my phone.

Speaker 6 They're all different and they all communicate into that remote neuron point and the neuromuscular junction.

Speaker 6 And they get the action potential in the muscle to contract. So it's 100% recruitment of the muscle.
But a key point in this, and again, when Richard said, why don't you come in for a demonstration?

Speaker 6 I said immediately yes. because they knew my provenance as a SS trooper.
Clearly they turned it all up to about 70

Speaker 6 and had me running through like samurai things and I think one of them the sort of gaming side of things I'm sort of making my way to a nuclear core and it's just getting hit and hit further and further

Speaker 6 and essentially then you've got outward looking sensors that can simulate gunshot so it can contract the muscles that you

Speaker 6 so it's really cool right it's like the key point is your neuromuscular junction so what is this doing

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 this is

Speaker 6 effecting sending a signal into your neuromuscular junction in any different muscle group.

Speaker 6 And if you look, you know, in the suit I was wearing this morning, there was no lower back panel, whereas in this, there's a lower back panel.

Speaker 6 Now, I've only got three stims in me, I should have four. I usually use four because I picked up the heart rate one that I don't use instead of the fourth.

Speaker 6 And I left a little bit chaotically from the UK. But essentially, you know, you just adapt your stimming to the muscle groups that you want to

Speaker 6 to have an have an effect over

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 and you can put as many on as you like right so I generally they use four the stims can go up six eight whatever but this suit and it's absolutely unique right there is nothing in the world other suits have got straps on they're wireless sorry they've got wires they've got program stations generally gel pads are used to communicate a waveform there's three different membranes already tested that are even more stretchy and conductive.

Speaker 6 So, when you take this to a racing driver and say, Look, you know, we can give a beneficial waveform into your physiology that not only conditions you to be stronger, fitter, faster in your performance, but we can actually generate beneficial enhancements in your overall physiology.

Speaker 6 And I'll come into some of the

Speaker 6 case studies we've, you know, I've been involved in.

Speaker 6 Then, but the art is not to say that really, really expensive racing suit you've got well you've got to wear that underneath no it's to engineer it into that suit and that's what's quite incredible so the adaptability of this platform and the applicability to all of the different so the segments would be specialist professions and i define specialist professions by any profession that challenges human biology right and the astronauts are the epitome of it the special forces communities are really interesting set of people that have got explosive blasts going on, everything.

Speaker 6 But the astronauts go into

Speaker 6 an atmosphere with no gravity.

Speaker 6 So immediately it's compromising your ability to regenerate all of your physiological functions, your neuroendocrine functions.

Speaker 6 Your brain health is immediately affected.

Speaker 6 Neurology across your body and your system is.

Speaker 6 You're getting interference from radiation at a cellular level, and you're in a confined environment where you can't move properly.

Speaker 6 It's an absolute, now it's well known in space travel, but there's so many other ones. You know, you look at

Speaker 6 fire,

Speaker 6 fire brigade, they're using breathing apparatus. That's changing you.

Speaker 6 You're overheating a lot of the time. Lots and lots of exposure to toxicology.
It's very, very demanding.

Speaker 6 you have to use the stairs and carry you know so there's all of those performance related things that challenge human biology over time These are what leading to the behavioral changes.

Speaker 6 They're leading to predispositions to certain diseases later on in life and neurological conditions, right?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 so that's specialist professions.

Speaker 6 You've got what we call recreational fitness and sport. So elite sport is in specialist professions.

Speaker 6 It's a real key definition to have rugby players, boxers, NFL players are quite interesting.

Speaker 5 So high performance type occupation.

Speaker 6 High performance, you're getting paid, right? Totally different approach. It's not health.
You know, you're trying to protect health, you're trying to condition.

Speaker 6 Whereas in recreational sports and fitness, a lot of it might be aesthetics, but essentially, it's underpinning health.

Speaker 6 So, recreational sports and fitness, you know, I can see this belonging to health clubs on subscriptions. We've been talking to quite a few already.

Speaker 6 These are the sorts of things that we enhance.

Speaker 6 Gaming is a really, really interesting one, right?

Speaker 6 You know, like FIFA 24,

Speaker 6 I name it making gaming healthy. So, you're a teenager and you're playing your FIFA 24, and I'm a big advocate of gaming.
Gaming's brilliant, right? It improves acuity.

Speaker 6 It's like they've found the beneficial mental aspects to gaming, like as elder is a lost world. You know, children can get lost in this world, and it's actually not that bad for them.

Speaker 6 Now, the aspects around social media are totally different from what gaming is. Gaming communities are pretty decent communities to be involved in.

Speaker 6 But you imagine if you're playing FIFA 24, the soccer game, someone sort of comes in and tackles you from the right and you get a beneficial stimulus into your quad and the motor neuron.

Speaker 6 You're actually generating a physiological function that's benefiting

Speaker 6 your brain health, right? So, and I'll go into the mechanics of how this works in a minute and the key aspect of neuromuscular junctions in a minute.

Speaker 6 But essentially, if you think that you can make sleeves, you can make bands, you're really, really cheap bands. You can adapt it to all the different markets.
And the last one is medical therapeutic.

Speaker 6 And this is, I've got great friends who've got Parkinson's. And I always have wondered, you know,

Speaker 6 what led to these neurological conditions. At some point there was inflammation

Speaker 6 caused by stress or caused by some environmental factor you're exposed to. You know, genetic preconditions are different.

Speaker 6 I mean, let's face it, they're only percentage points, subjective, whether that was ever. You know, people who end up with cancer, a lot of it is down to pure bad luck.

Speaker 6 But you can adjust the probabilities of your exposure, but it doesn't precondition you not to get it.

Speaker 6 This is really fascinating in biology because I think if you look at pharmaceuticals, they cannot, you know, I believe in the power of pharmaceuticals and what they're doing.

Speaker 6 And interestingly, a lot of the new drugs are communicating into your own systems to say, go and tell the T cells to do this.

Speaker 6 You know, CAR T therapies, you know, get that receptor to go and enhance that, inhibit that, express that, rather than interfering in a way they have done before.

Speaker 6 But what I've always remarked about pharmaceuticals is actually because we're individualized in our whole physiology and biology,

Speaker 6 we can never be sure what that drug is doing to you. You can't be sure, you're basically looking at

Speaker 6 what comes out on a conscious side.

Speaker 6 There are some tests probably you can do.

Speaker 6 Whereas if you look at your own physiology and see where that can be empowered and you use applied there's a family of technologies and i've not come across a lot that apply in a non-invasive way essentially it's like cleaning a spark plug it's like enhancing putting better fuel in and what they're doing is in this particular technology it's enhancing your motor neurone points it is at a local level contracting the muscle you will see if you want 20% better cross-sectional muscle mass you'll get that you know and I'll remark on it is big muscles don't mean strong muscles.

