Jocko Podcast - 450: Pronounced Dead. Still More to Do. CRACK ON. With Royal Marine, Mark Ormrod.

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Mark Ormrod, award-winning author, coach, mentor, motivational speaker and sought-after ambassador, was born and raised in Plymouth, Devon and in 2001 realised his lifelong ambition of joining the Royal Marines.On Christmas Eve 2007, whilst serving on operations in Afghanistan with 40 Commando Royal Marines, he was blown up by an Improvised Explosive Device, resulting in the traumatic amputation of both legs and his right arm and was twice pronounced dead.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 450 with Carrie Helton and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Carrie. Good evening. It was dead quiet when the Bowman radio crackled with HQ giving us a grid reference and range to the northwest. The order couldn't have been clearer. Hostiles. Engage. It was the first we knew about it.

Game on. I was straight on the GPMG, cocked it, and shattered the night silence with a short burst, fired blind at the grid position. given by HQ another Marine was in the Sangar watching through the Sophie and he directed my fire come left and you're on there they are about eight hostiles trying to come up behind a tractor in a field about 700 meters they're all going firm or in cover behind the tractor the GPMG leapt as I let another burst go you're just short rammers come up a bit another short burst you're on mate go for it. The machine gun bucked and kicked in my hands as I let go in a long burst. Tracer smashed

into the enemy positions around the tractor and hit the machine itself, and hit the machine itself, deflecting high into the night. Sanger's three and five knew immediately from the long burst that I was on and piled in with everything they'd got. The enemy were suddenly lit up as an illumination round from a 51 millimeter mortar, soared into the sky and turned night into day. Other Sanger's added to the light show, firing handheld illumination flares into the night. The noise was deafening as the fob erupted, red tracer flashing into enemy positions. The high-pitched rip of a mini-mee was backed by the funk, funk, funk of the 50-Cal heavy machine gun, giving it some.

Another GPMG gunner in my sanger began alternating with fire with me to keep the barrels cool. As soon as my burst ended, he took over malleting the town. Taliban. As soon as he stopped, I opened up again. By this point, the rest of the lads were lined up on the perimeter wall, firing whatever weapons they had to hand. The Marine on the Sophie site directed us whenever a loom packed up, giving us a running commentary. We were hitting the Taliban hard. They were dragging their wounded into a ditch. The tractor was taking so many hits. It was practically sawn in half. Spent shells and link were piling up around my boots as hundreds of and hundreds of 7-6-2 rounds went downrange with no order to cease fire. Fuck me, Rammers. They're evacuating the wounded and wheel barrels. The Taliban were loading up their casualties in a ditch by the tractor and bugging out as fast as they could push. They hadn't gotten closer than 700 meters to the fob. They couldn't touch us. The ceasefire came and we took a breather. The firefight had lasted about 15 minutes.

I had fired more than 800 rounds of ammunition from my GPMG alone, a ridiculous amount. Usually, I would have been more cautious, but because there were seven or eight of them, we just let it rip. We had given the Taliban a beating. Well, that brings a smile to my face, and that is an excerpt from the book, Man Down by Mark Ormrod. And Mark Ormrod is a Royal Marine, who served from... 2001 to 2010. And in addition to being a Royal Marine, he's competed in cycling and rowing and swimming.

He's a purple belt in jujitsu. He's a speaker. He's an author. He's a business owner. And he's done all that after losing both of his legs and his right arm in Afghanistan, where he was pronounced dead twice. But he wasn't done yet. He's still going.

And it's an honor to have him here with us tonight. to talk about his experiences and lessons learned. Mark, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Thank you. I've been wanting to do this for years. Yeah, well, it's interesting. I was just down. We, Carrie and I were downstairs and I was looking and I had a Twitter message from you from, I think it's five years ago where we linked up on Twitter. You were coming to the States, but I wasn't in the area or whatever. We just didn't get it linked up. Yeah. So it's an honor to have you here. And I read some opening passages on this. that's a good one right there.

I know everything that's, I know all those beautiful sounds. The 50 Cal just laying it down. The mini-mees just getting after it. Oh, that's just, it's a good night right there. It was a good night.

There were no casualties on our part, so it was a great night. That makes it a great night. So let's get into it, man. Let's get into the beginning. So you're born, what, 1983? Yep, 29 to July, 1983. And what'd your parents do?

Growing up, my mom had various part-time jobs. My dad originally worked in, so we've got a giant nuclear naval base in Plymouth. So he was like, he worked there as a civilian. Then he spent 10 or 15 years as a tiler. So he would travel around the UK. We had these stores over there called Tesco, like a Walmart. And he would do all the floor tile in and all that kind of stuff. And then he went back to doing what he did originally.

And were you born in Plymouth then? I was, yeah. Yeah, born and bred. And is that where you're raised? Yes. So that's where you're from. You're from Plymouth. That's where I'm from.

That's where I live. That's where I've stayed. And, you know, unless there's an extreme change in my circumstances, it's probably where I'll die. We'll see. And you had a twin sister growing up? Yes, which is very much an Arnold Schwarzenegger down the vehicle situation. Me previously being six foot two and weighing six. 16 stone, which I think is close to 200 pounds, and Harrow being four foot 10 maybe, and

you know, half that weight. Really? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I actually found a picture on my phone the other day of the day I passed out as a raw marine with my uniform on, stood side by side with my sister. And she probably used to come up to like my chest time when I had legs and was six foot two. Man, that genetic randomness is kind of crazy, right?

Was your dad tall, mom short, mom short, dad tall? Like, what's the gig? Average, I would say. He wasn't super tall. I think he's probably six foot. Yeah, so no, no crazy. I don't know what it was, you know. But I know that from the minute I was born, you know,

when I was delivered, she had her umbilical cord rat around my neck. So I pretty much came out the gate fighting, trying to survive. But yeah, it's actually, not a lot of people know that that I'm a twin You know, I've got a great relationship

My sister, she only lives about Probably less than a mile from my house With my little nieces and nephews But yeah, not a lot of people know that I'm a twin Yeah, it's too bad Echo's not here To kind of go down the twin, you know Because it's a little different, he's got a twin, identical twin brother Oh really?

And so they are They are very, very close Gotcha. Like it can be a little bit strange sometimes But it's, you know But being in a, what is that? called a non-identical twin? I guess so.

And obviously the opposite sex, too. So you're not going to be identical. So you're in school. How'd you like school? What were you doing in school? I was average in school. Wasn't bad, wasn't good. I think a lot of the times at the end of the year,

when you get a report by your teacher, I was always referred to as cheeky. So, you know, a little bit mischievous, but not too bad. You know, I didn't love school, didn't hate school, did what I had to do to get through it. So I'd say I was an average student.

You know, I just did what I had to do. And I was watching the documentary about you and it showed a picture of you and then you self-stated that you were like a chubby kid. Oh, yeah. And I saw a picture of you. I was like, oh, yeah, he's a little bit chubby.

Yeah. And then you tell this story about some other kid picking on you and he tells you this is how cruel kids are. Yep. This freaking other kid tells you, your body is disgusting. I was like, dang. Yeah.

And that, that, like, landed on you. Yeah. How old were you? I would say 12. And we were sat down and we used to have like this 10, 10, 30 in the morning break before lunch where you go and, you know, I run around for 15, 20 minutes. And I had this routine where I'd go into the cafe and I'd get this pink bun, like this square bone. with cream in the middle. And just like every day, I was about to tuck into it

and I was sat down in this booth. And where I was sat down, kind of my school shirt where the buttons are, it was kind of open and you could see in and see a little bit of side boob in there. And that's when he walked up and he kind of just stopped and looked at me and then looked me in the eyes and he said, your body's disgusting. And, you know, I'm pretty chilled out

and not a lot of stuff like that bothers me. For some reason, that comment kind of hit hard. And so I ditched the slice, went to the school gym, at about 10 minutes left to mess around, locked the door. And it was a tiny gym. It was probably a little bit bigger than this room. And there was a rack of free weights in there, a peck deck, a treadmill, and a lap, pull-down machine. And that was it. And this is maybe 94-95. And I took my shirt off, and I looked in a mirror, and I was like, you know what? That was pretty shitty what he said, but the guy's got a point. Because I'd just gotten into this

It was the time when The Sega Mega Driver came out And you know I had all these video games and stuff So I was outside less and inside more Diet was terrible because I was a kid And just like sweet things And without realizing

I'd put on this weight and got quite chubby And out of shape So I kind of looked at myself in the mirror And I thought I need to do something about this But there was no internet back then So there was no knowledge And all I could do was Save a portion

of my dinner money throughout the week. You know, I had like a paper round thing that I could do to earn a bit of money. And then at the end of the month, go and buy bodybuilding magazines because that's all there was. They didn't have the range. I think there's just these huge guys on the front,

like just jacked. And so I'd buy them and read them cover to cover to try and understand what I was supposed to do to lose this weight. And I didn't really want to look like them, but I didn't want to look like me either. And so I would just go in this gym at lunchtime and take what I was learning piece by piece

and just apply it. And I like the way it made me feel physically and mentally. I felt more energized after lunch in my classes. I could pay attention more, was feeling a bit stronger. Don't think I looked great, great. Genetically, I'm just not gifted,

but I could see the improvements. And so I just kind of fell in love with training from my early age of about 12 or 13. Did you change what you were eating at all, too? Only a little bit. I just kind of ditched some of the treats and sweets, but again, didn't know much about diet and nutrition. And here's a great example.

I just knew from watching the Rocky movies that eggs were good for you, so I'd eat fried egg sandwiches because I thought that was what you did and not understanding there's different ways to cook things and eat and get your macros. So just muddled my way through it, and my parents weren't into that either. So I didn't really have anybody to go to for advice

and just muddle my way through it and did the best I could. Tell you what, the internet nowadays, like you get into anything. It doesn't matter. And there's going to be someone's going to show you on YouTube or on the interwebs how to do stuff. So these people, kids especially have such a huge advantage

if they didn't then get sucked into the whole algorithm of the rest of the internet. If you just looked up, how should I train? And that's all it gave you. But damn, if you weren't going to get sucked into some crap. I had a lawnmower that was broken and I went on the internet and, you know, how do I change the filter, the fuel filter on this random damn lawnmower? And sure enough, there's like a dude's like, oh yeah, if you've got this model, here it is and just breaks out and just copied

him. So yeah, it's it's pretty crazy what you used to have to do. Go to look at Dornian Yates because that's probably what you're looking at back in the day. You're British. You're probably like Dorian Yates let's go yeah get something and obviously Arnie and the big guys the big names but yeah it was um it was difficult it was difficult but it was looking back on it it was great as well because it got me into the uh that habit you know if you got an issue this is what you got to do go get some info and figure it out it's also interesting like for the reaction that you had could have been so terrible to that you know you could have become more into your video games.

I'm not going to go outside. I'm disgusting. And so now you go into like deeper into a shell. Right. So that's an interesting dynamic that you had as a young 12 year old to be, to take that information on board, not let it wreck your life and say, yeah, the person's got a point. I wrote about this in the book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics.

It's like a section on how do you take advice from someone that you don't respect. Oh, okay. Because it's really hard, right? And what I wrote was like, oh, yeah, someone that you don't respect that you don't like that you think has it out for you gives you advice or gives you criticism. What do you do? Listen to him and be like, okay, how what can I take on board from this? How can I learn from it? And that could be different.

Like this person, this individual, like you said, that's, you said yourself, that's a terrible thing to say. But I'm going to take something on board from it. That's a good lesson in its own right. Yeah. And I think looking back, I understand why I went the way I did rather than. Well, what was that? That's kind of the key. Well, a lot of that indoor time that I was spending

wasn't just on video games. It was a big movie nerd. And so I was Arnie Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Dam, Stevens. And so I think when he said that to me, those were my kind of role models growing up. So I thought, okay, cool. I'm going to learn this working out thing because I want to be like those guys.

You know, I want the muscles. I want to be the action hero, you know, the explosions and car chases and those kind of things. And fortunately, it took me done a positive root rather than a negative one. Good, good lesson and something to be careful for, of parents. Now, you got into Muay Thai.

How did you end up getting into Muay and boxing, kickboxing? How long do I go down? That was John Claude Van That was farm. I watched those, you know, this is VHS cassettes, right? I watched those VHS cass cass cass sets until they just broke. And he was the main one for me at that time. And, you know, just the splits and the jumping spin kicks and then the muscles and everything. And a friend of mine took me to a gym.

Not long after, actually, this guy had said what he said to me. His uncle was a kickboxing instructor. And so I went down there. And I didn't know this about myself at the time, but I was naturally flexible. So I could go in there. And I think within a week I was doing the full splits. And then I could do it without warming up or anything.

And I was really good at these high kicks. And where I'd watched these movies, I tried replicating all these fancy jumpings. And I just had a natural gift for it. You know, and I was like, and it's like anything. If you're naturally good at something, you love it, right? And you get addicted. It seems easier.

And so I just started training, competing, because of my age, I had to compete in these tournaments that were around the Southwesterns in England. I think there were six in a year. Were they kickboxing tournaments? What were they? Originally it was kickboxing. Almost like a jiu-jitsu. They were matted areas, like six in an arena.

And you go in there and you do these couple fights in a day, whoever had the most points at the end of the year after. the six tournaments became like the grand champion of the Southwest. So I did those to start with. I entered three, became the grand champion of the Southwest. Are they full contact? No, you have headgear. So it's like touch?

No, it's not like karate where you touch and you break. You're fighting, fighting, fighting, but it's, you've got the protective gear on. Got it. You know? And that's what led into Mutai. Because then over the years, as my instructor's changed, we got in a guy who was also a retired Royal Marine, who was the head. head mutine instructor. Now, at the age I started training. It was very intimidating because they

didn't wear pads and you could use shins and elbows and I'm like, not really sure I'm up for this. It looks a bit dangerous. But I, you know, I'm going to blame him again, but, you know, I watch kickboxer and he's kicking down trees and coconuts and he's got Tong Poe coming after his girlfriend and I'm like, okay, let me try this. And so I tried that. And I, I did enjoy it. I enjoyed the Competing in Mutai was horrible and it hurt a lot more. But again, it was something I felt naturally good at. I wouldn't say competing, I was naturally good. I hated that whole process.

The week leading up to it and everything. The training was great. The fighting was horrible. But training, I just loved the training, you know, and seeing what I could do. And I didn't know it back then, but looking back on it, It was the whole growth aspect of it as an individual, you know, learning these skills, testing yourself,

getting better, getting mentors, learning new things. You know, I just kind of fell in love with that. And, yeah, that was my introduction to martial arts as a young teenager. So then the way this school works in England, you get done with, like we have high school and you get done with high school, you go to college, but you're 18 when you get done. You guys are younger than that when you get done. What's the first school, or what's the year at high school,

equivalent. So we call it primary school. It might have changed now, but we would leave primary school at 16. Then you would go to college, but it's not the same. Our version of your college is university. So college was almost like 16 to 18 to get the next level of qualifications. And then you can go to university. And when you're doing that, what's the two years from 16 to 18? What's that called? That's college. Okay. So when you're in that college, they're assessing you to see what kind of of like a job would be good for you, right? So in primary school, you do, the exams you do are called GCSEs. When you go to college for that two-year period, you've got A-levels, all these different

things. You kind of select at that point what your career is. And then you go and do some advanced training in that. And then if you want to go to the highest level, you take that training and that niche you're in and go to university. get your degree, your master's, and all that kind of stuff. It seems, though, like in England, this is kind of from my wife, that's where I'm faded information from when my wife would tell me what her career path was like as a kid,

but she did A-levels, right? And then she went to the University of Nottingham. But it seemed like in America, you graduate from high school, what are you going to do? Go to college. And what are you going to study? Like, they don't know what they're doing. A lot of kids. Some kids are like, oh, I'm going to be an engineer.

I'm going to be whatever. They know what they're going to do, but a lot of kids, they're just going to go to college and major and whatever. It seems like England's more specific. Am I right? Yeah.

You get guided a bit better, I think. And it's probably much better now than it was when I was there. But yeah, you go to university knowing what it is that you're going to study. And I think I never went to university, but I think if you get there

and you decide it's not for you, you can change, I'm not sure. But you definitely go out with a plan And then you just I think it's four years at university. So you get done at 16 with that level of schooling. And then you go into the next one, the next level of schooling, right? So I kind of did. So I stayed at the same school I was at and went into what was called the sixth form,

which is it's not quite college. It's like the watered down version of it. And I started studying GMVQ Advanced Business Studies. Because I didn't know what I wanted to do in my life. And so me and some of my friends, this is how we made the decision. We just got together and went, should we do this course?

And I went, yeah, cool. So I went and did it. And it basically involved, and this is 1999, maybe 2000. So they had desktop computers and the internet was coming in and you would read these textbooks

and you would get given these tasks and then basically told to copy what the textbook says but change some words so you don't get done for plagiarism. And I got about six months into that and I'm like, this is terrible. like this is so boring

I'm not learning anything like this can't be what life is just read it copy it and make it your own a little bit so me and one of the guys there Tom we had a conversation he said we just ditch this and join the Royal Marines I kind of I'd been looking into it

because I had an uncle that was in the court but he hadn't looked into it at all but was just as bored as the course as I was and went okay cool let's do it so we just quit and I went to work in McDonald's in the interim. I had applied for the Royal Marines, but there was this brand new leisure complex

had been built in Plymouth where I live, and there was a gym and a health club on there. Now, if you worked in that complex in any of the other businesses, you could get access to that gym for $20 a month. If you didn't, it was like $200 a year to be a member, you paid a monthly membership, and then every time you trained you had to pay.

And I was 16. I had no money. So me and Tom went and worked in this McDonald's restaurant on the complex to get access to the gym to train for the court. And we put our notice in, waited. I don't know how it works over here, but we used to do what was called a potential Royal Marines course, which is three days. You turn up at the commander training center and you get hammered for three days, which is an opportunity for the staff to see if you're ready or whether they fail you and send you and tell you to come back and a chance for you to get a taster and go, is this the life for me? So I think about four months into having quit and having that job in McDonald's,

I got an invitation to go and do that, went up there. I think I was 16 at the time, passed that, came back and then just waited. They said wait for a letter. You get one turned up at your house through snail mail, giving you a date to start training. Keep doing what you're doing. Here's a training program. Here's a kit list.

We'll see you in a couple months. And that was it. Yeah, I liked in your book here, this is such a classic recruiting story. You say, going back to the book, our house was only around the corner from the Marines recruiting office in Devonport, dockyard, and I was 16 years old when I walked in.

They talked about jungle training and showed me a video. It looked like a scene out of Predator, only more real. Bloaks covered in camcreen, patrolled through the jungle up to their necks and swamp. The recruiter also talked about Arctic training. Someone's going to pay me to learn how to ski. They showed me a Gucci. They showed me a few Gucci scenes of Marines leaping out of rigid raiding boats and diving out of an aircraft and parachute training.

It looked like one long adventure holiday. Where do you want me to sign? Yeah, pretty much. That is so classic. But there's got to be some intrinsic thing that we have as humans that sees that and goes, yep. Because let's face it, if you take a half a second to think about each one of those things, you go, wait, being in a swamp, wait, why is that seem cool? Yeah. You know, jumping out of airplanes.

