Jocko Podcast - 279: Don't Stay in The Same Place. The Art of Exploration w/ Levison Wood, Former British Army Officer

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:06:07 - Levison Wood2:46:49 - How to stay on THE PATH3:07:04 - Closing gratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 279 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Helicopter blades slashed through the hot sky, the roar of engines deafening as the pilot twisted and turned on our final approach. Crammed into the back with my men, I tried to keep my balance by tensing my legs and focusing my gaze on the machine gun in the helicopter's door. My kit was heavy on my shoulders and sweat poured into my eyes from under the rim of my helmet.

My palms were wet as they gripped the rifle. I pulled it closer to my chest and prepared myself for what was to come. The airman behind the machine gun turned to me. His face was covered by a scarf and the dark visor of his helmet, but I knew what it meant when he held up his index finger. I turned and shouted to my men, one minute, one minute to landing, and whatever was waiting there for us. Looking into the eyes of my young soldiers, I saw steely resolve, the hardness of the paratrooper flying into battle.

I was closest to the rear door, which was now winching fully open. There was no doubt in my mind that I had to be the first one down the ramp. I had waited years for this moment, and now was my time. I practiced it over and over again on grass fields, in mock-up structures, and on the real things during exercises all over the the world but this was different for the first time in my life I was flying into war our mission was a simple one to kill or capture a Taliban bomb maker a bomb maker called haji mohammed infamous for making the improvised bombs that were responsible for the deaths of dozens of British and allied soldiers we'd spend a week pouring over maps and aerial photographs of

the village in which he was thought to live. My platoon, number eight platoon, on attachment to a company of the third battalion of the parachute regiment, was given the honor of landing first, right in Haji Muhammad's back garden. And it was our task to surround his house. It was a dangerous mission, but as the seconds counted down and I looked out the rear of the door of the helicopter towards the dusty planes below, I felt a tremendous sensation of both trepidation and sheer excitement. It was a lot of responsibility to shoulder, but I wanted to carry it. The helicopter got closer to the ground, whipping the Afghan dust into the air until it was a thick cloud around us. Ten seconds shouted the airman, holding tightly to a rope. The door was now fully open. The ramp

hit the floor with a clunk, and a shutter went through the airframe as the wheels touched down. everyone wobbled but kept their feet. They knew how important it was to stay upright and get off the heli quickly. The Taliban had spies everywhere, scouts that reported the movement of helicopters. Every second that we delayed de-planning was a second for the enemy to train their weapons and kill those on the ramp. Go, go, go, go. The airmen shouted, myself and my men picking up the call so that it rippled through the aircraft.

And then we were running, gritting our teeth. as though that would stop the bullets that may await us. My feet touched down on the Afghan soil, and I breathed in the dirt as I ran through the cloud that the helicopter's blades stirred up all around us. My rifle was up an eye level, and I looked over my sights ready to snap shoot anyone that posed a threat to my men.

My soldiers followed me. I felt like a giant, leading them from a metal beast into the jaws of death, except that when the helicopter lifted away and the dust settled, we were quite alone. Nobody home. Shit. I put some of my men into defensive positions and took others with me to search the house.

This was still a dangerous time as the Taliban were not above booby-trapping their own homes. Other than a few sacks of opium, the drug of choice in those parts, we found nothing. I walked back outside and was shrugging off the disappointment of another quiet mission. when a whip-like sound echoed across the fields followed immediately by a crack. It wasn't the noise you hear in the films. It was altogether more visceral and unnerving. Incoming, shouted my platoon sergeant.

I shouted at the men to jump into a nearby ditch and return fire. They looked at me, unbelieving. It was like being on an exercise on Salisbury plane, except the noises were not the dull simulators we'd been accustomed to. These were real and violent. Somebody was shooting with the evident intention of killing us. 300 meters away, I saw the enemy moving in a line of trees. I took aim and fired.

It was the start of a very long day. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called The Art of Exploration by a former British Army officer named Leveson Wood. who served and led combat operations in Afghanistan, but who seemed to have found an equivalent level of excitement and danger as a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and explorer, and we're lucky enough to have him on the show tonight to share some of his experiences with us. Leveson, thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me. That's a good way to start this thing off. Brings back some memories, hey? Fricking, good way to kick it off. Before we jump into your career in the Army, let's start at the beginning. Let's talk about your childhood and you grew up in England.

Sure, yeah. Stoke-on-Trent. That's it. Not many people have heard of it. And that's where you actually grew up. Yeah, so I was born and raised in a small village just outside of Stoke-on-Trent, right in the middle of England, sort of halfway between Manchester and Birmingham,

kind of place that not many people sort of travel to, they just travel past it. And I think it was for that reason that I was always from a very young age curious about the outside world. I was very keen to get away from Stoke-on-Trent. It will always be home, but yeah, from a very early age, I was always excited by the prospect of traveling out into the big wide world. It was something that not many members of my family had done.

But I always knew that there was more to life than the provincial sort of suburbs of my hometown. And that's what inspired me. And Stoke-on-Trent, that's a city where you're in, I guess it was prior to the pits shutting down. You were in the pits or there's a giant pottery factory, right? Isn't it famous for making pottery? Stoke-on-Trent is the heart of the British ceramic industry. It has been for centuries. And sadly, you know, a lot of those industries, the mines and the pottery industry died a bit of a death through the mid-20th century.

So there was a lot of unemployment. There was a lot of poverty in Stoke-on-Trent in the 80s when I grew up. And so there weren't that many opportunities. Not many people had the opportunity to sort of travel very much. But I was very fortunate to be grown up in a family of teachers. Both my parents were teachers. They encouraged this spirit of curiosity and, you know, encouraged me to read a lot. So I read as a youngster all about history, geography, travels,

all those stories of exploration of those very hairy men in the 19th century that went to the polls, you know, Livingston and Shackleton and Scott. And, you know, those were my heroes. So it was growing up, my dad read me a lot of books about exploration, Lawrence of Arabia, people like that. So I think from about the age of seven or eight, I was determined to somehow follow in their footsteps, which wasn't exactly a very realistic sort of thing.

to go to my careers officer and say, I want to be an explorer, but that's exactly what I did. And he sort of laughed at me and said, okay, well, let's see. Well, I'm kind of thinking you must have been even in a worse position than me. So when I was a little kid, you know, I liked rock and roll music. And so when I started playing guitar and thinking, okay, I'm going to write some riffs. But it didn't take me very long to figure out that, hey, all the, you know, if Jimmy Page already wrote that riff and Tony Iommi already wrote those riffs, so what am I going to do? How am I going to write better riffs than those guys?

So you had to be even in a worse position because the world's been explored. Yeah, actually you can make up new riffs. That's possible. But, you know, most of the known world has been explored. Yeah, yeah. So you're in a worse spot than I was in. Well, my, you know, I grew up with those stories, but I was also encouraged by stories of my grandfather. My granddad was a soldier in the British Army.

He served in India and Burma in the Far East, fighting against the Japanese. And he told me these stories which felt, whilst it was still a long time ago, actually to hear them firsthand, somebody who'd been to the jungles of India, who'd been to the mountains of East Asia, that was like mind-blowing for me as a kid who'd never really traveled beyond the confines of the United Kingdom. So that's what I wanted to do. I want to go and see, not necessarily go with my pith helmet and sort of khaki shorts and and with a big union flag, but at the very least to go and see with my own eyes, the kind of places that very few people had traveled to within my own social circle, really. So it started pretty humbly and just going off backpacking and, you know, doing what a lot of youngsters do and travel around the world on a tight budget. And that was what I was determined to do

from a very young age. Now, what was your relationship with your grandfather? How long was, is he still alive today? No, he's not. So he passed away when I was about 18. So, you know, but growing up, it was, like I say, it was those, those really exciting stories and pretty gruesome stories sometimes. Like if you were in Burma fighting the Japanese, good Lord. Yeah. And he was not only that, he was on pretty much one of the first ships into Japan. He was part of the occupying force in Japan. He was based in Hiroshima after they dropped the A-bomb. So some of his stories were just like, you know, crazy. Yeah. And what about your dad?

Did your dad, wasn't your dad in the army as well? So my dad was in the, he was a reservist. So, you know, throughout the 70s and 80s, you know, his period, it was the Cold War. So he, you know, he likes to tell me he was off fighting the Russians in Germany, you know, it really, you know, realistically, he was, he was out there. A lot of digging trenches on the planes of Germany, but obviously no actual fighting. But, but yeah, he always encouraged me to take an interest in the military. and it was things like, you know, he was a cadet instructor and so on. So I remember growing up, you know, he'd sometimes bring his rifles back over and things

like that. And as a kid, he'd give me a uniform. And if I was a good kid, he'd give me an extra stripe. And if I was naughty, he'd rip one off my arm. So that's kind of, that was how I grew up, yeah. And when you, were you, you're saying that you're reading all the time? Does that mean you were a good student? I was, I think I, I was always curious and that helps.

I think that's a good start. You might be the first person on the podcast. That was a good student. Have you ever had any good students on here? No. Everyone's, everyone's just bad students, myself included. So you were reading and you're doing pretty good in school. Your parents were, so both my parents were teachers as well.

Sure. Yeah. And one was history. One was English. And people go, oh, that's what? And I was like, no, no. I didn't do it. I didn't do any homework.

Were they teaching in your school? No, they weren't. Was your dad teaching? Or your parents? No, no, no. So, yeah, I think that helped. I don't think I would have liked having my teachers as my parents as my own teachers. But they, they got you on the reading path. And it must be, it must be something born. Like, you just must have been more naturally curious than me. I was like throwing rocks at my friends. No, I did that as well. Yeah, I mean, I think I was definitely a bit of a rebel and I got into lots of trouble as a kid. I think I was just naturally inclined to be curious about. history particularly and that it was it was reading about you know the ancient greeks Alexander the Great the Roman Empire the Vikings it was those sort of exciting quite you know quite masculine manly stories that that really inspired me to to sort of

take an interest and I did from a year from an early age and of course it's it's those sort of things that you read and then develop I mean one of the first books that my dad read to me was was a children's version of the Odyssey and I thought you know one day I'd love to go off on a ship and explore the world I mean, hopefully not lose all my men in the process. But, you know, but yeah, I definitely thank those early years for what I'm doing now. So the weird thing about, one of the big differences about England and America is the schooling system and kind of the way you test to get into certain levels and my wife's a Brit.

So I have some idea of it. But you, so you went to what, Painsley, is that right? Painsley Catholic school. That's where you went to school? Yeah, so it was a non-fee-paying. It was just an ordinary state school. But it was, you know, as a Catholic school, you know, Catholic schools were sometimes, you know,

considered better in some ways. It had a real bent towards science. That wasn't my bag at all, but good teachers. And it was one of the schools that you can flourish in with the right attitude, but also you can get in a lot of trouble if you don't have the right attitude. And I sort of did both. And what sports were you playing? So I wouldn't say I was hugely into sports.

I preferred, I was into athletics, so I was a good runner as a kid, but I wasn't really known for its team sports. And that kind of frustrated me in some ways because, you know, I knew that I was kind of sold on the idea of the army from probably the age of about 11 or 12, in fact. So I knew that I should probably be doing rugby or something like that, but it wasn't really on offer in my school. So I had to be creative with what I was doing.

So I did a lot of personal fitness, did a lot of running, like I said. I was interested in boxing from young age and that was something I took up and that followed me into my army career as well. So what age did you start boxing at? I mean, I was training from probably 15, 16. When I went to university at 18, I was in the university club. And then, like I said, did it throughout the army as well. So I know you went on like a, this is, I don't know if Americans do this or not. They go like traveling.

That's what you all call it, right? My wife did it. Oh, traveling, right? And so you did that too. Like in America, you graduate high school. Then if you're either going in the military, you're getting a job or you're going. There's no traveling moment. There's no traveling thing.

Echo, did you go traveling? No, sir. No. We're not going traveling for a year, but it's real normal. Oh, yeah. It certainly is now. You know, when I left school at the age of 18 in 2001, I knew that I wanted to join the army

and I was sort of, I really wanted to go to Sandhurst and go in as an officer. But because of my background, I wasn't at, you know, one of these posh private schools. I hadn't, you know, necessarily got the sports background, so I knew I needed to do something that would give me a bit of an edge. And it was a...

Go drinking in Australia. Exactly that. But it was actually a stroke of a fortune. So when I was a kid, I was doing every odd job going. I worked in factories. I worked in shop. I even flipped burgers at McDonald's just to try and get some cash together. I flip burgers at Wendy's.

There we go. It's got a character building stuff. The making of great military leadership flipping burgers, get some. 100%. So I was doing all of that to try and earn a bit of cash before going to university. One of the jobs I was doing was working at a theme park, a place called Alton Towers. And I think, you know, I was basically, I must have been on one of the rides upside down and I lost my wallet. Fell out my pocket and I was a bit upset because it had my entire week's earnings of about five pounds.

in there. So I was quite surprised a couple of days later when the wallet was returned in the post and not only was the five pounds still in there, but there was also a note from the person who had found the wallet. And it was actually signed off. There was a note saying, don't be such a, you know, I won't say the word. Don't be such an asshole for losing your wallet. Keep, better sort of care of your belongings. And it was signed off by a certain lieutenant in the in the Royal Artillery. And I thought, well, that's a nice, nice guy. Obviously, not everyone who would return a wallet.

And so I, you know, I did the right thing and wrote a thank you letter back. I think my note would have said, your lesson is costing you five pounds. That's mine. So I said, but because I was already interested in a career in the army, it said, have you got any hints or tips on how to get into Sandhurst? And by return of post came back a six-page essay with all of these really great tips. It was like, you know, go away and learn how to, you know, read a map and use a compass. This is how many press-ups you need to do to pass the fitness test.

All this really useful advice. But the last sentence is something I'll never forget, but it said, above all, travel, dot, dot, dot. Because at the end of the day, you'll have some great stories in the bar, in the mess. So I took that to heart. So I decided, based on that letter, which was all the serendipitous result of me losing my wallet, that I was going to go away and do what we call in England a gap here. which is exactly what you say, go drinking in Australia. So I told my dad and he said, what on earth is a gap here?

This wasn't particularly popular, you know, at that time. And I said, I'm going to go find myself on the beaches of Thailand. And he said, well, if you do that, you can go get yourself a bloody job. So that's when I had to go and start earning more cash. But eventually I did. I went away backpacking. And at the age of 18, you know, to literally just disappear off. And the first place I went traveling was actually in South Africa,

which is pretty dodgy, you know, in that time. I went to Zimbabwe, which at the age of 18, it was the first time I'd had a gun pulled on me by a taxi driver who tried to rob me. So it was all really quite, you know, sort of, it teaches you a lot about independence. So what did you learn about how to handle getting a gun pulled on you by the taxi driver?

Well, you can't just throw that out there and think we're just going to let it ride. So I'd been in... So you're in Zimbabwe. So I was traveling, I'd met this random Dutch dude who was much older than me. I was 18. This guy must have been 2930.

And he was backpacking as well, and we were on the same route. And we got off the train at a place called Bulawayo, and we sort of got into a taxi and asked the price to whatever, the next bus station. And he said it was going to be $40, Zimbabwe has dollars. So 40 Zim dollars was equivalent of about two US dollars. And we were like, yeah, no problem. So we put our bags in the trunk of the car off. And it was like two minutes around the corner.

We thought, okay, we got out and he said, okay, $40. We got the Zimbabwe dollars out and he said, no, no, no, US dollars, 40 US dollars. And we thought he was joking and laughed at him. He said, no, no, put his hand in his jacket, pulls out of piss and said 40 US dollars. And we're like, oh, shit, okay, well, I don't have 40 US dollars. I'm on a budget of about $2 a day, right? So we said, okay, we'll pay, but let us get our bags out. And it was quite a busy, crowded sort of car park.

So we got our bags out of the boot and this guy, this Dutch guy, who's quite a, you know, quite a hefty fella. He said, okay, come over here and the taxi driver, he put his pistol in the car, he got out, so he was unarmed at the time. And this guy just sort of, as he got his bag on his back, just headbutted this taxi driver, right, and then looked at me and said, fucking run. So I ran and we escaped, but this guy, then we jumped in another taxi and said drive. But the original guy was then chasing us through the streets of Bolaway. So I had my first, not only my first sort of gun pulled on me, but my first car chase at the age of 18. which is all pretty wild. But it was those early travels that sort of encouraged me to sort of, yeah, be careful,

be independent-minded and start to think about looking after myself. What are the chances that you made it back through the first year of travels? Well, after that experience, it was all fairly tame, I have to say, but, you know, getting drunk in Australia. But it was, no, it was great. And it was probably that first year of travel, really, that motivated me to want to do more. Because, you know, apart from that one sort of moment, it was usual backpacking stuff. But throughout my time at university,

I went to more and more challenging and interesting places. I went to, in my second year at university, I was studying history. And my particular interest was the history of travel writing. So I looked at Marco Polo and his travels. I was reading about the hippie trail of the 1960s, the great pilgrimages, all the big overland journeys.

So I tried to make all my studies around that. So in my summer leave, I would try and go to the place that I've been studying around. So after one particular module, bear in mind this was in 2001, just after 9-11, it happened. So there's a real focus on the Middle East, and that was a place that I was fascinated by because of the history, but also what was going on in the news at the time. So me and a buddy decided one summer that we were going to go and travel around the Middle East. This was in 2003. So it was a second year at university.

the Iraq war was happening and we said okay we're going to go to Egypt and just have a look around and we went to Israel and then when we were in Israel there was a bomb went off in Jerusalem caused the borders to shut so what we'd plan to do

was take a boat from the coast from Haifa to Greece and then go backpacking through Europe that was all now not on the cards my parents thought me and my mate Alex were actually on holiday in Greece at the time anyway so they had no idea where we actually were

The only border that was open was to the east to Jordan. So we went to Jordan, and then we were in Jordan. Another bomb went off, which meant that we were stuck in Jordan. The only border then was open was actually further east, which was to Iraq. So we took a taxi from the capital of Jordan, Amman, all the way to Baghdad at a cost of $20. I was 21 at the time, or $20. And I was met by a national guardsman on the border who said, do you want to buy a gun? He said, you're going to need it where you're going.

This is 2003. This is 2003. And we got to Baghdad because it was the only route that was open. When in 2003? August. So the wars, it's on. It's on. Yeah.

Combat operations are just finished, more or less. But it was before the main insurgency had begun. But yeah, stuff was definitely exploding around us at the time. And what part of this idea sounded smart to you? Well, we didn't have another option. We couldn't afford to fly home from Israel because we had no money. And we thought it would just be a bit of an exciting. adventure. And so we made it to Baghdad, but then we stayed in the hotel Palestine,

which was the in the green zone. Oh, I know where that is. Yeah. That's freaking crazy. But we couldn't afford a night there because it was 100 bucks, which is a lot of money when you're a student. And so we thought, okay, this was just after somebody had just shot the top of the hotel because they thought there was an Iraqi insurgent. It was actually a camera crew. So we thought if we can sneak up the fire escape up of the ladders, then we can just sleep amongst the rubble on the roof. So we did that. We got into the roof. And then there happened to be a UK, a British film crew, filming a news piece on the roof.