Speaker 6 And they certainly don't mean healthy muscles. What healthy muscles are is the interaction between your neuron point and the motor point.

Speaker 6 And this is what is absolutely critical to your nervous system and the neuronal pathways that are created. And I've always thought, and again,

Speaker 6 it's a confusing concept for me. I've sat down with a piece of paper and gone, go back to the work I do with the breathing physiology.
It's probably the last aspect I'll come on to,

Speaker 6 is

Speaker 6 how do you get people to understand

Speaker 6 that the power of your conscious mind is in no way

Speaker 6 anywhere near the power of your physiology itself and your brain and your brainstem.

Speaker 6 Because it takes over and it's trying to protect you. You're built for survival, right? So when you have a shock, you're actually better off handing control back to your kind of sort of unconscious.

Speaker 6 For human evolutionary biology, it's become highly, highly tuned. And your brain is locked up in a dark cavern.

Speaker 6 And it's receiving senses and signals that build up neuronal pathways and patterns that become preferential, right? So when you...

Speaker 6 looking at what's important when you get under stress

Speaker 6 uh so what what what is the fractions?

Speaker 6 How do you put this in figures?

Speaker 6 Your conscious mind, everything that we spend so much time concentrating on, affirmations, whatever, you know, and your unconscious area that is driving your physiology and ensuring it remains harmonious.

Speaker 6 And the figures

Speaker 6 might as well not worth be quoting apart from the size of them because I came across it quite recently in a in a news article and it gave the answer, right? Is the thought,

Speaker 6 the level of information you can process per second consciously is 10 bits

Speaker 6 per second.

Speaker 6 I've seen the highest level of estimation of processing thought consciously, that ability to pick up that, you know, I want to do that, it's become important, is 40 to 50 bits per second.

Speaker 6 The level of sensing of information that is going into your brain that is getting processed and either being flagged up as priority or not at all is 100 million bits per second. Wow.

Speaker 6 And to describe what that, and you know, I've wondered about it and I've gone, how do you describe this to people?

Speaker 6 How, you know, by doing the wrong breathing technique, you are undermining your physiology.

Speaker 6 And if it's so long as it's zeroed, and it's functioning properly, you're far better off handing control to that. Right.
And to describe what that means you know

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 uh i don't know it's an air conditioner isn't it has been going on all along i've taken that in every different texture and every pattern in this room i've taken in my brain has been processing information on a subconscious level in a massive

Speaker 6 volume but consciously

Speaker 6 I've been doing an umpteenth amount. I thought in visual terms, what does this look like? Is this the surface ocean via the volume of it? I mean, it's an absolutely extraordinary fraction to look at.

Speaker 6 Yeah, absolutely extraordinary. And this is where I've become absolutely sort of

Speaker 6 firmly planted in non-invasive technologies. And technologies I'm involved in, there's really two.
I'm a data subject for one and highly involved in this one.

Speaker 6 It's because I believe they can be used very effectively.

Speaker 5 So what

Speaker 5 does it do? What does the suit do?

Speaker 6 So if you put the suit on, you know, and again,

Speaker 6 it depends what you want to do with it. So are you training for, you know, a performance-related thing?

Speaker 6 The suits, you put the stems onto the necessary muscle point, put the suit on, as I say, this is brand new, sent over from Taiwan by a company called Maclot,

Speaker 6 who are leading investors in EMS technology and making conductive membranes. The company has had a relationship with them very, very whole on.
And they have, you know, they're really

Speaker 6 quite remarkable people, actually. So, you

Speaker 6 isolate muscles, yeah. So, in each, each each point in your muscle, so say for instance, that's your chest.

Speaker 6 So, you put a stim on there,

Speaker 6 turn it on,

Speaker 6 there's the other stim,

Speaker 6 and connect it,

Speaker 6 turn both on, connect it through, and it goes into your motor neuron points of that muscle mouse and communicates a signal.

Speaker 6 It puts like a signal all the way through the membrane that releases the action potential down the muscle fiber.

Speaker 6 The bits that I'm not interested in stronger fit faster, so when I have my demonstration, I was immediately, I'm conscious that neurological deficit that is there. I'm never complacent about it.

Speaker 6 I don't know what my outcome is. At the moment, I've got a lot to be thankful for, but that doesn't mean it's good in the future.

Speaker 6 I know people with neurological conditions that are very, very complicated for the people around them. I'm not complacent about this.
It doesn't mean that I believe that the outcome.

Speaker 6 So when I would put this suit on, I was like, this is a key driver of your physiology. Your neuromuscular junctions are the most powerful element I know of.

Speaker 6 you know that can drive brain-derived neurotrophic factors there's another family called glial cell lined neurotrophic factors There's one I've even just learned about that was only found in 2010, I think, called cerebral dopaminergic neurotrophic factors.

Speaker 6 And all of these factors are responsible for removing proteins and macrophaging your brain.

Speaker 6 So what happens is when that stimulus goes off, your neuromuscular junction prompts your muscles to release these factors. into your blood.

Speaker 6 And obviously through your blood-brain barrier, that's the individualized bit that that lets a pharmaceutical win or not. And we have very individualized biology, including our blood-brain barriers.

Speaker 6 It can be very fussy. So, the original principle I'm looking at, all of this technology, is being able to press on the factors within your own system.

Speaker 6 Your body will work out the harmony they need to happen.

Speaker 6 But whatever's going to be happening is going to be beneficial. Now, we can't say to what extent we'll be successful in treating a condition, but say for instance stroke.

Speaker 6 Stroke is a brilliant example of how incredibly resilient human beings are. You can have people with critical strokes.

Speaker 6 So Ellie's stepfather had a very bad stroke, had to learn to write again, had to learn to read again.

Speaker 6 Now lives a happy life and all that he has is a slight deficit in movement down his right hand side. That's an incredible example of what your body comes back from.

Speaker 6 And someone approached the company, and the neurologist, physiotherapist at the time, she's currently stepped away from the company and studying extreme med, which is again a very exciting area,

Speaker 6 worked with the engineer Vincent Tellenbach, who's the original author of the medical grade waveforms.

Speaker 6 And they were approached by someone who had a very, very bad stroke and had drop foot. So drop foot is when you don't get clearance

Speaker 6 off the floor very well.

Speaker 6 And of course, the key risk is not necessarily anything other than fall.

Speaker 6 So, what follows not being able to clear things off the foot is you have really bad falls and you injure yourself.

Speaker 6 So, the neuron point that fires the foot, and I'll show you the video on my phone of this actually happening on purpose.

Speaker 6 So, the company put motion detecting sensors around the gate and pressure sensors to analyze the gate, and then worked out the timing in which to fire the neuron using a stim and a band of membrane.

Speaker 6 No one quite knew what would happen.

Speaker 6 And it came back to a 90%

Speaker 6 reaction. And that's purely because the signal reminded the peripheral nervous system and rebuilt the neuronal pathway and the central nervous system to say this must happen.
And it's happening now.