Wait, why does that seem cool? There's something internal as humans that we have that makes us want to do that kind of shit. Straight up. I know that's what it was like for me. I was like, oh, okay, that's what we're doing? Got it. Yeah. I think when you show up, it's another thing.

I was watching that, I was watching the documentary about you, and it shows guys showing up to the Marine training, and they're wearing suits. Yes. Is that part of the deal? Yep, you turn up. Wherever you are in the country, you go down to a train station in Exeter,

and the Commando Training Center has its own dedicated stop for a train. It's freaking legit. Yeah, and it's right on the bottom field, salt course. So you turn up there, you get off and you're already watching guys probably in week 15, 20 running around rope climbing, firemen's carrying people. You turn up there in your suit. Some guys have got ironing boards under their arms. They've got their backpacks and, you know, I had a huge bag. I couldn't fit my boots in it because I didn't know how to pack property. So they were, the laces were tied. They were draped over the bag and an ironing board under the other arm.

Just stood there, terrified with this guy of a clipboard, like ticking names off. And he didn't do what I expected, which was, you know, shouting and screaming, which made it more terrifying because I was just anticipating this guy shouting and screaming. And that made me more worried. And that never really came. And he just checked everyone off and then marched just off to the foundation block, which is the big 60-odd man room with all the beds. And that's where you spend your first two weeks down and out of iron and wash and shave and all that kind of stuff. Dang, it's freaking legit. The Brits, the Brits military is just freaking professional.

It really is. I've worked with them, not a ton, but I've worked with them enough. And just their level of professionalism is so freaking squared away and so British. It's so badass. One thing that's really funny, you get in here, the drill leader, I think that's what it is, The DL screamed us fast in bootneck slang. They actually handed out crib sheets to make sure we got it. Most of the stuff was simple Navy stuff.

The kitchen is a galley. It produced scran. So you got all these freaking, right. So scran is food. Toilets were heads. Excellent was hoofing. Moldy socks didn't stink. They were honking or gopping.

Tea or coffee was a wet. Best served redders. What's redders? Hot. Hot. Hot. Mistakes made the instructor's threaders, which is mad. Pissed off, yeah.

Not angry. Juice was screech. Pork pies and mustaches were both growlers for some reason. We didn't moan. We dripped. If we stopped dripping long enough to pass out as Royal Marines, we would be allowed to wear the precious green lid that marked us out as Royal Marine Commandos, bootnecks, booties, or royals.

Fast forward a little bit in the book. The book has awesome details. Get the book. One of the corporals didn't like the name Ormrod and kept calling me ramrod instead. It stuck. From then on, I was known as rammers in the core.

Right. So that's how you got your nickname. Makes sense. Yeah, I think a ramrod, it used to be what you would push a round down with a little gunpowder. I think it was that aircraft name as well. But in the Marines,

I don't know why we just put ERS on the end of all these words so reders threaders and they just a brief made the word longer which I didn't understand right but yeah I just picked up the name rammers because it was easier pronounce and that's what I got known as from the day I turned up I was like it seemed like the Aussies did that with people's names everyone was a oh or an E like everyone just like had a nickname that was just their name plus an O on the end of it right this one point again I'm on a fast where you got all kinds of cool stories in this one point you say you're in your

sleeping bags you're on a tactical exercise you're it's been raining all day because it's England um you said I didn't want to get out of my quite warm mostly dry pit it was about zero four hundred and pouring with rain I look stupidly at my plastic bag of soap soaking wet freezing cold clothing I forced myself to get a grip and drag myself into the stomping white wet rig it felt as if the clothes were coated in icy slime I wanted to cry my morale turned to shit this was bullocks what was the point. We weren't learning anything here except how to endure misery. I consider jogging back to our accommodation block. At least the run would warm me up. Then a couple hours

Kip in a dry bed and check out a limestone or limestone later in the morning. Basically, you were saying quit. It started to rain harder. I told myself, you can do that if you want. Just give it a minute first. After 60 of those minutes, I was still there and it was someone else's turn because you were on watch, I guess. I didn't care what they threw at me now. I'd take it and get through it. Otherwise, that miserable night would have been for nothing. So it sounds like that was kind of your closest scenario where you were going to quit. Yeah.

And I think, and you know this, right? This is probably the same across the ball when it comes to military training. You can be super fit and want to run these marathons and ultra-marathons and be a great swimmer and all this. But if you can't handle being cold, wet, tired, miserable, sleep-deprived, food-deprives. then you're not going to make it. And you know, you were saying earlier, off there, you know, about people you know that would be in the top 5% of runs and stuff.

I was in the bottom 5% for everything. I'd be the guy with snot coming out his nose, crying, moaning, losing his temper. But I just wouldn't quit. And I could be cold and wet. And I would see guys that would thrash me on runs, everything that would quit because they didn't like the cold and the wet, you know?

And I don't know if it was, if my ignorance, or my stupidity or just being stubborn, but I just couldn't, I couldn't pull that trigger and quit. I just was like, it's only temporary, this would be fine, we'll get through this.

And I actually, and I feel a little bit bad saying this, but I actually took some joy when I watched people quit. It almost gave me strength. It's like, you know, their soul came out of their body and gave me some extra.

So I'm like, I would smirk, like, yes, there's another one gone. I've made it another step closer. How do they quit? Do you just walk away? Like in seal training? you ring this bell it's a big not a big ceremony because I'm telling you what you're going through seal training there's so many people quitting you just don't

even know there you just you're like mustering like one muster you have 150 people and then two hours later you muster again and you're down to like a hundred and then two hours or whatever a day later you're down to 62 and you're just like well what what happened because most of the people you're you're not in proximity to them you're in your boat crew but there's starting off there's whatever like 20 boat crews. So there's just dudes just dropping like flies and you don't even see them. You don't know them. They just disappear. Gone. How do you quit? How does someone quit in Royal Marine Training? I mean, there's a couple ways. They can just they can quit on the spot.

They can go to when we're on camp doing whatever we're doing internally. They can just go to the training team's office and say, this isn't for me and hand an official notice. I don't know if it's changed now but used to go to a place called the opt-out block where everyone that quit would go while they waited for that train to turn up and take them home there was actually a point there where you can rescind that and go actually I've changed my mind and you would get what we call back troops and go back two weeks to join the next recruit troop coming through and then there's obviously injuries and not making the grade and things like that but yeah there's there's a couple ways to do it and I think that not the funniest that's not the right word but the way I enjoyed

the most is when people would do it on the spot. Yeah. And there's one particular example where we were all, it was probably about 16, 17 weeks out of the 30. And we were all outside our accommodation block on camp, stood in three ranks, ready to go on this thing called DigX, where you wear a full NBC chemical suit with a respirator. Get some.

You do a kilometer insurgia march. You spend the entire night with this tiny little entrenching tool, dig in trenches. Then you get a fake chemical attack. and then you do all of this stuff and then you've got to do a one or two kilometer excursion march and we were stood there about to go

and everyone knew how miserable this was going to be it was like the one exercise that nobody wanted to do and this guy he stood in file and said sergeant what would happen if I said I didn't want to go on this exercise and he went well then you quit and you'd be gone and he went sergeant I don't want to go on this exercise and he went

Right, out you get then. Just calm, very British. He was like, out you get then, go in the accommodation, hand your paperwork in, see you later. And that was it. And he was gone. I heard this story, this, because they, you were just talking about gassing. And I don't know, did they use like a tear gas or something on you when they actually hit you with the CBR attack? Not in that scenario. We do that differently on camp in a chamber.

They do that in seal training. And it's a lot of gas. Like, it's next level. Well, I mean, you don't really know when it's going to come, but I was talking to some guys, and one person was a rollback, so he had just gone through and gotten rolled back for whatever. And so now he's going again, and the point comes where they're about to get gassed. And like, someone looks at the guy and like, oh, are we about to get gassed? And he said he just, like, gave that look like, it's coming. Just there's nothing you could do about it.

No, they used to put us in a chamber. Down on camp on the bottom, the field of your circle says a CS gas chamber and you go in there with all your kit and then they like the CS tablets and you've got to take your mask off and say your name, rank number and then wait to be told

you can put it back on before you leave and you get the brief, you know, don't touch your face, don't rub your eyes. And I remember I ran out of there and there was like a waist-high fence and I had my eyes closed and I was snot coming out and I hit the fence and somersaulted over the fence onto the grass and was just trying

and my heart is not to touch my eyes waiting for the wind to kind of blow it out but yeah it's brutal I didn't know the human body was capable of producing that much right sound you see it like going from a nose to a guy's chest yeah yeah it's brutal it's being able to

and I think this is something that you know when you I was reading that piece where I said you said oh you don't you're not learning anything what you learn through all these things is how to just turn off your brain and keep going And even when I was reading that thing and you're saying, oh, I've got these wet, it's freezing cold out. I've got wet clothes that I took off that are now in a pile.

And I got to wake up and put these wet, cold clothes back. There's, you just have to just have a mind that you can just turn off and just put, because that just is terrible. Putting on wet, cold clothes when it's cold outside is just terrible. Yeah. It's just terrible. And that's what you're going to do. And you're going to do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. That's your life.

But I think you get to a point, don't you, where you realize it's bullshit. You realize it's a game. And then you laugh about it. And you're like, okay, cool. It's all part of the game. This isn't necessarily real life once you finish the training. You know, I never, ever once had to do that again after that. But you just, you're like, okay, I understand this is designed to break me.

I'm just going to roll with it, laugh about it, and watch other people quit. Yeah. And you're definitely, in the SEAL teams, you get way colder in the SEAL teams than you do. in training. You get way more fatigued in the SEAL teams than you do in training. Really? Oh yeah. I mean, freezing cold. Like, and there's no, you know, do you go, you get put in the water and people are whatever, they're, they're really cold. But in the seal teams, I mean, you know the deal. You're, you went to Arctic warfare. You get in a situation where, oh, my God, like this is absolutely freaking terrible. And there's no bell to ring. You have to just keep going. You have to get it done. And I always tell people what, any of that. compared to rolling out on a patrol in combat for the 38th night in a row. It's like, you know that there's things that are going to kill you out there, people that are trying to kill you.

That's why they have that training in place because it's going to get rid of the people that can't say, yep, I don't want to do this and I'm going to go do it anyways. That's what's happening. Yeah. What's the, do you know what the attrition rate is in that training, like on average? So when we started and we went from that train station platform to the foundation block, there was 64 of us. By the time we had finished 30 weeks, well, if you factor in leave, it's the best part of a year later. There were, I think 14 of us, what we called originals, that had gone from day one all the way to the end without quitting or failing.

Maybe the troop was 25 strong, but there are only a handful of us that had survived from day one all the way to the end. That's impressive. The dropout rate is huge. You say this. Back to the book. By week 30 of the training course, four tests stood between us and our green berets. It starts with a six-mile endurance test in two parts, a two-mile obstacle course with pipes full of honking brown water to crawl through, followed by a four-mile run. The hole to be completed in 73 minutes.

Next is the nine-mile speed march carrying 32 pounds of kit in fighting order to be accomplished. to be completed in 90 minutes. The Tarzan assault course and the bottom field assault course have to be completed together in 13 minutes. Finally, a 30-mile march in full fighting order to be completed in eight hours. On top of the load you have to carry between the troop, you have to carry between the troop and emergency day sack with medical supplies and hypothermia blankets. I completed the first three tests with no problems.

It was exhausting, but I was coping. I could almost feel the green beret on my head. Then came the 30-mile across Dartmoor. I think I've blanked out most of the horrendous parts of it, but I can't forget the last 800 meters. After 30 miles, they decided to end the course with a hill, rider's hill. My legs felt like I had a pair of concrete boots on

as I approached it and started up the incline. I reached the top of the rise and felt relief as the ground leveled out. Then my heart sank, as I saw it was only the first in a series of inclines that we had to get up. Pain jolted up and down my muscles of my legs, and I forced one foot in front of the other. My left boots squelched with a mixture of bright red blood and dirty brown water with every step. At last I got to the top of the last true hill and plotted down the other side over a stone bridge across the stream to a load of minibuses parked up to collect us. I sat down and couldn't get up again. All through training, we'd learned what an honor the Green Beret was for Royal

Marines. There was a superstition in the core that if a recruit touched a beret during the training course, he'd never wear one for real. I expected the clouds to part in a shaft of sunlight and a choir of angels to lower the green beret down from heaven onto my head. In fact, a sergeant jammed the lid into my hand and said, Rammers, good effort. I placed the beret on my head and dressed it over to the right. It was the proudest moment of my life. There you go. Yeah, quite the anti-climax. That's pretty much as it is. You get to the end, exhausted, you know, your body, you can feel the depletion by the time you get to the end. Your feet are just numb and covered in blisters, and then it just gets shoved into your hand. And it's like, good job. Next thing. And I went

and sat down after that because we do this in groups. And there were a couple groups behind. us and I sat down by the minibus and then by the time the last group came in I had to get people to pick me up because my legs had seized up and I just couldn't stand you know but um yeah I thought it was going to descend from heaven with a choir of angels and place it gently on my head perfectly positioned and I was going to get a shot of energy but it wasn't that at all that's funny when I got to seal team one so I graduated basic seal training and I got to seal team one and the master chief was like, hey, you graduated seal training. So did everyone else here.

No one cares. Yeah, Roger that. Yeah, that's pretty much it. So you end up becoming a driver. So you got a choice of jobs, clerk, chef, morterman, and driver. Yeah. There was this thing at the time, DSS, a direct specialization scheme. And basically, some guy sits in Naval HQ somewhere.

I goes, we need people in this specialization, this one, this one, and this one. And so before we'd done our marching ceremony we started things with our family, our pass-up parade, they called you onto the accommodation block landing and just told you where you were going and what you were doing. And I remember it being like this massive, like, kicking the teeth.

And I'm like, are you serious? I've just done all of this. I didn't join to drive vehicles and you're going to send me on this driving course. And I knew, to a degree, what that job entailed. And it was very boring. But, you know, after I had a little temper tantrum to myself, I kind of took myself off and I was like, okay, listen, you're going to get something out of this. You're going to be able to drive this, this, this, this, this and this. You've got no choice. Go out there, do it, and then we can figure out if we can switch later and do something. That's more enjoyable and really more in line with what you join to do. The United States Marine Corps used to do that too.

Really? You joined the Marines. Yep. Like, that's what was happening. You joined the Marines. And at the end of boot camp, they would tell you what job you are going to be in the Marines. And maybe they gave you some choice along the way. But that's the way it was.

When I was looking at joining the military, the Marines was like, I said, well, what would I do in the Marines? They were like, be a Marine, which almost got it. It was almost there, you know. I was like, cool. I'm in. Definitely close. But the Navy had the option of like, oh, what will my job be? Oh, well, you can try and be a seal.

okay and that's what I ended up doing but the Marine the US Marines had you have more influence now but and I think ours do too because we kind of had a choice you put your top three on but it was just ignored yeah it was just to give you that that false sense of hope they knew what you were doing anyway but this was back when you had to do it on paper now there's a whole digital computer system and you can kind of I think to a degree bypass the sergeant major in the chain of command go straight to Naval Manning give them your preferences and just do that like multiple times a week or a month until you kind of get what you want but you never used to go in the amount of requests I put in for like parachute courses and

my sergeant major I'm sure as soon as I left just went ripped it up and threw it in the bin when you joined did you think about the whole idea that there was cooks and drivers and whatever clerks did you think about that I did because it was explained to me in the recruiting office But the way they sell it is, and this might be quite unique to the raw Marines. Your primary job is always infantry. So it doesn't matter if you're a chef or a driver or a snipe, whatever it is. When you deploy, like I did in Iraq and Afghanistan, you go back to be an infantry. And then secondarily, you're a driver, you know?

So that kind of takes the sting out of it a little bit. But then when you're in the UK, it's just, you know. Well, the Marines have a sense. similar protocol, which is every Marine's a rifleman. Right. Because that's what they're going to tell you. They're like, now you're going to be carrying a spatula, but every Marine is a rifleman. And that's what they say.

And look, as you both know, I love the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is outstanding. But definitely they've changed it now where you can have more influence. And listen, the thing is, if that's what you want to do, that's awesome. Right. That's awesome. Like, it's awesome that you can go into the military. and if you want to be a cook,

what a great way to get experience as a cook and serve your country. That's outstanding. If you want to be a diesel mechanic, guess what? We need diesel mechanics in the Army, in the Navy, in the Marine Corps, in the Air Force.

It's what a great way to serve your country and get that skill set. But if you don't want to do that and that's what you get assigned, that's what turns into a little bit of a bummer. But they've done a good job of fixing that where people have a lot more influence over it. I think they had to too,

because there were so many people that just left. I don't want to do this. I didn't join you do this, I'm going. And you pay 100,000 pounds to train a Royal Marine per person. You know, it's a lot of wasted money. I was on a ship, and I was getting ready to go out on a training operation here off of the coast of Southern California. And it was like a bad storm was coming through, and it was freezing cold.

And we were on our boats, on our little zodiac boats, and we were on the back of this amphibious ship. And the Bosen's mate, first class, Navy guy was down there. and it's the well deck go the the hatch goes down or whatever they call that thing this big giant thing goes down in the back and so now we're exposed to the ocean there's huge waves it's freezing cold it's raining and this boatswain's navy dude looks at me and he goes damn i'm sure glad i don't have your job and i looked back at him i said man i'm glad i don't have your job and it's totally true like that's the best example like that guy was doing what he wanted to do and i was doing what i wanted to do and it's all good that's how the military works

Absolutely. So you graduate basically, what, 2002? 1, October 2001, four weeks after 9-11. So right after September 11th. And you end up going to Iraq. That's where you end up going to. How's it like checking in, once you get done with your initial training, you check into what?

So for me, what happened, there's a bit of a, a lull, I guess, in the battle where you're waiting to, you know, that driver course, I was waiting to be loaded onto it. So I ended up doing security at the commander training center, went and did that course, and then was actually originally trained to do Afghanistan on Operation Jakan in 2002. So I went through the pre-deployment training. You know, I was 18 years old. A little bit stupid, a little bit dumb, didn't really know what war was actually all about. So quite excited to go out and do this. And I still don't know why to this day, but it got scaled back massively. I think it became more of a special forces thing, lots of recies and

stuff, so tons of us didn't go. So I felt a little bit disappointed. And then 2003, Iraq came, Operation Telek won. So I got put through pre-deployment training for that. Went out and deployed there. I did three and a half months out there. You got some good stories about that in the book. A lot of is waiting for a war, right? You're waiting for the thing to kick off. You're getting a ton of CBR practice. I forget what you guys got a chemical biological radiation. Like you're in and out of that suit hundreds of times. And you talk a lot about that.

You talk about the fastest slit trench ever dug. Oh, yeah. This was a great. Delegation. Yeah, that was awesome. You get told to dig this giant slit trench. Yeah, we basically driven through the night. And I had a naval medical officer who,

who was in the back of my Lam Rover sleeping the entire time. I think we did about, it was like a 16-hour road. And we got there. Maybe he's related to my wife. Because every time I go on a road trip, that girl is just asleep, bro. One time I did a 17-hour drive from Montana back down to San Diego. We're coming home. We wake up like in Escondito, which is like a half an hour away.

