Shaun Newman Podcast - (Replay) #387 - James Sinclair & Chuck Prodonick

Episode Date: December 9, 2023

Together they have 54 years of Canadian military experience. They both served in Princess Patricia's Light Infantry, combined they did tours in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo & Afghanistan. This episode marks the first attempt at a military roundtable where we hear stories about the military and an outlook on the world today. Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastE-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] [phone] – general sales line, ask for Grahame and be sure to let us know you’re an SNP listener.

This is Tanner Nadeh. I'm Trish Wood. This is Tammy Peterson. This is Curtis Stone. This is Quick Dick McDick, McDick. This is Carrie the Don, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Saturday.

Yeah, we're in the countdown mode here in Christmas, and that's bringing us to number eight. How many people are? I wonder what the top ten are. Well, number eight, and you've already seen it on the name, Jamie Sinclair, or James Sinclair, and Chuck Proudnick. episode 387. You've got to go all the way back to February 13th of 2023. And this is a long one. We spent three hours.

I listened back to it. And I chuckled. There was a whole bunch in there that I thought was just brilliant. And, you know, it's the first time I start talking about a military roundtable. Like, should we do a military roundtable? We call it a military roundtable. And what's cool about it is at the very end of it, we bring up Willie McDonald. And obviously, Willie McDonald was, again,

here in 2023. And here's a little spoiler alert. Right before Christmas, I'm doing what I'm deeming the military roundtable. It's taken me some time. But I got Chuck Prodnick, Jamie Sinclair, and Willie McDonald all coming to studio here in Lloyd Minster right before Christmas. We're going to do a military roundtable that will air over a Christmas break for everyone. I think that's going to be a ton of fun. You know, I was listening, you know, I don't know where everybody else's thoughts go, but Chuck said something that I really enjoyed. Governments get the military they deserve. Oh, how true. And then Jamie not to be, you know, outdone had another idea that Canada is not a name, it's an ideal. And I, you know, when I think back on that, that's two very clear thoughts that

are very interesting. And so I guess I get, you know, listening to this, why it was such a popular episode. You know, we had, if you haven't listened to the previous ones, we counted down last weekend. We had number 10 was Dr. Robert Malone. And then number nine was Ken Driesdale with the Driesdale Report. And now you got Chuck and Jamie. So enjoy, I hope wherever you're at on Saturday, you know, you're having a little bit of fun. And if you're tuning into this replay, enjoy a new look at, you know, where we've come. I also chuckled, they bet a dollar on who would win the war in Ukraine.

And I would say that Chuck is winning that dollar right now. And certainly in a couple weeks, I'm going to bring that back up for them. And either way, hope you guys enjoy your Saturday. Thanks for tuning in to today's replay. Here's number eight. Well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. How about we start here, boys? I'm joined by Chuck Prodnick and Jamie Sinclair.

You guys, well, hey, thanks for making the drive to Lloyd for this. I mean, that's always better in person. as I think all three of us know yeah but you boys haven't seen each other in what 17 years is kind of what we're figuring yeah crazy yep yeah since just after the 06 tour yeah it's funny how and anybody that knows me back home I always talk about 17 like 17 was my dad's hockey number 17 kilometers from our farm to the to like the main highway like 17 just pops up in my life all the all the time all the time what do you make of that it that it's I love it because it reminds me of my dad, right?

Like every time I hear that. So no, I, I, it's just, but it's uncanny. Yeah. Well, it's funny because you'd, uh, you and Huey had just sent that video to me, you know, when you're in the truck and, uh, it was probably, surveying land, crop serving. Doing a little crop surveying. And, uh, Sean was out at our site a day or a couple days later.

And he's like, you probably hear this all the time, but you know this army guy. And he says your name. And I'm like, well, I know. know him like it's been a minute but yeah what a small world eh small world i was i was saying on that one military um uh all you guys with your military background you act and talk like hockey players and the hockey world you think it's this big you know wide ocean and then you realize it's actually like this really you know everybody knows everybody almost right it's it's and so you know you walk in and you say it and the look on his face when i said it was was price i'm like oh you know

Oh, okay, fair enough. Well, I party with them one night. Let me tell you, it was kind of interesting. Oh, my God. Speaking of parties, like, we, we, you know, maybe we'll get into this as we're talking, but the characters that and the shenanigans that would go on, like, I've actually, a guy that we went through battle school with, had a house party and he actually stapled somebody to the floor with his bayonet, like right through his foot because he was going to leave his

house. you know we'll just call them we won't we won't we won't throw anybody in jail but uh yeah like just insane stuff that would go on like like it

were they still friends after that oh yeah yeah yeah they would they would like take crossbows and shoot arrows through each other's hands on a dartboard because they didn't want to be a they didn't want to be a chicken so they wouldn't move their hand

and the dart would like the crossbowl would go through their I'm going to take a step back. You boys are crazier or not. Oh, it's, no, there was some pretty, like, look at Hermie. He's dead now, but the shit he would get up to you, like, is, it was insane. Well, we went through with the guy, Hermie here. He'd already spent five years in the Foreign Legion.