And they said, you know, what are you idiots doing here? And we explained that we were sort of backpacking through the Middle East. And this guy's, I would never forget his name. Martin Geisler, who's an ITN correspondent, said, look, you must be the first tourists in Iraq. I'll tell you what, if we can do a news piece about you, we'll pay for your room. So we ended up staying for a week because we couldn't get out of Iraq at this point.

And eventually we managed to escape by hitching a ride with some former SAS mercenary security guys who were doing the route up to Tikrit, which was before Saddam Hussein had been captured. So we were actually in to Crete before Saddam, whilst he was still down his little hole. So eventually, long story short, we got out to Turkey and then eventually did find it,

find a way back to Europe. Major amount of survivor bias on this whole thing. So anyone that's listening, you have to overcome this survivor bias. I'm going to recommend not particularly following this. extreme level of let's just go for it. What are you carrying in your backpack?

As little as possible, you know, a shemag just so we could kind of blend in. We had to go to the local market to buy your sort of traditional. How many liters is your backpack? Just a day sack. So we're talking 25 liters. You've got a 25 liter backpack. Yeah. That's it.

That's it. And we even put that, you know, those sort of plastic big bags that sort of check, check ones that people go to the market in it. Okay. just so we didn't stand out. And we bought those shiny shirts and black shoes that they wear in the Middle East so that we, you know, I'm quite sort of fairly dark skin

so we could blend in. And it worked and we were just sort of walking around the markets of Baghdad and, you know, it was fine. Do not try this at home. Do not try this in that. Well, I didn't tell my parents still about six months later. So then you finally get out, how did you get back? You just hitched a ride with some contractors?

Yeah. right up to the Turkish border and then hitched all the way home to the UK. How hard is it to hitchhike these days? I hitchhike last week, actually, in the States. And you got picked up pretty easily? Yeah, yeah, it's fine. It depends where you are. But I used to love it because it was a great way of meeting interesting people.

And in fact, when I... It's also a great way to get kidnapped. It can happen. It can happen. But I think what my trips had taught me was you've got to have a bit of face. in human nature. You have way more faith in human nature than I do. I've done too many of these podcasts to be jumping into vehicles with random people. It's weird too because when I was a kid, and I don't know, I guess I'm 10 years older than you, maybe. Yeah, something around 10 or 12. But when I was a kid,

hitchhiking was very normal. Yeah. You'd see it all the time. People, you know, you go getting on the highway, there'd be people hitchhiking. There's no big deal. If I missed the school bus, we'd hitchhike to school, things like that, yeah. But nowadays, well, people are more scared. It's way more scared. And I guess that's part of that is just there's more news is more prevalent. Well, like when someone gets kidnapped and freaking raped and murdered, you know about it. Whereas in 1978, it was just no factor. In your mind, that didn't happen to people. You trusted human nature.

Yeah. And all this is taking place while you're going to college, the University of Nottingham. That's right. Yeah. So I studied history. Every summer, we'd go off and do some crazy adventure. But it all kind of built up really to when I graduated in the, summer of 2004.

So I was still desperate to join the army, but I'd got the travel bug at this stage. So I wanted to sort of do something even bigger and better. And because I've been studying about these overland journeys, I decided I should really do a really big one. And so I thought, why not actually hitchhike all the way to India following the ancient Silk Road and following the footsteps of sort of Marco Polo? So I did. I hitchacked from, I put my thumb up at Nottingham Service Station and five months later somehow

made it to Goa in India and that was a wild journey because it went through all of Europe, through Russia, through the Caucasus, I was in Chechnya, I went through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan over the Khyber Pass and then and all of that, you know, I was fascinated by the stories of, you know, Victorian exploration, the great game. particularly in Central Asia. Afghanistan was very much on my radar then because the British Army had just made deployments in Kabul. Things hadn't really kicked off in the South yet at the stage.

So it was probably a fairly safe as it gets in Afghanistan to go traveling there. But that was a journey I really, really wanted to do. And so, yeah, off I went. And again, very similar thing. I just went with a small day sack. I had no money. I had total of five.

500 pounds in my bank account. There was all that was left from my student loan. And I thought, I'll see how far I can get. And it took five months. So I was... What are you eating? 500 pounds feeds me for like a day and a half. It does, it does me now.

What the hell are you eating? So not very much. I was pretty skinny. So yeah, I was just, I kind of, maybe I was a bit reckless, but I was just really putting my faith in human nature. So, you know, I hitchhiked the whole way. usually whoever I was hitchhiking with you know I was 21 right so people look at you and when you tell them what you're doing they think you're either mad or they feel sorry for you and um

off the back of that I got invited into people's homes you know I met lots of girls that way and uh but but people would look after you and often they would stuff 10 dollars into your pocket on the way out or fill your bag with with with apples or whatever it might be so I think actually came back with more than I started with okay so I'm starting to think I'm starting to feel like Maybe things are different in life for you and me. I'm just saying maybe you're a sweet-looking guy and I'm not. The last time somebody tried to slip me $10 was never. You think I get invited into people's homes?

That doesn't happen. So you're living a charmed life. I'm over here. I feel like the world might have been against me this whole time. If I put my thumb out as you did, there's no one's going to pick me up. Zero. The percentage of people that pick me up is zero. Yeah, it wouldn't happen these days for me, I don't think.

I think it's definitely a thing when you're younger, it's far more likely to happen. I don't think I would. How many pairs of pants are you bringing with you? I went fully light scales. Like zero. You just bring the pants that you're wearing. I had, yeah, one pair of, one pair of pants, you know, a couple of shirts. That's it, really.

And it was great. The freedom, the liberation of it all. It was brilliant. I was just sleeping at the side of the road. I had one poncho. Sorry, I had a bivvy bag. A ground pad? Ground pad?

Didn't even have a ground pat now. And I was just, you know, if somebody didn't invite me into that home, I would just sleep on it. I mean, in Russia, I remember sleeping in the middle of this roundabout because it was a busy city. There was nowhere to stay. I couldn't speak a word of the language. So I just found this roundabout in the center of some really gray industrial area.

I was like, that'll do. And it was quite cold. So I had gone into this roundabout. I saw some top what do you call it, top haul in, like plastic sheeting. I was like, perfect, this is going to keep me dry because it was about to rain. Got under this tall pole in. And then I heard some rustling. I thought, oh, shit, there's some rats in there.

And I sort of looked underneath. There was actually two other, like, homeless people sleeping under this blanket, so I had to move on from there. But, yeah, it was sort of experiences like that that, you know, I looked back and think, what on earth was I thought was like doing? But at the time, it was, it felt like, yeah, it was a big ground adventure. So again, what did you eat? Whatever I can get my hands on.

I was usually, I was, you know, one meal a day. I tried to budget, so I had, you know, $3 or whatever per day to spend on food. But in Iran, I remember I ran out of money in Iran. And the, I mean, literally I had, I think had $5 left. And I knew I needed to pay for a visa at the Afghan border. So not only was I had no money in Iran, but I was going into Afghanistan completely penniless. I had like one travelers check, but you can't change any sort of Western travelers checks in Iran

because there was a big embargo on, all that stuff. So I remember staying, I went to this small hotel in the middle of the desert and explained to this. The Iranians are lovely people, and they're very, very hospitable. And everyone else had looked after me, but in this particular place,

what about the Russians that let you sleep in the freaking? What about them? That restored my faith in Russians, because I'm like, the Russians didn't help you. Come on. No, they did. Honestly, I was like, I mean, it was, it was tougher in Russia than a lot of places. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, it was definitely, you know, going across the border into Georgia was great because there was a stark difference there. So you roll in to where in Iran? So I'm in a place called Mashad, which is a big holy city, only near the Afghan border, nowhere to stay. And I found this one hotel, it's like a motel thing. And I explained to this guy, I said, look, can I have a room? I've got $5, but I really need $3 to get the Afghan Stammer. because it was that so much of gossip.

He said, look, you can stay for free on my office floor. And I said, have you got any food? He said, no, there's no food. But I noticed there was a wedding sort of party happening. He said, just go and help yourself to the leftovers. Score. You know, there's always a way. There's always a way.

But, yeah, I ended up in Afghanistan. Literally no money. But I knew. I'd been told that the Afghans were pretty hospitable. And they were. I managed to sort of hitchike across the whole country through Herat. I went through the central mountains through Chad Sharon, Bami. and ended up in Kabul.

How are you finally able to crash that travellers check? How are you overcoming the language barrier? By... Hand signals. Hand signals. I mean, I had a pretty good beard at that stage. So the places that I was

traveling to were ethnically Tajic and because I'd got a pretty good tan and a beard. Everyone thought I was a patch done. So they all sort of kept the distance because they thought I was a Taliban. But as a result, they were quite, you know, they kind of looked after me and yeah, it was fine.

And then where did that trip end? That ended in India, so made it through Afghanistan, always through Pakistan, and then finally made it to the beach and Goa where I sort of shaved the beard off and finally had a beer and celebrated still being alive. Once again, I'm over here. Look, I got four kids.

And my opinion is don't try this at home. I'm glad you did it. I'm glad you're telling me about it. I'm not encouraging people to necessarily do the same. No, actually, you wrote an entire book telling people to do this stuff. So I'm going to disagree with you there. It comes with, it comes with a disclaimer. All right. Speaking of the book, I'm going to go back to the book here for a second because at some point, well, before I jump into that, you get into Sandhurst. So what's the deal

with Sandhurst? Sandhurst is not like West Point where you go there and you go to college for four years. No, Sandhurst is 12 months, pretty much. It's 44 weeks spread over a year. It tends to be mainly graduate, so people who've finished university, but it is open to people who haven't necessarily been to university. And you spend 12 months there and then you commission into whichever regiments or core that you choose to join. And how hard is it to get into Sandhurst? Tough, yeah, very tough.

I started my application process. I think I was 17 when I went into the careers office with my dad. you then do the what was then known as the regimental sorry the RCB basically the selection interstander so you have to go to a place called Westbury where you do all these sort of command tasks lots of interviews mental arithmetic all this sort of stuff where you're tested for your aptitude and your personality a lot of it's about leadership it's showing not necessarily having experience in leadership but the potential to develop your leadership is there any other ways to get your

commission besides going like in america you can go to west point or the naval academy or whatever or you can go to r o tc which is you go to college while you're taking classes about whatever branch you're going into or you can do officer candidate school so there's or you can be a prior enlisted guy yeah and you can get commissioned how does it work in england so all officers have to go to sandhurst even if you done i was in oTC whilst at university so i did three years there is it a different school for the army versus the navy yes so that those three. So Sandhurst is for the army. Then you've got one down in Portsmouth for the Navy, and then you've got Crownwell, which is for the Royal Air Force. Yeah. But you're going to go,

if you're going to get a commission, that's what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. You've got to go to Sandhurst. And so for me, it was quite, I'd heard about it. My dad had encouraged me. He didn't get into Sandhurst. He wanted to, to join as a reservist back in the 70s. Didn't work out for him. So I felt like I was, and my grandfather was, you know, he was an enlisted private soldier, so there was no history of officership within my family, although I think there were five generations of soldiers previously. So we'd all served in one way or another. So to go to Sanders was a real privilege, but also a big challenge, because there was, it was quite a daunting prospect. You know, I was from a pretty normal background, and then suddenly I was in the same platoon as

Prince Harry. So I was, you know, surrounded by a totally different type of people that I hadn't necessarily met before. Lots of people who'd been big in sports, who'd gone to a very prestigious universities. But I could say it's about leadership and demonstrating the potential to be an officer. Now let's jump into the book. I passed the Army's commissioning board, which meant I could join as an officer and command men, something I found both exciting and daunting. A young officer's training takes place at the Royal Military Academy, Sanhurst, and when I arrived there, age 20, 23, I still wasn't sure where I wanted to end up. After visiting as many units as they want to see where they might fit in,

officer cadets can select two regiments to have interviews within their final term. So before you go to Sandhurst, you go and meet with various units to see which ones you like. Yeah. How freaking cool is that? You do these sort of familiarization visits, and they can be as formal or informal as the regiment chooses. So, you know, a lot of the cavalry units, which are known to attract quite posh well-to-do officers, they just go on a drinking binge for a weekend. Other units, you know, the engineers or the artillery do slightly more, you know, craft-focused exercises.

The parrars, I didn't look into the parrars at this stage. So I'd gone to visit my local unit, the Staffords. I'd looked at the Gurkhas, and I went to look at the intelligence corps. So you go, you basically go and have a look around, see if it's the right fit for you. and it's a two-way thing. They might not like you and say, don't come back. So now you show up at Sandhurst. Back to the book.

Sandhurst was hard work. And the late nights ironing my uniforms, the parades and long academic essays were only part of it. There was a lot of running, marching, and being shouted at along with field exercises, rifle ranges, and blowing things up, as well as learning the more subtle arts of officership, fancy dinners, the intricacies of letter writing

and knowing the DeBrette's guide to etiquette, inside and out. It was an interesting and varied education. The DeBrette's guide to etiquette. Yeah, I didn't even know what this was until I went to Sundance. I don't know what it is right now. So it's basically a manual of how to behave like a proper gentleman. Give us one example. Well, it's, you know, it's, I mean, the basics of, you know, if you're going to a seven-course meal, it's like which, which knife and fork do you start with first? It's how to write, you know, if you're writing a letter to a member of the royal family, how do you address? them. So when I went to officer candidate school and this is only 13 weeks long. So you,

but you do get etiquette training. I believe the only thing I remember, this is a weird thing to remember. Echo Charles, take notes. This could be important. Because it surprised me. If you get a piece of food in your mouth that you didn't want in there, the proper way to get it out of your mouth is to put it back on the fork and put it down. So in other words, if you're eating a piece of chicken and there's a bone in there, you don't pull it out with your hand. You put it back on the fork and you put it down. Now I think it's a lot more subtle

to put the hand up by the face, grab that thing, and like, no one's never going to know what I just did, as opposed to spitting the food back on the fork, right? That's kind of... Yeah. But hey, that's the tradition. They're the rules. But that's so in regards to that, what if...

So it has to be something like a bone. Like, hey, I don't... A piece of gristle. You're eating a steak and there's a piece of gristle that ain't going down. What are we going to do? Put the fork back next to your mouth. This is alleged. Look, I'm not even following this protocol because I think that's a lot nastier.

I'll clandestine move. You won't know what happened. But that gristle's coming into my hand. It's going to be somewhere on the ground. Makes sense. But what if, and this might go outside of the scope of even what you're talking about, what if you eat some chicken that's like dry or like, well, you know, some new food, like an escargo or something like this?

And you're like, oh, first time, I don't like this at all. Do you spit the whole escargo on the fork? Or? We have to go. We'll have to consult the DeBrette's guide. That's a good, the Wright's Guide for. I don't know what to do. I think you're in a tough spot.

Yeah. I had that happen. I was, I don't like seafood. And I was with, I was in Sierra Leone. And I was, there was stuff going on down there. And I was with my commanding officer. And there was, like, said there was things going on we were trying to figure things out so we get invited and I was

like his little sidekick guy was a prior enlisted guy but I was had been commissioned as an officer and he was just really taking care of me and show me the ropes and so he gets invited to go see the charge the affairs which is the number two underneath the ambassador in a country unless there's no ambassador in which case they're they're the the lead and in this particular case there was no ambassador so this individual was the lead so we roll up and this is Sierra Leone there's a freaking war going on there the eccomog versus all that craziness is happening in Liberia it's just it's just mayhem down in Africa so we roll up to this like really nice house and every there's servants in the whole nine yards and the first thing they put in

front of me is some kind of crazy like like no it's it's like octopus shrimp and like raw fish all in one thing and I'm trying to do what I remember Remembered from you know adequate which is you eat whatever you know they're putting something in front of you they they went the distance and so I I was just I sucked it up bro I did it for the good of the mission For the good of the mission. You do. All right A little detour there back to the book I also took up boxing Everyone had to be part of a sports club at Sandhurst and I wasn't into rugby or rowing boxing seemed like a decent choice Initially I hated the 430 a m starts but as fitness started to as the fitness started to impact

on me and I felt myself improving. I came to relish the early morning alarm calls. Plus, there was the added carrot of the annual fight night in which the most dedicated, committed boxers were chosen to fight, watched by the whole academy, as well as the string of generals, politicians, and VIP guests. I was incredibly proud to be chosen as one of those fighters. And on 9 November, 2005, I stood in the ring surrounded by over a thousand people face to face with officer candidate Mortimer.

I won the fight by knocking my opponent to the ground, but I'm not retelling the story to discuss the win. I had a huge respect for my opponent and the opportunity that came next arose simply from having stood in the arena. After the fight, all the boxers were invited to the sergeant's mess, a club of sorts where many of our training instructors lived. This was a huge honor because this particular mess was usually out of bounds, and the sergeants themselves were only seen in their context as authoritarian figures. all muscles, tattoos, and shaved heads. The fact that we privileged few were allowed into their private domain was viewed with absolute envy by the other cadets. The sergeants crowded round the fighters

and congratulated us all on our performance, victors and defeated alike. As I finished my second pint of beer, I found another one thrust into my hand. Looking up, I saw that it was Captain Truitt, the Sandhurst representative of the parachute regiment. Congratulations, Wood. Which regiment are you joining?

he said sternly. I hesitated momentarily before replying. I'm not sure, sir. I was looking at the Stafford's or the Intorpe, Intel. Saw that, he said. You should join the paras. My look of surprise must have been quite apparent. The parrots were the most fearsome soldiers in the British Army.

I'm not good enough to get in the paris, I thought. You need to be a muscle-bound machine to get in. Surely it wasn't even on my radar. Sit down, the captain barked. I sat on one of the little stools by the bar, beer still in hand. First two rounds of interviews have already been done, he told me. We had over 100 applicants and now we're down to 20. I don't do this very often and I won't ask you twice, but do you want to interview? I sobered up pretty quickly. My entire future rested in the balance

and all sorts of thoughts crossed my mind. What about the Staffords? They seem like a nice enough bunch and the Intelligence Corp. They did some interesting spy related work. It could be a good start to my career, which would allow me to travel too. When it came to the paras, there were a lot of unknowns. regiment, they are shrouded in mystery and are considered to be one of the countries, if not the world's most elite military units. I didn't know what to expect and I didn't think I was capable of joining their ranks. The temptation was to play it safe and stick with a more achievable goal. I knew what I was getting into with the Staffords. If I agreed to an interview with the paris, I would automatically have to turn down one of the other options since you can only interview

with two regiments and the paris had the toughest selection of all just peaking the intelligence. core. If I turned down the Staffords and failed the board for the others, I ran the risk of not getting any of my choices. I could end up being a blanket stacker in the logistics core for the rest of my career. The captain was staring at me. I'd like to interview, sir, I told him, expecting that it would take place in the coming weeks. Nope. Captain Truitt launched into a formal interview right there at the bar grilling me about my own motivations, experiences, education, and skills. After another 15 minutes, he stood up, shook my hand and told me to report to his office at 6 a.m. the next morning. And that's what I did, hangover and all. I was fast-tracked to the final

eight and then at the last interview with a panel headed by some of the most senior figures in the British Army. I was offered a place in the parachute regiment. That's how I got into the paris. Freaking epic story. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, In hindsight, it's those little moments, isn't it, that can change your entire, the course of your life. And it was that drunken moment in a bar that, you know, boxing is what got me in. And that's probably, if I hadn't have joined the Paris, there's no way I would have been able to do half the stuff I've done since then, let alone have the confidence to go and spend, you know, 10 years exploring the world. So I'm glad I took it up. And I'm glad I took the risk.