She wakes up and she says, oh, do you want me to drive some? I said, darling more, I'm going to be home in 20. minutes. It's all good. I got this. So you had you had basically one of her relatives in the back sleeping. Maybe yeah. But we did this whole world move because we were acting as like force protection for the medics and we had pushed up from the bottom of the Q8 right to the border. And as soon as we got there, all of the naval officers went, right, we've got a really important meeting to go to. You guys dig the trench and we've been driving all to, we were all exhausted. And I I saw this JCB like a digger in a distance.

And as I got closer to, I walked over and there was like this very young looking, as a spotty kid in there. So we just kind of bribed him and said, listen, can you dig this trench for us? I think we gave him some of your MREs actually because we had stole a load of them. And I had a friend as well who was just jacked

and he had his shirt off in the sun and I think he intimidated this kid a little bit. So he just got this JCB and dug this massive trench. They came back an hour later. Again, we only had small entrenching tools to dig with. And they were shocked. Like, how the hell have you dug this like 12-foot trench in an hour? So we didn't tell them.

I mean, they might have read the book. They might know now. But, yeah, we achieved the objective. And then set up camp there for a week or two. And it's three and a half months you're over there. You end up, you don't shoot your weapon. You're, again, you kind of mentioned the fact that you were young and dumb. like we all were, so you don't get to shoot your weapon.

You don't see any combat, true combat. And you're kind of disappointed about that, of course, because that's what young men want to do. Sometimes even us old men want. You get home, your daughter's born. Yes. How do you say her name? Kezia.

Kezia. What kind of name is that? A different one. And that's why we chose it. We went, when it's something a little bit different? Does it have, like, where's it from? Did you just put letters together? Pretty much just put letters together.

Yeah, there's no significant meaning behind it. It was just a nice name. So is she the only person named Kezia? You didn't see anyone else named that before? Not until after. I probably, she's 19 now. I probably met two, maybe three other people with that name. And someone will put a H on the end of it.

But hers just K-E-Z-I-A. Keziah. Yes. So she's born. And at this point, you get assigned to a trip to Norway. And this is where you kind of start thinking, maybe I'm going to do something else.

Yeah, because I looked at my career at that point, and I thought, you know, our minimum term that we have to serve as five years. And I thought, okay, I've earned the Green Beret. I've been to, quote, unquote, war. I've done the art that war. I think the only thing I didn't do was go to the jungle in that first five-year period.

I'd boxed as a heavyweight boxer for the marine. I squeezed a lot in and I think I was 22 and I thought I've got responsibilities now I can't be jetting off all over the place for months on end and not see my daughter grow up. So, you know, I had a long, long conversation with myself about the future and what I was going to do. And the right thing to do is what I did

and I put my notice into leave. I thought I'm quite proud of what I've done this five years. I've ticked a lot of boxes. Now I need to go get a new job, maybe with the police or the fire brigade and be a dad, be around to see my daughter grow up, enjoy that, and then figure life out after that. I thought I'm definitely young enough to start a new career. So I put my notice into leave.

How long was it between putting your notice into leave and when you actually got out? 12 months. Oh, so you had a full year. Yes. What did you prepare for the civilian sector? Not much. This is kind of a loaded question because I didn't recognize. I thought it was nine months, but yeah, so you have a year to prepare to get out.

Yes. What kind of job did you line up? What kind of career did you have squared away for when you got out? So here is the issue with it, right? And I don't know if this is how it works over here in the US military, but you get that 12 months, but that doesn't mean that you're exempt from doing other stuff. So I think in that period, I actually did another deployment to Norway for a couple months. So that completely ruined everything. We had to go on exercises around the UK. So that ate up another couple weeks, couple months. And it wasn't until maybe the last eight to ten weeks

that I actually started to take action on stuff and to do stuff. And I did what a lot of guys do back then. Don't have many skills, don't have many qualifications. And I just went and retrained as a bodyguard. I flew out to South Africa. I had actually separated from my daughter's moment at this point as well. So I was in a bit of a... I could have took my notice out and stayed in,

but mentally I'd already made that switch. And first you became a bouncer as soon as you got out. right that was sort of the first thing you did well I can say this now because I'm out but I was a bounce while I was in I spent six years the pay was so bad I had a daughter a mortgage I was earning oh my god eleven hundred pound a month um trying to pay all these bills so I had to take an extra job and I was doing three nights a week for years as a nightclub dormant and actually in the day when I was in the UK I would climb in the back of the trucks button them up and sleep because I tried to explain

this to people at the time like in the military they would take us us at seven in the morning and dump us eight miles from camp and we'd have these runs to do and you know it's very physically demanded and when you're not getting home to three o'clock in the morning a couple nights a week and then having to do that you got to grab sleep where you can so it's a very stressful period for me and then when me and my daughter's mom separated we get a bit of money and to retrain when you leave the military and I had a bit saved so I just took all of that and signed up to this course in South Africa and went over there for six weeks And the goal was you were going to get into like executive protection and that's what I thought.

I thought I'd be walk around London with a fancy suit on talking into my wrist and protecting celebrities. But I'm sure you guys know that's not the way that world operates. Not all the time. So yeah, it was a bit, it was a bit, I was a bit disillusioned with it. And for some reason, I think it was because of my age. It certainly wasn't for the lack of work, but I just couldn't seem to get my foot in the door with anybody. was willing to employ me and give me some good jobs. So, you know, I was working as a dormant at the time, sleeping on a friend's sofa, eventually graduated to rent in a room in a house,

just trying to figure it all out, you know, and getting in some trouble. When you were being a bouncer out in town, and are you not allowed to do that while you're in the Royal Marines? It's like the one thing you can't do is security work. You can have another job, but like there's like three things that you can't do. I don't know what the other two are, but security is like number one. And I actually, as I was leaving, my QM, I can't remember his name there, he's a major, caught me three times working. I was going to say, how did you work in town without the boys showing up and being like, bro, what are you doing? I didn't. But they were all pretty cool with it.

But there was one who just wasn't. And every time he dragged me in his office. And I think the third time he dragged me in, I was about six weeks from leaving. So I didn't really care. But it was, I remember having mixed feelings about it. I'm like I get it but the times you've seen me you've been out partying you've been drunk you could have just let it go but you drag me in the office Monday morning with my heels together you know yes sir no sir three bags full sir doing the routine and I was a little bit annoyed about it but you know

I got away with it I didn't end up getting charged or anything like that and then just you know did that until you know tried to figure something else out yeah and you you mentioned in the book And again, get the book because all this cool stuff is in there. But you mentioned that when you go to this training, this five weeks of training in South Africa, you learn, look, you learn some stuff. You get to do some ambulance ride. You see people get shot.

You see people get stabbed. You have a baby get born. Like there's a bunch of cool stories in there about that. And when you get home and you don't really get a job, what you realized you learned from that school was that you like that kind of job. Yep. Meaning you like guns. You know,

you like doing dangerous, cool stuff. and you missed having like the camaraderie that you had with going through that course because there was a bunch of other military ex-military guys in that course and this lead you to the decision that you're going to go back in the Marines yes yeah I very much missed it very much struggled as a civilian and you know what it felt like it was when I was even when I was working as a as a bouncer while I was in the military it was cool and but when I left it It was like someone had flicked a switch and put a giant neon sign above my head

saying he's a civilian now, treat him differently. And that's how it felt. Like, even the people I used to serve with, treating me differently. The civilians that were coming in, the nightclubs felt like they treated me differently. Whenever police were involved in incidents, they felt like they treated me differently.

I didn't like it. It's like all the respect I felt that I had been a Royal Marine had gone. And so I'm like, I'm not doing this. I can't live this way. I'm going to go back to what I ironically thought was the warm, safe, love and embrace of the Royal Marines. So yeah, reapplied, went to go back in, didn't have to do training again,

because I think I've been a civilian for 12 months. So just did the annual test, fitness, shooting, the NBC CS gas thing again, and was back in uniform within four weeks. Dang, they get it done. Yeah. I could have done the whole thing in a week. I don't understand what they did. You turn out one week and it's the fitness test.

come back next week for the weapon handling test come back for the shooting test I could do most of this in one day but yeah they spread it out for four weeks they were paying me so I wasn't complaining you end up going to 40 commando yes you say here within a matter of weeks I was in

optag training for Afghanistan the operational training advisory group was responsible for constantly updating training packages for troops about to deploy to theaters such as Afghanistan or Iraq so you roll right in You're doing an exercise This is kind of an interesting story

You had a vehicle that had like an issue And it would shut down when you shut it off And it would need to jumpstart So you pull over the side of the road And you're trying to get this thing restarted There's a couple land rovers parked nearby Some army officers in there And you say I went back to one of them

Excuse me sir any chance I could borrow your slave leads I need to jumpstart that four turner over there While they were sorting the leads for me I noticed the young officer with ginger hair sitting quietly in the back of the rover on the right. I recognized him straight away. I went back to the four-tonner with the leads and told the other drivers,

Stu Green and a fellow Marine called Rookie, what I had seen. Here, Prince Harry is sitting in the back of that landy. Yeah, Rammers, of course he is. Eyebrows he is. And by the way, you guys have this thing that you talk about. Eyebrows means, if I'm wrong, I'll shave my eyebrows off. Yes.

So eyebrows he is. Go have a look for yourself. The rookie went over and confirmed. I was telling the truth, so I wouldn't have to shave my eyebrows off. after that the prince realized there was no point in lying low and he got out of the landy for a leg stretch at the time almost no one knew what prince harry knew he was going to serve in afghanistan for real and was doing his optag for a reason i didn't give him a second glance i presume never see him again

so why would i so you're back in and you detail some of the training preparing for that um but eventually you're you're going to afghanistan and you fly to afghanistan you first stop at the big base camp bastion and then you head out to fob robb yes forward opera and bass robinson going to the book here as the dust cleared of this is you landing landing at fob rob as the dust cleared a bare chested bootneck wearing shorts and flip flops grinned us through an uber chad mustache and massive lamb chop sighties he looked like he'd stepped out of a 1970s porn movie. The RSM back at Bastion would have given a would have had a coronary just looking at a photo of his growler. Welcome to fob rob he chuckled grab your stuff and follow me. So there's

your arrival. Um going a little bit here. I didn't know any of fast forward. I didn't know any the lads here and we didn't and we hadn't even started to get to know each other when we trooped outside to be allocated to Sanger watches and to meet the Sanger commanders. I was pleased when I saw mine was Corporal Helsby because I knew him. We had been through training at Limestone together at the same time and served in Iraq together. I'd taken a year out in Sivvy Street and he'd reenlisted since then while Sean, that's his name, Sean, Sean had carried on. He was a bit shorter than me at around 5 foot 10, but he was mega fit. He was from Manchester and had his brown hair shaved tight to his head. The good thing about Sean was that he was a natural leader.

He never had to raise his voice, lose his temper, or bollock people for to get things done. The lads just didn't want to let him down. Part of what he did was that he never passed shit downhill. If we messed up, we knew we had earned him a bollicking from the troop stripy or HQ, but he would never let you know about it. He could make you feel terrible just by a shake of the head, which would let you know he was disappointed with you. He would seem perplexed that you would behave like a dickhead when you were capable of much better. it was worse than copping a bollicking. The other thing was his judgment.

It seemed to be spot on all the time. He never had any worries about going on. I never had any worries about going on patrol with him. He made you feel safe. You felt that if the shit hit the fan, Sean would be able to sort it out, do the right thing and get you out alive at least. In short, I would have followed him pretty much anywhere.

And most of the lads felt the same. Yep. It's always good to dispel the rules. rumors or the the stereotype of military leadership that the military leadership of good leaders like yelling and screaming and everybody and it's like here's a guy totally respected he'd fall him anywhere never even had to raise his voice yeah 100% natural leader 100% fast forward a little bit the ground heaved clouds of dust drifted down from the mosque ceiling that's where you guys were staying and chips of clay render fell off the walls and rattled the deck what the f incoming yelled Juergen. The shelter, quick.

And get the books, you can get the introduction to all these different characters that are freaking awesome. Yergan being one of them. I leapt off my cot, flapping like a novice and piled on my body armor and helmet.

Shit, I was wearing flip-flops. I started putting on my boots. Rammers, come on. Oh, fuck it. I flapped my way out of the mosque and ran at full tilt, 10 yards across the compound into a shelter,

a two-story, Hesco shack topped with railway sleepers piled up with sandbags on top. Marines were piling in. What the fuck was that asked? I asked. A mortar? Nah, Rammers.

You can hear mortars whistling before it hits. That was a Chinese rocket, I reckon. 107 millimeter. They don't make that much noise as they come in. Sounded quite close. Yeah, it was near the bogs. Let's hope no one was turfing out one just then.

I looked around the shelter. I was scared and trying not to show it. The Hesco could soak up a lot of damage, but a direct hit. I looked at the railway sleepers up top. We were sitting underneath tons and tons of sand and gravel. If this was brought down on top of us, it would bury us alive. This was not the glamorous war fighting I'd come out here for,

sitting in a gloomy cave, no way to fight back, waiting for the sleepers to collapse in a ball of flame, shrapnel, and rock. What was I doing here? I got a grip on myself. There's nothing you can do about it. Just chill out, I told myself. The Taliban can't aim those rockets to save their lives. Be one in a million if they managed to hit us here.

slowly I got over the shock and composed myself we were all in it together and none of the other lads seemed to be bothered a little bit of a reality check there getting freaking bomb for the first time yeah yeah and like I say you just feel helpless and defenseless right you just got to wait and see what happens and hope for the best and it's not it's not a great feeling is it you know just sitting around waiting and really what you want to be doing is it's reacting you know but they were built pretty sturdy they were never any incidents and they did their job they protected us kept us safe yeah the times that I've been like in vicinity getting mortared um I always just think about those guys in world war one

like it's gnarly getting mortared with four rounds of 60 millimeter mortar that sucks can you imagine just being in a trench line on the front and just receiving massive artillery for weeks and months and years on end. I can't imagine what that, I can't imagine what that was like. No, me neither. Terrifying is what it's like. Yeah, because you get a, like what you described there

is a little bit of, a little bit, you know, a little fraction, a little probably four minutes of terror, you know? You hear, you can hear, like it describes there, you can hear mortars if they're getting launched close and you can hear them coming in. So you kind of get a little bit of that feeling of like, Oh, there's a chance.

There's a chance I'm in my last 20 seconds of life. Yes. But, you know, when you get four mortar shot at you, six mortar shot at you, so that's, you know, maybe you go through three minutes of that, this might be my last 20 seconds of life. But go a day, a week, a month. That's why those freaking horrific videos, you've seen those videos of guys in World War I that come back,

the guys that had really bad show show. Shell shock and they can't stand up and they're just shaking so bad. It's freaking horrific to watch. It's heartbreaking. Yeah, it must have been tough. What was your, when you were getting into Afghanistan, were you pretty much still with the young, dumb attitude of like, hell yeah? Yes, absolutely, 100%.

I remember feeling curious, is this going to be different to Iraq? And the pre-deployment training had already let me know that it was going to be because it was completely different the training than we did. A lot more intense, a lot more focused, I think is the word. And so I knew it was going to be different. But there were still elements that caught me off guard. Like when you went to Camp Bastion, you know, and there's a coffee shop and a pizza hut. I'm like, what's this?

This is like going to Disneyland. And you're walking around and there's people immaculately dressed with creases in their uniform. And I'm like, okay, this is not going to be the whole six months, I doubt. And then when we flew into Ford Robinson, I was expecting this Chinook to land and we'll all be running off, getting around and all around the fence. And then a guy turns up with flip-flops and no T-shirt on. I'm like, what? I thought he was going to have body armor and a helmet and be fully rigged ready to go.

So that was kind of like an adjustment period. And then, you know, that stuff started happening and what was coming in, getting attacked. And then you know, okay, cool. This is what I thought war was going to be like. And it very much lived up to my expectations. Yeah, and if you think about your training when you were going to Iraq, there was just no combat experience for like the guys that were training, most likely zero of them had combat experience.

Right. You know, maybe one or two of them. Maybe you had some holdover. Maybe some guy came home early from Afghanistan or something like that. But, you know, there was just didn't have combat experience. And so the training is going to be different. Because if people are operating off what they think the war might, what they think war might be like,

it's going to be different and it's going to be substandard. And then when you have people that are coming back from war and actually coming back from the specific theater that you are going to, you know they know how to run good training. So they're definitely going to step it up. The training that we conducted, look, and we did our best in the 90s. We did our best to conduct good training, and we had good ideas and good principles

from the Vietnam era guys. But there was a different theater, and they passed us on their principles, but it still wasn't there where it should be. But then once we all started coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's like, oh, yeah, we're going to run this training. We're going to make sure our friends are ready.

And that's what it was about. Another little note here on leadership, you say the commanding officer, the officer commanding the Fob was a Royal Marines captain named Chris Jessen. Fob bosses were usually majors, but Captain Jessen was no ordinary officer. For a start, he joined the Marines as a booty in the 80s

and been promoted to Warren officer class to a serious non-commissioned rank. He then took it a stage further to become a senior corps commissioned officer and was promoted to lieutenant. He was now in his late 30s with 20 years experience and knew the Corps backwards. He was backed up by CSM Bob Toomey, a married man with two young children who was about 37. Between the pair, they had almost 40 years experience as Royal Marines,

and they commanded instant respect among the bootnecks. So you got a good crew of leadership out here. Yeah, we did. Yeah, very good. And you talk a lot in the book, you're spending a lot of time basically on guard duty, for lack of a better word. And you're in these sangers.

Are the sangers pre-built? Describe a sanger for me. So they were built by engineers. You know, the Hesco barriers. Yeah. So basically the entire fob was made of Heskel barriers. It was like a giant kidney shape. If you were lucky, it was stacked too high,

but most of the time, just one. And the Hesco barriers were one level, sorry, the sangers were one level of Hesco barriers. Externally, they were covered in body, barbed wire to stop people storming them. And there were little windows. We had two windows and ours. And on the roof, the roof was railway sleepers and corrugated iron,

just stacked with sandbags and dirt and grit to protect it. And that was it. Internally, there was a map of the local area and a little crib sheet with some local phrases where you could try and communicate with people. A radio. And that was it. You know, and you just sat there, observing, you know, watching your arcs for hours a day and night, and then defending from any

income and attack. It was pretty solid. And that was proved with our success rate. Every time we were attacked, nothing happened. It was in an elevator position too. So that was to our advantage. The whole fob was in an elevated position. Yeah, for that area. I think in total there were seven of these sanguages. We had responsibility for three. And then we had, there were some Americans with Dutch, maybe French as well, that manned all the other ones. Yeah, but it's pretty tight and defensive in there. And we never really had any issues. I just could never get my head quite around how,

when we were in these fobs, in the fob walking around, you had to have your helmet on and your body armor and your weapon close to you. But if you wanted to go out and do a run, you could run around the whole thing in shorts and no T-shirt. So I'm just like, this makes no sense to me. Like, I'm still in as much danger as I would be, but I can run around in a pair of shorts and trainers, and that's it.