So he'd seen combat. He'd done the craziest stuff you could do. And then he comes to our military basically as a retirement gig at 26, I think. Well, can I back up on that? because Hermie did his legion time, retired as a sergeant, so you get a shit ton of cash at that point. And he started up a brothel in Kenya, and he would service all the legionnaires that were in Africa, basically, at the time. And then he ended up marrying one of his girls that worked for him, brought her to Canada. He needed a job, so he joined the army again because that was the only thing he was ever good at.

Yeah. And like the parties we'd have at his house, and this little black woman would come in there with a Rungu, which is like a knot in a ivory tree. And they would chisel the one edge. It was like a sharpened weapon. And then the other side was like a baseball. And there'd be 10 of the toughest army guys in the Army laying on the floor.

And she'd be standing there because she didn't want anybody to mess up her kitchen. It was like, They were the funniest best couple probably I'd ever seen, yeah. But yeah, he was a maniac. He was the first reason I realized our army was broken, and I'd been in the army for five minutes at that point. Remember, we used to do section attacks and training, and we would do our version of how to attack a position.

And Hermiston, he stood up, and he's a big boy. He was a big lad. And he looks at the sergeants, and he's like, no, not doing this. And the sergeants were like, this is back when they could beat on you pretty good for looking at them funny. So none of them would do that to Hermie, but they're like, get down and play the game, do it. And he's like, no, you're going to get everybody killed doing this. And I'm like, what? What do you mean?

So he's like, no, you come under fire. You do X, Y, and Z. What you're doing is just going to get everybody murdered. So this was like the eye opening. Maybe we haven't evolved since World War II or. Korea you know we we have things to learn we usually pay a really high price to learn them which we all we figured out going down the line too but it was the my first moment in the army where I had a question that maybe not everything you're

learning is good or proper the thing is about that though like to go back like we went through at a time where like yeah you could get hit and like I remember when we did on our combat like our our instructor would pull somebody out of the platoon this is how you choke a man out and you choke you choke me out you'd piss your fucking pants you'd be laying on the floor and then you'd be like all right now square off with your partner and choke each other out it was like you're actually fucking choking people till they go unconscious right like it it was and then every Sunday it was awesome because there'd always be a little spat in a platoon about something

every Sunday that the instructors knew who was fucking pissed off and who and they'd line you up because it was like instead of going to church you went to the unarmed combat center and you'd fight each other and put the shit out of each other and there were some good battles yeah there's some good ones yeah it was awesome so do you do you miss uh you know like for a lot of listeners uh you're gonna go holy crap like i didn't realize that do you miss those days or Do you think it's better coming away from most days? Well, you just have to look at the numbers right now. I mean, I do think that there's an element of that kind of discipline in the military, at least in the infantry.

The other trades, okay, maybe they don't need that much. But in the infantry, if you can't handle that, you're not going to handle standing in front of the Taliban when they're coming over the wall screaming for your death. Like, you're just not. You're going to be the guy going the other way. So I don't agree with the bullying. We saw some bullies. A lot of bullies back then.

I'm pro-bullying and certainly. I am. And I got reasons for that. And I get that too. I understand that too. But I'm more of a fan of when two dudes have a disagreement, regardless of rank, they can get settled. Yep. You know, I'm a big fan of that.

And then it's squashed. It's like a hockey fight. You know, at the end of the hockey fight, Suddenly those two guys are like, well done, you know, shake hands after. That's kind of how we grew up in the military. I mean, I was just turned 18 when I got in, and I got my ass handed to me a lot because I had a big mouth and wasn't that big and everybody else was really tough, you know. Well, you got to remember, like, when we went through basic training, like, you'd, every man

had to have a full bottle of water. And before you go on patrol, you'd jump up and down, sound check, make sure there's no noise, no nothing. and as a group of eight men with your instructor going out on a foot patrol through the Battle of River, up to your neck and water, and it's spring and it's cold, but no one can touch their water bottle to the instructor. You know, he deems that, all right, we're thirsty enough now,

we're going to have a sip of water. The guy that's a jerk in the patrol that's not like being stealthier doing, like he's disciplined first. So you take his water bottle and everybody gets a sip out of it and he gets a sip out of it at the end and the water ball's empty now

because you can't have a half empty water bottle slushing around you got to be silent and quiet so then that that's how we would take care of each other like if you weren't the guy that was like I had the best fire team partner Unra Oger

Oger and he like I was a course senior when we're doing a defensive we're digging in and what section were you two or three? Two. Yeah, so three sections, fucking dogging it. And it's nighttime, and we've got to dig in. Norman slept, and everybody's hungry.