Speaker 6 And incredibly, It only took a few weeks of using that stimulus. A very simple thing.
It's just sort of signaling in saying, fire

Speaker 6 Interesting. Yeah, so it works both ways.
There isn't like a link between your brain, your body, your endocrine function, and your nervous system. And it works in unison and harmony, right?

Speaker 6 And what's more,

Speaker 6 they're safe because when you're pressing from the outside, everything's harmonizing or inside. If your blood pressure has to change, we'll come on to breathing physiology in a minute.

Speaker 6 But remember the tacho to super cardiomorphy. Slight

Speaker 6 change in the integrity of the heart changes elements of your blood pressure changes all sorts of things heart rate variables changes all sorts of factors that have to remain in harmony within your physiology for things to remain stable and set

Speaker 6 it's absolutely in tune with one another and when something changes like there's a factor that comes in it rebalances really really effectively and really well and when those factors are going and going up into your brain and clearing out cyanucline proteins and beta amyloid so beta amyloid being Alzheimer's, cynucline being Parkinson's.

Speaker 6 I'm not sitting here and saying this is a solution to Parkinson's, right? But I do know putting deep

Speaker 6 implants into the brain, whilst it's absolutely exceptionally brilliant work, it's still like playing the piano with a mallet,

Speaker 6 right? You're introducing a foreign body into it. When you have to do that, you must.
But my key question is how much more could we be doing a lot, lot earlier? 20 years usually is the lead time.

Speaker 6 You know, there's a ton of people out there that are exhibiting operator syndrome type symptoms that have neurological elements to what they're doing.

Speaker 6 And what would happen if we can boost their physiological functions, not only whilst they're serving, but you encourage it. And to put this in words,

Speaker 6 I was getting on a train to London. and I bumped into someone I knew well because he was a quite famous rugby player.
But he didn't know me. I was just

Speaker 6 from a local club

Speaker 6 and I didn't say hello to him because I just was like no he gets it all the time but then I saw the train was delayed and I was walking past the window and saw him sitting down I said okay well you know being stupid let's at least go and say good morning and I got chatting to him and he started talking about his sister

Speaker 6 His sister had a syndrome called Gwillome Barry syndrome.

Speaker 6 It's where no one really knows what kicks it off, but the immune system starts kind of interfering with the peripheral nervous system and it starts

Speaker 6 resulting in a breakdown in motor control.

Speaker 6 This syndrome can end up in locked-in syndrome, full paralysis, right, at its worst. Sometimes it reverses itself and sometimes it ends with lasting consequences, deficits in motor.

Speaker 6 It's usually treated because it's essentially an autoimmune system first by blood transfusion but as it happened his sister was pretty much immobile on the sofa and losing mobility fast she's presenting to a new neurological consultant in a wheelchair and that was on about September the 23rd I heard of it and phoned MMEZ

Speaker 6 the company and said hey could we provide some products to this it happened there were a load of prototypes lying about on the neurologist physiotherapist floor so I said can you send them over to me I can drive around this person's house.

Speaker 6 We can give her a quick coaching course in the simplicity of using this, which is put it on, press the button, trust in it.

Speaker 6 And you can do an assessment on where she sits. And, you know, I drove around the house, took round,

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 took round the prototypes.

Speaker 6 took round, downloaded the app and explained exactly how the technology works. It communicates waveforms into your motor neuron points.
It cannot do any harm.

Speaker 6 The risks are very well defined and it can only do benefit. Then Vicki, so Dr.

Speaker 6 Victoria Spartan, neurologist physiotherapist at the time, did a connected on signal and did a full assessment of her and then the prognosis was really quite sort of really, you know, it's like the her own neurological consultant was saying this is really really concerning.

Speaker 6 And we left her to it. Said look you know you can contact us anytime, but get on with it.
And

Speaker 6 she started using it and within a week she could get up off the sofa unassisted wow and within two weeks she was sending videos of her walking to the pub with her family wow significantly in four weeks her neuro neurological consultant her neurophysio team signed her off to drive and go back to work now roughly at the time when we introduced the technology to try and help

Speaker 6 She had a second blood transfusion. The first blood transfusion hadn't worked for whatever reasons.

Speaker 6 Whatever it was, a combination of the blood transfusion and the helpful beneficial stimulus acting as a catalyst or a solution, we're not sure.

Speaker 6 Her neurological consultant, a neurophysio, was off to meet us. They've described her recovery, which was a month.
So a month to get signed off back to work. Wow.
She's an incredible woman.

Speaker 5 How often did she have to? How long did she have to do it?

Speaker 6 You know, so this lady is, and this is an important point as well. So I think she was using it every day and just went for it.
Right.

Speaker 6 Every day for help.

Speaker 6 We gave her bands and, you know, for a month. And she kept on using it.
And she describes herself as back to 95%.

Speaker 5 What I'm asking is how many, how long does she work? Does she wear it all day? Does she wear it for an hour in the morning?

Speaker 6 I'd have to explore that. I think she wore it for hours at a time, like one hour at a time.
When she was immobile on the social, she really had nothing else to do.

Speaker 6 And so constantly, constantly waking it all back up reminds me.

Speaker 5 How long do you wear it for?

Speaker 6 So it interchanges.

Speaker 6 The beauty of technology, it'll work with you right so it's just going to do whatever you do we have experts so owen laces is the program development expert he's a leading coach in the risk sports institute quite a famous um sports sports performance well performance expert he's got his own sort of sort of studies and casework so he formats formulates the program development so you can just do programs so i've got 18 minute programs 35 minute programs all different waveforms this morning i was on capillarization because it's quite nice and massaging.

Speaker 6 I didn't want to absolutely wear myself out for this. So it's really, I'll come on to how I've sort of lined up for this as well because it's part, a very, very important part of this.

Speaker 6 So it really kind of sort of just works with you. And interestingly, I'm testing hypothesis in my head because your body only regenerates and repairs when you're asleep.

Speaker 6 So is there a waveform we can write where you just wear a set of pajamas and just buzzes away very, very nicely for you?

Speaker 6 Because if it's generating beneficial factors you know is there a further repair element i have to talk to vincent you know i'm not a biologist very interesting i'm just quite perceptive and i've done all this by reading books love books what have you noticed so i mean

Speaker 6 i've and i don't use it all the time i have weeks off without using it and then i use it for concentrated periods and i've used used it in the days i've arrived since nashville because i don't want to i don't want to tune out of the the weariness of travel i've also tested it very very hard, you know, because I'm very, very interested.

Speaker 6 And as I say, I'm like this really, the way I am valuable is by supporting other people's casework. And I'm a good minion to use.

Speaker 6 I've got an understandable belt history that comes with some exposure, well, irrefutable exposure and expected challenges.