But, yeah, luckily, nothing bad happened. We did, however, and I think it was the Americans. They spent a long time building, because we were living in these pre-existing mud huts and stuff that were in the area. They had built wooden accommodation, and literally the day they'd finished it, it took about three weeks, a mortar came in,

straight in the middle, no one was hurt, luckily. Barring the thing to the ground, you know? Yeah. So yeah, it was a, it was a very well defended fob that we worked out of. You talk and you tell some stories about sort of the rules of engagement that you are following. And sometimes you'd be saying, hey, why aren't we engaging this guy? And you go through some pretty good examples of why, why those rules of engagement are in place and how they work.

So I thought that was a really good, really good thing to understand from your perspective. That being said, I'm going to go back to the book here. I was itching to get into a scrap and let off some steam. A mid-morning dust up against an enemy prepared to stand and fight was what we were all looking for. There was a definite competition between some of us to see who could do the best in a contact. It would put all our training to the test and give us something to tell the grandkids about. The biggest fear for all of us was landmines or IEDs. In a contact, you can fight back.

Use your superior skills, communications, and firepower to win. There was no way to fight an IED. All you could do is try and detect it before it detected you. Yeah, the IED threat is a nightmare. I always remember me and the lads having conversations, and we used to say you've got to be pretty dumb to set off an IED. You know, obviously there's remote detonated ones, but because of the terrain that we were working in,

it would be easy to see where that ground had been disrupted and where they'd been, someone had been digging and, you know, you could see the wires and everything. And we had a lot of these conversations, like, you've got to be dumb. Like, if you can't see where they've dug these in, then you're an idiot. And then, as you know, a couple weeks later. Note to self, don't talk smack. Yeah, exactly.

That's weird. We, it was hard. I was in an urban environment. And man, they were good at putting in those IEDs. One of the things, I'll give you an example. They would put a tire on the road and burn it. That would melt the tar. They would then remove the tar, put the IED in the ground,

and then put the tar back on, and then put dust on it. And so these are literally, we call them subsurface IEDs, but they were underneath the pavement of a road. with the wires running underground off site or they'd be a pressure plate. So it was freaking hard to identify. And in an urban environment, because in a rural environment, if you see something that's manmade, it's very suspect, right? If you see a wire, it stands out.

In an urban environment, there's just wires everywhere. There's literally wires everywhere. And there's pieces of trash and garbage. And so everything is manmade. And so therefore nothing stands out and therefore anything could be an IED and they put IEDs in curbs. They put them in dead animals. They put them in they just put them in everything. And it was very difficult to see.

And I will tell you that I never, you know, joked around with my buddy saying anyone who finds, anyone who steps on an ID is dumb. Yeah. No, but our environment was different. I can imagine what you're saying because there's like there's just trash everywhere and, you know, it would be very, very difficult. but there was nothing where we were. It was just sand, dust, dirt and rocks. And, you know, we got the intelligence briefs. You know, if there's a pile of rocks,

that's there signed to each other that there's an IED close by. So we're always aware of that, always watching out for that. And yeah, it would be very easy to see when someone had dug into that ground and disturbed it. So very, very different environment. And I think I know the reasoning behind why I didn't see the one that I stood on.

I'll never know. But I have a theory as to why I didn't see it. And that's because the one I stood on was in a, like a shallow bowl in the ground. And that's where we were taken covering and given fire positions. And it had been raining prior to that. So I imagine, because it's in this bowl shape,

that the rain had smoothed the surface out and made it a lot more difficult to see. But then when you look back, I think I was 24 when I was in Afghanistan. And I didn't know anything about, military tactics or strategies or any of that stuff and you know we had intelligence briefs like I said but I was very wet behind the ears and I understand that looking back on it it makes so much sense that where they put these things

you know because they know that if they attack you they're gonna run to that position for cover let's lay the place with IEDs if I knew that back then I would have made a different decision but you know fortunately you do live and learn I wouldn't make that decision again but yeah I think that That's what happened. The rain smoothed the area out, and it made it very, very difficult to detect. Yeah, you're out on these patrols. You cover one of these patrols in the book.

You say the gravel crunched under our boots as we scan the ground ahead for disturbance or signs of suspicious activity. The lead section was approaching a narrow footbridge across the river, giving access to the village and fields beyond. HQ was certain no Taliban had dug anything in the bridge, and it was clear for us to cross, but the bloke's back at the fob didn't have to test the things. theory with their own boots.

As the lead section approached the crossing, we went firm on the hillside about 100 meters behind to cover them. Dinger sent two lads to approach the bridge and take up fire positions on either side of it. Two more pairs went across and went firm on the far side, all quiet. The rest of the section yomped across and went firm covering arch to the village. I read this part because it's just a classic covered move situation. You're setting up a cover position. You let an element move across.

That's what we all do. that's how it happens Fast forward a little bit We carried on Dinger section Matching our pace through the fields On our flank outside the village Hammering home the point of the patrol To show the locals

We could come up Their high street And hang around for as long as we wanted We were the strongest force around We were polite and took nothing We could take on the Taliban Anywhere they wanted And win convincingly

We were strong enough to protect The villagers from the Taliban Repat Prizels if they did start to lean our way. They'd better not think for a second about stashing weapons for the enemy down this high street because we would come down here

anytime we liked. We were dominating the ground, not just sitting back in the fob, waiting to cop a load of indirect fire. So that's what you're doing. You're kind of out there doing these presence patrols of the local populace. Yeah, if we weren't in Fob Robinson,

you know, defending it from incoming attacks, We were out on the ground, five, six, seven hours a day, pushing two, three, four, five miles out. With objectives, you know, there's an enemy location over there, go disrupt it, there's a weapons cash, go confiscate or destroy it. The usual basic kind of stuff. And they were keen. They were keen to get us out every day if we could.

We suffered, I think, like most people would, manpower shortages from time to time. Silly little things like, you know, one of the lads fell off the back of a truck and smashed his ankle up. And then a couple of lads flew out on R&R, so our manpower was down, so we couldn't always go out every day on these patrols.

But whenever we had enough men to man the Sanger's and Mount Patrols, we would go out there just to maintain momentum and do whatever we were tasked to do. Fast forward a little bit. Rammers, get down here, hissed Sean Helsby. I joined a group of Marine Tears briefing in an urgent whisper. HQ got ordered to a silent stand two and triple manning of the Sangers.

Get all your kit, get all your weapons. systems up and get the GPMG's made ready. Once you're at your posts, no unnecessary movement outside your hardcover. So they got Intel. There's going to be an attack. As I approached Sanger 4, all hell was breaking loose.

The crackle of multiple small arms fire opened up from outside the perimeter. It sounded very close. At the exact same incident of GPMG in Hangar 7 let rip, the gunners overlooking the southern approach to the fob were getting hit with something,

or hitting something with everything they'd got. They started alternating fire trying to put down a constant maximum of rounds without melting barrels Wush another RPG roared overhead and smashed into the ground a few meters from the doorway to Sanger 3 clattering the sandbag watch tower Fast forward a little bit we heard on the battlefield radios that there was an estimated 30 Taliban attacking the fob from a position We called Dicker's Walk a ruined compound that had been bombed to rubble in a previous tour about 300 meters from the perimeter Every spare booty was in the Sanger's putting down rounds with their rifles. Tracer streamed out of Sanger 7 and its gunners hammered the enemy. Jurgen, meanwhile, was a busy little bastard in his mortar pit.

The Sanger crew was yelling for him to get rounds from the 51 on to Dickers walk quick time. He also had a direct link to the Fobb HQ via Bowman battle radio. Jurgen loved being in contact more than any Marine I knew. He was a true bootneck through and through. He knew Dickers walk well. We'd all patrolled through it and we had panorama and we had panoramic photographs of the landscape pinned up in our compound identifying the local landmarks and ranges from the fob. He knew what he was aiming at and where it was, but all he had to do, all he had to go on for accuracy was a range and bearing. He tugged the firing cord again and another mortar round, sailed into the air with a sharp crack. Before it even impacted, Yurgan had another round in the tube. HQ saw the fall of the shot. Captain Jensen was straight on the radio. drop 50 meters and you're on, Juergen. He'd barely finished giving the order before Juergen had the shot, had the shot away. It exploded roughly on target and then he just went for it, firing for effect.

Yeah, yeah, that's the man that you want in a firefighter, Juergen. We were both very similar. We used to train kickboxing and everything out in the fob. We were very similar, I think. Not in just in mindset, in physical size and strength. and everything, definitely one of the blokes that I spent most time

without there. And if I remember rightly, that story leads on to the point where he actually landed a mortar on somebody's head as he was running away. And it was pure luck,

but he would never, because he was down behind the wall just tugging this cord and feeding it. But we had a cherry picker in camp with a camera on top that would scan the area all the time and it was watching this engagement.

And one of the mortars, this guy was running through the field and it just came whistling down, hit him right on the back of the head and pink mist, just gone. It's crazy. And he took, of course, credit for it. All the credit.

Yeah, that's exactly where I put it, right. Next question. Yeah, but yeah, pure luck. And that was a frustrating engagement because that was Sanger 7 and I was in Sanger 4 and our arcs didn't cover that. And everyone wanted to go over there,

but you just have to be professional, don't you? And so we're just in there just ah we want to get over and get involved but we couldn't So we then we had to listen to the gloating and everything else that came after But they did a good job they did a really good job all those lads in that situation By that that same thing that happens in that one us US specter gunship showed up and starts laying waste and those things so you you call it to hear death from above and it's like yep More attacks.

You know, again, the book covers a lot of these, the guard duty, some of the patrol. You're static for a while. And then finally, you get to go out on some patrols again. You say here, we hadn't been out of the fob for five weeks during which time we'd been pounded to fuck by the Taliban. It must have looked like we didn't want to come out and fight. We were happy to just step behind our perimeter soaking up the rockets. It was Christmas Eve. Time to show him who's boss.

I felt the rush of excitement At the prospect of going out on patrol And ran back to my cot to sort out my kit The plan was simple two sections With patrol and figure eight With the fob at the center of the two loops Fast forward a little bit I made my way up a waist deep trench

That ran across the slope of a hill And into the bowl-shaped depression At the top of the north fort The ground there offered Excellent arcs over the local terrain a commanding position any infantryman would be happy to get control of. We were doing our five and 25 checks automatically. No sign of disturbance, no suspicious rock piles, no problem. I stomp purposefully into the middle of the bowl, hefting the load on my chest and back. I placed the lads where I wanted

them indicating which arc belonged to which marine. I moved around all over inside the bowl, checking out their arcs over their shoulders. Happy I'd got the lads into decent positions with interlocking arcs. I slung my rifle and took a step forward. My boot sank into a layer of drying mud. My full body weight plus 30 kilograms of kit loaded onto the few square inches of soil beneath the ball of my left foot and closed the contact on a pressure plate detonator buried beneath the surface.

Boom. The blast wave at a cone of white hot shrapnel herd. me into the air and smashed my body to pieces the enormous power of the high explosive charge Gouged a massive crater out of the hill it was measured later at eight feet deep and 15 feet across shrapnel tore up my back burning the skin as it ripped the rear plate out of my body armor along with the camelback and day sack weapons and ammunition were blasted in all directions the extra layer of mud washed over the iED by heavy rain may have soaked up a vital fraction of the blast that might have otherwise killed me, but I'll never know.

As I lay there struggling to take in the extent of my injuries, pure rage swelled up inside me. shitty thoughts were flashing through my brain at an unnaturally fast speed. I totally blame myself for catching it up for no good reason. These were horrific injuries and we weren't even in a fight. I got more and more distressed as I realized. I had just completely fucked my whole life for nothing. My little girl and my girlfriend, Becky, were going to pay a massive price for my stupidity.

Thoughts of me turning up at her school in a wheelchair with stumps poking out all over, made something snap inside me, and I came to a decision. I was in shock and battered to fuck, but my head was clear. When Sean came over the lip of the bowl, I saw him take in my injuries and stare back at my face. We'd been through training together, served in Iraq together. I had massive respect for him as a Marine and as a bloke.

I couldn't have wished for a better man to do what I was about to ask him. Sean, I looked him in the eye. Shoot me. Kesea wouldn't want a freak for a dad. Becky was only 21 and stunning with it. She'd find another man, a whole man, not some freaking midget stuck in a wheelchair for all time. I shouted at him, shoot me. All the anger I was feeling.

came tearing out of me. I couldn't face life. I couldn't face the life on offer if I survived this and I wanted it over with now. My bloody stumps weren't hurting, but they'd bring a world of pain with them if I lived. It was endex big time. Just do me a favor and get it over with.

Sean was one of the fittest bootnecks in the core. If anyone could, he would understand what it meant to have that fitness ripped away. forever I instinctively knew that in a shit storm Sean would have the balls to do the right thing I waited quietly for him to unholster his sidearm and plant a nine millimeter round in the back of my head I could never wake up from this nightmare there was only one way to end it please put me to sleep do it now I wasn't wrong about Sean no way rammers he snapped in a command voice we're going to get you out of here

sit tight and don't even talk about fucking wrapping. The helo's on its way. Intense. Yeah, of eight foot deep, 15 foot around. Around hole. With six other devices that were unearthed when this one exploded. And what they were, when the guys came in and cleared the area afterwards and wrote the report, they were anti-personnel mines with the warheads of 107mm Chinese rockets on top.

So the only thing, I know it says a little bit in the book about maybe the layer of mud from the rain absorbed the fraction of the blast, but I think the one that I detonated must have been where the bowl kind of went up at an angle, maybe at 30 degrees, it wasn't completely underneath me because if it was completely underneath me and went directly up, then I would have been incinerated. So it must have came at some sort of an angle as I was going to get into my fire position, which is why a lot of my body is undamaged. It was just the legs in the arm. But it's, you know, I do a lot of quote unquote motivational speaking at corporates and stuff.

And I tell this story. I've told it a million times. And I always try to emphasize the people that the thoughts, feelings and emotions that you would expect to go through in a situation like that are the last thoughts, feelings and emotions that you actually do think. You know, a lot of people would think you would sit there and you'd be terrified of dying, and you would be fearful, and you would be scared and panicking.

None of that really came into view for me at all throughout the whole thing. I felt embarrassed to begin with, because we had these conversations about how stupid you must be to trigger an ID, and then I went and triggered one. I felt shame. I felt anger, because I had now put seven other men in this situation where if there was a small arms follow-up attack, they were going to die and it was going to be my fault.

I thought about my daughter and Becky and instantly thought, and this all happens in seconds, right? This is probably all these thoughts, feelings and emotions within five seconds. I instantly thought, right, well, their lives are ruined because they're going to be lumbered with me now and, you know, I didn't know what it was like living as a disabled person.

I'd just imagined people would push me in a wheelchair and wash me and feed me and dress me and all these things. And I didn't want that for anybody. That alone, my girlfriend, that wife, and my first born child. So that's why I asked Sean to do that. You know, I'm like, and I thought he'll understand because if he was in my situation, he'd be the same.

So I asked, I took my helmet off and I threw it to the side. And I just thought, I imagined it was just going to feel like getting punched in the back of the head and then, you know, lights out. So I just sat there, relaxed. And that was a strange thing as well. I was very relaxed throughout the whole thing.

my adrenaline had spiked you know my fight or flight I kicked in I wasn't that bothered about dying because in my mind it was an honourable way to die and because of what had happened at home you know I'd separate from my daughter's mother I didn't really have a great relationship with her

I thought well she can grow up being proud that you know daddy died doing something honourable and trying to make the world a better place so I was at peace with it and I'm like right just you know take the shot and then I'll hopefully come home and get like a hero's funeral or whatever is.

And, you know, people will turn up once a year at my gravestone and say hello to me and, you know, that's it. And I honestly was just at peace with that from the beginning. But then obviously the lads being the lads, why aren't going to do that? Sean started coordinating the evacuation. And again, you guys know this. You know, you drill these scenarios, right, a thousand times and you'll cock it up eight, nine times out of ten.

But when you need to do it, when it's real when someone's life is on the line, those mistakes just don't happen. So instantly, I think it was Juergen, was on the radio, giving a nine-liner report back to HQ. They were scrambling, a helicopter from Camp Bastion. I had a 19-year-old on his belly with a baying out, prodding the ground,

and then marking left and right a safe route for when the medic got there. One of the other guys was coordinating all around the fence straight away, and Sean the entire time was just talking to me. And I was just laying there, and imagine if you have pins and needles, right in your legs and your arm

and then intensify it by like 10,000 that was the sensation it wasn't pain it didn't hurt it was just very uncomfortable and Sean was talking to me the entire time and I remember closing my eyes and the sun was beating down in my face and I just pretended I was on a beach in Spain

and it's so strange to explain to people but I felt calm and relaxed and I was just like cool what's going to happen now is I'm going to pass out and go to sleep like I would every night, only this time I'm not going to wake up. And then I started to feel extreme exhaustion, like the most hard I've ever been in my life. And then the medic got to me very, very quickly because we were like, we were just finishing up that patrol. We're like 200 meters from the front gate. The HQ compound was inside the fob.

He got out to me, scrambled up onto this high feature, jumped into this crater that I was in via that safe route, what the guy had marked for him, put tourniquets on my legs. He then asked me to tighten the torniquet in my arm to keep me conscious and responsive because I was in and out at that point. He put his hands under my armpits, and he had a... The stretcher was like, from what I remember,

like a tablecloth were handles because we're in this huge bowl, you couldn't use the rigid version. And he put his hands under my armpits and he dragged me over to the stretcher. And then I felt pain. And it was like a stabbing sensation in my right leg. What I imagine, you know, if you put a screwdriver under your kneecap

and they just started ratcheting down on it, that's what it felt like. And I looked down, I asked him, you know, stop, put me down, looked down to my leg and coming out with my thigh was like a thin piece of rope or a string covered in blood and sand and that. And it went into a boot, into my boot. I don't know why I did this, but I picked it up and I looked inside it and my foot was still in there. So the medic took it.

He put it on my stomach. My left leg was completely gone. My right leg was still, it was gone. The upper and lower bones were gone. My hand was still intact, but it was just like a big floppy mess. So he put the leg and the arm onto my stomach. And then I've no idea how he got me out of this crater,

avoided the six other IEDs, got down off the high feature. But he did. And then he put me into the back of this vehicle called a Supercat, was waiting for us. Now the driver was Bob Toomey, the Sergeant Major. He's driving along. We're getting thrown all over the back of this thing because of how rough the terrain is. And I remember like, I didn't have my helmet on at the time and I remember smashing my head off the side of it. And at this point I was just kind of, they were talking to me and I was just kind of groaning, like to reply to let him know I wasn't dead. I couldn't really say anything as I was trying to

process everything that was going on. And as we were climbing up the incline, to go into the front entrance of camp because of how loose the terrain was and how big the holes and dense in the ground were you had to be quite aggressive with the driving and Bob the sergeant major had done this before and so he got to a point where he had to i think he had to hit the accelerator and then and then banked to the left a little bit and as he did and we hit like a pothole the medic that had saved me fell out the back now i fell out after him but as the bottom of my back hit the kind of tailgate of the vehicle, the guy driving swang around,

reached out and just grabbed whatever he could grab to kind of hold me half and a half at the vehicle. And he ended up grabbing my femur that was coming out on my right leg. Now, he left the medic because that other section of eight men that we had left with earlier

and they were at the bottom of the incline so he was safe. He had eight heavily armed men to look after him. He drove me through the front gate, right way through our compound, through camp to the HLS. And the last thing that I remember is this Chinook landing,

the sandstorm that's created from the propeller blades, and then the heat of the exhaust, which is the point why I blacked out. And later on found out that was one of the times that they declared me as dead. So I don't remember anything after that point. Yeah. Actually, the documentary has pictures of your injuries.