And by first light, you've got to be prepared for an attack. We've got to do a clearance patrol. Like, there's all this shit that has to get done. So I leave Unra to dig our trench by himself, and he's a C9 gunner. So it's a support weapon of the section. And I'm down fucking helping three section get. shit sorted out so like we can be ready for morning for first light so i come back to check on

honra and he's like you know everything is real quiet have you ever seen that quiet fight in the other guys you know where they're fighting on the floor at all quiet like that's that's kind of like that's kind of what happened so i'm telling henra i'm like they're fucking dog that down there they're not fucking digging and i'm like okay uh give me a break i got to go have a piss or whatever he had to do and I'm like okay so I fucking start shoveling and then all of a sudden throughout the darkness you can hear fucking ding ding unrod took his fucking his uh spare barrel for his machine gun down there and started fucking hitting people in the helmets and fucking motivating them to start digging faster do you remember that yeah yeah he's a motivating guy

then he comes back to uh to me i'm like what the fuck were you doing he's like I was motivating in three section. It's fucking hinder him with the helmet. And it'll be funny too because there'll be a segment of people these days that'll hear something like this

and they'll be like well no wonder, these Neanderthals were the reason the army was broken. You know, they're the reason that all these things have. We're the reason guys like us where things were held

together with tape and glue, you know, like if there's no discipline, there's no army. And right now, there's no discipline nobody wants to join this military right now because you're not going to serve this government and that ebbs and flows but you see that with every governmental change the amount of recruitment that goes up or down or what the

deployment schedules are like you know dude comes out of high school he's like I want to go to Afghanistan we saw a little bump with that stuff but I know people with kids who are of serving age and they're like I wouldn't I wouldn't let them join now well of course you wouldn't you have no pride in this government the government gets the military they deserve. And right now they got what they deserve. It's under strength, under man, and there's no morale. All of our friends that are still left, we probably know the same guys riding out for that,

you know, 30 year, 35 year pension. They've got, they're in charge of units and they've got, they've got no hope. These are guys in charge of like 600 men. No hope. So, going back to it, though, like, like Chuck's totally right about discipline, right? So in the Royal Regiment, like their discipline is on the parade square. The Van deers, there is no discipline. They're just like it's like it's, I can't even begin to talk about how fucked up some of the shit that they do.

For Patricia, which we were, our discipline was field discipline, right? So it was like the most, like easiest way to check yourself and your buddies. if somebody's not doing a job when you're out in the middle of the field and it's teamwork to survive in the Arctic to working in the desert, it's easy to put that person and motivate that person properly. And the patricians are famous for being some of the most disciplined in battle. Right from our lineage when the Germans were going to gas the front lines, the first people ever gas for the Patricius. And we would trench rate at night and discover that, they have gas and we're going to be gassed and the British command wouldn't believe us.

And we just have like thinking out of the box, like we've always had smart people in the patricians. And one of them happened to be a doctor before he joined up. And he's like, all right, to counteract this gas, we need to piss on rags because the urine will take out the chlorine. The chlorine. And to be able to do a lot of pissing, we need lots of booze. So they, fucking trucked in a shit ton of wine. So, like, every position was stacked up with bottles. I'm serious. Bottles of wine.

And then when they fucking let the gas go, everybody's just drinking like motherfuckers, pissing on their rags and putting it over in the mask. There's a story that doesn't get told. So everybody, everybody fucking left, like the entire line broke, like the French ran,

the British ran. And the patricians are drunk. So there's, there's 600 and some odd guys on the line that the Germans thinking, fucking everybody's gone. Well, to their surprise, there's 600 fucking dudes with bolt action rifles. They totally stopped the entire German.

They would have captured like miles of land. But these fucking ornery buggers, they wouldn't give up an inch. And they stayed there fucking drinking their wine and shooting Germans. And eventually the gas dissipated and then the British and the French could come back. But the only reason they could come back is because the patricians wouldn't leave. They figured out a way to survive. and to make it work, right? And that's what we're famous for.

That's a wild story. There's a lot of those. Oh, fuck. Look at Big Jim Stone. If I could do this real quick. So Big Jim Stone, he's a second battalion guy. That was our paratroopers back in the day. He's in Korea with 600 guys.

And he gets four Australian tanks, like 30 American cooks to cook for him. And their position is Capillon Hill, which is like overlooking this major route that kind of like the main highway going through Korea. And the Chinese army invades, everybody's running the Brits, the Americans, the French, everybody's like the Austroians, everybody, you're fucking leaving. So the Australian tank guys are like, yeah, we're going to Big Jim Stone's like, no. And then the American cooks are like, we can't get the fuck out of here.