And you made that decision in a split. You literally hadn't thought about the pairs at all before that. I hadn't even been on my radar. And you thought maybe you weren't quite capable of doing it? Is that what kept it off your radar? I think until that point, you know, I mentioned there, the Staffordshire Regiment, which was my local regiment and the intelligence corps, which was very difficult to get into,

more from an intellectual capability. So I felt that in having the Inc. Corps, that was going to, you know, that was quite a big risk. The Staffords was slightly more guaranteed in many respects. So the Paris, you know, like I say, I'm not the sort of biggest muscle-bound guy in the world and looking around at some of the other guys that had been in the Paris. There's quite an aggressive mentality to get in there. And like I said, there was 100 applicants for only six places in the end.

So no, it hadn't been on my radar. But I think the boxing, which had encouraged me to just have a bit more confidence, is what did it for me. So that and probably the drinks I'd had for the, in the bar at the time. If you'd have said, no, he'd handed you another shot. Probably. He got you to say yes. Do you keep in touch with this guy? Yeah.

This guy freaking changed your life. He did. Yeah. He actually, he sent me a message on LinkedIn the other day, which is quite a coincidence, because I'd not heard from him for quite a number of years. And I mentioned that he was going to go in my book. And he said, why? I said, well, actually, sir, it was you that I can thank for all of what's happened.

And then what about the guy that found you, wallet. Nicest guy ever. I've tried to track him down. I can't find him anyway. One day, I'll send him a nice letter back. Yeah, it's just a good reminder to people, to everybody. You know, you have the opportunity to, like, completely change people's lives and

and just by doing something cool and nice and freaking those guys. I mean, first of all, giving you your wallet back and your money, that's kind of crazy. But then just giving you all a six-page essay on how to move forward. And, and you know what's, look, not everyone's going to take you up on your advice, right? Of course. And you give people advice all the time and you might get sick of doing it and you think, well, it's not worth it. But you change one person's life and you're a perfect example of that of your world changing because these momentary decisions and momentary mentorship from people. It's unbelievable.

It's awesome. Let's get to the pairs a little bit. Going back to the book, to join the parachute regiment, candidates must undergo a tough selection process called pre-parachute selection run by Pegasus Company, which is usually referred to as P-Co. Pea Company, yeah. Based at the Infantry Training Center in Catterick, North Yorkshire. After 21 weeks of training, candidates are put through eight tests designed to test their resilience and determination, including a 20-mile endurance, March laden with a 16-kilogram. pack and a rifle in under four hours and ten minutes and intimidating assault course, which is what you guys call obstacle courses.

Maybe we do call them assault courses too. Let's go with assault. Sounds way cooler. 17 meters above the ground called the Traneasium. Is that right? Yeah. And 60 seconds of milling. Milling, arguably the flagship event of parachute selection is a boxing match

between candidates of similar size and strength in which, determination and aggression are awarded and dodging and blocking lose points. In short, it amounts to being punched hard in the head for a minute straight while trying to hit the other guy as much and as hard as possible. If either combatant sheds blood or is knocked to the floor, the clock is paused, blood wiped off, and the bout resumes. It is forbidden to aim at any part of the opponent's body besides the head. And the winner is the most aggressive candidate.

milling is designed specifically to replicate quote the conditions of stress and personal qualities required in a combat situation and test quote determination and raw fighting spirit of the candidates it is this raw spirit of controlled aggression that sets paris apart from the rest of the army good times yeah had to go to youtube on that one let's watch some milling it's pretty cool it's freaking legit it's freaking legit just go as hard to as you can for 60 seconds. It's pure unadulterated aggression, punching straight to the head. You can't back off. You can't turn away. If you turn away, that's you. You've screwed your entire career. It's all based on that way moment, especially as an officer.

If you show any weakness, if you, if you cower away, you won't get in the regiment. So you can have spent months doing all the other training. You could have passed all the interviews, done the tests. I know the guys that spent six months who were perfectly capable of doing everything else. And then they were just a bit weak on the milling. That was them done. Do they actually fail? Yeah.

And you're not in it. And then you're not in. Then you'll get sent somewhere else. Did you have to like rearrange your brain from your boxing training to not, you know, parry and slip? It's very different. Yeah. Yeah. Because I would think your instinct would be, you'd be slipping, you know, and moving and head movement and everything that you've learned to be a good boxer.

You have to throw it out the window. And there's no training for milling. The only event that you do, you don't practice this at all. The first time most of the bloke. actually Mill is on their test. So you're given your gloves and you're told the rules and you just go in. I mean, it's a great spectator sport. Yeah, this is definitely, this would be on pay-per-view for sure.

It's everything like that the UFC wants, right? Just punch each other as much as you possibly freaking can. How often do guys get knocked out? A lot. Yeah, like it's every other one. There's guys going down. I mean, it's pretty full on. I mean, especially as the officers,

because you're in with the enlisted guys as well. So there's probably, let's say, 90 enlisted guys and, like I say, six officers. And they always, with the officers, I mentioned in there that you're usually put up against a person of your own size and weight. Officers, that's not true. They put you up against the biggest guys out there. So I was up against this huge guy. And it's all, you take your tops off. It's all done sort of, you know, so you can really get the full experience.

And I was up against this huge guy. And I was absolutely terrified. probably because I'd already had my boxing match at Sandhurst, which I'd won, so I was quite proud of my sort of undefeated one win. And then to go milling where you're surrounded by not only your future brother officers, but also, you know, dozens of men that you will go on to command. They're all watching you. All their eyes are on you.

So, you know, you've got to put on a bit of an act, a brave face, of course, but you don't want to lose. And thankfully, I did win. And it was only afterwards. I mean, I got a lucky punch and knocked the guy out. But it was only, it was only afterwards that he came up to me. He was much tall than me, much bigger than me. And he was like, good fight.

So he said, I'll be honest. I was terrified. I was like, he's serious. Like, I'm literally half your size. Because you were the Sanders champion. Well, no, he just said, you're a parachute regimen's officer. I was never going to win against that. And I think that it's mindset, isn't it?

It's mentality. And so he was, bizarrely, it was nothing to do with physical presence. It was far more against, you know, it's just that what's going on in your mind. And for him, it was to be up against an officer was, was a big thing. Damn, they play that game in the Seals. You give the young e-dogs that shot at the title against an officer, that officer better hang on because he's going to bring it. The other cool thing is I was watching the videos, it's like basically the ring is formed from the crowd. Yeah. And it's small. Yeah. What is it? It's probably, it looks like it's like eight feet by eight feet.

You don't, you don't move your feet. You're just stastic. Yeah. Good dives. How much did you wear? I was probably 80, 75, 80 kilograms. Yeah. What, are you challenging it? I'll leave now. Nearly.

Going back to the book, nothing worth having comes easy. And we will need to work hard to achieve things that we want most out of life. Whether this is learning a new skill or advancement in our professional careers, we need to be prepared to stay the course and keep working toward our goals. no matter which obstacles appear along the way. When I was on my way into the parachute regiment, I bust up to Catterick for my pre-perachute selection. At that point, I had no idea what the next 20 or so weeks would look like for me.

All I knew was that they would be the most stressful, demanding, challenging of my life so far. But I had a goal in mind. I was determined to earn that purple beret at the end, the recognition of my achievement and my initiation into one of the world's elite fighting regiments. That level of drive is absolutely crucial. We can't give our all to anything if we're not motivated by the end result. And if we're not giving our all, we've no chance of sticking things through when the going gets tough.

Over the first few weeks of selection, it was pretty clear that a lot of people didn't have what it took. Some couldn't handle the rigors of training and fell behind. Others decided that enough was enough and dropped out of their own accord midway through. I had my own moment when I thought my time on selection was up. I came down with a shin injury that sent me back behind the rest of my cohort for a few days. Unable to join in the rigorous drills and knowing that when I was back in action, things would be exponentially tougher for the time I'd missed. I wondered if this was worth it. I started thinking about what my life would be like if I failed selection.

Probably not all that bad. I could probably go and reapply to one of the Army's other more sedate regiments. Then what? Have a fairly average military career? Perhaps go on, go to some interesting places and do some interesting things, but nothing grabbed me about it. Even more so when I considered a life and career outside the Army, having just passed out of Sandhurst, I couldn't for a moment contemplate the prospect of a civilian life.

All I wanted was that maroon beret. It kept appearing in front of me every time I closed my eyes. In a way, it would have taken some motivation to present myself to one of the officer's running selection and tell them that I wanted to drop out, that I couldn't do it. But I had no desire to do anything besides recover, get back to training, and persevere through the rest of selection. So that's what I did. I pushed myself harder than I'd previously thought possible, quickly making up the ground I'd lost on the rest of the cadets. I remember my fear of heights being pushed to the background when I tackled the transanium.

My 60 seconds of milling passed in such a blur. I can't remember them all besides an overwhelming need not to hurt the person I was paired with, but to prove to him and everyone looking on that I wasn't one for backing down whatever the circumstances. Perhaps I'm fortunate that I was born with this amount of grit and determination. It's not always a positive. I've been told many times that I'm as stubborn as a mule, but up there in the cold, wet, windy, cataric, these inner reserves of dry vision, grit and resilience pulled me through, and I got the beret I've been dreaming about. It's hard to think how different my life would have been without it.

One of the reasons I wanted to read that little section was there's a point where you're doing a little bit of rationalization like, oh, you know, if I don't make it, you know, like, well, probably might not be that bad, you know, and I don't have to put up with this. And I hear people rationalize and stuff all day long. As a matter of fact, there's a TV show, Echo Charles. It's called Lost and they basically take these people out in the middle of nowhere and you're by yourself. I think it's called Lost. No, it's called Alone. Sorry, it's called Alone. And they go out and they put these people.

And my little daughter, who's 10 at the time, she got really into it. And we would watch it. And so you can quit at any time. You can key up your radio and send out a transponder and they come and get you. But you'd be listening to the people and you'd hear him start to rationalize, you know?

And so I taught my daughter. I say, you know what they're doing right there? She'd be like, oh, he's rationalizing. Because, you know, the guy says, you know, I like being out here and I love the nature, but, you know, I really miss my family. you know, I realize that my family's more. And I look at my little daughter and go, what's he doing right now?

Rationalizing. He's about to quit. So I like the fact that you started going a little bit down that path of rationalization. And then you said, you know what? No, it doesn't work. I think, you know, we're all sort of prone to it to varying degrees. And when when things get really tough, you know, those little elements of doubt do have a tendency to creep in. And you just have to fight them.

You have to sort of try and look at your situation objectively and realize what you're doing. And that rationalization, thankfully, is outrightly sort of castigated in the parachute regiment. And you're reminded, stop rationalizing. And the instructors, it might sound like they're shouting at you, but what they're doing is just reminding you not to give up. So thankfully, it's stamped out pretty quickly. But a lot of it's on your own shoulders. You know, nobody wants you to quit. You know, the unit needs officers that need soldiers.

They don't want people to leave. They're not telling you to quit. They're telling you to not quit. But so it's down to you. And people do this with every freaking thing in everyday life all day long. Like that last rep or that donut that you're like, you know, I did work out hard yesterday. I did work out hard. And actually, it's really good to reward yourself.

It's good to reward yourself. It's good to have a positive feedback with that I did work out hard yesterday. And yeah, I want to be, I don't want to be in a grind all the time. You got to enjoy life, right? Discipline equals freedom. How about the freedom part? Here's the freedom part. Let me get that donor.

You can rationalize anything. You can literally rationalize anything. If you're not freaking careful, you will rationalize stuff that's not good for you. So you get done with this train. Is milling like the last final thing? Is it close to the end? It's close to the end, I think. But the most important event of all is something called the log race.

And basically, there's a big telegraph pole. I can't remember how much it weighs, but it's bloody heavy. And there's like eight, eight people on each log, and usually one or two officers on each log, and it's a race. So you've got four logs, or however many. How many days does it take? No, it's just, it's one event on, I think it's the second to last day or the final day. And it's basically you are, you're sent off. It's about, I think it's three miles or something like that.

And it's a race between the different groups, but you've got to stay on the log. If you come off the logs as an officer, that will stay with you for the rest of your career. I know generals who, you know, in the 70s are still reminded by their fellow officers that they came off the log in 1975. It happens. So you're all made aware of this. So a couple of officers did come off the log. I stayed on it. There was only two people left on the log.

And this thing is bloody heavy. There's only two people left? Yeah. And so you're pretty much dragging this log up hills. So when you say off the log, what do you mean? As in you fall off. And people just fall off and they just pass out. I mean, it's really heavy.

you start with eight, you've got to do two, you know, like I say, two and a half or three miles on an off-road course, it's up these, you know, through rivers and all this sort of stuff. And usually by the end of it, there's only like top couple of people left. Oh, really? Yeah. But the other people still graduate? They do, but if you fail two events on P Company out of the 20 or so events, then you're off the course.

So when I was, as I was later an instructor on P-Company, usually with the soldiers, at least, with the recruits, there's only about a 10 or 11 percent. rate. So we'd start off with a platoon of 90 or 100 recruits and we'd pass out 10 or 15. So that's how tough it is. Damn. And how long is the whole training 21 weeks? Yeah. So if we're on a log and we're going and I've passed every event but I you know, don't carry the log. I go to the side or whatever. I can still be a para.

Only if you don't come off one of the other events. So if you feel, fail, let's say the assault course of the Traneasium, which is the aerial assault course where you've got to sort of jump across the high nets and things like that, then you'll be off the course. So you can get all the way to the end of the course. And if you fail two of these events, that's you off, then you'll get sent to another regiment. Is there a time limit on the log? Because I can imagine if there's only two of you left. Like, it'll take some time.

It takes a while, yeah. It's staying on is most important and not just giving up. In the seal training, you carry a log. You spent a lot of time with a log, but you also spend a lot of time with a boat, like these little boats. That used to be made out of rubberized canvas, so they were really heavy.

They're a lot lighter now than they were. But what's interesting, so when I went through, you're carrying the boat on your head a lot, and this is sort of what I thought you were saying. You carry the boat on your head a lot, and, you know, if we're all in a boat crew, and there's eight of us in the boat crew, it's possible to sort of like shrink your head down a little bit and release your posture a little bit

and not have your head carrying any weight, which means that everyone else is carrying the weight. So when I went through it was like a sort of like it was happening and you'd see someone doing it and be like, you'd hear people yelling like in another boat. Go get your freaking head under the boat, man. Well, they didn't have this, but they have it now. They have, you can actually, you get written up for what they call duck boat. So they'd be like, Charles, you're ducking boat. And you can get like a demerit.

Yeah. They didn't actually call it. They didn't have a name for it when I went through. But now they have a freaking name for it because it's like a, it's like you're coming off your log. Yeah. Like you're not with the team. And that's not cool. Well, we have the same thing.

I mean, because there's a stretcher race. So the same sort of thing where you carry in a stretcher for five miles that one. So you can get through to the, certainly as an officer, it's more apparent. But if you can get through to the whole course, even if you stayed on all of the, events, you can get what's called a stand-up fail, which is basically you're still standing up, but you've failed on your attitude or personality. So you can still get booted off if they don't like you. Yeah, that's as it should be, right? Because there's some non-quantifiable leadership qualities that some people have or don't have. And if someone, you get someone that's looking out for

themselves and just, you know, trying to step on everyone's back to get to the top. We don't want that guy on the team. Yeah. So you get done with that. And now you should. And now you should, show up, you show up at the regiment. More or less, you've still got to do the infantry battle school. So there's three months in Breck and in Wales where you then go and do, no, apologies, that was first, P company, and then, yeah, that was to the unit. Yeah. So I joined the unit in 2006, just as they, my three power were getting back from Afghanistan on the first tour. So it was a pretty, that was a pretty punchy tour as well. And so you're just new me at this knew me straight in charge of 30 more veterans and that was quite a daunting challenge yeah what was your

what was your what was your what lessons did you learn from that um well I never forget the day I was I took over my platoon I met the guys and you know you sort of taught at sandhurst that you're going to have this sort of general Montgomery moment where you're sort of you know standing on a land rover sort of addressing your soldiers as they're all on parade doesn't really work like that I sort of walked into the barracks and they're all in bed I was like could I speak to the guys so they all came together and there was a corporal, corporal crab tree, Chris Crabtree, big guy and said, sir, can I tell you a joke? He said, yeah, go on then. He said, how many sang in veterans does it take to change a light bulb? I was like, I don't know. He says, of course you don't know, sir, because you

weren't fucking there. I was like, thanks. Welcome aboard. Welcome aboard. But it was, no, it was, daunting, but, you know, I felt prepared, you know, Sandhurst, the infantry battle school, P company, it prepares you, it gives you that confidence, you know, milling, boxing, all that stuff. So whilst it was like quite something, I'd hitchhike through Afghanistan, you know, a couple of years before. So I think when some of the guys started learning some of my stories, they had a slightly more respect for me than they probably could have had. But it was still a big challenge. You've got to prove to you, men. They're not going to, they're not just going to

follow you until they know you're not a dick, basically. How long is it your, what's the training like now? The guys come home. I'm sure they stand down for a little while. And then it's hey, we got to get ready to. to go back. So I think the turnaround was about 14 months before the next deployment. So there was a bit of downtime. There was plenty of opportunity for the guys to get some rest and do things like adventure training. And I mean, there's the story in the book where as a junior officer, the commanding officer said, look, this is the kayak? What is a kayak polo? Go ahead. Go ahead. So basically the CEO said, look, all the new officers, so the six guys that we'd all just come out,

straight out of Sanders, you guys pick a sport each and then get all the guys to go and do something fun. So I said, okay, well, I was looking at sports. And all my colleagues had pretty much chosen what their sort of chosen sports were. So somebody did soccer, football, somebody else did, you know, ran the rugby team. My only sport, of course, at that time was boxing, but three-parr already had a very well-established boxing team. So there's no way I could go and join that. So I was sort of scrambling around and thought, okay, well, I'll just do kayak. It sounds like fun. You know, I'd done a bit when I was a kid, so I'll do that.