And I read the book first, and so I read that section about how he's grabbing your femur. And in your mind, you're thinking like, well, what does that, what does that actually look like? And then I saw the pictures of your wounds. And it's like, yep, there's his raw femur sticking out like a, like a damn baseball bat, basically sticking out. That's what he grabbed to keep you in there. So you stayed conscious for a pretty long time. Yeah.

Are you thinking you're going to die? Never. I know it sounds strange it's so bizarre I had so much confidence I think in the people that I was working with that I knew that they wouldn't let that happen and I didn't feel scared of dying

and I think that helped me to think that I wasn't going to die and it's I still kind of shocks me now that the thought process that I went through but I was just like no no I'm cool I'll survive this and you know your body your adrenaline kicks in

the medic shot me at with morphine as well so, you know, I'm starting to come up on that and nothing really bothered me at that point. And like I said, the Chinook landed. I don't remember anything after that. I've met the entire Marrick team over the years since and I think it'd be quite cool to share that story because they've told me and it fascinates me.

But they landed this Chinook and there was another guy injured in the blast, Stu. He got shrapnel in his tricep and shrapnel in his back so it wasn't life-threatening. And I don't know if you, you might do it differently, but the way we were prioritizing casualties at that time is if you've got a dead guy and a guy that's dying, you have to just leave the dead guy because you don't want two dead guys. So when they felt me for a pulse, I didn't have one,

they couldn't get any intravenous lines into me because all my veins had collapsed because of the massive blood loss. And when they put an oxygen mask on me, they said it should have steamed up to show that I was breathing, but it didn't. So they put me on the back and went, right, he's dead, leave him. Let's go work on this guy. as one of the medics walked past me to get some equipment to go and work on shoot he said that my eye started to flutter which meant to them that my heart was beating

so he alerted some of the other medics they came to work on me and you can't make this up three days before I was injured whoever runs the UK military medical world had green lighted this new technique to be used where if you can't get intravenous lines into somebody's veins you can take a medical drill

and you can drill into their tibia and fibia and you can administer fluids that way. Problem being, I had no tibious and fibius. So these two medics, Charlie and Milsie, and you've got to imagine, right, this is not a clinical hospital room, this is the back of a chinook, full of sand and dirt,

banking and left the right to avoid RPGs and mortars from the ground and AKs. They had no idea what to do, so they got these medical drills and they decided to drill in to my hip, one at the front, one at the back. The first time they did it, they put the line in and it failed.

They told me that the skin was too loose. So they pulled out, tightened the skin up, one in the front, one in the back again. They said three minutes later, I was awake and responsive. The first thing that I said was that my ass heart, which isn't a marine thing. It was apparently a side effect of mass amounts of morphine.

And then they were asking me these questions, which I was coherently answering. I wasn't just groaned in the moment anymore. And I complained. because prior to deploying, I'd spent a significant amount of money on some custom Nike with rammers on the tongue, rammers on the side, they were all colour-code, and I wasn't going to get to wear them. That was my main concern at the time,

was I'd spent all this money on a pair of trainers, and I couldn't wear them. So they then flew me back to Camp Bastion, took me to the field hospital, sergeants had to look at the damage, and they had to amputate both my legs above the knee, and my rot on above the elbow. That was the only way they could save me.

Yeah, that thing about the giving you fluids through your pelvic, like I was watching a video about it. That's just, I didn't even know that was a thing. It wasn't. They made it up on the spot. They literally made it up on the spot. Where are they putting the fluid into, like into the bone marrow or something? I guess there's, I've no medical knowledge at all, but whatever they do in the tibia amphibia, I guess it's the same thing. It must be the marrow or something.

I don't know. But it worked, thankfully. Yeah. Back to the book, getting me and Sue away from the fob quickly and safely was a massive team effort. Everyone involved responded magnificently and without a doubt. I owe them my life. I would like to put down a massive thank you to everyone, particular the lads of Echo Company 40 Commando, whose skills and courage got me off that hill alive Christmas Eve.

And then the medical team just freaking incredible. Incredible. And what I had to reread this like five times. to make sense of this. That was Christmas Eve. You, on Christmas day, you're home. Yeah. About 4 o'clock in the morning.

Oh, I know why it didn't make sense to me because it's so much further to go to America. Okay. No, because I'm thinking of getting to California from Iraq or Afghanistan, like there's no way you're getting home the same day. It's not possible. But you only have to go to England.

Right. That's only short, what does that have? Go to Germany. How long is the flight over there? No idea. Four hours, five hours, something like that. It's nothing. It's not.

It wasn't long now. So again, you talk about this, just the notification of the family. The first message that they get through is like, you lost a leg. A foot. A foot. Just a foot to start with. You get home. Your parents going to see you.

You say, Becky didn't want to be the first one to go in and see because she was frightened of the mess I'd be. Mom and dad came in first. Mom was in a state of utter shock and disbelief. I don't think she stopped crying for 40. days after she was told the news. She kept thinking she was in the middle of a bad dream and would wake up any second saying, oh, thank goodness, Mark's okay. She was like that for months afterward. Mum was struck by how big I seemed after all the thoughts of how much of me was missing. My shoulders seemed to fill the bed, almost touching the rails of both sides. The heavy bandaging

to my stumps filled the space. Even my good left hand had caught up in an ugly piece of shrapnel that cleave the palm to the bone. They were able to save the hand, but it was a bit too bandaged up like a boxing glove. Dad came out wiping the tears off his cheeks and reported to Becky. He looks okay. He just seems to be asleep.

Go and see him. It's all right. He's still our mark. Becky came in, still believing that everyone, even my parents, had made a mistake. And you talk about this in the book. She was like, no, it's not Mark. It's not my mark.

She saw my face, which was unmarked. And that was it. He's still gorgeous. she said out loud. We kind of, we kind of, we kind of, uh, didn't talk about you meeting Becky and we was going to talk about it when you

were talking, because you met her when you were a bouncer. Right. You went through the whole courting process. You were pretty slick. She kept showing up at your club and eventually you said, hey, listen, if you, if you don't give me your number,

I'm going to ban you and all your friends from the club. I, I pursued her for months. And she was like, no, I know what you do. I'm like, not do it. And then and I did it in a tongue and cheek way, right?

And I was like, listen, this is your last chance. Give me the number or you're never coming in this club again. And then she broke. Give me a number. And the rest is history. Yeah. So you had been with her for now, like probably a year at this point. About a year.

And, you know, obviously traumatic for her to go through. Fast forward a little bit. By the 28th, again, this is going so quick. By the 28th, although there was no more, although there was more surgery to go through, the injuries had settled down. started to come round. The first thing I heard was Becky's voice. My proposal came out as a croaking whisper. And by proposal, you mean marriage proposal. Becky could barely hear me and I was not sure what, and was not sure what she had just heard. Did you just ask me to marry you? She asked. I managed to

smile and a nod. My aunt came into the room and Becky said, I think he just asked me to marry him. Is that right, Mark? Did you just ask me to marry you? They both listened and I repeated as clearly as I could, will you marry me? My aunt caught at this time and told Becky, he did. He did. Becky loud out a quiet shriek and said on the spot, yes, yes, of course I will. Apparently morphine doesn't get you out of a marshal person. I was going to say it's funny. People were, some of the other people in your family were like, hey, listen, he's under morphine right now.

Like, you know, let's make sure. And then you go the next day, I woke up for a bit longer as properly with it for several minutes. Becky made a bit of a joke of it to cover for herself. Mark, do you remember what you asked me yesterday? she had a big cheesy grin all over her face. If I didn't remember she was going to laugh it off. Yes, I do, I said, and I remember your answer too.

I wasn't about to let her off the hook. Yeah, when I met Becky, you know, I fell for her pretty hard. And you know, right? And I remember, you know, it was really hard. It's always hard anyway, like going away from people that you love and leaving them behind. And it was just everything. Because we were together when I was doing the body garden. and that six weeks was hard.

Afghanistan was hard. All these things were difficult. But I remember when I woke up on the 28th, I remember the kind of blurry lights on the scene. I couldn't open my eyes because it took too much energy. And I was choking on a feeding tube, and they took all the mask off in the tube. And I could hear everyone around me.

And I think because of the drugs that I was on, everything was echoing and was being repeated two or three times. And I heard like four voices. and I instantly recognized Harris and it gave me that feeling of comfort I think that I was in a safe place I didn't know where I was but it felt safe and I had actually

in an amilton under my bed in Afghanistan I was old school I was writing a letter to her dad asking for permission to marry her and had asteriskses and crossings out and everything and I had finally written out a neat version that I was getting ready to send before I went on patrol

so I remember thinking you might as well just ask now he's not going to be that mad if you don't go traditional. So I just asked during that brief moment of consciousness, wait for a 15 seconds and then pass back out because I was just exhausted, just completely exhausted. And then, you know, the kind of the initial stages of rehabilitation started. I spent seven days in intensive care.

Each day, they gradually reduce my medication to bring me out of this coma that you had me in. and the first day after, so the 29th, I remember, and it's very hazy on a lot, I don't know what drugs I was on, but they were wacky. And I remember thinking to myself, I've just lost a few toes, and I think it was fingers. And then the next day, it was like, oh, it's both my feet and some fingers. And bit by bit, day by day, I was gradually understanding it until day seven came. and I pulled my right arm out from under the bed sheet and scratched my nose

because I was right hand dominant before and I've been doing that or scratching my torso whatever for the entire week and as I pulled my arm out I started to giggle and the nurse was like, what are you laughing for?

And these drugs have been making me hallucinate all week I had like a eight-foot bottle of ketchup in the corner of the room I got visited by Will Smith I had a forklift truck in my room at some point And so as I pulled my arm out and started to giggle, she said, what, you laugh and I said, I'm hallucinating again. So my arm's falling off. And she just gave me that look. And I was like, okay, you don't need to tell me. And on like day seven, I had a full understanding. It's both legs above the knee, right on above the elbow, a couple of bairns and trapped the wounds. And that was it.

And then on the evening of day seven, they took me out of intensive care, moved me upstairs in the hospital to what was called the Barnes and Plastics Ward. And that was when I was to start the real road to recovery after that. You have this, you have this section in here that, I want to read it. You say, what can you say? We all did a lot of crying, but in the end, tears are no use. Imagine you've lost your legs. If you shut your eyes, you can probably feel them still there. That doesn't mean anything.

I could feel my fingers and toes for weeks after the explosion. Open your eyes and take a look. Still there? Good. Now imagine every time you opened your eyes to check your legs, all you saw was a pair of stumps. No matter how many times you opened your eyes still stumps. You are not going to wake up and find it was all a bad dream ever. As I saw it, I had to cope with it and move on.

It was like that landmine nearly finished me off, but I'm still here. Am I going to wrap or am I going to make the best of it? No matter how hard I tried or. how hard Becky or mom or dad wished for it, my legs and arm were not going to grow back. We all had to accept it. Just deal with it and crack on. Deal with it and crack on. What else can you do?

And listen, when I talk about this, I'm always very honest about it because you can brush over it, right? And make it seem like, oh, this guy lost three limbs, woke up, got prosthetics, and it was easy. It wasn't, it wasn't like mentally trying to figure that. that out, 24 years old, went from 6 foot 2 and, you know, nearly 200 pounds to 3 foot 5. And while I was in intensive care, because of the limb loss, the infections I was fighting off, I was under nine stone in weight. I mean, right now I'm 60 kilos without my limbs on, so I was probably 50, but less than that. And it was a lot of deal with. And in those first three weeks, there was a lot of false positivity.

I remember thinking I need to be positive for Becky and my family, even if I'm not. And then hopefully when I'm feeling down, they'll be positive. And we'll just bullshit our way through it, which worked for like three weeks. And then this guy knocked on my hospital room door. He wasn't part of my immediate team. I never met him before.

I could see his face through the glass and the door. And he came in and introduced himself. And he was the UK's leading medical professional in the field of amputation. So this is January 2008. At that point for 33 years, this guy had been travelling the world, amputating people's limbs

and following their progress. And he walked in, you know, almost non-emotional, introduced himself and said, Mark, you need to prepare yourself for the rest of your life in a wheelchair. And then he went on to explain that in his vast experience.

He'd never met anybody who had one leg missing above the knee that had any real success for sex because they were too difficult to use, they were too painful and they took so much energy that people just put him in the cupboard and got in a wheelchair and then he turned around on the left. Now, when you're in hospital and you're on a lot of medication and it messes with your sleep cycles and all this like,

I found myself awake a lot at like two, three, four in the morning on my own with no one around no one to talk to. And that's when you start thinking about stuff. And I started thinking about, how much life I had left ahead of me, 78 years, whatever it is, the condition I was in, what this guy had told me, and, you know, it was difficult to process.

And I'm always very honest, when I do talks and things, and I say this, you know, I contemplated suicide that night, and I will never, ever make light of, you know, people that have suicidal thoughts or anything, but this is just how I dealt with it.

I remember laying in bed, at about three in the morning. And this isn't relevant, but I was super constipated. So that was adding to everything as well and making me feel like crap. But I remember just laughing to myself thinking, I can't even cut my own wrists. I didn't know how to do, how to actually commit that act. But I was just going through things that I'd seen in films.

And I'm like, you can't even do that. And I had a little chuckle to myself. And that kind of brought me out of it a bit. And then I got up the next day. And I was like, right, let's just figure this stuff out. there's got to be some sort of life after this. About six days later, another guy knocks on a hospital room door. And again, I didn't recognize him.

He wasn't part of my immediate team, but I was feeling better, so I invited him in. And he opened the door, and he came walking in on a set of prosthetic legs. He was a double above knee amputee. He had both his arms, but he'd lost both his legs in a rack. He had the rear door of a vehicle open and a suicide bomber detonated and took both his legs above the knee. he sat with me through about six hours and he took his legs off and he put them on he talked through all the Bluetooth technology

and the CPUs and the fitting process for the sockets and how you get cast for your prosthetics he taught me through his entire story and journey at that point he was still in the British Army he was a father and he was on the the Paralympic snow sport team and he was a part-time prosthetic user but he'd walked into my

room, no wheelchair, no support, no carers or anything. And after about six hours, you know, he got up and left and my morale went through the roof because I had physically seen with my own eyes, somebody in a similar situation to me, that was out there living. And from that moment, I thought, okay, cool, all I need to do is get these prosthetics, follow a similar process to what this guy's can't do, and then surely I'm going to achieve similar results. So I got a laptop brought in my room. And you remember, remember dongles, the way you used to get on the internet with a USB before Wi-Fi, so I got a laptop and a dongle and I started researching prosthetics, amputees, amputations.

And although Mick was similar to my injuries, they weren't identical. So I was trying to find somebody who was a triple amputee who was out there living. You know what I mean? You hadn't just resigned himself to life in a wheelchair. And very quickly found a guy over here. in Oklahoma, a young man called Cameron Clap, who, he's from California. He was hit by a train in 2002

and lost both his legs above the knee and his right arm to the shoulder. And I saw what he was doing, and it was phenomenal. And it was everything that in my mind, in those early days, when I didn't understand my situation properly, it was everything in my mind that I wanted to do,

but all my team were telling me wasn't possible. So I spent a lot of time watching these videos, It's following his social media, reading his blogs and his news articles and everything. Just trying to understand this guy a bit and then to figure out how he had done it. And eventually, I sent him an email and I told him my story. And I didn't think he would bother replying because from what I saw, he was flying all over the US, giving talks to schools. He was still surfing and doing these mini-triath-on events and all this cool stuff.

But he got back to me within the week. He then introduced me to his team down in Oklahoma, who had built his prosthetics for him, and they developed a specific training program for bilateral above knee amputees because it's, apart from being amputated through your hips, it's the hardest form of amputation. And like that doctor told me, he was right,

most people just quit because it's too hard. So he had been through this process. He had developed the process. He was the guinea pig for it. And he introduced me to this team, and they all started giving me advice and information and tips on how to improve my independence when I was at rehab.

And it was brilliant because I would go into rehab and have meetings with my team on a Monday morning and they had sketched out what they wanted me to achieve by Friday. And we were doing it by Tuesday because of the extra help and support I was getting. So, and I don't know if I mentioned it earlier, but I was the UK's first triple amputee.

So there was no path. You know, Mick had been through as a double above the amputee, but no one had dealt with a triple or more. So that made it that bit more challenging Because there was no set path for me And no not to do with me And I understand it now looking back It was frustrating at the time

But they were wrapping me in cotton wall To protect me and to protect themselves In case I push things too hard and hurt myself And I'd have surgeries and all this kind of stuff But the help and support that I got From mentors and professionals Just accelerated my rehab exponentially We actually had a guy

this podcast named Jim Searlesley. Okay. Who was in Vietnam. I think I know him. He died recently. Well, actually it's not that recent. A couple of years ago he died, but he was a triple amputee from Vietnam. Okay.

And he lost his legs like at the hips. Like there was no prosthetics to put on him. But his attitude was freaking awesome. And he just got done, you know, got out of Vietnam. He had one month left in his tour as a one-year tour back then he was in the Army Had him about a month left and was out Set actually was he had just placed his guys in a perimeter and was walking the perimeter and Stepped on a landmine it blew up his attitude like he just he came home

I think he did however many years or how many months of rehab learning how to use his wheelchair Learned how to you know do all the things that he needed to do and then he went started a roofing company. He got into real estate. He just, he had a bunch of, he got married, had a bunch of kids, grandkids. Just like an amazing human being. Attitude was just freaking spectacular. But a huge thing that he said, which is the exact same thing that you say in the book

and what you're saying today, was he knew that there was nothing he could do about it. Like there was nothing he could do. The chances of him getting his legs back and his arm back were zero. Right. So what is he going to do? He's going to go start a roofing company, go have a bunch of kids and just get after it. And that's what he did with his life. And just an amazing human being.

But that attitude of, you know, people ask me sometimes, you know, like the book Extreme Ownership and the attitude of extreme ownership. Well, how do you take ownership of something like that? You know, how do you take ownership of this situation? Oh, you take ownership of how you respond to it. What are you going to do? Are you going to curl up into a ball and, you know, look for sympathy? Or are you going to crassive? on and clearly your attitude is freaking outstanding.

So very cool to hear and then you started talking about some of the technology here. And I fast forward a bunch of the book. Look, hey, get the book everybody because you go through a lot of those trials, trials and tribulations of what it's like, the rehab, the reintegration with your family, all those things. It's very moving to read about. You get to this point where you say, I worked my ass off. I worked my arsoff, sorry, you're British, so.

I worked my arsoff at Headley, trying to come to grips with the sea legs. These were like advanced legs with technology in them and get control of the gate because an important event was coming. The men of 40 Commando had returned from their tour of Afghan and were to be awarded the operational service medal on the parade ground of their base at Norton Manor camp. my 10-week service in the Afghan meant I'd earned the right to receive the metal alongside them. I was now walking lengths of the physio department on my sea legs with a quad-pod walking stick with four rubber-coated feet on the end of it.