Speaker 6 And this is why the people I'm coming on to, I'll come to.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 the date is quite precious, but I've gone out myself, you know, I'll go running in it and I just tune it in.

Speaker 6 And a lot of time I I just leave it off you know this suit has just arrived from Taiwan as I've said made handmade by McLott's team

Speaker 6 and you know they they're an incredible team you know they're experts in conductive membranes and they've made this beautifully honest this is the next generation up 41 so I'm super excited to turn it on I reckon this is like a bit of a sewing machine yeah do you imagine if this is if you made this all informed and you say gave it to people exposed to certain environmental factors that are going to challenge them you just have beneficial stimulus as keying off outward looking sensors you imagine the the benefit for training simulation you know proximity were to a blast and you get a contract in you know it's

Speaker 6 the applications are really very very broad if you think about them they're applicable to all human beings but particularly ones who are mobile so if you've got people who are mobile and waiting for an operation you need to drop their weight you need to do whatever okay what's the waveform for that I'm not saying this technology is a panacea but you start combining these families of technologies up and they start becoming uniform in unison quite powerful and the casework we've got and I can go into lots there's a NASCAR

Speaker 6 racing driver who's still racing because of the use of the technology wow and she is offered to do a like she she's done like a run of a recording of her particular case you know there's lots and lots of casework now.

Speaker 5 What's the name of the company?

Speaker 6 So MMES Group AB is this company. Now they're a Swedish company by heart but they're kind of sort of mixed in everywhere.
Vincent Tellenbach is an amazing engineer, incredible.

Speaker 6 He's got 30 years, just under 30 years experience writing these waveforms and works incredibly closely with Imperial College.

Speaker 6 So these waveforms alongside other types of signaling, because your body's all told electric.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 6 And so these waveforms, if you pick the right ones you can initially initiate some really really clever changes how powerful they'll be are actually up to our your individualized biology it's guesswork from the outside but it's going to be beneficial and my original hypothesis and it probably starts with the fact that I've got close friends with Parkinson's and you see the conditions that they face on bad days, you know, days when the weather's not good.

Speaker 6 You know, and somehow finding something that can happen before you have to resort to the invasive procedures is only going to be good.

Speaker 6 And it has to be, you know, for me a technology has to be accessible. In order to be accessible, it has to be affordable.

Speaker 6 And it needs to be made available to those that will benefit from it.

Speaker 6 Talking about this technology, this will be quite expensive, but it's the preserve of specialists and people who want to spend a lot of money on their sports recreational fitness.

Speaker 5 How much does one of those cost?

Speaker 6 Well, it's previously on the market, and you remember that

Speaker 6 you've got this that can actually be made for, you've upscale the production of this, this actually can be made extremely cheaply, but the overall product involves an app, involves potentially a subscription.

Speaker 6 It depends what you're asking for, is it bank programs are expertly written.

Speaker 6 But when it comes down to providing it for medical use case and therapeutic cases, it can be made to be really cheap. Now, once you get into the scaling up of this, you can make accessories.

Speaker 6 The box of accessories I've used, and I'll show you some videos afterwards of some of the stuff we've took into Ukraine to help with the war injured there. And they're just simple pads.

Speaker 6 They're not unique to the company. There's only a few companies that do do it.
But I've got an app on my phone. They've got banks of programs.

Speaker 6 So is it a licensing fee?

Speaker 6 Some customers, you know, the good thing about the product is it's built up over, you know, you look at the number of touch points right if you just need the membrane because you want to do an incredible line in

Speaker 6 sports but it's a little bit more expensive an elite running range

Speaker 6 just need the membrane yeah put it in your own you know and you know I have not yet come across a garment that has an active technology in it there's lots that inform you know I've done buyer feedback assessments now with various bits that get pinned onto you I have not yet come across a viable

Speaker 6 garment that has an active technology in it that can act on you. You know, so I think this is very much the start of looking at these non-invasive technologies, all of which the risks can be defined.

Speaker 6 They're really quite, they're very safe, and

Speaker 6 they're born out of medical markets with the EMS family tens.

Speaker 6 Now, actually, they shouldn't be like

Speaker 6 put under the same sort of discretions under sort of FDA certification as other things because they are enacting on your own biology and physiology.

Speaker 6 And I noted in one of the previous podcasts you I think it's an executive order or something about make your own mind up. You know, it's about medical things that people can opt for.

Speaker 6 I might be getting this slightly wrong, but you know, it's people's own choice to get involved. with certain technologies.

Speaker 6 Now, if you've got Willem-Barry syndrome, got a neurological condition where you think, do you know what, there's nothing to lose in getting getting on with this go ahead with it go ahead with it because it's non-invasive and the risk can be very very well defined you know and if it does

Speaker 6 small amounts of good so be it yeah but in the cases we've used and we can see it actually is quite powerful you know and especially in combination with other things as well very interesting yeah and it's that key thing right so how do people find it so at the moment the the gen one that i've got here we've taken that off.

Speaker 6 We're consolidating that and we're making it as a preserve to support war injured at the moment. The garment itself is

Speaker 6 nowhere near as good as this one.

Speaker 6 So I think at the moment, the strategy will be to work business to business and work with special specifications. Okay, so this would go to...

Speaker 5 This would go... An individual cannot purchase us.
This would go to...

Speaker 6 Not right now.

Speaker 6 They could have done the older one, but actually we're in a much, much better spot. So this company,

Speaker 6 I've been involved in the company on paid for three years. I've absolutely loved it, right? You know, at the end of the day, I really, really believe in this.

Speaker 6 Human performance, health and technology is something I would

Speaker 6 be a pleasure to be involved in it for the next 10, 20 years, right? It's could be that thing. You know, it comes with a risk these sorts of companies do sell through.

Speaker 6 But in this particular case, I've witnessed what they're prepared to do over the last eight years.

Speaker 6 And all of the finance has gone back into the development of the product and they're actually in a really really prime position to

Speaker 6 enact this on certain markets and the more difficult markets like specialist professions and medical therapeutic they're going to take more time you need certifications for medical therapeutic to use it to its sort of more heightened abilities

Speaker 6 principles of it couldn't be more simple as we've talked about it's enacting on your innovative muscle and it's promoting physiological harmony as well as helping you train and be strong or whatever you want to do, create lean muscle mass, lose,

Speaker 6 improve cardio-respiracy, whatever it is, there's a program that can be formed with Waveform where that can play a part.

Speaker 5 So is there any

Speaker 5 for somebody that wants to use this, how would they get their hands on one?

Speaker 6 So I think that comes quite quickly, hopefully in the next few months.

Speaker 6 The company is in a position where it can scale up. A new set of these have been made for trials and testing to certain sort of people at the moment.

Speaker 6 We're talking to a company about potentially an agreement where this would be made available to their customers.