So I went to sort of, you know, ask for volunteers. I got six or seven very unwilling volunteers from the soldiers because they'd rather be on leave, but they'd all been told they had to join one of these clubs as well. Now, that's when things started getting competitive because the powers being the powers, the commanding officer sort of then threw into the ring. He said, look, you've all got to apply for,

whichever sport it is apply for a competition, and you've got to win it because you're powers. So you were just thinking, I'll put together a kayak club. It was meant to be fun. And we'll go out in the river and we'll have some fun. Exactly. It'll be all good. You can probably travel.

So you're always trying to find some scam to travel. Exactly. Yeah. But then he says, hey, I want competition. So, and I was based in a place with Colchester in Essex. Now, there's no, there's no sort of particular venue to go and learn kayaking in Colchester, apart from the local canal system. Now, this was winter.

So I basically managed to get hold of a bunch of these boats. and we were out paddling in the frozen, you know, dirty waters of Essex canals. Now, there was like shopping trolleys floating around the water. There was like, you know, the homeless guys sort of taken a leak off the bridge as we were going under it. I mean, it was that kind of, it was pretty grim. And so the guys were not particularly inspired by this whole project. And I was trying to find a suitable competition to enter. And the main kayaking competition in the UK is basically a race.

It's a hundred-mile race along the Thames. from a place called Henley to Westminster. It's called the Devisors to Westminster race. But that wasn't until May, which was, we were meant to be back in the training cycle by the end. So the any other thing I could think of or find was over the Easter weekend,

which was the Army Canoe Polo Championships, which was in a swimming pool in a town called Aldershot, which is the home of the Paris. And so I applied for this competition. They were like, yeah, we don't normally get paras applied, but fine, turn up. So after we'd done like several weeks of training, the guys were just about competence in staying in the boats without falling out,

but by all means none of them could do a proper Eskimo role at this stage. So we turned up on Easter weekend, and the guys were all really annoyed because it was Easter weekend. They wanted to be at home with their families. And we found the swimming pool attendant, the guy who's running the competition. He said, oh, you didn't expect you to turn up. And we got in our boats. He said, right, get in the pool. Where's all the other teams?

There's supposed to be like six other teams entering. He said, well, it's Easter. Obviously, nobody's bothered. You're the only people here. So we said, well, what does that mean? He said, well, you've got the gold medal. So out of all the teams that in the Paris to do all these sports, we were the only ones to actually win our competition.

Obviously, we didn't need to tell anyone that nobody else had turned up. We'd won by default. But it goes to show, you know, if you've got to be in it to win it, so to speak. Now, you guys are going, do you know that you're preparing to go to Afghanistan? Yeah, we knew. We knew that. So the deployment was in the spring of 2008, especially off the back of the first tour that they'd been involved with the powers of the first of the whole British army to go into southern Afghanistan, into Helmand, and it was like I said, it was a very kinetic tour.

There was a lot of stories coming out of it, so there was a lot of things to live up to. So, yeah, so we deployed to Helmand and Kandahar and we were on something called the Regional Command Group South, so we were basically the rapid response unit to go and fly in. helicopters to wherever they needed us. And it was a pretty varied role. It was interesting because we weren't in one of the Ford operating bases, like two para, who were stuck in in one of these fobs for the whole six months. We were bouncing around all over the place, which meant that one day we'd be doing a raid on a Taliban commander,

another day we'd be helping the local police builder police station, another time we'd be going out clearing the opium. So it was a really interesting, varied role. But it did mean that we all had to get our heads into this, you know, 360 degree battle space hybrid warfare. No two days were the same. And so it was quite a complicated environments in which to operate. Well, who did you turn over with? Did you get a turnover from somebody when you showed up there? Yeah, we did. I think it was the Royal Marines who were in there before us. But the role itself of R.C. South was pretty undefined. So it was pretty much whatever the brigade

commander said we'd go do. So it might be the first job that we did was in a place called Maywand and we had to go and clear this this this this town of any any Taliban elements I'd read about may one from my my days doing history and this was a place that the British army had been in in 1842 and it turns out we were stationed in the same fort as the British army 150 years previously so that was pretty you know interesting from from somebody who'd studied the region you go into some of your um some of the operations in here and some the leadership really lessons that you learned, which are great lessons. I'm going to the book here. Once on operations in Zabul province in southern Afghanistan, my platoon was given the mission to

search a village for a known terrorist recruiter. For the most part, this involved being invited by friendly women for tea, scanning their kitchens and gardens with metal detectors, and then being cursed and told the house belonged to an absent uncle as we dug up and removed caches of weapon. After walking around all day, we were low on water and needed to get back to the helicopter pickup point, which was five miles away across the desert. As we were leaving the village, I noticed a group of men huddled around under the shade of a mulberry tree. They looked shifty and stared at us as we walked past. One of them wore a white turban and had coal around his eyes looking like a Taliban leader. I got the translator to say hello and ask their names, which he duly noted.

I reported the names by radio to our intelligence cell, and they said they were all clear. So we left the men and trekked back across the desert to where my boss was waiting. By now, the whole platoon was exhausted and thirsty. We had not had time to eat all day, and the temperature was over 50 degrees Celsius, which is like 120 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the soldiers was beginning to wobble, and I expected it might be heat exhaustion. Then to make matters worse, my boss came over. Lev you know that group of men in the village yes well the one in the white turban the

in cell now says they want him in for questioning what the hell i reported his name on the radio and they said he was clear i know they screwed up so what now well we've got two hours before your helicopter comes go and get him i shook my head i had two hours and it was 10 miles a 16 kilometer round trip. In the paris, we have a well-known physical stamina test known as the 10-miler, which is a punishing speed march while carrying kit. They can be hard work at home in the rain, but out here in the desert, low on water, I knew it might be deadly. I looked at my men and could tell that half of them weren't up to it. They were exhausted, but orders were orders. I figured that I could do the job with 10 or 12 men, so half of the men could stay behind. I knew that in order to do so,

I had to get them to buy into the vision and feel ownership. So instead of barking out an order, I gathered my section commanders around. I told them the situation and asked them what they thought were the best options. A lesson I learned early on is that even if you already know the answer, ask the question. It makes people feel valued and part of the team and decision-making process. It doesn't matter who gets the credit for the decision. And when you take your own ego out of the equation, it's amazing what has. happens. Sir, I have an idea, said the youngest corporal. Why don't we leave half the men behind

and take some of their water? I'm sure we can do the job with 10 or 12 men. That's a great idea. I said, patting him on the back. He grinned from ear to ear, and I made him the point man. I need 12 volunteers to come with me. I said, the rest of you can stay here. The men looked at each other. They knew it would be one of the hardest tabs of their life and that it would be dangerous because the Taliban now knew our strength and would have time to prepare an attack as they saw us walking back across the desert. Private Foster, one of the new soldiers, put his hand up. I'll come, sir.

I need the exercise, he joked. Sylvester was next. Then another and another. Because we had a strong team, bonded with trust, I had no shortage of volunteers. Even some of the men who I knew stood no chance of making it started to put their hands up because they felt ashamed, but I already had enough.

We redistributed the water, gritted our teeth, and marched back across the desert to the village where we found the man in the white turban, arrested him, way back again being chased by an angry mob of Afghans. It was a hard slog, but one of the most determined team efforts I'd seen in my career. To top it off, we later found out that the man in the white turban was at the top of the regional most wanted list. That victory and a shared hardship cemented the bonds of the platoon even stronger. There was nothing that my men didn't think

they could accomplish. Legit, I get it. Often I'll get asked, you know, how can I get my team to buy to the plan. Let them come up with the plan. Simple, isn't it? Let them come up with the plan. That's what you do. And that's something, you know, you say you learned it. Where do you think you picked that up? Was it something that you saw the instructors doing at Sandhurst? Is it what your sergeant, the way your sergeants ran things? I'll give you the honest answer. I was actually, I watched a, there's a series called Shop. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It was about, um, I don't think so. It was, it was basically about the war, the peninsular war in the 19th century. But it's, yeah, Sean Bean in it.

It was basically a military drama series. And it's often referred to in military circles because it's, it's, it's a, it was a fun war in the sense that it was, it was in a, what's the name of this program? It's called Sharp. Yeah, Richard Sharp. As in S-H-A-R-P? P-E, yeah. Sharp.

So in America, we'd say Sharp. What you're saying here right now sounds like shop, but it's all good. I'm married to a Brit. I kind of understood it. So Sharp is a military officer. He's a commander in the rifles and basically often cited as a sort of figurehead in leadership. But I remember watching that as a kid and thinking, oh, he does exactly the same. When did the series come out?

Oh, it was back in the 90s. Yes, it was an old series. But I grew up watching Sharp. So I think that was probably where I first saw that style of leadership. But again, of course, it was drilled into us at Sandhurst and in training. to bring your team into the plan. You know, if you've got a vision, that's great, but you've got to get people to buy into it.

I think empowering people, letting them take ownership of those ideas is the best way of doing that. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, a lot of times, even if you think you have the answer and you ask the team what they think, they're going to come up with a better answer

than you had in the first place. Exactly. So it's like, why not just ask them? Yeah. And I think ego is often the downfall of a lot of leaders in some ways, because it's when you sort of when you think that oh because I'm the leader I have to have the answer that's when things go wrong especially in the military context yeah 100% 100% that's a

that's a killer um leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield also pays to be lucky sometimes another little section back to the book one day we were setting up a temporary encampment on the outskirts of a lush valley I got the call from my commanding officer that a vehicle had been blown up a couple miles away, and I was to take my platoon out on a rescue mission. Our armored cars had special tracks so they could go over any kind of terrain. We drove them across the desert

and up to the top of an escarpment where the location of the explosion had been reported. As we got closer, I looked through the front windscreen and could see the remains of a land rover blown to smithereens. I was expecting the worst, as there should have been four soldiers inside. I called the team medic and told them to get ready to treat any surviving casualties.

We stopped short by 50 meters in case there were any other bombs nearby. And when I got out of my vehicle, to my absolute surprise and joy, I saw that all the men were fine. When the landmine had exploded, it had sent a shockwave through the car, sending everyone in it flying out onto the ground. They were all alive and seemingly unharmed. I asked them if they were okay. And apart from being dizzy and shaken, they nodded and walked over to where I was standing. There was space in one of our three vehicles, so I put the men in the back of the car at the front, telling the lead vehicle that we should reverse back out of the danger area because we might be in a minefield.

It seemed like a sensible option, so that's what we did, making sure that we stayed exactly in our own tracks until we were well clear of the flat plateau. At that point, my three vehicles needed to turn around so that we didn't get stuck in a bottleneck between two large cliffs. So the front vehicle did a three-point turn and pushed around the other two so that it was now facing forward again in the lead. We all did the same and drove off down a track back towards the encampment and by now I was in vehicle number two where the commander should always be. Then just as we left the scraggy Boulder Field, there was an enormous explosion and I felt the shockwaves hit my own car. After a second of deafness and ringing in my ears, I looked through my windscreen to see a mess. massive cloud of dust. As it cleared, I realized what had happened. The point vehicle had driven

over another mine. And to make matters worse, it was the same four soldiers who had been in the first explosion. I shouted down the radio, telling everyone to stop exactly where they were, whilst I considered the situation. I could see bodies lying in the dirt next to the car, which had the front end ripped off of it. Now I knew I had to show some real leadership, and there was only one thing for it. The metal detectors, We're in the car at the back and it would take them a good 10 minutes to clear the path between the cars, let alone get to the front where we might have heavy casualties. I got out of the car, pulled out my bayonet, and began to crawl forward, stabbing the sand in front of me to check for mines. Luckily, the car in front wasn't too far and I was able to cover the distance quickly.

I reached the car and to my relief found that yet again, by some miracle, everyone was alive. And what's more, uninjured. One of the soldiers stood up, dusted himself off, and looked at me stabbing around in the dirt. What are you doing, sir? He laughed. You won't find any Taliban down there. It was a lucky day, made even luckier as I was filling out the Daily Report back at camp when I found out that my team and the remaining vehicle had been tasked with denying the half-blown-up cars. That meant going back to the site and blowing them up properly with explosives so the Taliban couldn't make use to them in the future.

It was a simple task, and I was told that I should remain behind with the other platoon commanders. so that we could receive our orders for the next day. As the team were driving back, they too hit a landmine. And the empty commander's seat where I normally would have been sitting was completely destroyed by the explosion. You can't be a leader

unless you're willing to put your team ahead of yourself when circumstances call for it. This requires moral courage and integrity, the building blocks, not only of great leadership, but of a fulfilled, purposeful life. Just out there digging, for mines.

It was a lucky day. Very lucky day. And no one got in your seat. No one got in your vehicle commander's seat? Yeah. I was, yeah. I look back now and thank my lucky stars that, yeah, that was a very lucky day. What was the opt tempo?

So, like, how often were you guys running out, going out on missions? Well, because of the nature of the job, we were, like I said, doing different things. So we'd go out and clear a valley one day. We might be out for a week. then we'd come back to Kandahar. We were based in Kandahar Air Base alongside the Canadians for the most part. Most of the Brits were either in Bastion or in, you know, one of the fobs. So it was quite, I mean, Kandahar Air Base, you know, it had a Timmy Horton's coffee,

it had a pizza hut. It had a Burger King. I mean, it was a bizarre sort of experience. So you're out there getting blown up one minute and then you're in, you're in with the rems, as we like to call them another. And it's such a bizarre thing to get your head around. but we weren't in there for long. We'd stay for a few days.

We'd regroup. We'd clean ourselves up and then we'd get back out there. And we did some really fascinating, you know, operations. We did, according to the news report, at least, we did one of the biggest airborne assaults of the entire war. We flew into Zubal with, I can't remember how many schnucks. It was like 10 Chinooks with Apache support

to do a full battalion level assault. And stuff like that, when you've got, when you've got right of the varkery's blaring out of the speakers it sort of it was pretty you know it was pretty energizing to say the least equally you know we'd be out there helping rebuild a school or painter a police station the next so it was it was quite it was challenging on different levels it wasn't that we were getting as many fights because actually the guys in the fobs were getting attacked every day

they were immortaled every day we'd often go for for a week without firing a shot and anger So it wasn't necessarily the intensity of the fighting, certainly for my tour. It was more of the variety and the scale of what we were trying to achieve. How long was the deployment in total? Normally there's six months. I only did four months because I was at the end of my tour as a platoon commander. So my replacement was sort of brought in and then I had to move on to another job.

So that's when I went to be an infantry at the recruitment center. I was then a directing staff sort of recruiting. and training recruits back where I'd done my training before. And that's a historical deployment for the paris down there. I know I was doing just some reading about it. You had a corporal Brian Budd who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. Sounds like he just led a flanking maneuver against enemy Taliban fighters, ended up being killed, but was able to suppress enough fire that the rest of his team could maneuver.

there's another guy named Corporal Mark Wright awarded the George Cross. Pretty, I mean, does you read the story? It's like unbelievable story, heartbreaking story, but they're in a minefield. There's guys wounded. He's, as he's trying to get his guys out of this minefield, like he's singing happy birthday to one of his friends that's, you know, in a really bad way. And he ends up dying of wounds. but I mean just a just of incredible bravery and and upholding that tradition of the paris you know to this day awesome stuff um when you get back I know you mentioned in the book

that you were you were considering going a selection for for the special special forces and then and then well that was the net that was the natural progression like I say after the tour it's considered the next step is most of the officers then go back to Katrick to then train the next boughs of recruits.

I mean it wasn't my first choice. I didn't really want to go and be in the wind and the rain, training recruits. I would have loved to have spent more time in Afghanistan, but that's the way it goes, you know, in the army.

So I was up in Katrick. I'd say that my morale was sort of flagging a little bit because I was actually, I wouldn't say I necessarily enjoy, I've got a lot I did I did I did quite enjoy some of it but but that's why I joined the army and so I was there I thought okay well you know go for special forces selection that that will be the next thing so passed all the initial tests and it was meant I was meant to be going on the full selection in January 2009 and I was at my peak fitness I was good to go and then I made the the the error of going to see my girlfriend in Mexico who had a ranch. And in a bout of silliness, I decided to get on a horse and do some rodeo on her ranch. The horse threw me over a six-foot wall, and I broke my leg a week before I was meant to be on selection.

So I had to sort of limp in back to the barracks, and obviously I was told I couldn't do selection, needless to say. And what was worse was all of the jobs for the next deployment, which was going to be happening in a few more months, had already been taken. So it was a crux point in my career And I was like, well, okay, do I stay And then do a job that I don't enjoy for two years Or do I look at this as an opportunity? And it was a quite, it was pretty depressing time Because I was desperate to get back out there

And do what I loved the most. But equally, I didn't really fancy spending two years Doing a desk job. That wasn't why I joined the military at all. So I rang up my... They don't tell you about those. desk jobs, when you join the military. That's not even a thing, right? There's no recruiting poster that shows if officer sitting at a desk making a PowerPoint slides. Exactly. Yeah.

Excel is not what I signed up for. So I, after sort of really, you know, going through some heart-wrenching decision-making, I thought, you know what? I think now is the time to do something else. And actually in hindsight, it was because I left Hungary. It was because I left still hankering for a bit of adventure and I didn't feel as though I'd done everything I wanted to do on that side of things that I probably it gave me the impetus to do what came next. So I left and by a sort of

by a twist of luck I suppose when I because you have to usually give 12 months notice when you leave the military but when I rang up the army personnel somebody hadn't filled out the paperwork properly so I meant that I could actually leave in four months and my boss at the time said look just take the time off, get yourself together. So I was on full pay and off I went. So as soon as my leg was fixed, that was me onto whatever came next. I didn't really have a plan other than

thinking, other than thinking actually now is probably the time I can go back to that schoolboy dream of somehow becoming an explorer. At what point did you climb Merrah Peak? Yeah. So that was in, that was again, that was just before I broke my leg. It was in October that year. So I was, again, a bit of downtime, I was given the opportunity to do what, you know, is affectionate, you know, as adventure training in the army, which usually involves doing some hill walking in Wales. I wanted to do something a bit more exciting. So I decided to organise a proper mountaineering expedition to the Nepal Himalayas.

So I got together a bunch of the junior A.C.O. at Katrick, who are, you know, my training staff and said, let's go and climb a mountain. None of them had climbed a mountain before. but being Paris, they all sort of said this sounds like fun. It's three weeks off work, so off we go. And that was my introduction to proper civilian style leadership in many ways, because we were not in uniform. We were learning a new skill in a new environment.

So off we went, and we went to Climb Mirror Peak, which is not a technical mountain, but it's six and a half thousand meters, which is, what's that? That's like 20. I think it's about 21,247 feet. Spot on. Good guess. So it's a pretty high mountain and the air thin up there and you know you can suffer from altitude sickness.

So often it's a three-week expedition. And it was actually pretty demanding, especially for some of the guys who'd never been to that altitude before. And I'd been backpacking in Nepal and I'd done that sort of thing, but I'd never, never, ever been to that sort of height. So it was a really interesting lesson in motivating soldiers who soldiers love to complain at the best of times, especially when this is their vacation time. So it was all fun and games until we got to sort of 5,000 meters, 15,000 feet. And that's when things get really tough and cold. Yeah, you break it down really well. I'll go to the book here.