They're like, he's like, no. Everybody dig in. We're not fucking going nowhere because they got to come through this passageway. Like the entire Chinese army is coming right at them. So they had, I don't know, a day or two to prepare for it. And thousands and thousands of Chinamen showed up. And there's 600 Canadians there with the four Australian tanks and these 30 cooks. And they fought off the entire entire Chinese army stopped them.

So they couldn't invade the entire southern. part of Korea at the time and they fought these guys for day and night day night I think 12 days they fought the Chinese army until they the Chinese left they they stopped fighting they actually withdrew I think we had like 12 casualties two dead there were Canadian there were some Brits or Americans and uh Australians that got killed but they they it's almost like a modern day 300 no yeah the Spartans basically you know when 300 are they're stacking up the dead bodies. That's what these guys would do because they were coming over the wire.

They would stack up the dead Chinaman bodies and make the walls higher. They were used inhuman. Like, they have no idea how many Chinaman to kill, like thousands. I met a couple of the survivors from that. And they'd, yeah, they'd called artillery on themselves. Like, they were being overrun, constantly calling their own artillery on their position. Nothing, nothing they could do. Well, and that was Big Jim Stone's battle plan.

Yeah. It was like as they overrun us, we're going to dig in deep enough that we're going to call in artillery on our own positions. So if it wasn't for the patricians in Korea, the Chinese would have pushed right down to the southern tip of Korea. Like it's just amazing. You know, when I had the idea, after certainly going back, I was saying before you got in here, me and Chuck were talking about the first time you came on. and then of course having you and Dave on I'm like we should be doing this more often like once a month military roundtable if you would I don't have a great name for it but

you kind of get the idea because I hear these stories and I'm like why I've never heard any of this before now I can live under a rock at times so that's fair but like for a lot of people like I've never heard these stories most people haven't heard them and and they're old stories You know, and it's, we met, we knew vets. Yeah, we knew the guys that did it. We knew the guy, like, we met in, on our battle school graduation, one of the survivors from Capillon, he was there. And he was yours, like, he's a little fella.

So, you know, he's like, small little guy. And I'm thinking, like, how did this fella do what he did? You know, he, he survived one of the worst battles the Canadians have been through. And, uh, you know, he just, he was just a dude, you know, he was just put together. and seen everything he'd seen. And he talked about it like firsthand to us, you know, or drunk that night on our graduation.

He's like, yeah, we were stacking people up. It's the only way to stop, you know, them overrunning us. And I'm like, I couldn't fathom that.

I still can't. I still can't. I still can't, I still can't really. But, I mean, you take those stories that are 70, 80 years old now going back to World War II,

World War I mean, that's where the patricias were really. Vimy Ridge. Yeah. Like, like that should be our nation's birthday. I keep saying that. Yeah.

It's agreed. It's so huge an importance of us becoming a nation and cementing our legacy as soldiers. And with small numbers, we've done great things, right? Always, always punched above. But then you take this last, this last 20 years where we were in a shooting war for a long time, a long time shooting war. Most Canadians don't even understand that unless you knew or related to or where we're a neighbor of, you know, or worked with somebody who is a vet or had been over. Nobody knows those stories.

I mean, a lot of people have seen the documentary, you know, they've seen hopefully, and they can't wrap their head around that we were in a shooting war, like a physical upfront thing. And I'm, for me, I mean, you know, I'm 50 now. I'm worried that those. And he looks at. I do. I'm feeling rough right now.

But it feels like those stories will be lost. And I don't mean like, you know, those of us that are still here. I mean, like, guys like Vaughn Ingram. Yeah. You know, talk about that a minute. You said you were doing that documentary thing for him. Before I get into Vaughn, no, I got... One second, though, before you do all that.

I just, on that thought, most Canadians don't understand. Am I right? This is what Google is thrown at me. The Canadian Armed Forces is comprised of approximately 68,000 regular force and 27,000 reserve. Does that sound right? Maybe in 1990. Maybe in 90, yeah.

1980. So it's way more? No way. I bet you we couldn't put 4,000 regular infantry soldiers in the same room. So when you even use those numbers, that's... Those are inflated, yeah. 95,000.

I think regular force were less than 40,000 right now. Yeah, and that's all trades. That's all trades, yeah. Like, that's everybody all. in infantry might put four thousand guys in the field like it's it's not even a percent of the population no it does military like so you when you talk about probably why I'm so shocked with a few of these stories is like oh I get it when you talk oh you maybe you know somebody it's like maybe you know somebody

three towns over maybe right because I mean when you I think all of us grew up with the the monuments in your town from everybody who went and served in either World War I or World War II yep I think, and as kids, Remembrance Day was a, I think it still is, but I mean, it was a big day. You always saw the names, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But now as time goes on, and you guys are saying these numbers are inflated. It's like, holy crap, there's like, I guess once again, I don't know if I really paid attention to it. I always assumed that there was just like a certain number we have.