Speaker 6 Because what you're looking at is the first instance of an integrative technology being part of a garment, which is quite an exciting thing, though.

Speaker 6 And you can see where this can sort of really be very, very effective. Very interesting.

Speaker 6 You know, when it comes to sports recreational fitness, you can sell it to individuals, but actually, it's probably better bun through professional sports and health clubs you know first as a subscription model whatever then there'll be some instruction you know you don't need instruction you can just put this on and use it and the programs are set with protocols in it which ensure that you can't really mess it up although guess what your body does a really good job of protecting itself anyway so if you choose to kind of sort of choose to sort of really sort of go offline with it you can't really do it because your body will say, No, no, I don't really like that.

Speaker 6 But you know, some education and some built-in protocols are necessary in any

Speaker 6 technology, especially when you can never compensate for

Speaker 6 the random choices that people can make.

Speaker 6 But essentially, the risks are rhabdomylysis, and I've looked in all of these different cases, and you can give it from training, so you can do it from negative reps.

Speaker 6 It's not very often at all, and certainly, in my view, not made more likely because of the use of technology but it's a declared use so if you do incredibly hard negative reps in CrossFit movements for instance you can overwork your muscles

Speaker 6 so all of those protocols are built into the programs already

Speaker 6 introductory use but that's actually you know for programs like this that once you know and this is what we hope to do is is transform it into a number of markets but really the true value is in the medical and therapeutic world you know and that is going to be a a longer piece of work but it's already been happening already you know Vincent Tellenbach is the incredible person really behind the design and engineering of all of this you know the company has now taken it on to make it something that can be made accessible and available to people incredible companies like MacAlotte are able to make garments like this.

Speaker 6 The next one

Speaker 6 is incredibly well engineered. It's got like lymphatic drainage built into textiles and stuff.
I mean it's almost unnecessary, over-engineered.

Speaker 6 I think it's going to be to kind of kind of prove a point. This is the generation that could, you know, fly.
It's got a more conductive membrane than the one I use.

Speaker 6 And I haven't used this yet, so I'm going to enjoy seeing what that feels like and looks like.

Speaker 6 But again, you know, it's

Speaker 6 the key one is to to

Speaker 6 technology is useful if it's available to people. And in order to do that, you have to

Speaker 6 be an adaptable product that can be made, you know, affordable to people in whatever markets you're moving into.

Speaker 6 And you know, you can have a massively engineered thing because your needs and requirements are around a profession.

Speaker 6 You can have a very, very simple thing that has a membrane that delivers something much less complicated in terms of waveform, but it's generating what you need, yeah, underpinning health.

Speaker 6 Man, this is hand in hand then, um, with

Speaker 6 um, so on a

Speaker 6 I went down to Snowdonia. There's an ex-former colleague, he's actually from

Speaker 6 the SBS called Gary Bamford.

Speaker 6 And he formed a company called Geratis, and he asked me to come speak to his

Speaker 6 the people that were on a walk around Snowdonia. And during that walk around, I met a gentleman called Dylan Mackay.

Speaker 6 Now, Dylan Mackay is an ex-performance expert from New Zealand, but at heart, he's Army Technicians Officer, Arms Weapons Technicians Officer, EOD Disposal.

Speaker 6 And he's become central in breathing physiology. And when I met him, you know, immediately, you know, when you can tell that someone's really, really interesting

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 not only really well-centered, but there's expert knowledge there.

Speaker 6 And I started talking to him. He said, you know, are you willing to become a data subject for us?

Speaker 6 And I said, well, you know, why are you interested? And he said, because

Speaker 6 we know your background, but you present very normally and so we wouldn't mind seeing your physiology you know through breathing cap catnography which measures the acidosis the chemical axis levels in your tissues through breathing it checks whether you're hypercatinic so low CO2 levels so it affects your oxygen uptake or not

Speaker 6 So I obviously willingly agreed. It sounds like an amazing opportunity to me.

Speaker 6 One thing I've learned in this transition process is size up opportunity as in in why I'm being asked but if it makes sense take it and it's by what like having that attitude towards these that I become involved in these technologies so I started building up a baseline in technology in understanding of my own breathing physiology with Dylan Mackay looks at all my data and goes you know and I started then finding out what resonance breathing frequency is and are you aware of resonance breathing frequency

Speaker 6 so resonance breathing frequency is essentially what people are trying to achieve by box breathing okay But it's very individualized to you.

Speaker 6 So that's a point where you can get amplitude in the harmony of your physiological function. So you can empower it.

Speaker 6 So when people are doing these breathing techniques, they're doing quite an inaccurate way of what this capnography will do, which will show you mine, for instance, is four.

Speaker 6 So and the bracket is 4.5 to 6 breaths per minute. So that shows you how individualized it is.

Speaker 6 But it took an expert to look in and say, actually yours is full but once you get it right your physiology becomes very very powerful and recenters itself so feelings of anxiety dissipate and the the scientist behind all of this is a guy called dr peter litchfield who invented

Speaker 6 this which is the catnograph

Speaker 6 and it's a clever box that again i used this morning

Speaker 6 and I don't do you know I'm basically giving enough sessions to inform

Speaker 6 Dylan Mackay's work, but also I'm benefiting from all the expert knowledge that is coming back. And essentially, it's

Speaker 6 you wear a heart rate monitor, you put the nasal cannula in, and this clever box here measures the astosis levels and your breathing rates to see what your entidal CO2 is.

Speaker 6 And obviously, if it's too low, then you will be out of kilter.

Speaker 6 And this is where some of the behaviors... So they're very involved with

Speaker 6 operator syndrome I think they've been quite involved with I think it's dr. Chris Frew's work

Speaker 6 and they're quite well advanced and breathing physiology anyone who uses breathing apparatus like some divers barbecue should this this should be absolutely baked into their sort of re-key process yeah but actually it's very fundamental to a lot of other people as well So again, I'm working very hard with them and through that process, and Dylan Mackay is utterly fascinating.

Speaker 6 It's almost like my therapy going on to essentially and that's where we worked out right

Speaker 6 now.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so please, there's the nasal cannon, the pulsar that we read. And I never realized the complication of each breath processes.
And you get a graph, so I plugged this in and put that little

Speaker 5 thumb drive.

Speaker 6 Yeah, thumb drive into your laptop. You know, I was was doing it this morning in the gym because I did one of Scott Sonnen's regimes

Speaker 6 in order to prepare myself. You know, you know, I'm interested in seeing, you know,

Speaker 6 certain different types of workouts, prepare yourself in certain ways. And I had quite an interesting experience doing this.

Speaker 6 But in all of this, I'm measuring my beauty physiology and giving Dylan that data. And he's able to see, one, he's said, right, you know, your physiology is centered, right?

Speaker 6 So you're not traumatised by anything. We know that.
You know, you're, although you're laden with the normal stresses of life, you're not out of kilter, right? So that's an important thing to know.