After more than 10 days of hard trekking, we finally reached the snow line where the temperatures plummeted to minus 27 degrees. And with Gale Force winds, making the setup of camp a dreadful prospect, at least three of the others and I were suffering severe headaches, dehydration, and very cold feet as we tried unsuccessfully to sleep at 5,000 meters. On the summit day, we were greeted with clear conditions. But two of the local Sherpas decided to remain with the tents in camp rather than ascend to the top. I led the way with Jordi? I led the way with Jordi and our mountain guide, Jason. We plotted through the thick snow, tied together in case a crevasse opened up. It was punishing slow going and every step was hard earned with short gasping breaths.

The summit came into view. A few hundred meters ahead, but there was no time to celebrate. As we stopped for a short break, one of the soldiers approached me complaining that he couldn't feel his feet anymore. His boots had been on the tight side and as a result, his toes were right up against the edge of the boot. As we'd been trained, I ordered him to remove his boots and socks and I placed his bare toe inside my jacket right up in my armpit where it would be able to warm up to body

temperature naturally. As we waited, I saw another soldier shifting about. He told me his feet too were numb. And so after a while, I offered the same service to him. But before long, my feet were also getting so cold. They were excruciating. We needed to move. So once we'd taken a rest, we pushed on another hundred meters to a crag.

By then, just before the final push to the summit, disaster struck. A howling wind flared up the valley, followed immediately by a white blanket of cloud. I knew instantly that even if it was short-lived, they would add time on to our exposure, which might mean the difference between someone keeping or losing their toes to frostbite. We had trekked for days and planned for months. No one wanted to give up. Boss, one of the soldiers shouted, we can make it. It's not far to go.

200 meters more. I looked up into the murky abyss of frozen air and then back at the faces of the two. shivering soldiers. I was torn. From the looks around me, it was clear the overwhelming urge of the group was to continue. These were all paratroopers, men proud of their own heartiness and expecting it above all from me, their leader. But I knew that if I decided to continue, I was putting all our safety in danger and the fault would be mine alone for any consequences. We turn back, I shouted, now. I hauled the youngest of the crew to his feet and pointed down the slope back to where the camp, back to the camp where the Sherp was waited for us.

The most headstrong of the soldiers muttered and shook his head. I didn't say anything or blame him. I was as disappointed as he was. We all knew that our chance of conquering the mountain was gone, at least for this expedition. Months of anticipation and weeks of physical training had gone to waste. As we got back to the tents and packed up the camp, we were all silent. It wasn't until hours later when we descended beyond the snowline and to a sheltered gully where the sun had warmed up the rocks that one of the senior soldiers approached me.

You made the right call there, boss. Otherwise, we might have died, or at the very least, we'd all be missing a few toes. As we carried on down the trail, the disappointment that we felt that not achieving our aim seemed to dissipate, and we were glad to have come down unscathed, having lived a fight another day. I had not wanted to make the decision to turn back. It felt like failure, and I was worried about the impact it was. would have on my soldiers estimation of me. But as I discovered afterwards, even those who had wanted

to continue at the time had a lot of respect for the decision in hindsight. Moreover, that defeat instilled a wonderful attitude in those eight soldiers. After the expected banter and complaining that all soldiers are good at, every single one of them said that the trip was one of the highlights of their military career. What's more, many of them later became serious climbers and mountaineers and went back to Summit Mera Peak. If I had made the popular decision that day, rather than the right one, it could have been a very different story.

Just another, and look, I usually say this in the beginning of these things. I'm obviously reading only, like, tiny sections of the book. You got to get the book. There's all kinds of lessons learned throughout this book, about leadership, about discovery, about exploration. It's full of them. So get the book. but that's a good highlight, a good lesson learned, and this is now.

And so that's sort of your intro to, well, maybe I can do, maybe I can do something like this in the civilian world. Yeah, it was. And so when I left, when I managed to get out of the, out of the army, like I said, I broke my leg. I was disappointed at not being able to do special forces selection, but I was still hungry. And that was the key ingredient because I was desperate to do something that I felt was

was worthwhile. Most of my fellow officers who left the military at the rank of captain or junior major, they were sort of at the process of getting married, settling down, and wanting something slightly more stable. You were just getting warmed up. And I was just getting warmed up. So a lot of them went to work in London in finance or consultancy,

something with a bit of cash. At that stage, I wasn't motivated by cash at all. I just wanted to go and have adventures and prove things to myself. You almost said fun. You said I'm going to go have adventures. Yeah, some of it was fun. So I thought there's got to be something in this. And so while I was kind of planning,

I wanted to bring together my passions of writing, I sort of had an amateur interest in photography. And of course, travel was kind of at the heart of everything that I did. So I was planning and I was chatting to a friend of mine, Tom Bogkin, who was at that stage also in the process of leaving the military. And we came with this idea. of setting up some sort of a travel company, taking people on adventures, expeditions. He saw a few months left before he left the military.

So in the meantime, I volunteered for a charity. A friend of mine had set up a charity in Africa, in Malawi. And what they really needed more than anything else was vehicles. They needed a couple of ambulances. And so she was like, is there any way you can, you know, somehow while you're sitting around plotting your next trip, why don't you send me some ambulances, raise some money or something like that? So I said, okay.

But we're going to do this the fun way. So I basically got together a bunch of my friends, told them to take two months leave, whatever they were doing, and we were going to buy the ambulances on eBay and drive them to Malawi, which is 10,000 miles away. And that's what we did. I managed to raise probably about 50 grand, not a massive amount of money,

but bought a couple of 20-year-old land cruisers off the internet, painted them white, taught myself basic mechanics, stuck a flashing light on the top, and off we went. And we drove all the way through, Europe, through the Middle East, went through Syria, you know, all these crazy places. And two months later went to, you know, finally delivered these ambulances to this little clinic in Malawi.

And it was such a rewarding experience. I mean, it was a heck of a road trip, but it was, you know, it was for a good course. And these ambulances are still being used today to save lives. And there was something about that that really, I found really rewarding. And I thought, well, maybe if there's a way of commercializing this, I can turn this into a lifestyle and that's what I did. So when Tom finally did leave the army, we ended up setting up a company called Sequel Compass, which basically offered military style expeditions in some of the most remote places in the world to civilian clients. But with a very military ethos, we're going

from A to B, it's going to be tough, everyone needs to get stuck in, everyone needs to wash their own dishes. This is not a package tour. Let's go. So the first trip, the flagship trip we did was horse riding in northern Afghanistan, which in 2011, I think that was. up in a place called the Wakan Corridor, which is completely unaffected by war and the Taliban. But it was, you know, it sold out. I couldn't believe it. How many people?

It was only about 12 or so people. So it was small group trips. The next one we did was mountain climbing on the Iraq-Iran border up in Kurdistan. And that was pretty special too. We then went across the Sahara Desert in Sudan with camels. We rafted down the Nile in South Sudan, walked across Malagascar, all these sorts of insane trips. but it was so popular.

It wasn't long before we started getting the likes of Discovery Channel and National Geographic calling us up saying, look, we've seen these kind of trips that you can do. Can you take our journalists and our film crews? So that was a bit of a segue into the world of media. And before we knew it, we were taking these highly respected film crews and journalists and directors into Syria, Iraq, wherever you wanted to go. And we met all sorts of people.

I mean, I ended up in the sort of security for George Clooney at one point. It was wild. But that was how it sort of led on to. Is he an actor or something or a politician? George Clooney? Yeah. Yeah, well, I don't know. He's a bit of both, isn't he?

Movie guy? Echo Charles. Yes. Jack. I was believing you for it. Hey, yeah. At some point, I think it was 2010, you started writing your first book. Yes.

And you write about it in this book. You write about writing your first book. And one of the things you say, you're like talking about the challenge of writing a book. And the quote that I, that I liked was you said, are you really going to feel more inspired tomorrow? Or do you just need to be firm with yourself and get started? Once again, it's rationalization. Well, I really don't feel like writing today.

Maybe I can wait until tomorrow. So you started writing this book and you go through your methods, you know, with some, you know, about how you lay it out. And you're very methodical about your writing. How'd that book, you know, what did the publishers just jumped all over that one, huh? Sadly not. So this was when I was trying to set up a business. I was trying to have fun. I was trying to get over the fact that I left the army

and wasn't, I hadn't quite achieved what I wanted to do. So I thought, okay, what I'm going to do is going to write about that trip that we discussed before when I hitchhiked to India, because I thought it was interesting. Whether or not anyone else did was another matter. I wrote this book, 100,000 words, pitched it to agents, publishers,

and basically got told to piss off at every turn. Nobody was interested. They said, you know, nobody cares about your honest. holidays. So it was quite disappointing, but I'd written 100,000 words. It was on my laptop. And I thought, okay, maybe this book's not good enough, but it's been a really useful learning curve. It's, it's given me an introduction to writing and the process. And that inspired me to carry on. And but I knew I needed to do something that was more impressive, something that would get picked up. And, and that's how it led on to the sort of the bigger expeditions.

later on. So you were thinking, I've got to do cooler stuff if I'm going to write a book about it and people are actually going to be interested in it. Exactly. Yeah. What was the first step towards that? What was the trip that you said, all right, this is worth writing about? So like I say, I was doing all was that freaking horse riding in Afghanistan? Well, no, none of those were big or bold enough. They were all cool trips, but they were still two weeks, you know, trips. Oh, you said two weeks. Two weeks. Yeah. These were all like short trips that the paying clients could come on. And whilst it was fun guiding trips for paying clients, it wasn't the kind of stuff that I could write about. But it was all, it was all leading in the direction. Were you guys profitable? Uh, quite the opposite.

So I was, I was, I was homeless. I spent three years. Bro, you've been homeless since you're like 14. No, but this, this was proper homeless. I was, I had, uh, I'd basically, whatever money I'd saved up from the army, I'd invested into this company with my buddy, which meant that I didn't have any money for rent. So I was basically staying on friends floors. Um, um, and, um, and, and, For three years, but I also had a rule that I'd learned in India. I'd stayed at a Gurdwara at the Golden Temple in India. And it's part of the Sikh religion to offer hospitality, but only for three days and three nights.

After that, you can move on. So I'd adopted this, this, I quite like that because you don't want to, like, you know, sort of burn your bridges or outstay, you're welcome. So I'd adopted this mentality, and I was pretty rigid with it. So for three years, I never spent more than three nights in one place. So I'd stay with friends. And even if they insisted I stay longer, I said, no, I'm going to move on.

So I kind of did this big rotation through all my friends in London. But it did mean that there was a few occasions where there was gaps and I slept on benches. I'll be honest. I slept outside and whatever it took. And it was a pretty tough experience because I was kind of living on one or two meals a day maximum because that's all I could afford, especially in London. It's not cheap. And then, you know, I was surviving by going away on these short expeditions where at least my

expenses were paid for. You're stoked to go to Afghanistan. and ride a horse so you can get a meal. Just so I could get fed, yeah, for sure. And then, but whenever I was back in London for like a week or two weeks, I was, I was poor. I had no money. What was the opt tempo of these trips?

How often were you going on those? A lot. You know, it would be, I'd be away for two or three weeks, then back for a couple of weeks, then away. So it was basically nine or ten months of the year I was away. Why wasn't the company profitable? I mean, I would imagine your clientele must have been people with a lot of money. And for them, the difference between,

how much it would it cost? If I wanted to go horseback riding in Afghanistan, what were you going to charge me? Well, it's probably about two or three thousand pounds, so $5,000. So not super money. I mean, we were aiming at that high-end clientele, but at that stage we just didn't have the contacts. We didn't know those circles of people.

So we were trying to aim at the more mid-range budgets, people who were adventurous, who had a bit of cash, but we're not talking billionaires here. We're talking, you know, people that work in the city. I mean, we had all sorts of people, teachers. I mean, people who just saved up all year to do that one particular trip. What about your buddy Todd? Tom.

Tom. Tom. What about him? Where's he left? Well, he was married, so he'd already sort of managed to get himself sorted. So he had something to live unlike me. So we were in slightly different places. But for me, it was like, you know, I was using all of these trips as an opportunity to learn the craft of writing to do more photography.

So I'd go away and do this horse riding in Afghanistan, take some photographs and I'd try and sell them to, you know, Lonely Planet guidebooks or the newspapers, whatever it might be. So I was trying to build up a skill set. Were you getting any bites on that? Yeah, I was. It took a while. I mean, I was doing my fair share of weddings and baby photos, but it was all building up. But it was on one of these trips.

I was out in South Sudan doing a, making a film out there. It was a fishing show about a guy that was fishing for Nile Perch in the middle of a war zone. The only problem was he didn't really catch any fish, which doesn't make for a particularly good fishing show. And when we were back in Juba, which I don't know if you've been to Juba, but there's nothing there. I mean, it's, the world's newest country at the time, South Sudan. It had about three miles of paved road in the entire country.

I mean, even in the city center, it was just like dirt huts. So a pretty rudimentary place. We were out there trying to make a show about fishing, but hadn't it not caught any fish. The whole thing was a bit of a disaster. Turns out that George Clooney was in town doing some of his humanitarian work. And he'd landed, we tried to get him on the show. We thought, at least if we got George Clooney in the film, it's going to sell just for the sake that he's in it. the only problem is that the cameraman who was supposed to be filming George Clooney

because he was so starstruck turns out halfway through the interview to forgotten to press record so that was a disaster as well but we were out there we were kind of as a reputation within the film crew we thought this whole thing's a complete mess there's shambles and we're going to go back to channel four who'd commissioned this thing with our reputation in tatters at this point so they commissioned your company to film this wasn't my company I was just a freelance health and safety guy. I was, you know, part of secret compass, but we, you know, we basically sorted out. You got contracted out. Yeah. So, so Channel 4 is paying someone else to make this show. To make the show. And you're just a helper. I was a helper doing all the behind the scenes,

logistics, safety, keeping people fed and water. And you recognize that this isn't going well. This guy hasn't caught in a freaking fish yet. He hasn't got a fish. George Clooney, you didn't show up. Yeah, exactly. I ended up having to be George Clooney's hand double because they screwed up the first start of the interview. I mean, it was like, it was pretty bad. But that's how I met a guy called Neil. He was the second, he was the producer director on the show, a second cameraman. And he said, look, Lev, you know, we could do this ourselves. Why don't you get, why don't we film one of your expeditions, you know, cut the crap, let's go and do something cool. He said, have you got any ideas? And we were in South Sudan on the banks of the Nile. And I was sort of looked left and right,

so it was whopping great, big river. And I said, well, I wonder if anyone's ever walked the length of the river Nile? And he said, well, I'd highly down. And he said, well, I'd highly down. it because it's four and a half thousand miles long and I'm full of war zones so I said well let's do it and so that's where the idea was born and I decided I wanted to be the first person to walk the entire length of the River Nile and I thought that's that's big enough and bold enough to write a book about and get published so that was the plan and that was the plan that was back in 2012 and it took me about almost two years certainly 18 months of planning fundraising trying to get TV interest

trying to get a publisher all that sort of stuff but I was determined that that come what may, without, even if we don't get the support of TV or a book, I'm going to go and do this. And just by committing mentally, I think that's what did it. It was the confidence of then just walking into these meetings saying, screw you,

even if you don't give me any money, I'm doing it. And I think people saw that and the sort of the, I guess, the credibility of having been a paratrooper that got people brought into this vision. And somehow I managed to get the TV commission, book publishing deal and everything else,

and got the whole thing fully funded. And so off I went. Took nine months, walked four and a half thousand miles from Rwanda through Tanzania, through Uganda, South Sudan, all the way to the Mediterranean in Egypt. And that was a rough one. I mean, I know in reading through this, you had one of the guys that was with you, guy, Matt, Matthew Power. Yeah, Matthew.

He was a journalist and, yeah, he died. Yeah, he came out to write about me for a magazine. And sadly, he passed away from he. stroke on the way and that that was a real kick at the ass because you know it brought it home that this was real this wasn't just some some trip away you know stuff stuff can go wrong and sadly does go wrong sometimes but but it really brought it home and it made me really question the validity of this you know what was what I was doing right you know but you know it happened and I thought I've got to carry on to I've got to finish this for his legacy as much as anything else to to make if I give up now

then what was the whole point in any of it? So this was... So a TV crew is with you and they're filming? Not the whole time, no. I mean, the journey, at the time when I set off, I didn't know how long this would take. I'd anticipated about a year and, you know, you can't afford to pay a crew

for a 12 months to follow me around. So they came out four or five times for anywhere between three or four days and a week. So they were only on the ground, probably a total of about a month out of the nine months that I was, I was on my own or with local guides. You know, I always try and have a local person with me as an accompaniment.

But places like Sudan, they couldn't even get in because they weren't issuing journalists visas. So I was on my own for like two months in Sudan. How many miles were you doing a day? So I started doing probably, you know, 10 miles a day in places like Rwanda where it's quite hilly. But when I was really into my stride in the desert in Sudan, I mean, it was hot. It was sort of August, September time, with, with 120 degrees in the desert,

but probably averaging 45 to 50 kilometers, so 30 miles a day. And then this TV show, this is a TV show that eventually, or is it like a one documentary show? It's a four-part series, Walking the Nile, which then aired in the UK and in the States and globally, and it was a huge success, far more than I'd ever anticipated.

Book became a bestseller, and yeah, it changed my life. suddenly wasn't homeless anymore. When the, is it like on Netflix? Where do you watch it? It was on Discovery Channel in the US. It was on Channel 4 in the UK. But you know,

you can still find it, find it online. Yeah. Still out there. Did you feel like these bastards that filmed that only came on this thing for like three weeks and I was out there for nine months? Well, we all became friends.

And actually to this day, like Neil, who's the guy who originally inspired me to do this for TV. We're still, you know, best buddies. and we still, you know, I've now set up my own production company, so I make shows for other people and for myself as well, and he's on the team. So, yeah, we all became very close.

I mean, you tend to when you're in those sorts of circumstances. I mean, we were in South Sudan, in middle of a war zone, you know, it was, I mean, they weren't there at this time. It was just me, but. I was going to say, because you become close, and then they're like, hey, I'm out. We're going back to England for two months while you're going on and a slogging. All the excited things happened when they weren't there.

I mean, we were in a place called BOR. This was during the, just the sort of there's a big big civil war happening in South Sudan it was they just got the new country

but there's still a lot of tribal fighting I turned up in this town called Boar the same morning that 60 members of a tribe had been murdered

inside the United Nations refugee camp the whole thing was kicking off I found myself on top of a you know this bombed out hotel with the rebels

approaching on one side you know trace a fire going overheads there was mortars landing nearby and the only alternative apart from watching the fireworks display was climbing down the ladder

into the river aisle which was filled with crocodiles. So it was a pretty hairy time and lots of things, you know, like I say, can and do go wrong. But turns out that makes for good TV. Then you, so you get done with that, you got a place to live now.