My knees were bending most of the time and getting out of the bars. Those are the parallel bars made a massive difference because I was less worried about getting tangled up and going arse over tit. It was still a struggle, but I was getting somewhere. An idea popped into my head. The parade ground at Norton Manor was flat. The whole base was flat. The only thing to stop me walking there would be a couple steps up to an office

or the steep slope behind the front gate. That's it, I promise myself. I'm going to walk onto that parade ground. I will stand to have that metal pinned on my chest like any other bootneck. And that's what you're training for. You also You have a bunch of stuff in here

Prince William and Prince Harry They come to Headley Court You're on this City City salute on the BBC With Jeremy Clarkson Which I have to bring up Because my family like is obsessed with

Clarkson's farm And Top Gear and What's the new one? Top Gear got replaced with The Grand Tour Oh yes So my family Family's very into.

Gotcha. Jeremy Clarkson. This buddy, yours, Ben McBean. He was another amputee. And you guys are getting ready for this ceremony. And you say a week later, Ben McBean and I got ready for the metal ceremony in the sergeant's mess at Norton Camp, at Norton Manor Camp, home to 40 Commando. We had our desert rig uniforms over our prosthetic legs and we're sitting in our wheelchairs. The Royal Marines Band struck.

up and the men of 40 commando marched in their positions and were brought to attention. They knew I was going to walk, try to walk and stand shoulder to shoulder with my colleagues through the whole ceremony. Through the whole ceremony, I was fretting that I would stack it, get hurt and never forgive myself for making a tit of myself. In addition to that, they were looking at hundreds of Marines who'd come home without a scratch from the Afghan, hoof and sun tans and had enough war stories to last a lifetime. Looking at them and looking at me gave my family a couple of tough moments, I think.

Everyone on that parade ground knew how lucky Ben and I were to be there at all. We'd been given a second chance and had lives to live thanks to the courage, skill and hard work of so many people. We certainly knew how lucky we were, especially when we remembered three men from Forty Commando

who would never be coming home. My friend, Corporal Damien Movihil, Am I saying that right? Who was 32, stepped on an IED during a patrol near two months after I was blown up. He died instantly. I'd work with Damien in the Air Defense Troop at Stonehouse before the Iraq War and he was a top bloke. In combat, he was a natural leader, one of the best section leaders in 40 Commando. He never flapped no matter what was going on.

He won respect up and down the chain of command for the way he looked after the lads in his section. They were devastated to lose him and so was. as I. Equally well-liked and well-respected were Lieutenant John Thornton, who was only 22, and a brilliant young boss, and David Marsh, a hoof and Marine, who was just 23. They were both killed when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb during a patrol just a few weeks before the end of their tour. Every single person on the parade ground thought about those three men during the ceremony. That's why I felt lucky to be there. And that's why I was determined to make the best of the chance I'd been given.

There was one more Marine who couldn't be with us for the ceremony, Joe Townsend, who lost both legs in a roadside bomb. Blast. He was in Selioch Hospital too well to attend after awarding the medals at the camp. The second sea lord, Vice Admiral Johns, was going to fly straight to Joe's bedside to present him with his operational service medal in person. The commander was stood to attention. It was time for Ben and me to join them.

I launched myself out of the wheelchair and stood up. There was absolute silence on the parade ground as if everyone was holding their breath. Ben and I started, Ben started moving and so did I. I had the quad-pod walking stick and concentrated on taking one step at a time. The weather was good, but there was a strong wind blowing across the parade ground, and it was the one thing I hadn't thought of. I concentrated like crazy on not getting knocked on my arse by that wind. Falling close behind me was Major Bob to me, who driven the supic

to get me from North Fort to Fobb Rob. If he saw me wobbling, I think he was going to try and scoop me up in the chair before I went. After Ben and I had managed a few steps, I was taken aback. The crowd started to applaud us. It took me a couple of seconds to realize the clapping was for me and Ben. I carefully walked around to the back row of Echo Company. There was a gap in the line waiting for me. I concentrated on getting myself in the right place and then shifted my weight onto my heel,

to lock the legs into standing position. Bob Toomey was giving a discreet running commentary to the rest of the lads who were stood at attention, eyes front for the arrival of the second sea lord. They weren't allowed to look around or say anything to me. So Bob was quietly saying, that's Rammers, moving into position, he stood at attention. That's him squared away.

Carry on, lads. Admiral John stepped up to the podium and told the whole commando that their professionalism and dedication was what had seen them through a difficult tour and would continue to shine brightly. He told us to remember our successes and that they were not easily won, that three men had paid the highest price for them. He talked about the wounded and singled out Ben, calling him Prince Harry's personal hero,

and me calling me a legend. The ceremony took 40 minutes, and I spent every one of them concentrating on not falling over. my OSM for Afghanistan by the Echo Company commander who'd taken over from Chris Jensen, Major Wraith, and Sergeant Major Toomey. They came down the line shaking hands with me. I was willing to speed, I was willing them to speed up and get the job done. At last it was over and I'd made it. We fell out and Becky came running up to me. She slid her arms around my waist to give me a kiss. It was one of the first times she'd been able to give me a smooch in my proper height in public,

and it felt fantastic for both of us. The moment capped one of the proudest days of my life, and I'll never forget it. It was an emotional day. Do they have that on video anywhere? I think the media do, because the place was swamped with local and national media. But, you know, when I left hospital, I only did six weeks in hospital. I had three surgeries, six weeks, and then went straight to rehab February 2008. mid-Februar i think it was and um i didn't i didn't really do this i didn't know this

consciously it was more subconsciously back at the time but i thought i need to have goals going through here i'm just gonna you know part of my way through and make a little bit of progress and the lads still had about five weeks out in theater and then when they came home they were going to get like 10 weeks leave so I thought okay I've got enough time to train to get to a reasonable standard of walking where when this day comes around I can stand on the sidelines walk on the parade ground stand shoulder to shoulder with these guys and get this medal standing because I knew that everybody was going to expect me to be pushed on in a wheelchair and I'll be honest the motivation the main motivation was to

show the world that we're watching what it means to be at a Royal Marines Commando because in a lot of our marketing campaigns and adverts and recruiting it they always talk about it's a mindset you know it's not just about the physical side we talked about it earlier being cold wet tired hungry it's the mindset so I wanted to show the world what that actually meant but I also wanted to make a bunch of the lads cry and I knew they would do it right because you know it's like everyone's big rough tough hairy smell but in certain situations like that,

they will break down and cry and a bunch of them did. And I felt so good about that. But it was such a driver for me because I'd get up in the morning in rehab and I'd have blisters on the ends of my legs. And being on prosthetics throws your whole body alignment out, especially if they're not set up, right? So my lower back would constantly be in pain.

The sockets on my leg, come up to my groin and they would constantly cut and I'd be bleeding all the time. So there were lots of days when you get up in the morning, you're like, I don't want to do anything. I just want to get in the wheelchair, have some breakfast, you know, go to some occupational therapy thing and play chess with my prostate arm and that's it. I don't want to put the legs on. But I put a little bit of pressure on myself with that event and the date that was set for it and my reasons behind wanting to do it to push myself when I felt like crap to get out. and do something and I just thought even if I just take one extra step and improve by 1%

at least I'm getting closer and even if the day comes around then I completely cock it up and I fall over and whatever none of that really mattered you know that what mattered was that the switching mindset having that goal and then just doing whatever it took to achieve that goal and once I did that I came home that day I went back I only live an hour 20 minutes away from where the camp was. And I started reflecting on this period of rehab and that actual day. And just kind of like a light bulb went off. And I thought, this is what I need now. This is how I'm going to achieve things in my life, whether it's personal, professional, whatever areas in my life, fitness, finance, family, career, whatever's important to me. I need to set goals in those areas.

You know, some can be short term, some long term, some easy to achieve, some more challenging to achieve, but this is what's going to keep me in a positive mindset and keep me driving forward. And I think that's where a lot of people might get things wrong and they get in that negative headspace and they turn to alcohol and substance abuse. I never felt I had the chance to get in a negative headset mindset because I was always looking from that point on what we do we do next, what do we do next, what do we do next, what do we do next, and just kept setting these challenges and goals and then developing some sort of plan and then just executing as much as I could. And I've been doing that ever since then, you know, 15, 16 years later, whatever it is,

just setting these goals and figuring out how to achieve them, you know, and it's kept me straight and true and on the white path. Yeah, you end up staying in the Marine Corps in the Royal Marines for a while. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit here. Becky and I were married on 2 May, 2009, 16 months after my... accident at a beautiful 800-year-old country mansion called Manaden House. Yes. Set in five acres of grounds.

The ceremony was conducted by the Plymouth Registrar on the porch of this magnificent old building and the sun blazed down all day. My best man was my dad, Paul, and my unofficial best man was Bob Toomey who was helping me, helping to look after me and all my gear. And I'll close out the book with this right here. We dance in front of all of our guests as we talked. turned on the floor. Becky's eyes were shining and as the song finished all the guests roared applause. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Sixteen months earlier, smashed to bloody

bits in the back of a super cat at Fobb Rob. I told Dave the medic that my dancing days were over with my beautiful bride Becky by my side. I'd shown everyone I'd been wrong about that. My dancing days were only just beginning. So, yeah, your dancing days were only just beginning. Stay in the Marines until 2010. You're a torch bearer for the summer games for the Olympics. So did you run for that? Did I like how far did you, did you have to run? How does that work? It was a walk. Okay. With the prosthetics. There's only about a K. I think just close to my house. Big, big relay that went on all. over the country.

But again, that's another moment where, you know, when you're laying in a hospital bed at 24 with three limbs missing you, you don't think there's any future, you don't think there's anything that you can do, things like that, you start to change the way you think. I'm like, actually, this opens up doors for me and it provides opportunities that I wouldn't have had

had this not happened. And, you know, that's just a small example, but hundreds of things over the years and hundreds of doors of, I wouldn't have wrote that book, you know, if I hadn't been injured because I had nothing to write about. What made you decide to write the book? So, you know what we talked about in the beginning? About getting bullied, discovering fitness, martial arts, joining the Marines, the body.

I always thought in the back of my mind before I was injured. When I get to about 50, it'd be cool to have, like, a book written. Because if I've done all this by 24, you know, surely I'm going to have some more adventures in my life. And not even to publish and sell, just from me and the kids and grandkids, I thought this would be cool. And then when I was in rehab, because I was the first triple amputee, and there was a lot of media interest about it, I developed the relationship with the journalist. And he joked to me one evening,

because in the evenings, all the other guys would go out on the playstations and things, and I couldn't do any of that with one hand. So we just used to hang out, and he said, oh, we should write a book together. And I was like, I actually think that's a good idea, maybe we should. And because now I've got something to write about. So, and it was difficult, right, because I was still serving, the MOD after clear all.

this, they tell you to a degree what you can and can't say. But we got to work with it. He ghost wrote it for me, which is why there are some things in there, like he refers to Afghanistan as the Afghan. No one says that. But I didn't actually read that book that was published in 2009. The first time I read it for myself was in lockdown from COVID, because I got bored and I'm like, maybe I should read my own book. And I actually edited it, edited the whole thing to be a bit more from me is a kind of a hybrid of me and him and I understand it because you have to if it was just me no civilians would they wouldn't understand what the hell is going on and if it's just him all the military guys would be like that's stupid so you have to have this hybrid you know of the way

you write these things but yeah I always wanted to do it I just thought I do it for myself and then this opportunity came up and I'm working now on trying to write a full autobiography including all the things that we talked about, all the things I've done since leaving the military with Jiu-Jitsu and Riyog and fundraising and speaking and all this kind of stuff. And also, you know, I read your books to my children during lockdown, the way the warrior kid, I'm like, I need to, I need to, because, you know, you're tucking him in every night and you want to give them something empowering to read. No, I was reading them.

And I'm not just saying this. I love them. And I thought, this is such an empowering way to teach kids these lessons about what's important. So I'm not stealing your idea, but I would like to write a version of my own story similar to that where I teach children, you know, it's okay to look and be different. And, you know, you go through some challenges in adversity in life. And if you set goals and you get around good people, this is how you can overcome it and teach them some positive lessons. So I'm working on all that. I'm sure you know it's not as easy. You just have an idea. You get rejected a lot by people.

but I'll keep with it. I'll keep pushing these projects forward and see what happens. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like an awesome book for kids. That's outstanding. How did you end up in the Invictus Games? Weren't you a little bit anti-invictus games in the beginning? Completely anti-Inty.

And so why were you anti? Okay, so first explain what the Invictus Games are. So the Invictus Games is, it was created by Prince Harry. It's a military-only, global version of the Paralympics. So men and women that are injured physically, psychologically, not just through combat, through anything, sports injuries, whatever it is, can apply to join their country's team. And then I think it's now every two years they do it.

There's a games and you go out there and you compete. And it gives them a focus and something to work towards and a positive outlet and a great addition to their rehab. But I was very against it in the beginning because what happened to me was, you know, back in a day when I was in the wheelchair, I'd meet a lot of. of people you talk to you know the city sleut Jeremy Clark so you meet all these people and these celebrities and civilians and my experience was whenever you when I was shaking these people's hands they would say oh so when are you going to start the Paralympic training and I'm like is that all

you can do as a disabled person and it's used to really annoy me and because of what I did before in kickboxing boxing muti none of these sports appealed to me and and I'd never done it even before and I thought that adaptive sport was all about sympathy and pity and and and and I don't mind admitting this, I didn't look at them as real athletes. I thought they're just, they're not proper athletes, these people, they just get sympathy,

they don't have to train that high, they don't compete at a high level, I had it all completely wrong. And the Invictus game started in 2014, and the first one was in London, the second one in Florida. In 2016, I was sat at home and every year at Christmas,

I go in my office and I write down everything on, like I talked about, fitness, finance, family, whatever is, I set my goal. And I realized that 2017 was my 10-year anniversary of being injured. So I thought, okay, how can I celebrate 10 years of life? I want to do something that I've never done before. And I sat in my office and I closed my eyes.

And I kind of envisioned like a puzzle. And one piece said career, one piece said family, one piece said health. And there were several pieces and the middle bit was missing. I'm like, what haven't I done in these 10 years? and it was sport. I had trained in a gym. You know, I'd kept myself fit and healthy, and I'd done bits and pieces,

but I'd never done sport. And I'd seen the Invictus Games over the previous two years, and I'd seen people that I'd gone through rehab with, go out and compete, and I'd see them win medals, and I thought that was fantastic. But when the cameras were off,

what I saw was them regain their confidence, reintegrate with their family, be excited for the future and transitioning into the civilian world and get in the career. So I thought, maybe there is something in this. Maybe it's not what I thought.

So I applied. I never thought I'd have any chance of making a team because there's 700, I think, 80 people applied that year. And there are 70. Just from the UK, me? Just from the UK. And there's 72 spots in the team. I had never been to a single sporting event in that nine years.

Didn't know anybody. Wasn't any of the clicks or the circle. So I thought they'd just see my name and go, nope, we don't know him. But I went. I auditioned or trialed, got there. And I remember one of the events I competed in was indoor rowing And I'd never really been on a concept to row over before

Yeah, so Right, and I turned up at this event Arrogant as how in my mind Like I'm just going to smash the life out of these people And then go home And this was just for the trial, I got there I took my legs off I had a special fitted seat

I had my prosthetic arm on And the race is you got a four minute race And it is just go As many meters as you can get 15 to 20 seconds towards the end of that four minutes, I went blind. All these stars came in front of me and my vision started to,

and I was like, and there's rows of these machines. I'm like, there's no way you can let people know what's going on. I was severely dehydrated, didn't prep properly. You just carried on, carried on, carried on, until the buzzer went.

And my vision came back and I hopped off the rower, walked on my bum over to get my legs at the side of the sports hall, got in my car, and it's like, what a dick. Like, these are real. It's like this is not just turn up, get a pat on the back and be, you've got to train for this.

And so I went home. That year, the first year, I did rowing, swimming and hand cycling. And I went home and I started, I made the team, started engaging in the training camps and learning these sports. I had a full-time job as well at the time I was working for a charity. So I had to fit it, I had to get up at like 5 a.m. and do my cardio on my garage, go to work, do strength and condition in the evening. and then attend sports-specific training camps on the weekends that were all over the UK, up as high as Edinburgh,

and I live in the complete opposite end of the country. My goal, again, still a little bit arrogant, was to turn up in Canada, win all gold medals, drop the mic and retire. And I got there, and I failed that first year. I got two silver, two bronzes, and then they give out an award for, it's one athlete from every nation,

so there was thousands of athletes. They give out one award for the best team and then one award for outstanding athlete and I managed to bag that as well. But came home and I have an ex-army friend who, as like a side hustle, he frames military memorabilia.

So I gave him my two silvers and two bronzes and I gave him a flag that all these people had signed for me while I was out in Canada and asked him to frame it. And when he brought it back, he'd put the flag in the middle

and on the left he had three holes and on the right he had three holes and in the middle he had the silver and the bottom he had the bronze and the top were empty and I'm like do you seriously think I can hang that in my house

without the gold medals in and he knew what he was doing so then I reapplied for the following year Australia complete different mindset I looked at the whole thing completely differently now

was a lot smarter with my training went back into that process and then I think that year I got four golds three bronzes and a silver and then I retired and I was like that

I said I'm done I've got enough, I've filled those gaps in the frame, so I'll leave. But it was a big eye opener for me. My attitude was so wrong in the beginning. I just didn't think it was a serious thing. And then when I actually got there and trained, I mean, I had to do everything, like an athlete would, like nutrition, training, recovery, all of it.

But yeah, you did what I needed to do, retired from the games, now I'm just an advocate for it and promoted to everyone. promoted to everyone the and did they film the no limits documentary during that time when you were going for that they did but that wasn't the intention of the documentary the documentary was supposed to be a so with the whole media coverage that we had I thought everyone gets to see all the cool stuff right the walkin at meadows praise or the fun they don't see the shit and I want to make a documentary like a fly on the wall behind the scenes real life thing of me with my kids you know I was changing

nappies and this kind of stuff And that was how we set out in the beginning, but then I made the team. So we're like, oh, let's just flip it. You know, I'll see if I can get the guys out to Canada with me and we'll film this and we completely changed the approach. And yeah, just had the team out with me filming that and it was a bit of a distraction. You know, you do a lot of this stuff and it's difficult when you're trying to focus on one thing, you've got cameras and you've got to do all these certain bits and pieces.

But, you know, it turned out okay. I think it turned out okay. No, it's awesome. And I really enjoy it. I want to do more stuff like that. I mean, I say more writing, more documentaries, working in the media, that kind of stuff. So let's get to the important part of this podcast.