We have a very small. Military. Those numbers are, who knows, when they were planted in there, but our reg force is maybe 40,000 in that range. right now of which and that's all trades that's you know i fix printers i'm a yeah i'm a medic i'm a i fix airplanes to you two aren't really cowboys in you know when you think about it in canada in canada i guess so maybe i mean i i kind of like that term cowboys two but the uh well i mean when you think about it like how many how many other you know i know they're out there but like realistically it's not like they're you know

I got asked a while ago about the combat veteran side of being a veteran there's actually one of the guys that I worked with he asked it because we were kind of reaching out to other veteran-owned businesses in our field and this other veteran we were talking to and Dave and I both being who we are we're kind of like feeling out this guy like we do we kind of we kind of see what what the resume is. You come like you would do in hockey.

You're like, oh, yeah. Where did you play? I'm going to look you up on the DB here and see, you know, if you're the real deal, right? We don't have that system, but we can tell. You know, there's always a tell. So dude immediately realized who he was talking to and kind of, you know, outed himself as to his illustrious career, which is about four and a half minutes long. And, you know, then we were done talking to him and our friend asked, well,

How many of you were combat veterans? And I had to sit there and think about it. There are all the different rotations and went through to Afghanistan and all this stuff. And the percentage wise is extremely small. You showed that number there of like how many, there might have been 2% of us in the military

that actually saw combat. And it was usually the same guys. Like on our tours, it was always the same guys. It wasn't, it wasn't. And you go back on another tour, we're the same guy seeing combat again. It's not like there was a whole bunch of fresh faces. You know, I went back in, in, 08, right after the 06 tour, and probably 25% of us that went over were just back there in 06, you know.

I got, wait, before we get going down this rabbit hole, I got two other cool stories I got to tell you. Because they, they're worthy. They're worthy. Okay, so Chuck was talking about my beautiful shirt I'm wearing today. Uh, Canadian Airborne Regiment sweater had from, from right when I got there, I guess. It's been sewed up. Look at. Look at all that.

It looks good. Yeah, it does. I'm wearing it. Of course it looks good. Anyways, the Airborne Regiment, it came out of several different outfits after one Camp Aaron that jumped in and D-Day, actually before D-Day even started. And the amazing stuff they did there. I met one of the women that was part of our, she was like on a set.

assassination team. So she did more combat jumps than anybody in World War II. And she would jump in and kill German officers and shit like that. And then ex-fil-trade back to England, get her next target. They'd jump her in. I'm picking up on this rate by you saying she. Yeah. A woman.

She was like, she would like cut people's throats with like razor blades or poison them or whatever her job was. like and I'm I sat down and I drinks of this lady and she was like eight years old at the time you probably put the moves on her if I know hey she's a good-luckin-gal but anyways just amazing stuff like the airborne regiment also they jumped in in 74 stopped the turks from taking over cypress like they've done some pretty amazing things I'm currently um just releasing out of the regina rifles the regina rifles have such a cool story to just give me two minutes to go through this because I think you guys will appreciate it. So World War II starts,

Regina Rifles are like 900 guys. The last guy killed in World War I was from Moose Jaw. He was part of the Regina Rifles prior, like I think we're the 56th Regade or something like that. I forget now. So the Canadian Army tells the Regina Rifles, once World War II starts, they start shipping guys to all these different units

that bump their numbers up. and they leave a catheter and a corporal behind to disband the regiment. So, foreclore is, and this is from vets, is that some old World War I guys are like, you can't let this regiment get folded up. You guys have to save it. And they're like, wow. And they're like, don't worry, we'll come up with a plan. So these old vets from World War I, they figured, okay, we'll get a bunch of money together.

We'll put these two guys on a train. They can go around Saskatchewan and re-refer. recruit soldiers. They can train where the airport is now in Regina and prepare for going to war. But they had no equipment because all the equipment left with the men when they shipped out. And also the World War I vats would write the government saying, don't let this regiment die. You know, we got manpower now, ship us out. Eventually, they realized what a massacre D-Day was going to be and they needed every guy they could get. So they're like, all right, get on the train, go to. to Halifax, you'll get your army equipment there, you'll go to England, and you'll start

preparing for whatever is going to happen because it was all top secret. But they want to test every regiment to see who the best were so they could hit the beaches first. They'll give us the best chance of success, right? So the Regina Rifles getting there like a year late, they end up being the best regiment out of Canada. And it was just a bunch of farmers and native guys that they pooled together. And like it didn't matter the color of their skin and nothing like that. They all wore green and they're all from Saskatchewan. And they were the toughest, best trained out of everybody. So they hit the beaches first. They went, they're the only regiment out of the British and the Americans and the Canadians are the only regiment to get to their

objective. And they went past their objective and they were told to stop. So now imagine the canals behind you. The Regina rifles are like 15 miles inland. Everybody else. is barely half a mile in. So Hitler sees that there's this big exposure. So he takes his German Panzer Division with, he had that SS outfit there. You'll probably think of his name here in a minute, Chuck. There's Yocum Meyer, there's Piper, there's a couple of assets. Yeah, anyways, like there's 12,000 guys in this division.