You're kind of going in a different direction as far as financially. But now you've got to start plotting on things. Like, are you thinking yourself, all right, I got a one-up myself. Well, it came pretty quickly. You know, the show was successful. I was then asked, you know, literally a couple of months later, where's next?

And of course, people want bigger and better. I thought, well, I've just walked the entire length of the room and aisle. I mean, what's bigger and better than that? So I thought, well, what I'm going to do is I don't want to be a one-hit wonder or a sort of flash at the pan. I need to think the long game. So I sort of squared it away in my own mind the kind of, journeys that I wanted to do, the kind of places that I wanted to visit. And I wrote down sort of my values, the things that I will not move away from. And it was actually going back to my

degree, do my degree at university. I said, I'm going to visit places that hold a genuine interest because at this stage I was getting all sorts of offers to go and build, you know, sort of log cabins in the woods in Alaska and do fishing shows and do cooking shows, all of which are great and interesting. but if I was to actually see this as a long-term career, I need to sort of call my own niche. And so I thought by doing journeys either on foot or certainly at the slowest pace into places that have got a bit of a bad reputation,

there's an interesting way of shining a spotlight on places that really need it. So I thought, why not pick a geographical feature. The Himalayas seem the next obvious choice, the biggest mountain range in the world, Mount Everest, and walk the length of that. I thought I'm going to start at the place that place, very close to my whole Afghanistan, in the Pamir Mountains and walk all the way to the Tibetan Plateau.

And that was another journey of two and a half, three thousand miles, and that took about six months as well. So that was the next big journey, which happened 12 months later. And then ever since then, I've been doing one big journey pretty much every year since then. Are you going solo? Were you solo when you walked in aisle? Well, like I said, I always have a local guide. They would change over depending on which country I was in.

So I was anyone to do the entire. What about the Himalayas solo? Again, other than guides, local guides. Yeah, and the crew would fly out and meet me along the way to film what they thought were the bankers. But, you know, it's always the way that the most interesting stuff happens when you're on your, either on your own or in a very small crew. Because the moment you've got a car with a crew there, things are not quite the same. People sort of close a bit and they're not as open. So a lot of the interesting stuff happens, you know, when you're unaccompanied, which is what happened when I was in the,

and my car, I was, the one time, is the irony of a walking expedition is the one time that I decided to get in a taxi because I was told I couldn't camp in it in this particular village and I had to move on to the next. That was when I had a pretty big accident. Yeah, talk us through, you read about it in the book, talk us through that one.

So it was, I'll never forget it, I was the 19th of August, 2015. I was in a town called Musicott with my local guide, Binod, and actually my brother who'd flown out to me, meet me a day before to join me for a week of what was his annual holiday. God. I know the story, so I can just imagine your brother. Yeah, cool. You want to go on some vacation? Yeah. So we're in the mountains, and it was just, it was almost nighttime. It was getting dark. And most of the time,

you know, I'd already been walking for three months here. We'd just camp in the villages or stay in local houses, whatever it took. But there was a Maoist interaction in this part of Nepal. So the Communists were taking over villages and they didn't take kindly to foreigners because, you know, they just said, and they weren't aggressive. They just said, look, you can't stay here, go to the town and then you can come back tomorrow and carry on your walk. But you're not, you can't stay in this village because we're having an internal dispute. So we said, fine.

So we got a local taxi, got in it, drove over the mountain pass. And just as we were going over the crest of the cliff, the brakes failed. So the car goes careering down this, this, this, this, this road. And unable to slow down, hits the side of the wall, and bounces straight off this, this cliff top. And when I say cliff top, it was a huge fall straight into the forest below, about 150 meters, which is what's that, 450 feet to the bottom of this gorge. And somehow, you know, again, thank you, my lucky stars. Do you have a seatbelt on? There were no seatbelt in this car.

I mean, it was an Indian. There were no airbags. There was no airbags. What kind of car was it? It was a Mahindra Jeep. So it was a metal frame, thankfully, not some cheap stuff. But it was, yeah, it was straight off the edge. And that was me.

I thought that this is what I... How long were you no break rolling down the hill? I'm difficult to tell. I think probably 10 seconds. I mean, the driver was trying to bounce it against the wall to slow it down. But you can imagine these roads. It's just a dirt track. Shear sort of rock face on the one hand and then a drop-off.

No barriers, nothing like that. And it was just a completely pitch of pitch black, middle of the night. and that was it. I thought I was a goner. And it was almost comedic in the sense that it didn't, it literally flew off the edge. And we were airborne for what felt like in eternity. It was probably just a few seconds.

But it was the only part of the roadside where there were no trees because it was forested, this bank. But we went off the pit where there was obviously a river running through. So it just kept on going. And when we finally did hit the deck, it bounced and rolled. probably rolled 10 times all the way to the bottom of the valley. And somehow I stayed in the vehicle. The driver and this random other guy that he picked up,

a local, had been thrown through the windscreen somewhere up on the mountain. We stayed in the car and, yeah, made it all the way to the bottom. At which point I thought I'd lost my arm because I couldn't feel it or see it. When the car settles. Yeah, when it finally settles. Are you conscious this whole time? Conscious the whole time. Yeah.

What do you say to your brother besides, bro, I'm sorry. Well, I got you out here. It was, I can thank my brother because when I, when I sort of figured out where I was, I crawled out of the car, thought I'd lost my arm. My first instinct was to go and find my arm. You know that scene on the beach of Saving Private Ryan where he's holding hold his arm, looking slightly dazed and confused. That was me in this car.

I went, I couldn't find it. Then I realized it was still attached, but I couldn't feel it. It was pointing the wrong way. It was completely, I mean, you can see the scar there. I had to sort of snap it back into place. That's when the pain started. And I think it was me screaming that woke my brother up. And he was relatively uninjured.

I mean, he'd been bashed around, but he hadn't got anything broken. So I couldn't move. I was in such pain. Binod, the guide, he was pretty much unconscious. And Pete, my brother, he came over and, you know, he's done a few trips, but nothing like this. You know, he was working in finance. You know, he sort of... He's back in finance.

Yes. Well, no, it's the interesting thing was Pete rescued us. He went and shouted for help. Luckily, the sound of the car crashing had woken up some local villagers a mile and they'd come to investigate. Probably took about an hour maybe for enough locals to come to carriers out. But then they had to carry us a mile through the jungle to the local village. You weren't bleeding? I mean, I wasn't bleeding. I wasn't bleeding. You weren't like bleeding, like you weren't life-threatening blood. No. My arm was just completely mangled. The driver, sadly, was in a very different position. He'd broken everything, his body, his neck. He was somewhere up the mountains. He was going to find him. We were taken to a very small clinic in the local village. And when I say small, I mean, there's like chickens running around the water.

This was basic stuff. But luckily they happened. Yes, that qualifies his basic. When you roll into the hospital and there's chickens. But they had morphine, thankfully. So that, you know, took away some of the pain. But, yeah, my brother, he coordinated the rescue. It took three days, though, because it was the rainy season.

and we couldn't get a helicopter in. The roads were all washed away. So it took three days for a helicopter to come. So it was a trying time, to say the least. And I think my brother was possibly regretting his holiday destination. But yeah, he was a real trooper throughout the whole experience. And yeah, so that really disrupted the trip a little bit. But I had to fly back to the UK for surgery

because they couldn't do it in Kathmandu because it was just after the 2015 earthquake, which had screwed all the hospitals. So I went back to the UK, had surgery, they fixed my arm, but then I couldn't give up. I'd chosen this. This was my career. I wasn't going to give up. So I, whatever it was, 45 days later, I flew back out to Nepal, went back to the car, still

there in the jungle, rusting over and carried on walking for another three months. The TV show came out. Yeah, they came out. They enjoyed that bit. They filmed me in hospital getting surgery and all the rest of it. And then this becomes another TV show. And did you write another book about this one? Yeah, wrote a book called Walking the Himalayas.

Keep it simple. And then they, of course, they said, what's next? So I had to come up with another one. You're paying yourself into a corner, man. Yeah, absolutely. So what was the next one? Walking the Americas. So I wanted to do something in Central America.

I'd had this girlfriend, this Mexican girlfriend, so I knew Mexico quite well. But I was fascinated by the ancient Mayan civilization. I wanted to go to see places like Honduras. and Guatemala and in Colombia because I knew that would have a bit of edge. And so I decided to walk from where the Spanish first landed on the Yucatan Peninsula,

give it a bit of historical context all the way to South America across the Darien Gap, which is probably one of the most remote and fearsome stretches of jungle anywhere in the world. So that was another six months, another 2,000 miles of walking. Again, lots of scrapes there as well. And this is the same thing.

TV crews coming out, joining you for four or five days here and there, wherever they think there's going to be the most mayhem is when they're showing up. You're carrying a freaking backpack with like a water bottle and 50 bucks. Yeah, yeah. And off we went. And that was a really, that was actually a really enjoyable journey because the guy that came with me, my guide for that one was actually a guy who had known for a number of years

called Alberto, who was the guy that got me into photography in the first place. And he'd lived in Mexico. He'd never walked anywhere in his life anywhere. And he certainly wasn't a professional guide. He was a studio photographer. He was far more at home sitting on yachts with supermodels. But he had just got divorced and was looking for an adventure. So I said, look, mate, come with me.

We're going to go and have some fun. And off we went. And we walked for six months through all these random countries. And we went through the ganglands in Honduras, met the sort of the cartels along the way. We sort of had meetings with all sorts of gangsters. that was a wild trip as well. What about a GoPro? So I had this little flip camera.

The interesting thing is actually you'd think sometimes that it would be tricky to film in these places. But actually having a camera does open up conversations. People are like, hang on, I want my photograph taken or I want to tell you my story. And particularly in places that don't get many tourists. Because if you go to touristy places, people aren't that, they're not that interesting, getting the photos taken or telling you their story. but if you go to Honduras, I mean, there's one story from there. We were in a town called San Pedro Sula, which other than Ciad Juarez, I think, was the murder capital of the world.

This is where the two main cartels, you've got MS-13 and Barrio 18, these two rival gangs that do pretty bad things to each other, are based. They've got their own, you know, neighborhoods. And we wanted to walk straight through the city. And the only way to do so was to cross between these two gangers. But of course the police and the army were like, look, we don't go in there. You can't rely on us for backing. So we asked around and Alberto was sort of doing all the translation and we eventually found this street pastor who said, look, I know the gang leaders of both of these guys.

I can probably get you in if you want. So, okay, well, ask the question. So he got his, he got two phones out actually and he called the leaders of both gangs and had them on speakerphone next to each other, which is bizarre. Both of these leaders were both in jail, right? Because they were. and he got them and he got them both on speakerphone

and said, look, I've got these two gringoes, I mean, he wasn't Albertos, he was a Mexican but he called us both gringoes. He said, look, they want to walk through your turf, you know, will you let them? And to my surprise, both these leaders were like, yeah,

absolutely no problem, you know, as long as you give a fair and honest representation of our story, we want to tell you our story and why we have these gangs. But he said, just give us 24 hours because we were just going to and clean up the graffiti and pick up the trash from the streets.

They wanted to show the best side of their gang wars. And it was the most bizarre experience. But we went through these areas escorted by these kids, 10, 12-year-olds. We're covered in tattoos with pistols down their jeans. And they showed us the Casalocas, the crazy house, where they torture each other. And this is where we killed, you know, this person. This is where we hung. It was like tragic stuff, but in the most surreal setting.

And it was a very bizarre experience to go and see that. And we saw a guy shot at the side of the street, you know, just in, just, yeah, from these gang wars. So, and I'm not into voyeurism. I don't go there to sort of glamorize any of this. It's trying to show what, you know, what the struggle is like for a lot of people living in these circumstances and not shy away from some of those really difficult but compelling stories. Now, did you, did you have a film crew there when you did that section? They had come out and we had a real struggle with the channel to sort of

Allow us to go into these places because you can imagine the lawyers back home This is this is too sketchy. We're not sure about this plus people with brains back on I'm like bro But you know, I think a lot of it was down to the fact that we'd got we'd found this guy who he wasn't a cowboy He was like I live I've lived in these in in on this on in these neighborhoods all my life and So did the camera come crew come through or not? So they can't, yeah, they came. They did.

So all that footage. And so what's that, what's that show called? Walking the Americas. Walking the Americas. How many hours is one of these shows? Each one's, I mean, the Nile was four episodes, four hours, Himalayas was five. I think Walking the Americas was five as well. Yeah.

Okay. So now you get back from that and you've got to step it up again, right? Okay, so the next one. Basically, this is what you're getting into. Going back to my sort of original. point of going back to places that I'd studied. My studies at university had mainly been about, you know, the Middle East, about places where the old British Empire had had a legacy, or places in, you know, in the news now, current affairs. And obviously, Russia, Iran were both pretty

high up on the agenda. This was back in 2017. Putin's sort of just getting reelected, all this sort of stuff. So I wanted to go and explore that region more. The Caucasus as a historical region is fascinating. So I thought, why not do a journey from Europe into Asia, over the Caucasus Mountains from Russia into Iran. We called that one crossing the wild frontier. So we started on the Black Sea, finished on the Caspian Sea, and going through places like Chechnya, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and then finished in Iran.

Getting travel permits to go into those places was actually quite tricky. But, you know, we had to apply to Russia. And the first thing they asked on your visa application is, have you or have you ever served in a foreign military? So they dig deep into your background. But thankfully, they let me in. The same with Iran. I mean, getting into Iran was a tricky one because initially they were like, no way.

We don't let, you know, especially not from the UK. We're not friends right now. Eventually, through a contact, I was told that I could meet a person from the Iranian embassy, but not at the embassy. It was a very mysterious lady who wouldn't give me her name with sunglasses, met me in a cafe in South Kensington and London and said, what do you want? I said, there's a link to all my shows. Go and see for yourself. I gave her a copy of my books. And she said, okay, I'll go away and read them. And the next day, it was on the

president, you know, the president's or prime minister's desk of Iran and I got approved a visa. And I think what they liked is the fact that I'm not there to do on the propaganda, but I'm not shying away from the hard stories either. But I'm not, I'm certainly not there to do investigative of journalism to, with an agenda-based sort of approach. I'm there to show what life is like for normal people. And they let me in. And so I did this amazing trip through places that you just don't get a fair understanding of, especially places like Chichinia.

And that was a really, really fascinating journey. Thankfully, nothing went particularly wrong on that one. I just got a really great understanding of what the region was like. Yeah, and I think, you know, a lot of times when people ask me, and I was just asked this, I was getting interviewed the other day. and, you know, people start asking about, well, the war in Iraq, should we have been there and all this? Was it, is it the moral right thing to do? And a lot of times what I try and do in those situations is I try and bring things down to a very granular level of what it was like on the ground.

And what I like about what you're doing is you're going beat. I guess the word is beneath the politics. I don't know if that's going to sound right, but you're going beneath the political, atmosphere to the actual other human beings that are living their lives that are you know trying to earn a living trying to raise their family trying to build their future and there's so much commonality that gets missed and that's that's often what i also say about iraq you know it's like i would kick in the door to a building and there'd be you know a family in there and they the dad's trying to build a business of selling whatever dates and the mom's you know trying to sew stuff that she can sell

in the neighborhood and the kids are wanting to play soccer and they're just normal people and yet you can never you can never see that when you when it's all screened out by the political viewpoint so what i what's is clicking for me now and i'm starting to understand is that you're going beneath that level in talking to the people on the ground and getting a real look and probably i'm assuming exposing all these commonalities that we have as human beings with other human beings Yeah, and I mean, that was never an outright intention. It's just sort of happened throughout these journeys, is trying to find out what does Unites and actually trying to find those human stories.

And actually there's a lot of positivity. And what I found is the sense of hospitality, you know, has been overwhelming throughout. And I've seen that in some of the places that you wouldn't expect it. Yeah, and even, you know, I started off joking in the early part of this, You know, no one would ever invite me in their house. And then as I'm sitting here listening to you talk and I've been to, I mean, obviously, I've been all over the world and been to all kinds of different countries.

And it's the same thing when you actually, when you actually get past that, get, but underneath that political vision that we have of a place, there's, you know, I've had people treat me unbelievably well all over the world. And that's why you have to get, you have to, you have to make those human connections with other people. And you'll realize, oh, yeah, they'll help you out. I mean, like you said, most people, they'll give you some water if you need some water. They'll pull over the side of the road and help you if you need it. That's absolutely.

So that's very enlightening. I'll never forget when I was on the Nile, this was back in 2014, I was in Sudan. And it was, this was a bit with, there's no crew there. It was me with a local guy called Moez. And it was getting very hot. We couldn't carry enough water just to survive. So we had to go and buy some camels from the local market. Now, I don't know how to keep a camel, you know, keep a camel going.

So we thought we'd better employ a couple of Bedouin camel handlers to come with us. So for two months, we trekked across the entire Sahara following the River Nile. There was one bit of the Nile where we had to go sort of slightly into the desert because there was some security issues by the Nile. So we were going through these villages and everyone was so hospitable. People were saying, come in, have some of our water. And it was almost, it was so overwhelming. We were getting slowed down because we needed to really.

the Egyptian border before Ramadan because that was the that was the basis for which these two camel handles said that will come with you but only for 50 days because we're going to get back to our families so we that was the deadline that was the hard stop so off we went and we were getting further and further behind schedule because of the hospitality because people say I come and teach my kids English and this and the other so we my two camel handlers were on the verge of revolt at this stage so we're like we're going home if you're going to you know mess around doing your silly filming and this stuff. So we came to an agreement. We said,

okay, what we'll do is day on, day off. One day we'll go through the villages where we'll meet people and talk and film and this, you know, all that. And then we'll do another day walking in the desert, avoiding the villages and camping out in the desert. And there, but we can cover more ground. But there was one occasion where we'd done this, we're in the middle of the desert, about a mile away from the nearest village. We set up our camp, made a little fire. And the local villages are mile away. Must have seen the flickering of the flames. in the desert and it wasn't long before a crowd of men came and came out to investigate. They said, what are you doing? And we said, well, we explained that we were trying to avoid

their hospitality in the most polite terms possible. And they said, they were getting really upset by this. So no, you must come. And we said, no. One guy stormed off. And he came back, half an hour later, he carried his bed on his head. And he said, if you're not going to come into my house, my home is coming to you. And that, I think, really demonstrates the incredible hospitality. I can't remember. I can't ever imagine that happening back in. if a Sudanese man was sort of passing down the street. But it's moments like that that really do kind of restore your faith in humankind. But you still have to step it up a little bit.

It seems like we're just getting more and more hostile environments. And so now it's like 2017, 2018. The freaking war in Iraq and Syria with ISIS is just flaring up. So, of course, you're like a moth drawn to the fire. So that's the next one, right? So I'd always been fascinated by the Middle East. Like I mentioned before, in 2003, I was in Iraq. I like the way you kicked these stories off with.