When did you start training in jiu-jitsu? 2017. So I was right at that same time frame. Like when you get done with the games, the Invictus games, did you decide, all right, cool, next thing is? Yeah, well, I didn't decide anything. For those that can't see, there's a gentleman sat on the corner of this podcast studio,

was a friend of mine called Sam Sheriff, who's also a former Royal Marine. Sam was a physical train instructor in the Marines. He was in charge of Royal Marines and armed combat. I believe a purple belt himself at the time, and he had introduced Brazilian jiu-jitsu to the Royal Marines against lots of negativity. Lots of people laughed him out of a room,

said you can't do it. And he eventually did. I won't steal that story from him. I'll let him tell that. another time. But I was in the sergeant's mess of Royal Marines headquarters in Plymouth, where I live, and we didn't know each other. And Sam came up and introduced himself to me, told me a little bit about what he did, and asked me if I wanted to go train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Now, I didn't know what it was, right? And growing up, between the kickboxing and the Mutai had tried Japanese

Jiu-Jitsu, I had played with karate and Taekwondo and all these things. And prior to me and Sam, I had a couple of people offered to train me and I think it was karate and Taekwondo up to black belt level. And I kind of knew that if you haven't got legs, how do you kick, right? And I knew it was more for them than it was for me. And I've told Sam this before, like when he first approached me, because I didn't know what it was. I was like, here we go again. Another bloke, bullshitting me, trying to promise me, this, promise me that. And we went down to the, the combat room what Samma created, which is basically a squash court where you jammed mats in on the floors and the walls, no windows or anything in there, just a door in and a door out.

And he explained to me what Brazilian jiu-suitz was, how it's a ground-based grappling system, fighting system. And I thought, okay, well, I don't do this with my legs on, so I'm already halfway with eggs, I'm on the ground. So now I just need to learn this stuff. So he basically kicked my ass for an hour. I felt at the end, and terrible, but also elated, because I felt sick, because I wasn't used to being upside down and twisted and turned in that way,

so I felt like seasick on one hand, but elated on the other, because once I was injured, I never thought I'd get that feeling and of being in a fight where your heart's beating, your lungs are burning, and you're in that survival mode, and Sam had given me that gift back of feeling that way.

And then he told me about a few basic techniques, and, you know, we looked at ways we could adapt them over the weeks, different arm bars and chokes and all this stuff. And like most people, I just fell in love with it. I'm like, this is cool because this is going to be based on genuine hard work and effort. There's no shortcuts. I can't just be given belts or medals because people feel sorry for me. I've got to figure this out, work my way through, adapt it to fit me, and then figure out actually, you know, what's good about my situation, not bad. You know, you can't leg lock me. tough luck figure it out all i have to do is protect my neck and my left arm and it poses problems

for able-bodied people so then when i figured that out and that took me about six years to figure that out once i figured that out i started thinking okay this is you know i'm really starting to understand this a little bit now and figure this out and you know just like most people just fell in love with it love love the training you know still don't love competing and then going through all that anxiety and stress it's better than moita i can put confidence no as well as well as far as just getting annihilated yes yeah yeah it's not as painful um but yeah just and just now pushing it and promoting it to anyone that that will listen particularly men and women situations similar to mine with with physical injuries um just trying to explain to them

i think that the magic of this sport you know you have to be present when you're doing this you can't think about your bills or your issues or relationships that you're having, you know, because you're going to end up unconscious or with a broken limb. You've got to be present. You've got to put the phone down. You've got to be focused and you're just immersed in it. And, you know, the personal growth aspect of it is, I think, what is addictive to me. You know, you turn out one day and everyone's smashing you. You come back a couple weeks later and you're having a bit of success and you know, and you're getting smashed again and you're having success again and you just gradually, like when I was going

through rehab, getting these little 1% improvements. and getting better over time and then challenging yourself to the next thing and the next thing. And with this, as you know, it never ends. So I've always got something to set goals

and always got something to strive towards, always got ways to improve. And also, you know, it brought a lot to my life outside of training as well. You know, and I can give you a physical example is what's left in my right arm. I never thought a shoulder

was a useful body part until I trained Jiu-Jitsu. And then so then I would go home and, you know, we'd come back from the supermarket. And instead of making four trips to the car to pick the bags up, I can put one in my left hand, put one on my shoulder and make half the amount of trips. You know, and it just, it just,

there was no negative to it. It was all positive. You know, everything it was bringing to my life was positive. And why wouldn't you want that in your life? Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing because, you know, when I teach people jiu-jitsu, you know, you have to explain to people that,

different, hey, your body style is going to be able to, you're going to have to adapt this to your body style because someone's a big strong guy, someone's a skinny, flexible guy, someone's a 110 pound woman, someone's a 300 pound dude, like, and you're going to, some people have short arms, some people have long arms, some people have long legs, some people have short legs. And so, you know, you always tell people, hey, you're just going to have to adapt it to what you got. And you're like, obviously a premier example of adapting to what you've got because, but that's what you can. You have the. ability with jiu jitsu to to adapt your body to this game and yeah that's it it's it is awesome i mean

obviously i promote jih Tzu to the the maximum ability that i can was sam still active duty when you guys met yes yeah used to that the duty want you still serving um finished did a full 22 year career and it's actually an interesting story because you know what that's evolved into is a charity called Riyorg. And I mean, when you start something, right, no one, if you hand that over to somebody, no one's going to be as passionate and as driven as you because you started, you created it,

you've got the long time vision for it. And I hope Sam doesn't mind me tell him this story, but when he was due to leave the military, a lot of us thought he needed to carry on because of how many lives it was changing and saving. But you weren't too sure, were you? And he was a bit, I don't really, can't do this,

I think his plan was to do security, like a lot of the lads. And it took a little bit of time. You told him about that job market and changed his market. Yeah, yeah. But we chipped the way in, me and a couple of lads over the course of about six months, until he felt a bit more comfortable with it and realized like this is doing such good work, you know, not just in the UK, but around the world. So what does reorg do?

Because this is a major part of what you do now is supporting this charity. What's reorg do? So initially it started and it was offering Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu just to Royal Marines who had suffered physical or psychological injuries as a result of their service. But then it gained such popularity that Sam had used it to order the military. And then I think it was after Sam had left and it formed as an official charity, we went out to the emergency services, police, fire brigade, and then evolved also into the fitness world.

not everyone wanted to do Jiu-Jitsu. Some people would like the CrossFit and this kind of stuff. And so we offer that to them as a form of rehab to help them through any issues that they're suffering with. And it's just a constantly evolving beast. So there are programs now. There's the Reorg-60. There's the Re-Og-365. What's the Re-Org-60?

So that's the initial entry program. So if someone hears about us or they're told about us, they're going on the website, they hit the apply button. they apply for the real 60 they'll have a call with with sam or trish or one of the team and almost go through like an interview to make sure that they're the right fit for this and then they have to do 60 days to form that habit and see whether or not it is having a positive effect on them they're to check in every day is the habit jiu jih Tzu or the habit is like what's the habit we're talking about i mean the manifestation of it is jiu jih Tzu yeah but it's also getting up having a positive thing to go to it's the physical aspect of it of training and then you record through the app and the program how it makes you feel and what

the effects are and which you've done the 60 you then want to see the negative outtakes of that I want to see people be like today was horrible I never wanted to do jiu jitzu again I got tapped out nine times by a 110 pound 14 year old I'll be back tomorrow yeah it's like I said that first time I did it, I felt like crap physically, but was elated because of what it was given me. But then you graduate to the 365, which is a year-long program. And it's all funded by Reorg. So Reorg pays for you to go to Jiu-Jitoo Academy? Is that what it does? Yeah, they pay the academy of no cost to the member. They get, they go to do it all for free. And then the 365 is like the year-long process. And now what they're building out now, as the addition to that is,

I think this might already be running but you can then go on their expats like go climb a mountain and it's the next level for people and then they're developing a mentor program essentially and a volunteer program where then you give back to re-agumental the next guy or go through so you know it's either one or the other

physical fitness functional fitness or jiu-jitsu going through this program You know, we're working with a university in the UK as well to do a study to prove the positive effects of it. I like that. Yeah, just doing it all properly just to say to people, you know, all the doubters and then they say is, here's the evidence with people that are much smarter than us that have been the university, have done these studies. This is what it does. This is who it's helped.

This is who it can help. If we can help you, get on the website, hit that button and start your journey. Reorg charity.com. Yes. That's where this can be found. I like the fact that it kind of grew based on demand signal and kind of goes, hey, you know, like we just need to get people on the Marines to train. Oh, cool. Everyone in the Marines on board.

Okay, cool. Now we'll get the military. Okay. Military broadly. Yep. Yep. There's still a demand signal. First responders.

Just grow. And then you go, okay, we've got people training jiu-jitsu, but we also need to get on the fitness. Okay, cool. So you grow that. Oh, now we're kind of maxed out on those two things. People are making it happen. Cool. Let's just go out into expeditions and start getting after it.

So that's a very cool way to grow. There's an Oregon America called We Defy that does similar type things. And I think you all know them. But it's just giving jiu-jitsu to people. And I can't wait to see the scientific studies. Yeah. Because I've been telling, I've been telling people this for decades. Yeah.

Decades. I've been saying, hey, man, it's going to help everything in your life. Just go train jiu-jitsu. Just go train jiu-jitsu. Just go train jiu-jitsu. And I can't wait to see this scientific feedback. on this because I've been right on some stuff by the way. Okay.

When I had Andrew Cuban on my podcast and there's all these things that I was doing in my life that are scientifically supported. Yeah. Like for instance, when there's a problem going on, taking a step back away from the problem and broadening your field of vision, that's like a physiological thing occurs in your brain when you do that. When you take a breath to calm down, what I used to do just because I didn't, we're talking on the radio in the teams I didn't want to sound like I was panicked or freaking out so I'd like

before I'd key up my handset take a breath calm down well that's a physiological thing you can drive your physiological system by your actions so I would put money a big money Kerry Hilton on on this I bet you when the study comes back on what jiu jitsu does for you it's going to be epic now I saw someone the oh no it's Craig Jones I think it was Craig Jones the other day was saying like, Jiu-Jitsu's ruined more lives than it's helped because it's like, oh, you're really good. Oh, what did you do?

You quit your job and you now, you know, don't have any money and you live in the back of your Toyota Celica and you just train Jitsu all the time. You know what? I'll tell you that might sound like a negative, but I'd be kind of down for that. Kind of all day. Kind of a good deal.

So that'll be awesome. And so can people go there? Can people donate? Like is that, is that what we're doing? Yeah, to help out? Yeah,

yeah, we're on Instagram, all the social medias, the website. We're actually, while we're here, we're conducting a couple of real seminars around San Diego and LA

fundraising seminars to help us to continue what it is that we're doing. The team's growing behind the scenes. So we're getting a lot more help and supporting now to reach more men and women. Do you know how many people you've sent to Jiu-Jitsu right now? Like,

What's a guess? Sam, you've got hundreds. There you go. There's the scientific answer, hundreds. So we're getting it done. Yeah. You got awarded the MBE, which is the most excellent order

of the British Empire. We don't have anything like that. Very British. Yeah, we don't have anything that cool. And what was that experience like? This is in 2020. Yeah. It was a strange one

because what I got it for was for working in the veteran community and supporting more Marines which is just my passion and it's not like it's hard work for me it's easy I just to me it's hanging out with my mates doing some challenges raising some money and helping some people that's all it is

so to be awarded rewarded for doing that I struggle with it in the beginning I'm like well I'm not really doing anything that special I'm just literally living my life having a good time doing it and then helping people but you know when I sat down

I chat with Becky about it. And, you know, it is a huge honor. It is a huge honor to be able to put those letters at the end of your name and wear that medal at fancy ceremonies. But it's not changed anything. Like, I'm still continuing to do what I love doing and what I'm passionate about because I'm passionate about it, you know. There's a video on YouTube.

You spoke at the Oxford Union. What's it, Oxford Student Union? Yes. Was it Oxford Student Union? Is that what it's called? I don't know because it was a complete... I actually went to Oxford University because I had arranged an evening with Mark Hornwood event

for me, telling my story to earn a bit of money. And my agent, Katie, she used to go to Oxford. And we were with one of the deans. She was just catching up with him. And when we're in the office, this is about three hours before my event. The phone ran. And he picked it up.

and you could tell he was a bit miffed when he put the phone down. So we asked what was up and some lord was meant to be debating in this Oxford chamber in the evening and he had dropped out. So Katie went, Mark will do it? And I'm like, do what? She went, oh, you've got to go to this, I didn't know what it was. She went, you've got to go to this thing and debate after the talk. And, you know, I don't know what you're like when you do talks and things, right?

But I was locked in on that focus and I had to ignore everything else. And then I'm like panicking a bit. Like, I don't know, I can't prep for this, I don't know what this is. I think that was a good thing that I didn't know what it was because as soon as I finished my talk I got put in a taxi took it to this Oxford Chamber thing

and they basically get students and they debate and there's a topic and the topic was I think it was a 50 year anniversary of I will not fight for king and country

and you have a for and against argument and they just threw me in deeper I didn't really know I was sat in there in this chamber full of people watching these students trying to figure

out what was going on, what they were talking about, how I could contribute to it. And there was a guy set opposite me. I'm not really into politics. His name is George Galloway. And apparently he's like a really intimidating figure and he wears a funny hat. And he was just staring at me the whole time. And I'm like, I don't know, what's this dude like, eyeballing me for it? Anyway, I figured out about 20 minutes in what it was all about, what they were saying, what they were doing. And it was all scripted. Even like the banter between the two sides. It was all written down on paper and I'm like well I haven't written anything down on paper and I felt very much out my depth because these were kids from wealthy families they were academic they were educated they had

prepared for this debate there were some like high-ranking academics in the room and then there was me with 10 GCSEs that dropped out of school to work at McDonald's and join the Royal Marines so you remember eight mile with M&M yeah you know at the end right when he's like well I know exactly what they're going to say about me. So I'm just going to, I am white trash, I live in a trailer, this guy took my girl, and then they can't say anything. So I basically got up and said that I have no education to your level. You know, I don't live in the world that you live in. I don't even know I have to fancy words that you're using, but this is what I do know. And then I just talked a little bit about having gone to combat, to war, and said, I would absolutely do it again.

You know, no questions. And then I walked out. Like you're supposed to like sit down and stay I just walked out. Kate, my agent was like this girl. That's called a mic drop right there. And apparently they I don't know if they've never had, I might get this wrong, but I got a standard ovation and walked out and apparently they've never had that in that chamber before. That was freaking epic. But then I went and I researched it after and I saw like Barack Obama.

Oh yeah, I was gonna say you said it's a bunch of students like no, they bring in pipe hitters. I know now the most. I didn't know that at the time. And there was all these people that I've seen online, and I'm like, holy shit. Like, they put me in there with these people. And it's kind of cool after that. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's epic. I'm going to figure out a way to post that thing because it's freaking legit. So what are you doing in America right now? Like, what's this whole trip about? Come here. Come here. You see you guys and do this podcast. Now, we're promoting the RioG mission.

Like I said, we've got some seminars coming up. We're going back to L.A. after this. Then back here, to San Diego. I think we're going to 29 palms We're you guys doing a seminar in L.A. Sam? UACTP, undefated. Okay, what about in San Diego?

National City Club. Humaita? Gracie Umaita down there? Or 10th planet? No, it's called National City Jiu-Soo Club. Okay, cool, right on. Awesome. Yeah, we're just going to come out and we thought,

you know, because you kindly invited me out here to do this, I thought, well, how can we maximize your opportunity are out there. So Sam came along, we're going to do these seminars, raise some money, hopefully go back with a nice chunk of change. I've had a good time, see our boys in the UFC Saturday night, destroy the competition. You're freaking out, and you're going live to this UFC? You're going? It's in Manchester, isn't it? Oh. It's in England. But they've kept the same time zones. So we were joking in the hotel room earlier. Like tomorrow, our athletes in England,

and I have to go to bed about four o'clock in the afternoon because the card starts at 5 a.m. in the UK. So we can watch it here live because they didn't change the time, but in the UK, it starts like 5am. I was thinking it was in Vegas for a second. I was like, no, you guys are stoked. Oh, I'd love that.

We've been to a couple live, and we've got some connections in there, Sam has, and they're very kind to us, they invite us to. We went to the first one back in the UK actually after COVID. Yeah, you know, you've been, it's amazing going to these things and seeing it up front and live. Yeah, it's cool. I'm kind of spoiled at UFC.

I've been to so many UFCs because back in the day, I coached a lot of guys. So I was up there all the time. I've probably been to, I don't know how many, but I've been to dozens and dozens of UFCs and always had kind of like backstage. I was cornering people.

I've been backstage with the champs, you know, everyone in the same warm-up room. It's been, I've had a cool experience. I wish I would have a helmet cam on. Oh, yeah. Because I'd have a bunch of good stuff. Sam sort it out a couple months ago when we were rolling with Tom Aspinall. Oh, that's awesome.

He's a beast. Oh, yeah, for sure. Obviously, he's like playing with a kitten with me, you know what I mean? But he does that with pretty much everybody. Yeah, he's a beast, beast. It's great to do these things, you know. This is what I said earlier. You know, my life now opens these doors and gives me these opportunities that I probably

wouldn't have had and I'm grateful for all of them. Yeah. Right on. Does that get us up to speed? What else? We miss anything? Oh, God knows. Oh, yeah.

We hold our own Jiu-Jitsu tournaments. We got the RioG Open. I'm competing in that on the 24th of August over in London. Okay. The Reorg Open. Yeah, it's an annual Jiu-Jitsu tournament competition. I think we've got over 600 people signed up right now, aren't we? And that's able-bodied and adaptive athletes.

It's men, women. We've got children too. Yeah, men, we cater for everybody. Yeah, it's phenomenal. It's like the, I was going to say the social highlight. It's not a social highlight. It's like the calendar highlight of the year. So I've got to get back from here and then kind of go into a small camp.

I competed the other week and snap my sternum because I didn't tap and someone, you know, cracked. But I've just about got over that now. So we're going to a camp for that. How much did you win for not tapping in that? I didn't win anything. I lost completely. Isn't that insane? Wow.

It's like we have been talking about that with Craig Jones. You know, people are, you're in a tournament for a $7 medal. Oh, yeah. And you're not tapping. You'd rather crack your sternum than tap. And now this dude's giving away $1 million. Crazy. There's going to be ACLs all over the mat just spilled out,

just shoulder pieces just all over the place. It's going to be mayhem out there. And that's the same weekend as ADCC, right? Yeah, but you can go to both. So the way they set it up is the Craig Jones invitation was, is Friday and. Saturday and ADCC is Saturday and Sunday. So you can see all like the good matches if you're up there for the whole thing.

So it's going to be Kay. It's going to be a freaking crazy weekend in Vegas. Yeah, absolutely. Are you going Kerry? Negative. Oh, dang. How'd that happen? Didn't build the right relationships or what, bro?

Because we got a crew going up there for that day. Well, I haven't confirmed. I know CrossFit games is the weekend before. Yeah. And then so we just have. haven't confirmed you haven't snake your way in there yet K dog hadn't made the list yet hell yeah for people to find you you're on you're at mark ormodd

com that's that's the website and people can get from there you can get like the speaking you can get the book like you can pretty much get connected to you there yeah Instagram's probably the best thing though you know that's the one I'm on daily but I'm on all of them X Instagram TikTok Facebook YouTube LinkedIn It's at Mark Ormod. Ormrod. Ormrod, sorry. At Mark Ormrod.

Also, the Reorg charity is at reorg charity.com. And then also on Instagram at Reorg charity. So people can check that out and see the awesome work that's going on over there. Absolutely. And that's how people can follow up on this whole gig. Yep. Kerry, you got any questions from this whole thing? Marine to Marine here.