They hit the Regina Rifles with all their tanks. And they're in this farmer's orchard. There's like 400 of them that are there, four or five. 500 of them that are in that area. So 11 days, they fight off this German Panzer Division with bolt action rifles, spring-loaded Piet Guns, they'll knock a track off a tank, maybe if you're lucky, and hand-to-hand fighting. So if they would have punched through the rifles and hit the beaches, D-Day would have been a failure. But these guys, these farmers and native guys fought like brothers that they still are.

and they stopped the German Panzer Division from coming right to the beach and and ruining D-Day. And we've talked about this last time we saw each other. We don't have a Hollywood. So what most people in the world, the world don't understand because America has the Hollywood. So, I mean, when you watch saving private Ryan, they basically won the war that day. You know, like they took the B. Canadians were the only units to reach and exceed their objectives that day, the only ones. No one else made it.

And it's not because they had a weaker position to attack. No, we had the worst part of the beach. Yep. And it was all flat. Like it was just in bunkers everywhere. It was like the only reason the guys got in there is because they didn't, they didn't wait around. Like they, if their boss was dead, they didn't care.

They just kept trucking. An entire platoon left their officer because the officer went left, but their objective was to go right. This officer finds himself with a, a hand grenade and a pistol and there's a great big machine gun bunker with like an anti like an anti-c gun for shooting ships he he ran into this building and i don't know how he got in there they didn't lock the big steel door but because he had this hand grenade with the pin pulled and his pistol out if he would have dropped it it would have blown up the hell of the powder like for shooting

his big gun so he captured like 90 germans with a pistol and a hand grenade like that day like just insane things they went on but but getting back to like our tour chuck you know wait you can't tell that story and they not talk about it just for a couple seconds here okay okay holy shit i'm trying to like align with what chuck was talking i know i understand but i'm like because you know you bring up the hollywood you bring up it's like you listen to this and this is this is hopefully the first of many of these uh little sit downs because for me i'm like proud Canadian. I've never heard these stories before.

Or we've glazed over them. I don't even know anymore. But when you talk about the Regina rifles, it's like, you know, this has been the last two years. Maybe it's been the last 20. I don't know. Everybody always, the government, I harp on the government a lot, but they find ways to create us and them.

This is, you know, all the time, all the time. And what I just heard from me is I'm like, man, Saskatchewan should have that story played once a year so that people understand how. how we come together. Oh, yeah. Because that's a beautiful story. Like Tommy Prince's cousin was part of the Regina rifles.

Tommy Prince is one of the most famous Patricia's First Nations guy. Like an absolute legend fighter. Like World War II and Korea. And he's one of many. We have buildings and platoons named after this guy. Just a legend. He'd be modern day Rambo, the stuff this guy did. But when Chuck and I went,

true. If you're a black or dark skin or whatever if you, it didn't matter. None of it matters. Because you're wearing green, you got the same pay, he had the same shitty jobs, and it didn't matter. And if you got pissed at somebody, you went out on Sunday morning and you had

it out. Yeah, you just punch a shit. We might have been among the first places in Canada that we really, none of that mattered. You had green on, good enough. If you could haul your weight and shoot, good enough. You could drink on the weekend and fight, even better. You know, the rest of that didn't matter.

I know that there's always idiots in every organization, and we definitely had a few. But back when we had those idiots, when we, in our generation, we could fix it, you know, and then he was an idiot once. See, what happened was, it was back in the 90s,

and Chuck, you probably remember this. Like, the platoon warrant would run the platoon ogres. So when it was time to, you know, get the orders out for what's going to happen the next day, and there's usually logistical, like stuff. doing garrison it was run by by your by your platoon warrant you never saw the officer unless he was given orders for a combat like he was the he was like a combat commander he wasn't taking

care of the day-to-day stuff and that all changed back in the mid-90s so an officer's that we had like pedigrew and those guys they had a grade 12 education they were captains on a hockey team you know they were men like and if you were an alpha aggressive guy well you had an alpha aggressive battalion commander or a warrant that could deal with you, right? So now you've got to be a university officer like to be an officer, you've got to go through universities

and I get some bookie that went through accountant. He's like, you know, pushing his glasses up in a pocket pen protector. He's in front of a bunch of alphas and he has no control, right? So now if you get drunk, he's like, okay, I'm going to write this guy up.