Like, I've always been fascinated with, you know, how sharp a shark's teeth could be. All right, so you got this fascination with the Middle East. So I'd been there in 2003, which is when I hitchhiked through Baghdad and all this, you know. So I'd wanted to return to Iraq. I'd wanted to see more of the region. ever since and I'd actually in fact after the Nile I pitched the idea of doing a trip around

the Arabian Peninsula to the powers that be within TV and sadly they said no they said one it's probably too dangerous and two they didn't feel as though there was sufficient interest they said in fact the word the exact words were that's just the realm of current affairs and news nobody nobody's interest in the Middle East as a destination there was a place to to find out more about and I thought that was just a disappointing answer so you're a on, I'd pitched this, you know, after the Himalayas, I pitched it again, they said, no, let's do the Americas. After that, I pitched it again, they said no again. And that just wound me up. So after the Russia to Iran expedition, I was like, I am doing the Middle East. I want to go to Arabia,

come on, we're the way out of you. So I've pretty much, you know, got told, no, we're not doing it by the TV company, by the TV guys. And I said, well, I'm doing it, which didn't, didn't go down well in TV land in the UK, but I decided that was their problem. So I set up my own production company to facilitate this. When you say TV people, these are, this is the channel. This is the channel. This is the channel. And, and you're pitching, is it, is it, is it multiple channels that you're pitching to? Is it just, like straight up BBC? It was, it was, it was channel four. Okay. Um, they, but, you know, it then got syndicated out to Discovery Channel and whoever else wants to buy it internationally. So you're pitching to,

the people that have made your other shows, hey, let me do this one. And they're like, look, no, not happening. And you just say, all right, cool, I'm doing it anyways. Yeah. So I wouldn't say I got sacked, but I kind of, they said, okay, well, you're not working with us if that's the case. So I said, okay, that's fine. I'm going to go and do it.

So I set up my own production company and basically self-financed this expedition with a couple of mates, my friend Dave and Simon, who chipped in. And going back to that thing about empowering people and bringing people on the team, I said, look, if we all chip in the same amount of cash, we'll take it the same amount of profit at the end of the day. And they said, okay. And these are guys who'd help me before on shows doing the health and safety. And I got Neil, my mate who's the director to come on board.

So we basically just clubbed together and off we went. And actually it freed up so many things because I was getting more and more frustrated with more and more restrictions and limitations on how things were produced. And actually, I felt like my creative sort of, my personal creative spirit was being somewhat suppressed a little bit. So I said, okay, I'm going to give this a go. What's the worst that can happen? So we decided to go and just do this. And the idea was to go and look at the Arabian Peninsula and all the countries that make that up in the same way.

Not necessarily walking the whole route this time because there's a lot of empty stretches of desert where not much goes on, but certainly hitchhiking and traveling with locals. So the plan was to start up on the Turkish border with Syria up in Rajava and the Kutjava. and the Kurdish region and basically walk, travel, hitchhike, whatever, all the way around the entire Gulf, and then finish up at Lebanon in the historic city of Biblos, which is the oldest city in the world, and revisit some of these places I'd been to on my earlier travels, including Baghdad and to create a Mosul.

Now, of course, this was in the height of the war against ISIS. They still weren't defeated in Syria and Iraq, so it was a pretty big challenge. But doing it very light for print, there was only other three others traveling at once. It meant that we could actually go and achieve something that had never been done before, which is actually travel through all these multiple countries. So going through places like Syria, we were embedded with the Kurdish militia.

In Iraq, we managed to join a group called the Hashid, the PMF, the popular mobilization forces who are sometimes the bad guys, but these are the guys fighting against ISIS on this occasion, but they're also Iranian-backed militias. I was embedded with them on the final Huija offensive, which is the final battle against ISIS in Iraq. On the front line, I mean, that was something else. I mean, it was an entire Afghan tour in three days.

I mean, it was intense. So now you guys are, now you guys are the camera crew? We are the three of you. It's just three of us, yeah. So now you got cameras rolling all the time. And I watch some of your, some of the stuff that's on YouTube. I watch you rolling up to that offensive. And the guys like, all right, lunch break.

and there's some, you know, having work with Iraqi soldiers a bunch. I was like, I know what's going on there. I know what that feels like. Yeah. But, like, what was the proximity to the fighting that? Were you getting right in it? Oh, no, right in it. Yeah.

I mean, it was kind of bizarre experience because we managed to hitch a lift to the front line where these sort of, you know, the Iraqi volunteers, these weren't the Iraqi army. These were literally the guys too old or too young to join the military. And they were fighting on their home turf. were fighting their neighbours. So these were mainly sheer militiamen fighters who'd volunteered, mainly to come out of retirement, to basically go and, you know, kick ISIS off the, off the, off the land. So we were rolling up not, I mean, they had about 12 main battle tanks, but mostly these guys were in flip-flops and Toyota pickups, you know, with a 50-cow mounted

on the, on the back, and driving in a straight line, no tactics, no strategy, literally a taxi to the front line. So we got a taxi to the front line, said, we'll drop us off here, hitched a ride on a tank, just jumped on a tank and just drove. The main, the point vehicle was a bulldozer with this Iraqi dude with a cowboy hat. I mean, it was absolutely crazy. Yes. Smoking a cigar as the bullets were pinging off the front of this bulldozer. And it was just a straight line waiting to get ambushed and we got ambushed.

And, you know, you could see the black flags of ISIS in these villages. And we just drive up to them, spread out, bond the shit out of it and then go in there. And we were in the mix, you know, right on the front line, filming everything. and liberating these villages and capturing we caught three ISIS commanders. I mean, I've still got one of the flags at home, actually, that took with me. But it was quite a, it felt a very important

and historical moment. You know, these, when the villages were liberated and they caught the command, the ISIS fighters, the women would come out. They'd rip their burkas off and they were thanking these Iraqi volunteers for rescuing them. Some of these women hadn't been outside

of their own compound for three years. so it was it was a very powerful thing to be witness to yeah we had another guest on and covered another book on here um holly who whose book only cry for the living and she interviewed a lot of those women and what they went through so you know liberation was the the understatement of the year for what was happening to the people inside those villages that were you know and cities that were run by ISIS did you what do you're not I know that you're you don't carry a weapon when you do this stuff um what you just wearing body armor we we managed to pick up some body armor from a bill

you know just bought some from the local shop and and off you go but um yeah it going through the sort of the urban fighting in place like shark at i mean we were in mosul this is a week or two after it had been liberated from ISIS I mean you know there's there was still a lot of clear operations going on. You've obviously got to be careful, but you know, I've been doing this for long enough to know what to do and what not to do, but at the same time we wanted to see what was going on because nobody was filming

this, you know, the any news reports that were coming out were coming out from Baghdad or Bill. Very few people were getting onto the front line and actually seeing what life is like on both sides. And we met these ISIS fighters. We got a camera in their face and that was quite rare. So it was fascinating to

see what was going on and to see the reality of life. And these guys, the the volunteers who were fighting. They'd been fighting solidly for three years. So you mentioned the lunch break. I mean, literally in the middle of the battle, the truck turned up with the chicken sandwiches on the back.

And people just stopped. They're like, well, the fight's not going anywhere. And everyone just sat down and had their chicken sandwich and then carried on. And it was a kind of bizarre experience, but it was no different to being on exercise and sorts of be playing with the British army, really.

As you wrap up getting, How did you decide it's time to move on? Was it when, was it like Missoual was now pretty much done? Was it, what made you decide, all right, we can move on now? So on the last day, I mean, we'd been attached with these guys. We'd seen Mosul. We'd been attached to the, to the frontline fighting units for a couple of days. There was one guy.

I mean, it kind of, it all sunk in. I mean, one, we'd kind of got enough fighting footage, and we didn't want this show to be entirely about for the fighting. But two, I met this one guy. We've been told we must meet him. His name was Abu Tassin. Now, Abu Tassin, his nickname was the Hawkeye. He was Iraq's most feared sniper.

He'd been fighting, you know, he was 65 years old. He'd fought in every war since 1973 against the Israelis. He'd fought in Bosnia and Chechnya. He'd fought in 91 in the Gulf against, you know, the Americans. He'd fought in 2003 against the British in Basra. He'd fought in 2007 against you, probably, in Iraq. in for Luger rather and he'd come out of retirement

to fight against ISIS. Is he a sheer guy? He's a sheer guy. Yeah. And he was literally a rax most feared warrior. I mean, they'd been books written about him. And he was there fighting on his motorbike with his big, you know, six-foot sniper rifle.

And he agreed to speak to me. He didn't normally do journalist interviews, particularly not with Brits, that's for sure. But he agreed to speak to me, sort of soldiers to soldier, when I sort of told him I was in the Paris and he said, well, I've probably killed some of your friends as long you don't mind that.

And it was a big decision to go and sit with this guy who had been not my person enemy, but an enemy against my colleagues and friends. But you kind of have to take that emotion out of it. And ultimately, I was in his country, listening to his story. And by the way, now he was fighting against an enemy of... Of the British and of the Americans and of human beings.

and of humanity. Sure. So we were sat around the campfire and he told me a story. He killed 400 odd people. He was quite open about the fact that he was against, you know, Oz, the coalition invading his country. But we were on the right side of history this time around and he thought that what he was doing was the right thing,

which was to rid his land of ISIS, which he was convinced was a creation of the chaos of, you know, 10 years of war. And I think it was a thing. that moment I thought, okay, enough's enough, I've heard the story, we should move on. And it was probably about time, actually, because sadly seven days later, he was himself killed by ISIS on that same battle on the last day of the war against ISIS. So there was some sort of poetry in that. But we left that behind and carried on the journey and continued around the Gulf. And like I

said, I didn't want this journey to be just about the conflict, because that's what we associate so much with, with the region. But to then jump out of Iraq. and then be in southern Iraq, actually, we were in amongst the marshes around Nasiria and Basra. You know, this is the birthplace of civilization, the Garden of Eden and so on. And to be in amongst the marsh Arabs, I don't know if you serve down there,

with these very traditional tribes who literally, you know, live amongst the marshes in these ancient ways of living in the huts, and they're called the Moodheaf and, you know, fishing and foxes. I mean, it's like going back to biblical times. And it was that stark contrast, you know, which was to me really, really interesting. And I wanted to give that balance.

And then to go from there into Kuwait and then to Dubai where you suddenly got these skyscrapers and Friday boozy brunches. I wanted to show that whole spectrum of what life is like in this region. And it was some really stark contrast. And to get your head into that and around that was often quite difficult. I mean, Dubai is just crazy. It's crazy. Like especially when you talk about that contrast between Mosul completely destroyed and just a living hell for everyone that's up there.

Then you go to Dubai, which is just, I mean, it's like Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah, the entire city's been built for like 20 years or something like that. And it's just everything is brand new and to the highest standards of luxury in everything. It's like, you can't get more of a stark contrast. It was a huge one. I mean, I actually quite enjoyed going, and it was a nice break having been on this war zone for the... Yeah, you probably got confused. We saw like a bed.

But that's what I wanted to show. I wanted to show these really stark differences and this traditional way of life, the Bedouin. You know, I studied all about Lawrence of Arabia and the old sort of Arabist explorers, people like Wilford Thessiger, who crossed the empty quarter. So to then go from there into Oman, which is a beautiful country, you've got these amazing, endless sand dunes and very traditional way of life there and then into yemen again a country that um was incredibly difficult to get into but we somehow managed it um it was yeah shown a fair representation you get done with this trip and then you go back so how long does it take when you get done with a trip how long does it take for the production to have happened and then what did you do

in this particular case did you now have to sell what you made well exactly yeah so with this one I got my own team on the case, so we were editing on the go. I mean, we're kind of sending the rushes back, and then we got an edit suite, and we were doing it on the go. So I think it ended up being, I think we got back from the trip in February, March, and it was on TV sort of two or three months later. Did you go back to Channel 4 and sell it to them? No, they wouldn't take it.

On principle, they said, we don't want to talk to you. But we sold it to Discovery Channel in the UK. Oh, you're like, what? And then it got shortlisted for a broadcast. award. So yeah, that was that was a real sense of, not just vindication, but, you know, it was, it was a very, very good documentary. And for me, it took it back to the, the organic, authentic roots of what my journeys ultimately are. And is, is that one also like four, five hours, four or five shows? Yeah, that one's five episodes as well. Were you profitable? Did you make money?

It washed its face just about, didn't make that much money on it, but it was worth it just because it set the ball very, very high. So you get done with that one. How do you measure success on those in terms of, I mean, is it view, like, hey, a YouTube video gets whatever, a million views? How are you judging success or if it's hitting the people right? Or is it just feedback from people telling you,

hey, that was outstanding. I never understood the Middle East like that. Now I do. Thank you. How are you getting your gratification? So for me, the validation, it's not just about ratings, because obviously that's a lot to do with the media landscape and the current politics of what's going on. It's changed enormously. Just in the seven or eight years that I've been doing this, you know, in terms of TV-wise, you know, it's changed enormously with, with the amount of streaming platforms out there, the sheer, you know, just difference in demographics.

So people aren't watching TV live anymore. They're watching on their laptops. They're watching on their mobiles. And there's so many new S-Fods out there anyway. So it's very difficult to sort of gauge in terms of ratings. A lot of the streaming platforms don't even publish their viewing figures. So I don't think, and that for me was never really as important as just doing what felt authentic and true to my own belief, really. And if there's a bit of feedback that's good and positive, then great.

I mean, of course, when you go to controversial places, you're going to get a bit of flack from different groups. you know, you didn't show my tribe and what we do, or especially if you go to like the whole Israel-Palestine question, or if you're traveling in somewhere like Iran, you know, it's difficult. It's difficult to tell everyone's story. You're never going to succeed in that. But for me, it was actually the slightly indirect feedback.

When you get the head of a charity saying, thank you, you know, we've been trying to put our country on the map for the last 20 years. And just one of your episodes has doubled our reverend. or something like that. Or you get individuals who call you and say, you inspired me to quit my job in finance and go and build a clinic in Nepal,

whatever it might be. And as a result, I've personally been asked to be an ambassador for probably hundreds of charities. I'm currently ambassador for about 20 or so charities. And it's things like that that that make it all worthwhile for me. So I'm not really that bothered about the ratings. Obviously, it's nice to get good feedback and it's nice to keep getting asked to do these journeys.

but it's hard now to do bigger and better when I feel as I've kind of done most of the journeys that I've really wanted to. So I'm just trying to think about how do I diversify or stay true to my sort of core beliefs but also still enjoy what I'm doing and still have fun and yeah, try and find something that's appropriate and useful.

So the next one was walking with the elephants, is that right? Sure. That come after? That came after, yeah. So eventually, they came back. They came back with us sort of saying, oh, can you make another one for it? Okay.

So you kind of won strategically. So I won in the end, I guess, in that way. So, yeah, they came back and said, we want to do something else. And I've always been fascinated by conservation. Once again, there he goes again. He's like, I've always been fascinated by conservation, so I was wondering.

Elephants have always been my thing. When I was 10 years old, I sort of, I don't, I've been begging my parents. to take me to Kenya to go and see elephants and they couldn't afford it because there were teachers, but eventually they did when I was, I think I was 14 and it was mind blowing, you know, seeing Africa, the big skies, the savannahs, the wildlife. So I had always wanted to try and incorporate a sort of an element of giving back in all my expedition. So I always pair with a charity or raise an issue. I'm a high net worth, a high profile supporter for UNICEF. So I do a bit of work

with sort of children's charities along the way. But conservation is something that I think is really important, not just for the sake of the animals, but habitat, keeping wilderness areas wild. And so I thought by going back to Africa, particularly Botswana in this case, there's a real opportunity here to showcase what's happening in the natural world. And by doing one of my sort of walks through a country, but this time following a herd of elephants on those, ancient migration route, there's a new way of telling this story. So I was walking with a herd of

elephants for 650 miles across Botswana all the way to the Okavango Delta. How many elephants? Well, there's 120,000 in Botswana. How many were you walking with? I mean, it just depended on the day, really, but we were getting pretty close to some pretty big groups. Like 10 or like 100? No, it could be 30, 50. Yeah, it's probably 50 was the maximum we saw at anyone. Did you get to know some of them? You get to know some of the personalities, yeah, especially when they're flapping their and chasing after you. But I mean, it was a really, really intense experience because when you're in an alien environment,

on the one hand that, you know, you're on your, you're on your guard the whole time. You've got to watch out because at any time, not just from the elephants, but, you know, a snake might, when you're sort of out taking a dump, a snake might come and bite you on the ass or whatever it might be, you've got to be really careful. We were camping the whole time,

staying inside the national parks. We were sort of greeted with them. by the Botswana government with the utmost respect, because they said, look, you know, not only encouraging tourism, but showcasing that Botswana is such a tourism, a conservation success, actually. And so we were able to camp inside these national parks

and really get to know the wildlife. But I'd say that as human beings coming from Africa, that's what we're designed. We're meant to be, you know, in that natural environment. So it did feel like a very natural journey as well. And that was the last big trip that you took. that brings us up to current date? Pretty much.

That was in the summer of 2019. Last year doesn't count because of COVID. So, yeah, that kind of brings us up to date on the sort of big journeys, really. So that's probably a pretty good place to stop, other than to say, so what your latest book that's about to come out is the book that I've been referring back to somewhat today, the art of exploration. So what made you decide you need to get another book? Because this is like, what do we say?

Was your ninth book? This is number nine. for the last 12 months, having been somewhat locked up, has given me plenty of opportunity to reflect on some of the stories that I didn't put in my other books. And I wanted to sort of, I guess, give some of the lessons that I've learned personally, but not just that.

It lessons from other explorers, from other key leaders, and reflect back on my time in the army as well. So it really, it's a bit of a summing up, for me, of the last sort of 10, 15 years, really, of the lessons that I've learned. And I've tried to put them into relevant themes and make them applicable and relevant to people in their daily life.

So it's not just me telling my war stories. This is some of the stories hopefully will inspire people to hopefully, you know, integrate them into their own lives. Yeah, and I don't think I did a great job of what I selected to read in terms of the fact that you're kind of given your philosophy throughout much of the book

and you're explaining, you know, what lesson you learned, but, you know, here's how I learned the lesson. Then you explain, well, this is what the lesson was, and this is how you can apply it. So it's a philosophical book as well, not just like you said, but I read stories. I read a lot of stories.

I like to read stories. But, and, you know, someone I said, here's some of the leadership lessons you learned. And I pointed out the way that you lay those out so that people can, and it's not just about leadership, though. It's about decision making. You've got a whole section in there about how you sort of lay out decision making based on your military education.

and what you. So there's all kinds of things that you can pull from this book and they're all rooted in what you've been through, which is, again, all my books are just, hey, this is what I've been through and here's what I took away from it. So you did this exact same thing. And anybody that's listening, you're going to pull a lot of lessons out of this book.

I scratched the surface. I read less than 5% of this book on the air today. So pick up the book. It's freaking, yeah, I mean, it's just chock, as you would say, in England. It's chock full of lessons learned. Where can people find you? I know you got Levisonwood.com. What's Levison?