Speaker 6 Because if people are, and I think this originally started a long, long time ago with Dr. Peter Litchfield identifying that dysfunctional breathing behaviors had an association to epilepsy.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And it's like sort of unregulated neurotransmission. So again, it all has relevance in any of those environmental factors, exposive, blast, exposure, you know, stress loads, absolute

Speaker 6 direct relevance to all of this, to re-zero. It's like, again, that analogy with a sight.
Your body physiology is your most powerful aspect of how you remain good and centered. It affects

Speaker 6 all of your behaviours. But essentially, you know, martial artists used to do meditation.
And that was their way of studying it and getting this centrality around physiology.

Speaker 6 Well, now we have a technology. You can plug it into a laptop.
You can see.

Speaker 6 Like last night, I went on my breathing resonance frequency, which made amplitude for my physiology. So if I was going to sleep well, I definitely knew it was there, no, I didn't sleep.

Speaker 6 Well, I did sleep well, I just didn't sleep very long, which happens.

Speaker 6 So, but you know, that it in itself is a reassurance. You know, I'm in tune, right? I'm in tune.
So ready for this.

Speaker 6 What becomes even more exciting is, you know, know i've just done their biofeedback they use something called splendo health which is a platform for testing your cardio cardiorespiratory fitness but also your cognitive abilities and so i i drove down to dylan's house and we went on the assault bike did a series of cognitive tests don't take very long but i was fitted with um

Speaker 6 monitors to measure oxidation in my tissues so my quad and in my prefrontal cortex i measured the heart rate variables measure all sorts of stuff and biofeedback, and I've got a report back.

Speaker 6 And remembering, this is not to prove I'm some sort of superhuman athlete because I'm not.

Speaker 6 And you know, I live life in a very kind of balanced and natural way. I don't make deliberately unhealthy choices.

Speaker 6 But I think part of life is making realistic propositions to people that can fit around how they need to live. Yeah, no, no one could be in the gym at four o'clock every morning.

Speaker 6 And if you do, you're probably cancelling out a relationship you really cared about as well.

Speaker 6 And there's nothing nothing more annoying you know one of the speaking things I do is like high performance not high maintenance no one wants to know you've had an ice bath yeah like this morning or if you didn't sleep well how you won't be able to work effectively you know it's like you become awful and you know going on to ice baths cold water therapy works right initiates metabolic change this all stands up people live in thermal neutral environments too much but why you need to go out and buy a $400 ice bath and I implore people people not to jump in ice baths you know it shocks your system 18 autonomic sets of muscles around your heart now if you want to have cold water for therapy best way to do it is one you have a bath in your house usually but even in the shower you have a normal shower and then just gently turn the cold water down and that's why you you're not setting your sympathetic nervous system off against your parasympathetic.

Speaker 6 It's quite a dangerous thing to do because your physiology is trying to take over.

Speaker 6 Now if you dunk yourself into very cold ice water, elite athletes do this to do something else for their muscles unless you're training for an elite competition.

Speaker 6 You just want to initiate healthy metabolic change at a cellular level.

Speaker 6 So all of these sort of lifestyle theories that are pushed and all become almost cult-like in their kind of sort of way of commercialization. You must be one of these and this is the result.

Speaker 6 No, it's a mixture. And they don't have to be severe.
And some of the advice that's given down at sort of local level, local gym level, in small towns is really quite sort of horribly inaccurate.

Speaker 6 I don't think it's intentional.

Speaker 6 So these breathing techniques, you know, the first thing to ask of the breathing technique is how do you know if it's in tune with your individualized breathing?

Speaker 6 Because you don't know your resonance breathing frequency. But you can, these days you can plug yourself into a technology and have an expert look at it over the cloud.

Speaker 6 And they say, yeah, you're in tune. I reckon it's 4.5.
Tweak it, tweak it, tweak it.

Speaker 6 So it's a fascinating area of work.

Speaker 6 Now, Dylan Mackay, so going back to what I'm really, really interested in, is how do I now train and activate my physiology to protect myself from neurological deficit that may or may not be there?

Speaker 6 Probably is there, right? You've had lots of exposure.

Speaker 6 So Dylan Mackay works very closely with Scott Sonan.

Speaker 6 And I didn't know much about Scott Sonam first, but I've looked a little bit into his history, which is utterly incredible, to be honest.

Speaker 6 You know, he's got a lifetime history history that people understand.

Speaker 6 He's been a professional fighter, he's a master of sport, but he works closely with Dr. Peter Litchfield on breathing physiology, also.
And works in close partnership with Dylan Mackay.

Speaker 6 Actually,

Speaker 6 I've been invited to be a demonstration model on one of their webinars.

Speaker 6 So I looked in. The first thing Dylan Mackay sent me was a program

Speaker 6 of Scott Sonnen's theory on how to adapt exercise to tune yourself in for, for instance, creative thinking and thought, but gives the reasons why.

Speaker 6 And this is exactly, you know, when you come across someone who's an expert and all of a sudden the jigsaw puzzle keeps coming, it starts patterning together.

Speaker 6 So a lot of the research work I've done, you know, has been AI models asking them more and more precise search words to paint dots together.

Speaker 6 But essentially you're sort of patching it together with interaction with experts books and

Speaker 6 online learning you know because I you know I can't go to university actually I don't think I'd have this approach if I did

Speaker 6 and Scott Sonon's work

Speaker 6 really really underpinned it because what Scott Sonon's work is is how to modulate exercise first of all address exercise exercise is actually some sort of proxy in human evolutionary biology for exertion you need to exert yourself in one way or another challenge and form movements through your neuromuscular junctions that keep your your body your brain being part of your body healthy and safe and your physiology is intuitive and adapts to that

Speaker 6 and what Scott Sonnen's programs is looking directly at that and it's fascinating and there's something called the Goldilocks zone of moderate to high intensity

Speaker 6 sessions so some are 20 minutes some are 10 minutes so Dylan's been saying mid ease because I'm actually really interested. Like, how creative am I?

Speaker 6 So, I've been tuning in for this. I don't know how creative,

Speaker 6 waiting for some, I don't know, some

Speaker 6 some

Speaker 6 confirmation or not, right? I did three sessions running up to this, and I got one completely wrong. And I overexerted and went into stress, and I could feel my body is quite stressed.

Speaker 6 I added weight into it, which they're usually body weight. But the core concept is complex movement.

Speaker 6 So, movement is described as complex if if it moves through four sets of different muscles, neuromuscular junctions.

Speaker 6 And your central nervous system will then recognize this as a pattern that is beneficial and generate these factors that I've alluded to, these family of glial cells that will move through your vascular system up into your blood-brain and activate in order to create

Speaker 6 stronger neuronal pathways. And your brain is

Speaker 6 everyone talks about brain plasticity. You've got neurology plasticity throughout your system, and it consciously adapts and changes to everything you've done.