I'm going to get him kicked out of the army because I can't deal with these guys. So they totally changed the culture of the military by recruiting people that, like, I guarantee a private now sits in his room, he's on playing video games or swipe and left or right when we were young. You had to go to the bar, potentially face violence,

to meet a girl. And if you didn't, like, you'd punch the shit out of each other just because you were bored at the end of the night, like fighting over a hot dog, Like it was totally different. Totally different. And I'm not saying the way that we had it all structured, the culture wise, was great either. There were, there were some things that could change, but it swung, the pendulum swung so far away.

Listen, people ask me about this, the culture part all the time and where we are now. And I'm like, well, who do you want to, if you're in trouble and you want to square off against a Taliban, do you want me in front of you? or do you want the other fellow that you can see over there that is worried about his feelings right now? Like, which do you want? Well, I guess I want you to do it. Well, you could have a middle ground too. They don't all have to be like me. I'm not definitely not the cookie cutter for it all.

But you definitely have to, we talked about it a little bit when you were down before. And it kind of leads into what Jeremy was saying, or James was saying about the Saskatchewan farm boy, your First Nations guys, you're just your general farm boy working type of guy who used to join back then. They're not doing it now. No. They're not doing it now. It just isn't happening. So if we get into real trouble, I don't know what they're going to do.

I just don't. Here's the thing, and I wish that we could say that nobody would show up. But here's how I feel. You might have a different thought, Chuck. but so um you always get people that say well hey you know you guys are the backbone of of who we are as Canadians and you know and I'm like well like I don't agree with that because number one um it's the it's the guy working in a mine it's a guy pumping gas it's the nurse at the at the at the medicl clinic would you go in there with your kid or or it's the lady at the

cashier when you're getting your groceries. Like Chuck, guys, like us, wouldn't go overseas, the fight for our way of life if it wasn't worth fighting for. And it's, it's the people in this country that do those everyday jobs that creates a society that we live in. You know, if you're the Zamboni driver or you're the whatever, like if it wasn't for that, that culture that we have, I wouldn't go overseas the fight. No.

And, and, and, and I, I believe. that that's so if Canada, if we're fighting a Chinaman in two more years, which, hey, is, like, let's not count that out. Like, if we're really in trouble, guess what? People are going to be lining up. Like, I was talking to a good friend of mine, he's a retired general, believe it or not, of the rifles. When things were kicking off down in Cuba, the lineup to go into recruiting at the Armories in Regina was 10 blocks. long six six wide

like they blocked off the streets like guys are just coming down that was a Cuban crystal Cuban missile crisis like people were like this is it the big one that's still the early 60s I think you would still get

look at okay I don't agree though look at when we were in Afghanistan how many tours did we all do with the same bloody guys yeah you know you might get a few fresh face here there but dude we were all going on multiple tours that's true that's where the burnout comes from

this country knew we were in a you know to some level we were fighting that's I don't think it was the big war though like it wasn't like the threat to to our way at life at the time well no but people will pick and choose what they see is the threat right now they all see Russia's the threat and we got to send them this that and the other thing which I think is completely

ridiculous yeah like find there's no good guy in that war you know there's There's great examples of why both sides are really bad in this war, like, in my opinion. Yeah. But we, we don't have a culture today in this country. And I mean the people that would go serve and fight, we don't have that. I don't feel like we have that mix anymore.

We're still there. We're older. I think like I look at my 17-year-old son. And maybe because I had some influence. on him he's like you know willie would like he comes down two or three times a year like he's been around soldiers and you know he's heard the stories and you know but but i look at like some of his buddies like they'd make great soldiers so would i'm not saying i'm not discounting everyone i'm just saying back when we joined i think you could have picked every other guy who's also

we're all hockey players you could pick every other guy and they would have been fine i don't see that now well i i want to I'm sitting on this side. I don't know how much I get to add to this, but I'm like, so the guys you're wondering about it is like, is guys like probably myself or, I'm not putting myself anywhere high,

but just like, what would it take for me to go to war? Like, what would it really take for me to go war? And you go, well, if China or Russia or the U.S. whoever just showed up on your doorstep and said, yeah, we're taking everything, are you going to war or not? And you wonder what the portion of the population would be like,

yeah I just take it we'll be underneath the whatever flag you call us but then but then there's Ottawa and that group of people

that went there and spurred on and you felt that it was palpable across Canada and went there yeah and all of a sudden

that's a group that I'm like I wouldn't fuck with those guys like hey here's the thing and great I just saw this like like you said

of what's going on in Ukraine like we've all been like been in Europe and met Europeans. Like you slap one of them and they're laying on the floor crying.