It's a family name, right? It's my, that was my dad's name and his dad's name. So you're just stuck with it. I'm the fifth, yeah. But yeah, no, people can find out more about it on what I've got an Instagram page? Leveson.comwood. I've got Twitter. And yeah, the new book is coming out in June in the UK,

and hopefully it will be out in the US shortly after. Yeah. We need to get the pre-order on Amazon, by the way. Yeah. Like, you got about two weeks from today to make that happen. Echo, Charles. Yes. Any questions from?

Anything else? Remember when you lost your wallet? Remember? Do you think if you didn't lose your wallet, you would not have gone into the military? when you think about it. I think that, you know, when I lost my wallet, the inspiration that, you know,

the main lesson that I learned there was kind of told by this young lieutenant who found it was go and travel. And perhaps if I hadn't have traveled, if I hadn't have got those early experiences, if I hadn't have had the gun pulled on me by the guy in the taxi in Zimbabwe, then maybe I wouldn't have enough stories

to get me through the interviews that got me into the army. So who knows? I mean, hindsight is obviously a great thing. but yeah, I think, you know, take opportunities when they come along, say thank you to people. You know, you never know, be courteous. And it's, it's, you know, writing back to that guy and just saying, thank you for handing them all it back. You know, got me all those tips in the form of that six-page essay.

So it's just little things like that. It's just it's never passed by an opportunity and never passed by an opportunity to be thankful and grateful. and no matter how bad things get, there's always an opportunity in that. And so, like, when I broke my leg and couldn't get in the special forces, I now look back and join the dots and think, actually, it was that.

It was that. While I thought was a low point, actually was a real opportunity to go and do something different. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy, huh? Because on the surface, you're like, dang, I lost my wallet,

because that sucks. Confirm. You lose your wallet? Oh, man, brutal. And then, yeah, man, it opens up this whole thing. And it's like, dang, I'm kind of glad I, did lose my wife.

Yeah, of course. And it's having a bit of faith that in every situation, now, whenever I'm feeling, oh, you know, damn it, that, that's gone really badly. I remind myself of all the times that the bad situations, if you just view them right and have the right attitude, then you can turn defeat into victory. And I think that's what you've got to remind yourself. So whenever things go really badly, I try and just convince myself, even if it's slightly delusional, that this is a great opportunity.

Absolutely true, man. Absolutely true. Well, like I said, probably a good place to wrap. We're approaching three hours right now. Thanks for joining us. Absolutely. And more important, thanks for your service. Thanks for your service to Great Britain, one of our, maybe our most, maybe our strongest ally, not only for your service, but your fathers and your grandfathers.

I know I watched a video about your grandfather, and it was just awesome that he was out there. there like you holding the line against tyranny and evil. And thanks for sharing some of your stories. Thank you, Father Milne. Like I said, there's 10 books. I always try and prepare. I couldn't read 10 books, getting ready for this thing. A ton of great stories and the lessons that you share.

And the experiences allow all of us to learn through your vicariously. through your explorations of the world, which you've made the best of. I don't recommend them, but I'm glad you did them, and I'm glad we can take away those lessons, man. It's awesome. Awesome to meet you, man.

Thanks for coming off. Thank you so much. Thank you both. And with that, Leveson Wood has left the building. He left the building. He didn't have anything with him, so he may be going. I don't know.

He's going somewhere. We don't know where he came in we don't know where he came from We don't know where he's going But he is out there On the continual exploration With a pocket Full of like You know two paper clips

And his wallet A wallet that he found And we're good So awesome to have him on here for sure We were talking about exploration That's the name of his new book The Art of Exploration And echo seems like exploration topic of the day.

Can you recommend some ways we can explore getting better as humans? For sure. What do you got? So I think keeping ourselves capable. Good call. Really? You know, look, we have a path. The path is hard.

Not all the time, but it can be hard. That's what I'm saying. Every once in a while we can deviate from that path, But the best way to deviate from the path is when we explore. If we explore as long as it's in the right direction, don't slip off the path. Don't go backwards. Keep moving forward. Anyway, so while we're doing that, we are improving ourselves.

We are working out. There's certain fundamentals to the path, we'll say. For sure. Working out physical improvement capability, strength. The more I'd learn about strength and strength training, resistance training, you know, this kind of stuff, the more benefits start to reveal themselves. Yep. Did you know strength training?

Resistance training is the best thing for your cognitive capacity as you grow older. Yes. Yeah. I did. Did I say that last time? You did. I remembered it. Why?

Because I work out. And for your immune system. So you either like, I think you hold vitamin D more efficiently or. Yes. Something with vitamin D where you can check, you know, anyway. So stay on the path. way anyway through this path you might need supplementation yes all right chocolate supplements only the best kind by the way yeah you probably need unless

you are just dedicating 24 hours a day for meal prep and you have your spear you're out shopping you're out harvesting your own meat you're out you're out in the garden pulling up carrots you know if that's what you're doing you can probably get away without supplementation look we we know that we want to eat clean Right? If you're eating clean, you don't need it. The chances of that are pretty small. Yeah, very small.

And again, and there's a bigger picture going on as well. And I'm a huge advocate of garden. I have a small little miniature garden, not many things in there. We've got some tomatoes in there. Either way, it's not about my garden. All right. It's about efficiency. Apparently, it is about your garden.

Well, kind of. A little humble brag. A little humble brag. Just some tomatoes. Nonetheless. Unless, you know, if gardening is your thing, then cool. But for a lot of us, if you dedicate all these hours, daily, weekly, whatever, meal prep, or whatever, it might become a little inefficient. So supplementation might be kind of the jam as far as efficiency goes.

So good news. We got some supplementation for you. Very good news. So what we got? Stuff for your joints. Stuff for protein. Stuff for cognitive health. Stuff for general health.

Vitamin D3, joint warfare, super cruel oil. We got some milk, additional protein. Cold War, by the way. Get that immunity. Immunity. Immunity. Sure, all these things on jacofuel. Did you say milk?

Mulk, yeah, protein in the form of a dessert. I authorized the next flavor of milk. What is that one? It's going to be that banana cream. Oh, yeah, yeah. No name yet. No name yet. Look, and it's hard to take banana cream and turn that into something tactical.

So if anybody's got some ideas on banana cream, like my, my ears are open. Yeah. I'm ready for something cool, you know, about banana cream. Let us know what you got. That's interesting because that's not like an obvious flavor, but once you say, you're like, oh, yeah, that's a legitimate flavor. Yeah. Even, okay, so the pumpkin spice, in my opinion, this is just my opinion. Kind of an obvious flavor.

an obvious flavor yes but and I'm like not that into it fine if that's my last flavor when we do not drink it no probably not but if when it comes to banana because I don't like pumpkin pie you know certain people like really love pumpkin pie and that's it no but no pumpkin pie I don't actually know anybody like that yeah I know a couple people really yes but are you sure bro are you exaggerating I think you know some of that old eats pumpkin pie if it's not for pumpkin pie you they won't eat any pie put it that's where you're at right now okay so if I'm not mistaken say I exaggerated a little bit but you know what I mean it's fine say that exaggerated a little bit but you know what I'm saying because there's not one

single person on the planet that only eats just pumpkin by 100% and the other pies are zero yes that yes there are pilgrims pilgrims eat pumpkin pie that's all oh wait I think they eat apple pie yeah they do anyway all right so cool the point is banana cream pie that is a legitimate one where it's like hey banana cream pie and then there's like everything else. I'm one of those people. My dad's one of those people. There you go.

BC's in the game. In the game fully. So banana cream milk. Like that's, that's good. Yeah. It's a good flavor. We also got the drinks. I'm drinking one right now.

A lot of these drinks. As a matter of fact, Discipline go in a can. You can get it. You can get it at Wawa if you're on the East Coast. And for a little while, there was a little break. pumping going on because the logistics train look logistics wins wars it took me a little bit of time

to get that logistics train straight out they said hey can you pump the brakes a little bit guess what logistics train is a moving down the tracks roll into wawa roll into wawa clear out the shelves they didn't want me saying that for a little while yeah i'm back saying it go into wawa clear out the shelves also vitamin shop and by the way all this stuff all this supplementation if you want to subscribe to it. If you want to get that krill oil showing up once a month, you want to get that joint warfare showing up once a month. If you want to go

on subscription, shipping is free at originusa.com, at jacofuel.com. Subscribe. Get it forever. And you know what we used to say on this podcast? Support the podcast as you support yourself. By the way, you are supporting the podcast when you support yourself with some

supplementation. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And energy drinks that are healthy, that's kind of a thing, you know? Well, not really. It's a thing with us. That's what I'm saying. It's not a thing with anybody else.

I'm saying it actually, there's no one else that said, you know what? Oh, we want our energy drink to be healthy. So we are going to go to the nth degree and pasteurize it. So we don't have to put any chemicals in it. Yeah. That's where we went. Who else is with us there?

Oh, look around. You know who I see? Nobody. Yeah. So it's not a thing. It's a thing for us. That's what I'm saying. It is now.

Okay. And you're talking even from like a banking standpoint where it's like, yeah, we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that, which is obviously good. But as a human being, I don't now, I don't have to go, hey, I need some energy. Hey, I'm going to pay the price a little bit, but I need that energy right now. Say, hey, let's pay that price, you know. There's no sacrifice.

No sacrifice. I'll pound an energy drink. I don't even need energy right now. I just want to drink that energy drink. And guess what? I'm going to be more healthy. Afterwards one it comes down to it can be more healthy and I got my energy drink You done good you made up for your pumpkin pie station

There you go That's what we're dealing with also at origin USA you can get American made Stuff when I say stuff I mean jeans American made dead them kind of a big deal It's a real big deal because you're probably thinking oh I got you know I'm not I'm supporting America I got these iconic American jeans and then you find out that your iconic American jeans and then you find out that your iconic American jeans are made in China. Yeah. Which is bad.

Yeah. Get your American, get your iconic American jeans made in America. Yeah. It's grown in America. Sown in America. You ever ate like a food or something and it says all natural? Then you find out, wait, it's not all natural though.

Like, I guess it's like they play you. All natural cheese puffs, right? Come on, bro. It's like they play you, you know, where it's like it's all natural. given the fact that it's not all natural. You see what I'm saying? It's almost like that where it's like, yeah, these iconic American genes.

Oh, yeah. Right? And yeah, maybe they're iconic. So it just depends on what you mean by all. It depends on what you mean by natural. Depends on what you mean by iconic. And it depends on what you mean by American. Bro, you're not playing that game over here.

No. Origin. USA. Or USA is in the name. There's no play on words. There's nothing like that. No trickery. No, sir.

Made in America without compromise. jeans boots rash guards t-shirts what what else you want yeah we got it too stuff yeah geez did I say geese I think said rash cards but yeah all good it's all included you say we want to be inclusive yes inclusive of the geese yeah gee no gee we're with you very much so we support both also jaco has a store it's called jaco store this is where you can get discipline equals freedom stuff t-shirts hats hoodies lightweight and heavyweight hoodies. Much of cool stuff on there in my opinion. So yeah, go there. See if you like something, get something. We also have a subscription situation going on with the shirts, additional shirts,

additional designs. So recently, one of the many designs that have been released. So people have been calling me personally calling me phone call, not text, phone call. Hey, is that design still available are you going to sell that design it seemed like people really like the design it's true the answer is maybe but to avoid having to call me or whatever just jump on that jump on that it's called the shirt locker yeah there's a new design every month that reminds me of the muster so we have the muster they always sell out and three weeks out from the muster like someone i know will send me an email hey i realized i think i didn't sign up for the monster you know I it looks like it's sold out but you know I just need three

seats yeah three and and I'm like hey um I I wish I could I wish I could help you this is an actual limitation like the fire marshal says this is how many people can be in there and we have it filled filled don't put yourself in that situation yeah at least don't put yourself in that situation yeah it's true Maintain control. Yeah. Invest up front so you can relax later. That's why you leave a little bit early.

Yeah. You leave a little bit early like I was supposed to meet you here today. Yeah. Right? I left a little bit early. Why did I do that? So I wasn't stressing. I was just driving.

Oh, there's a, you know, a little old lady crossing the street. She's taking a while. Am I honking? No, I'm just, take your time, ma'am. No problem. Plenty. There's a construction. guy he's got the little sign flipping you know stop there's road construction going

am i mad at that guy no i'm not mad at him i got plenty of time to get to the gym because you got on it early because i got on it i invested early now other people in this situation didn't invest early i get a text once i'm here that says yeah you're going to be late echo charles going to be late yeah did you how do you feel about that uh well you know i was not stressing but hey that's just me, I guess. Okay, maybe you need to add some stress in your life then, bro. Well, in this particular situation, now that you brought it up, I didn't. You did, and that's fine.

So, you know, while I was executing my sequence to come down here and record, okay, all right. I got tasked with the last minute thing. And I had to do that. I had to do that thing. So, yeah. Okay. Are you talking about a task that came from me?

Yes, sir. Okay. You're talking about a task that came from me at seven o'clock? in the morning or such? Well, you know, my sequence is very complex. Your wake-up procedure. All right, check. Either way, get on the shirt.

It's called the shirt, lock a new shirt every month. It's on jocco store.com. That's where you can get it. Go there, get on it early. You won't have to worry about missing any designs or anything like that. You can subscribe to this podcast. There's a bunch of different places where it's hosted. We also have Jockenravelling, which I've been real.

with Daryl Cooper we're going deep into some crazy subjects unraveling history and seeing where how we got where we're at we have the grounded podcast we have the Warrior Kid podcast we also the the underground jaco underground.com we're doing we're recording a little podcast there the reason that we're doing that is so that we don't have to have sponsors because why because we don't want sponsors because then they dictate what we can and can't do which we don't like we also don't want to have the platforms themselves be able to dictate what we can and cannot do now look we the platforms we've been good to us so far everyone's been okay with what we're doing

that's fine what happens when they're not what happens when they decide they're just gonna take a start injecting advertisements onto our podcast and when I say all I mean everyone what do we do then we don't have control so we made we made we the Jocko Underground podcast. Jocko Underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. Great way to support you. What we're doing.

If you can't, look, if you can't afford it, we're, look, we are a podcast of the people. That's why this podcast is free. That's why this podcast doesn't have advertising other than what we're doing right now, which you could have turned off 48 minutes ago before Echo even started talking. But if you can't afford it, that's cool. Email assistance at Jocco Wonderground. We'll still hook you up. That's what we're here for. We have a YouTube channel where echo post videos And you can subscribe to that one also origin USA has

Oh What is it a YouTube channel? Is that what it's called? Origin USA has a YouTube channel. Yeah, technically at the end of the day, but it's like a series you know like you know like a YouTube channel But it's a super general it's a general thing But there's is like a see it's like a series you know that's an origin H d right? That's a series. Yeah, that's one That's what you're talking about, right? Yeah. Because Origin HD is on the YouTube channel of Origin.

Origin USA. Yeah, boom. Okay. Well, and Echo makes a lot of those videos, and the ones that are really good are usually the ones on the assistant director. Is it a psychological warfare. Yeah, it's an album, tracks. You know, you need Jocko to help you get past the moment of weakness.

You're kind of like a therapist in a way. Or what do you call, like a life coach? Yeah, it's a life coach. You're a life coach. Life coach with a baseball bat. essentially. No, the life, you know how like the life coach is, the, what do you call the classic or the stereotypical situation is like, hey, I'm about to, you know, I just quit smoking. Then it's like, hey, I feel I really feel like smoking. It's really like, you know, on my mind.

So you call your life coach and they tell you gently like why you shouldn't smoke. You're going to get cancer. You've come so far and all this stuff. So Jock has his own version of that, which is called psychological warfare. So it's recorded. What you do is you get, it's an album with tracks. Jocka tells you, hey, don't skip that workout. You've come this far. You can do it. Maybe you need to make one of these. I was very motivated by that.

In his way, we'll just say. Also, we got flipside canvas. Flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. We got a bunch of books. Look, all the books I talked about today by Levison Wood, the latest one that should be available for pre-order right now. It's called The Art of Exploration. That's the one I was reading out of today.

We got final spin, which is a, look, it's a novel because it's not specifically true, but it's also not a book. It's like a, it's just a whole different gig. Final Spin. If you want, it's a new art form. That's what Echo Charles just whispered in the back. You might have nailed it. You might have nailed it.

It is a new art form of writing. And it's in a book called Final Spin, which is coming out. If you want to get the first a dish, better order it now. Leadership strategy and tactics. The code, the evaluation of protocol.

Disciplineers freedom field manual. Way of the Warrior kid, one, two, three, and four. Mikey and the Dragons. About Face. I wrote the forward on the new one. And, of course, extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership.

I have a leadership consultancy called Eschalon Front. We solve problems through leadership. You can go to echelonfront.com. If you want me and my team to come and work with your company, that's what we do. We have EF online, online training, leadership. You can get it anywhere. You can get it on your phone.

We're on there all the time. We're doing live Q&A's. We've got a bunch of courses to take. It's freaking awesome. We got the muster 2021. We are executing. Last time we didn't execute because I got Miss Rona. This time.

So I'm good now. It's happening. Orlando, May 25th and 26. Phoenix. August 17th and 18th, Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. Everything that we've done has sold out. Go to extreme ownership.com. If you want to come, don't be emailing me six days out saying you need three.

I'm sorry, I didn't get to you, but I just need three seats. I can't help you. Sometimes in the seal teams, I would tell guys like, hey, if this, if you do, if you make this mistake, I can't help you. You want to do something. Look, look, you do some dumb stuff. I got you. If you do something at this level of stupidity,

I can't, there's literally nothing I can do. Don't be doing dumb shit. Yes, sir. EF Battlefield, this is learning lessons as we walk historical battlefield. Just did recently did Gettysburg. We're planning others in the future. Again, go to echelonfront.com. Look for events on there if you want to come and meet us.

have dinner, you want to walk to battlefield, you want to do Q&A face-to-face, we look forward to seeing with those. If you want to help service members active and retired, their families, gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She has a charity organization helping out all these groups all over the place. If you want to donate or get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. and if you want more of my perpetual pronouncements

or you need more of Echo's convoluted conversations you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter, Instagram which Echo only calls the Graham and Facebook Echo is at Echo Charles I am at Jocco Willink and for Leveson, check out Levesonwood.com his Twitter is Levison Wood

his Instagram is leveson.org And also he's on Facebook at Levison Wood. And thanks once again to Levison for joining us. Again, sharing some of the stories with us. You could crack open any one of those stories and find a gem. And thanks to Levison for your service. And thanks to your father and your grandfather.

And to the fierce island nation of the United Kingdom. Thanks for standing beside us for so long in the fight against evil. And thanks to all the servicemen and women and veterans around the world that put on the uniform and shoulder the weight of freedom with your service and sacrifice. And to people here at home in service, police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all the first responders out there. You don't get thanked enough for what you do. So thank you for doing it.

and to everybody else out there, you already know what you know. You already know what you know. You've been there. You've done that. You've seen what you've seen. Don't stay in the same spot. Do like Leveson Wood does literally and metaphorically, go out. Go, go see, go do, go live, go explore.

And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.