Speaker 6 So you can programmatically strengthen pathways in a conscious way. And this really, really started interesting me because you end up asking any question,

Speaker 6 you go back to the original solutions with your physiology, right? You need to just need to know how to empower it.

Speaker 6 And Scott Sonnen's work does this.

Speaker 6 And if you do patterns of complex movement, so I do every minute on the minute sessions for 20 minutes, I did one of those today and it's just a complex movement that enacts those systems, then not only is your brain far more creative for periods of time

Speaker 6 and the benefits of doing it are huge, but the family of glial cells is astrocytes.

Speaker 6 oligodendrocytes and glial cells themselves of which then they're further defined and they all have slightly different roles so astrocytes do lots of stuff but essentially

Speaker 6 keep the dendritic, the forest of sort of dendritic connections that can form up into new neural connections. Axons are what join those synapses, those dendritic ends together.

Speaker 6 What happens in Scott Sonnen's particular regime for Goldiloxone, for instance, is it keely activates oligodendrocytes that create mylineation of the axon.

Speaker 6 So, when you talk about myline axon, it's conductive wrapping around the axon that strengthens the signal. So it strengthens the neuronal pathway.

Speaker 6 So when you're looking at these experts, and again, the academics have probably been sitting on these answers for ages, but they haven't put the dots together in terms of application.

Speaker 6 But this is where experts like Scott Son and Dylan can make a huge amount of difference. And, you know, the work is already there.

Speaker 6 So using and again, it struck me that people struggle to compensate for the challenges their professions, challenge of their lives. The rates of Parkinson's are flying up, right?

Speaker 6 So we can't say do better. Either lifestyle doesn't allow you to, the commitments you have done do not allow you to exert yourself to a relevant level, or there's preconditions in which you can't.

Speaker 6 Whatever it is, these non-invasive technologies can pick up a lot of the slack and they can perform a lot of the mitigation for it.

Speaker 6 And this is, I think, quite important because I always work off the premise and again going back to Gwillone-Barry syndrome there's a certain factor

Speaker 6 an element of factors that have to be involved which is expert knowledge willing patient or subject mindset and applied technology and it doesn't we don't know what that applied technology is until we know the problem

Speaker 6 but there's a set of them and they all signal in and key off your own biological function. So go back to the lady who had Gwillone-Barry syndrome.
Expert knowledge is fundamental and key.

Speaker 6 Came from the neurologist consultant, neurophysier team, and

Speaker 6 Victoria Sparks. She did the assessment, said this is how I use technology.
But I would suggest that the most powerful element of that was that willing mindset. And that enacted on her system itself.

Speaker 6 And the applied technology gave it a real kickstart. like a jumpstart and once it gets that message it re-patterns that neuronal neuronal pathway very, very quick.

Speaker 6 So going back to Duncan Slater, right? Duncan Slater, the WMT I met, I mentioned earlier, he's had some problems with his injuries previously and he's got some vascular shutdown that's happening.

Speaker 6 So I introduced Duncan to MME's group as a company.

Speaker 6 And really just to you know see if technology, the complexities around the injuries are really quite considerable and you know and I'll come on to the unbroken foundation in a minute once people become have limbs amputated

Speaker 6 you know the the trauma around the thing I think we've covered right that's going to be a deeply traumatic experience but humans will get beyond that right the complexities around the injury are far more consequential because you're at a biomechanical disadvantage driving your own physiology.

Speaker 6 And if you think if it's one leg, the amount of movement you depend upon, and how much that's enacting on your overall system. So you have to find mitigations.

Speaker 6 So, Duncan Slater, he's an incredible person, he's a speaker as well, a huge, huge character.

Speaker 6 And he's the only empty to ever done the marathon des Ables. And he's done it three times and finished it once.
And yeah,

Speaker 6 he's absolutely brilliant. And

Speaker 6 he got his stumps made, made, sorry, his prosthetics made for himself because the ones he got given are melted and debrided his whole area of his stumps in the first attempt because of the heat, right?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I won't speak too much on behalf of him. He is just an incredible person.
So he's now getting a bespoke suit made for him by the same people that have made this. Oh, cool.

Speaker 6 Because in the use of the technology, we've seen his vascular system open back up. But also, if you think about phantom pain,

Speaker 6 in that cavern that's in there getting fed 100 million bits of information per second when something crisis happens your consciousness isn't powerful enough to get that to make sense yeah right if you put signals through neuronal pathways in a localized area it remaps them wow and therefore you can deal with phantom pain wow which

Speaker 5 has he tried this yard

Speaker 6 so he's he's got at the moment he's got pads gels, straps. He's used it quite a lot.

Speaker 5 Telburn.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, at the end of the day, he's got this problem because he went to see a consultant about this vascular shutdown.

Speaker 6 And, you know, these consultants used to dealing with people,

Speaker 6 eight-year-old hearts. And he said, well, it sounds like we're going to have to cut more off.

Speaker 6 And Duncan was like,

Speaker 6 you may as well throw the prosthetics in the bin.

Speaker 6 You know, Duncan's in

Speaker 6 he,

Speaker 6 a single gentleman in an Italian shed made his plastics, which he then went and completed the marathon des Arblon. You know, so we're going to do a lot of casework now around Duncan

Speaker 6 to ensure that, you know, the technology will make a massive amount.

Speaker 6 Remap pathways, building vascular

Speaker 6 access back.

Speaker 6 already doing a really good job in a very simplified form. So if you make it

Speaker 6 powerful as this sort of thing, thing you know the coverage of the membrane is much much bigger and because it's so effective the membrane the waveforms are so intuitive it's like a sewing machine you know if you compare some of the EMS products they like come from gel pads it's like getting like a hip of animals yeah you know and you know again that's how some of them have been built you know they're like suits of armor with big straps and all the rest of it this thing is is is much much more intuitive yeah and the aim is to get this sewing machine to turn into a 3D printer at some point, right?

Speaker 6 In concert with all of the others. So,

Speaker 6 what we're excited about with Dylan Mackay is: I'm going to start introducing other technologies, MS being very central one, because I'm very, very familiar with it, but not ruling out others and going and doing this biofeedback platforms and mapping the physiological adaptations.

Speaker 6 You know, this is really exciting case studies that we can do. We can do them quite simply.
It's got willing human brains that want to be involved.

Speaker 6 There's plenty of research that shows neuromuscular electrostimulation builds back axonal regeneration.

Speaker 6 Some of the consequences being too near to explosive blast, of which the mechanism is there's lots of water in your head and as the wave hits your skull and goes through, the water cannot move out of the way.

Speaker 6 And it creates a turbulence.

Speaker 6 It makes a shearing mechanism between the grey and white matters, right? And it creates axonal lesioning, amongst other things, right? And your brain is extremely good at regenerating itself.