Is that what we're doing? I did have one question. question. You guys have legit. There's a connection, right? Yeah. Like Marines, I mean, the Marines in England are down with the Marines in America. Absolutely.

Strong connection. Plus, your mom's a Brit. Negative. Oh. I thought your mom was a Brit. No, I have German and Danish ancestry, but mom's not a war. How? Where am I coming up with this?

Not sure, bro. Dang, dude. No British nothing? No. No, you got a British friend now. I don't know. Two of British friends. All right.

What questions do you have? We were talking earlier about John Claude Van Dam movies. Yes. I was curious. You're filling in here for Echo for real, dude. I was just curious where Bloodsport ranks for you. Oh, easily. Top three.

Top three. Yeah. Right on. Yeah, for sure. Classics. Bloodsport kickboxer. I think now is relevant Universal Soldier. Sure.

You know, you just put me in an ice bath and I'll heal and go do my thing. Yeah, I just, I love those things coming up. You know, it's great. Were you Van Damme dude there, Terry? Pretty much all classic action movies. Van Dam was up there for sure. He just had that flare, you know, with like the level of actual martial arts

that he practiced. I think differentiated him a bit in that action hero movie category. So, yeah, we were down with John Claw. Getting your VHS on? For sure. All day. What else? Anything else?

Other than that, I just wanted to ask how when you were talking about training earlier on and not quitting, there was that shrinking of the time horizon, I think that you were talking about where it's like, I'm just going to give it until the end of this thing and see how I feel after that. Did that carry over into your recovery and rehab and things like that as you negotiated those challenges? Yeah, I think with a lot of things I do, I break it down. So like Royal Marines training start your weeks. If you think about it as start your weeks, it's too overwhelming. So you break it down into months, weeks, days, and then sometimes I'd even break it into individual sessions, like one hour blocks.

Same as rehab. As long as you can put a date on something like the Meadows Parade and work backwards, just break it down, break it down, make sure that you're making the right progress. Because then, you know, when you measure it, you can see where you've got to accelerate a bit, or you can take your foot off the gas a little bit. I do it with a lot of stuff in my life.

particularly if it's if the whatever it is I'm doing is lengthy I just try and break it down and get through bit by bit right on thanks man cool thank you that's I always liked that mindset you had going through boot camp carry you talked about which was you knew that no matter what even the drill instructors who are as close to God as they could be you knew that even they couldn't shut off the clock and the clock was going to go and those whatever it is 13 weeks were going to end. And that's what it that's what got you through some stuff.

100%. I had a very similar realization in training where I looked up at the clock one time and I had this little epiphany where it was like not even the drill instructor. Nobody can stop that thing from us getting through this piece and then the next piece and then the piece after that nobody could stop it. So it was comforting in those dark times. Right on. Mark, any closing thoughts from you? No, I mean, just thank you. I mean, like we said earlier, I think it was five years ago. I was originally due to come down here and meet you all. And that didn't work out because I didn't realize how big LA was and I was like eight hours away. But we finally got here. So thank you for the opportunity to, you know, share my story, to talk about Reorg and Jiu-Jitsu and, you know,

hopefully reach some people that might be in a similar situation that might be struggling. and hopefully I've said something in these last couple hours that might help them and get them on the right path. So thank you. Yeah, 100% man. Thanks for joining us. I'm sorry it took five years. That's kind of ridiculous on my part. It kind of sucks when you're far away and I'm always on the road.

So I'm glad and it's an honor to have you here to talk through this stuff. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for sharing your story, your lesson learned. Obviously, thanks for your service. Thanks for your sacrifice. But for me, even more important, it's just thank you for the example that you set as a human being that regardless of the obstacles that we face, we can overcome them as long as we crack on. So thanks, brother. Appreciate it.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate you. And with that, Mark Orm Rod has left the building. Freaking beast. Absolutely. I mean, come on. Like, excuses have just been killed, all of them. Just for him to be just out there getting after it at such a level in all aspects of life.

Just freaking totally legit. So awesome to have Mark on here. And one example for the rest of us, normal human beings of what's possible. So that's it, man. Appreciate it. guess what we better be doing we better be getting after it too at a minimum we're training working out doing jiu-jitsu lifting rowing running just basically getting after it better be which means we're in need fuel jaco fuel by the way official sponsor of the craig Jones

invitation jocko fuel also going into walmart Yeah, biggest retailer in the world. Did you know that? Biggest retailer in the world? I didn't. Going into Walmart. So if the good thing about Walmart is there's a statistic and I forget exactly what it is, but basically there's a Walmart within 10 miles of every human being in this country.

There's some crazy stat like that. So one of the goals of Jocko Fuel is to be able to get Jock Fuel, get that option, the cleaning option, the healthy option to everyone. And it's hard to do because there's different stores, different retail centers. There's just, it's a complicated machine out there. But Walmart eliminates a lot of that problem for people that live all over the country to be able to say, oh yeah, I need some jaco fuel.

I can go three miles, seven miles, eight miles to Walmart and get it done. I grew up in a small town in North Carolina. Check. And I'll never forget when we got the Walmart. Yeah. And we had arrived at that point. Our Kernersville was on the map. Our shop was called Kmart.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, Kmart. I think Kmart went under. They did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then in the movie about the, what is it, Night of the Living Dead where he's like,

don't, he works at Smart. Yeah. Don't just shop smart. shop Smart. Right. Classic. Classic. Classic scenario.

So we might not be an Smart or Kmart, but we got them beat. Going into Walmart. So check it out there. Also, joccofuel.com, obviously. Hey, we got like a, like a crew. We want to help take care of people that are in the game. So we've got like a reward system. So you can check that as well, jaco.com.

Joccofuel.com slash rewards. And this is where you can get hydrate, this is where you can get go, this is where you can get mulk. This is where you can get joint warfare, krill oil, all the stuff, all the stuff that you need to operate at a high level across the board. So check out joccofuel.com or going to Walmart, going to Wawa, going to vitamin shop, Gnc, military commissaries, Afees, Hanford, dash stores, wakefern, shopwright, H.E.B. Meyer, Wegman's, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields. and then in a bunch of small gyms all over the place. Just little jiu jitsu gyms, big jiu jizu jigs, they got it. If they don't have it, tell them to email jf sales at joccofuel.com.

CrossFit gyms, they got it. If they don't have it, tell them to email jafsails at joccofuel.com. We got a team out there just going around and going into these places, rolling jiu jihitsu, getting a workout in, and hooking it up. So that's what we're doing joccofuel.com. Check that out. Also originu-usa.com. we make clothing here in America.

We make clothing here in America. We manufacture here in America with American made materials, which is a huge part of this. It's a huge part. It's probably at least three quarters of the process or let's say half the process. If you buy some Chinese made material and sew it here, I don't even know if I can give you half credit. Maybe I'll give you a quarter credit. but we'll benefit of the doubt we'll give you half credit if you're sewn here in america thank you we appreciate it if you're cutting in sewn here in america thank you we appreciate it but

what you really need to do is what we're doing weave the material here use american made materials american grown materials american fabricated materials that's what we're doing at origin u.s. and then we're taking them into our factories and sewing them and cutting and sewing them so that's what we're doing here and it's the best stuff. Did you get, you probably didn't get the bur yet, did you? I have not gotten the burr yet. It's got to suck to be you.

I'm a little lower on the hierarchy. We need to hook that up. Because it is for, it's perfect. It's like the silk weight, quick dry, like totally legit. It's hot in San Diego, right now.

It's hot in San Diego. And never mind freaking Arizona. Never mind. Nevada. Right? So check that. out check out the new burr stuff the hunt stuff jeans geese rash cards by the way it's almost hoody season we're getting there i know it's hot right now but hoodie seasons are coming

origin usa.com american made stuff also we have a jitzy camp and we're gonna have some law enforcement first responder military training up there august 27th through the 31st up in main so the regular ones already sold out but we still got some slots left so check that out as well We also got jocco store.com. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom gear. You want to take your wardrobe up to that next level. Look at you. You're trying to vary off of the echo Charles Pat.

You almost said if you want to represent on the path. You almost said that. Almost. But then you decide to deviate. You're going to carve your own trail over here. Carry out and make it as mark on the scene. I mean, you already dropped in earlier with some 80s movie just strength. Bloodsport?

Yeah. Classic. Is Bloodsport? the, that's the kumitay, right? Yeah. And what's the difference? What's kickboxer? Kickboxer is, oh, you're getting called out, only?

Oh, we got a fake fan in the house. No, not a fake fan. They do start to blend together, right? Bloodsport is the one where, you know, it's the classic. Are they the same character? No. Okay, so it's two different dudes. Yeah, two different kind of franchise.

Can you name me the character's name in Bloodsport? Negative. Okay. So you're, you're into it, but you ain't that fire. No, 100%. Well, It was the classic, like, imagery, like the wrapping of the fists and, like, the dipping in the glass, you know, that type of stuff where I just remember being super young and watching that and being like this is cinema. You see what I'm saying?

Well, did you say this is cinema? Is that really what you said? Because I saw that stuff. I wasn't thinking about cinema. I was thinking about, like, when I watched platoon or apocalypse now, I wasn't thinking about movies. I was thinking about war. For sure. All those anti-war movies that they made, they did not work on me in the.

slightest in the slightest not not not cinema but this is what movies should be this is like what this is the coolest thing I've ever seen as a child you know but did you think of it as a movie did you think of it cool because it was a cool movie or did you think of it cool because that's what life should be like no it was it was this is I want to do this okay got it this would be awesome yeah because that's where I was I would see stuff like that Charles Bronson throwing knives in you know the evil that men do it'd be like yeah Okay, well, obviously this is what I should be doing with my life, right? Like, this is what we should be doing.

100% hucking knives and hitting the target. That's what I thought it should be. Yeah. And it's pretty cool to hear Mark today. Mark's just talking about, and it's in the book, too. He saw the Royal Marine Commandos and he had seen Predator. And he's like, okay, that's, how do I do this in real life? Yeah.

So he didn't think of it as cinema. He thought of it was like, this is a direction to go in. When he was talking about that, too, I was thinking about how I was at that age and just an 18, 19 year old kid who was absolutely bored with everything else going on in their lives. Like, community, I was at community college, which was the worst. I was working in a restaurant in the kitchen, which was the worst. I was just so sick of all that stuff. And then you're sitting in that recruiter's office and you watch that video.

And it's just like, yes, today. I don't even know how much. much they have to plan that. You know what I mean? I'm sure they're like, yeah, that's a badass video. Let's show it's 17 year olds

when they roll in here. We got them. Yeah. Right? Easy. But you don't, it's not like it takes some marketing director to figure that out.

No. No, dude's like, oh, you want kids, you want a young man to come and do what, do this gig? Cool. Give me a couple guys with machine guns, put some camy paint on them

and have them jumping into the water with machine guns in their hands. We're good. Call it. Like, we're good. Next thing. Next question.

That's, this is like a, there's something intrinsic about being a, and I can only speak for being a young man. Young man, there's something intrinsic that is like attracted to that and wants to go do that. There's no doubt in my mind, because that's how I was. That's how I was born. You know what I mean? You see that thing, and especially you, you're like, and especially you, you're like working in a restaurant, you're cleaning dishes.

And you could either be cleaning dishes. And then a, then a dude shows you a video of a, of a, dude laying down suppressive fire with a with a freaking m60 it's game over that this game over yep this is no need to no need to invest in recruiting we're good we got it tanks amphibious vehicles jumping out of helicopter you know you just see all this stuff and it's here's the weird thing is that like a cultural thing or is that a nature thing is that nature or nurture did we grow up thinking do you are you born i think we're born with it i think some of us are some of us are Some of us are born like, mm-hmm, war.

Yeah, I think we're born with that urge, that desire for combat. But I think our culture is where they really get us with all the cool toys, right? And all the amphibious vehicles and tanks and stuff. You're like, that's the coolest way you could satisfy that, that urge, that desire for combat. Yeah, and it's the camaraderie too, right? And it's the elitism of wanting to be a part of this, you know, special team. You know, that's all that's all it takes for your kid. Let's get it all.

Easy. So, Carrie, we got a store, you were saying? We do have a store. Jocko store.com. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom gear. Don't forget about the shirt locker. Cool, new shirt designed by Echo Charles every month. A lot of popular shirts coming from that one.

The sugar-coated lies had very good reception. Lies, lies, lies. Yeah. Sugar-coated lies, lies, lies. Just got some really good ones coming out of the shirt lockers. So check that one out. And some updated products, some new products on the Jocco store. What are we talking about? As well.

We've got some new quick flip items on there for your lightweight outerwear needs. Hannah Gracie coming through. Hannah Gracie coming through. But man, I've used those. The bag. You like that. You don't know how much that comes in handy until you try it. Slip that full zip off.

It turns into a bag in about 0.3 seconds. Throw your keys, your phone, all that stuff in there. Throw it to the side at the gym. Easy day. Check. So there you go. Also, you need steak. Check out Colorado Craftbeef.com or primalbeef.com.

Actually, we got a package from Colorado Craft. beef the other day I open it up then there's like a couple t-shirts and some jerky in there so I'm like oh cool they send me some jerky I'm like oh this must be new experimental you know maybe we're gonna come out some jerky or something so I open this bag it's an unmarked bag with jerky and oh cool start eating it I'm like hmm maybe I need to give them some feedback because not bad but I've had better jerky than this before so I'm kind of eating it I'm like yeah this is it tastes does taste a little strange but well maybe i'll just you know tell them let's ask them about what they're putting in it or whatever and as i'm eating this thing i'm like halfway done with this piece of beef turkey

and i'm reading a note from them from jeff and he's like yeah hey just wanted to give you this new this new um uh dog treat that we made it's it's liver and organ meats you know compressed and into a jerky form and i was like awesome i said him a text i was like yo i just eat a half a piece dog treat of just liver and organ meats. But even liver and organ meats compressed together, it's not out yet, but they're going to make some doggy treats with that stuff.

But their steaks, awesome. I got a tomahawk on standby for tonight. And of course, primalbeef.com. Just two awesome companies here in America, just great people and incredible stakes. primal beef fruit finished right get that fruit grain and fruit finished so yeah they grow up in the pastures of the shanandoah valley no big deal but then they then they're gonna finish them off with some grain and fruit think think that thing tastes sweet you're right it does so check them out primobief

com coloretrap beef dot com also subscribe to the podcast also jaco underground also youtube what we got for youtube we got jaco podcast youtube jocco podcast clips that is that is Echo Charles made and also Jock Fuel and Origin USA. Check all those out. Echo Charles is going to have to get, I don't know. I kind of, with that text I sent the other day about the damn thumbnails, bro, he's losing his mind.

He's losing his mind. He's got that AI. You guys know, you know that Echo Charles, he's into that kind of stuff. So he's sitting around with his damn AI generator and but he's he's explaining you know no I got to go in there and tune so he's into it so if nothing else go check out some of those news tell me on the YouTube I don't know how many more there's going to be because I got to be like bro this is getting crazy right now but check out those

YouTube also psychological warfare also flip side canvas Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall books we got a book man down read it today mark ormrod it's a freaking out standing book. I read 4% of it today. All kinds of really powerful stuff in that book. So check that out. Also, I've written a bunch of books, including the kids books, which Mark talked about today. Best kids books ever. Factual. Way of the warrior kid. Check them out. Get them for your kids. Which getting turned into a movie right now, as a matter of fact. It's going to be an awesome movie, but you're going to have to wait a year for that. Your kid could be off the rails. Like, have, they could be in an irrecoverable situation of doom because you didn't, because you

waited a year. Don't let that happen to the neighbor's kid. Don't let it happen to your nephew, your niece. Don't let that happen. Get them on the path right now. Way of the Warrior kid. Check those out. Also, I've written a bunch of books about leadership.

Also, speaking of leadership, we have a leadership consultancy. It's called Eschelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. So check out Eschlonfront. If you have any leadership issues in your team, in your organization, we will come and we will get them sorted for you. We've done it over and over and over again for scores of companies around the world. Eshlamfront.com. We also for teams and for individuals for leadership skills, we have an online training academy.

Boy, I wish this would have existed when I was younger. A place, because people don't think leadership, people think you're born with leadership. You're not just born with leadership. Just like you're not born knowing how to play guitar. You don't get born with that. You have to learn how to play guitar. You have to learn how to play basketball. You have to learn jujitsu.

Your instincts are not correct. And your leadership's instincts are not correct. And in many cases, your life instincts are not correct. We have the correct things, the correct skills to teach you how to lead and live. So go to extreme ownership.com and get a leg up. It's like jujitsu for life. you'll do better in your whole life. Just like if you didn't know any jiu jitu carry, and I did, what are your chances in a fight?

0%? 0% chance. If you know jiu jih Tzu, you can win. And yet somehow people think they can just go through life without ever having to learn anything, ever learning leadership, learning life, skills. So that's where we're at. Go to extreme ownership.com and learn how to lead so you can use jiu jitsu against. and in order to help you win.

Do you use leadership against people? No, you don't. You use it. I almost said that. I almost said, you can use it against your, no, you can use it against your competitors. Yeah, that's true.

You can use it against your competitors. But if you're using the skills that we teach within your family, it actually enhances everything for your family. So check that out, Extreme Ownership.com. Also, if you want to help service members, and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's

mom. Mama Lee, she's got an incredible charity organization helping out so many veterans. I know these veterans personally, many of them. And their lives are transformed by what Mama Lee does. So check out America's Mighty Warriors.org if you want to donate or you want to get involved. Also, Heroes and Horses.org. Micah Fink, just take and salvaging the pieces from people's lives and reassembling them and making them stronger and better than they ever were. So check out Heroes and Horses.org. And then Jimmy May has got an amazing organization, beyond thebrotherhood.org, got a great system of taking people from the seal teams and moving them into civilian jobs. and it's incredible.

So check out beyond the brotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us on the interwebs, as I said, Mark can be connected with at Mark Ormrod.com. He's on Instagram. He's on Facebook. He's on Twitter. X at Mark Ormrod.

And check out the Reorg Charity as well. Reorg Charity.com. And they're also at Reorg Charity on the gram as far as social media well i'm on jocco dot com i'm also on the the social media stuff at jocco willink carry is at carrie helton no underscore no nothing just k e r r r why h e l t o'n so check that out no no need for uh for for underscores no hyphens no underscores just straight up just straight up there you go so thanks once again to mark for coming on board and thanks for sam great to meet you and i can't wait to

have you on and talk through your career as well thanks to the reorg charity for what you're doing and thanks once again mark the service the sacrifice and the example that you set is incredible and we thank you for it and thanks to all of our military around the world tonight especially our allies and really especially of our allies thanks to our our British allies in the United Kingdom who stand with us shoulder to shoulder to protect freedom around the world we thank all of you for your service and also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service as well as all other first responders thank you for keeping us safe here at home

And everyone else out there, check out Mark's book. Look, there's moments in that book, and there's moments for all of us in our lives where things aren't going right, where the bad luck stacks up, where you feel like you can't get a break, where you feel like you have nothing left, understood. That happens.

When that happens, accept it. and then get up, go out there, and crack on. And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Kerry and Jocko.