Speaker 6 And I think when the winds are fair, people keep up with that deficit.

Speaker 6 But when they're not so fair, so they do less exertion,

Speaker 6 they're in a better, worse place, it can catch, it's like a bowel wave catching up.

Speaker 6 And it's not a precondition, right?

Speaker 6 So there's plenty of research, mainly from the medical world, that shows that neuromuscular electrostimulation, electrostimulation around the base of your CNS can reverse an episode of depression on the dot.

Speaker 6 Wow. Because it just promotes factors, right? That you rely on every day.

Speaker 6 And this is, you know, these simple things can act in concert with all of the incredible, the advanced things that are happening on.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 you know, and

Speaker 6 so I'll come on to

Speaker 6 Ukraine, you know, so again, I was introduced to a person called Liam Sullivan. He has a charity page called Tackling Matters.

Speaker 6 It's quite a new one and essentially he's been going in Ukraine for a long period of time. He's quite famous for providing 140 pairs of socks to a frontline unit in during winter.

Speaker 6 I mean it's pretty tough for him.

Speaker 6 And I got just a call because people knew that I was in and out of Kiev quite a lot saying, you know, if this guy needs help or would you be welcome to meet since meeting him I've realised that he's very involved with putting in football pitches and creating a football tournament in concert with Champions League clubs and Premiership clubs.

Speaker 6 Because a lot of the Premiership clubs have amputee teams and Parkinson's teams as well, you know, they have community hubs that are very, very powerful.

Speaker 6 So I came into contact with him and obviously as you look at this, the relevant technologies,

Speaker 6 this is extremely important when you're rehabilitating, this type of technology is extremely important when you're rehabilitating conflict injured. And Ukraine has a problem.

Speaker 6 It has a problem in complexity of its injuries and volume of its injuries.

Speaker 6 A lot of them are amputations and almost all have some sort of neurological conditions.

Speaker 6 So, when we last visited

Speaker 6 Unbroken Foundation, we took them some bare elements, you know, and obviously, a lot of these people are

Speaker 6 amputees, and we're turning up with suits with arms and legs on them. You know, they kind of sort of looked at us quite quizzically.

Speaker 6 Yeah, we gave them accessories instead, and they're using the accessories. And again, I'll share some videos with you.

Speaker 6 The accessories are incredibly good and powerful because, again, at the end of these traumatic amputation sites

Speaker 6 they are using them to reactivate muscles and you know again a lot of these people have got some very very complicated

Speaker 6 sort of feedback we had is is really really overwhelming. I think it's probably because it's so accessible.
It's very very easy to use.

Speaker 6 It's not complicated and they're treating like I forget the numbers, but they're treating a huge volume of patients. But this also has an association.

Speaker 6 They're using a lot of, you know, I saw some of the pictures, they call it bringing it back to colour.

Speaker 6 And get these people, some have been held captive, a lot of them traumatically injured, and they do this exercise of getting them to do art.

Speaker 6 And it's been an incredible insight into how they treat these people, try and get them back to a stable life. And, you know, for instance, in week one, they'll only use red and black.

Speaker 6 And that's a picture into how your mind's working. But when they start using colour, you're seeing things.
So they're very, very developed in how they're kind of sort of treating therapeutically and

Speaker 6 injury-wise these people. And sport is a key part to it.
So Liam has started up this amputee football tournament. The first one was in Arsenal training facilities.
The second one has just happened.

Speaker 6 And it's in...

Speaker 6 it's been it was held at sandhurst oh cool yeah it was very cool

Speaker 6 and uh we had some quite sort of i i i've got to emphasize i'm a friend of Liam's, right? You know, I support him wherever I possibly can, but it's his thing.

Speaker 6 The football tournaments is him, and he does some other incredible work,

Speaker 6 in particular with associations like Unbroken.

Speaker 6 That's really cool. Yeah, so and it's a powerful message, right? You know, it's like conflict is an inevitability in life.
It's going to happen. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And in some cases, the outcomes are pretty testing. Yeah.
But watching these amputees, and they're athletes,

Speaker 6 they're treated as athletes

Speaker 6 in football tournaments,

Speaker 6 looking at some of the prosthesis that they're having and some of the innovative machine learning that's happening around.

Speaker 6 I saw

Speaker 6 a person picking up a paper cup and teaching.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 6 It's absolutely brilliant. You know, you're looking at these people, and there's no element of feeling sorry.
You know, you're like, wow, you know, you need some support. Yeah.

Speaker 6 You need, if you can get made available technologies and a digital platform for support, you can go take this home.

Speaker 6 You're already just, you know,

Speaker 6 the powerful messages getting these people, regardless of the consequences of the participation in the conflict, is incredibly important.

Speaker 6 You know, it should be celebrated as well when it's successful. And these are complicated programs, but they're all important ones and accessible.

Speaker 6 So the role these types of technologies will play in that are very fundamental and key, especially when the paucity

Speaker 6 around treatment and resources are very, they're quite few.

Speaker 6 I can't remember the figures that Ukraine are looking at. They've got a big volume of war injured.

Speaker 6 But I think, you know, it's something like, you know, in a developed nation, you've got 15 per hundred thousand physios, whereas they have less than 0.8.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 6 So, but what they are is gaining an extremely advanced

Speaker 6 insight into how to treat these

Speaker 6 treat these things.

Speaker 6 That's really score.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and and I just hope that you know that comes to a close and people can concentrate on football tournaments and building these pitches I think Liam's putting 47 astroturf pitches into the country since since that football tournament but I really did sort of take note like that in the incredible role that technology can play with applied applications

Speaker 6 so

Speaker 6 you know I hope that this all transforms into something that moves you know we we we've locked into it I've looked how the company behaves.

Speaker 6 They, you know, spend the money on back into the development. They're in an absolutely superb position.
And I have every faith that we'll kind of see this through.

Speaker 6 I think the next few months are going to be pretty, pretty sort of tight and testing.

Speaker 6 But it is definitely an area of considerable value and purpose. And so in the central point in where I got involved in this, it's sort of made its way through to making some sense.

Speaker 6 And that's been participating alongside people like Dylan Mackay.

Speaker 6 and it's been good for me I've learned a huge amount and you know go back to what's a successful transition look like well I'm definitely not an example of it right now but if you learn you develop and essentially you support other people's really credible work I think there's pathways there at least

Speaker 5 well John

Speaker 5 I love what you're doing, man, and this has been a fascinating conversation. And where can people find you?

Speaker 6 So I have a LinkedIn site, which is my main site.

Speaker 6 You know, from previous profession, there's not much before that.

Speaker 6 I also have an Instagram site, and I'll be very, very happy to share.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I'll be contactable through those mediums and very, very happy to help anyone.

Speaker 5 Well, we'll link those below. And I just want to say thank you again for coming.

Speaker 6 Thank you. Your pleasure.
Thank you.