Like those, no, I'm serious. Like a fighting in Europe like they'll yell and scream and slap each other. It's like there's no like getting at her like how we would do it. But these like the Ukraine, there's 44 million

people there. They've stood up and like they are, there's hundreds dying weekly fighting the Russians. Like they, they, they're not stepping away from from grabbing a gun i i get that i mean but they're also being forced mobilized at this point they're being grabbed off the street oh totally like they're not allowed to lead the country but there's difference between service and joining because there's a war on and like we both did what we did because we wanted a career in it war just happens to be part of it and

then i know a lot of guys i talked to a lot of guys i didn't want a career i was only a corporal for 30 some years. The longest corporal ever. But then you have these break glass and time of war guys who think, well, don't, if it happens, I'm going to join up. Oh, good Lord. I'm going to join up. And don't worry, guys, when it gets really bad and Canada gets invaded by, you know, Russia or America, I'll be there. Well, dude, you might have fired Dad's 22.

shotgun, you know, and hit a can one time. And that's great. And we really could use your help. And I'm sure we'll be thanking you for your service. But it takes years to become a soldier. People think that, well, I'm just going to join up and I'm going to get some gear. I'm going to look real Gucci like I'm in Call of Duty. And problem solved.

Just send me. Point me at them. You know, like, you don't, that's really insulting because you don't understand. They don't understand the concept of like, you can't throw skates on anybody with a, you put a $200 stick in a guy's hand and he's not going to have a better shot. Well, maybe a little better shot, but he's not going to be, you know, McDavid. You know, I'm not saying we're the McDavid's of the infantry. I'm just saying it takes years.

And it takes years with the same group of guys. And so, you know, I hear this all the time on the Twitter when some guys like, well, well, if it comes to it all joining up, don't worry. I'm not worried, but you ain't doing nothing, but it's like. Yeah, well, it doesn't happen overnight. No. But here's the other thing, Chuck, like how we're talking about how we're talking to those Korean vets.

I think we did the opening thing at the Calgary Museum there. And we got to hang out with all these old dudes after and meeting them at reunions and the things that we did. Like at the time, you're not,

it's not really registering, but they're like putting shit in your brain. Like it's like, like it's not to you walk away from there and then all of a sudden you're in a position where you got to fill some pretty big shoes that all these little, like mentors and the stories you hear from the lips of the guys that did it.

You know, like you're not thinking of it then and you probably don't think about it at the time. But, you know, that is part of being a soldier. Oh, yeah. Like it's this like once again 300 at the end there where they're all talking and he's telling the young guys are going to have to fight the Persians. You know, he's around the bonfire and how they're all, you know,

like he's telling them what the king did. You know, that's part of being a soldier. Like that's, and you can't discredit that. Like, and if you don't, if you're not part of that culture right from the beginning, like you were 18, I was 18 when I joined as well. You don't, you don't get that mindset. Like it's like our, our platoon war would always say mission before self. Mission before self. Like you would be, you'd be down near or starve to death or freezing to death, but you'd clean your gun before you would take care of.

yourself like you would it was always mission before self and and it gets beat into your brain that cult that part of the culture um you really feel like you'll be letting down that history yeah the power of stories the well you know we're being overrun a couple times in afghanistan and i'm not saying you think well geez what would this guy from capyong do or the guys that you know vimming your passiondale or the guys you don't want to be the one of the group that has the story you'd rather die that and have your parking partner die. Like, you would, good example, we were, I don't know where we were,

but I'm in the back of a lab. We got a new guy. He's a sergeant. And I got my, I had that combat tactical or a combat tactical trial rifle with the smitten bender on it. Yeah. And I see this old dude and he had a white, headdress on. I thought he was a mula and I was gonna fucking blow his brains out and I didn't

because I didn't see a gun you know and like meanwhile like there's bullets and fucking like shit are blowing up the Americans were pinned down on a bridge I didn't shoot this guy so we're were three labs facing the river in the bridge and on the far right side his bags his his section that dude went around the corner with an RPG fired it over his carrier it went literally between me and the hall of our carrier you know maybe 10 feet high or whatever but you could hear the rocket motor flying overhead and bags is 25 was aimed at that corner they blew they shot the shit out of this guy so after that any time i was in contact anybody i saw that was that was there was a bad guy.

They were a bad guy. They were a bad guy. Like, thank fuck that that RPG didn't hit bags as vehicle, because there was four or five guys in the back of that. I would have felt like fucking shit. Anyways, after that flew overhead, I started picking out people and shooting.

And I remember looking down at the guy that just came to our platoon, and I'm like, changing my mags, and I physically looked down and he's like, hold him onto his rifle. And I'm like, come on, get up here, start shooting. So he got up there. And he started engaging, like, guys that it was like,

I remember the cadence of his rounds. They're like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And he just, like, got right into it. And it's like, you're like loading bags and bullets and shit are flying. But the thing is, is that you can't hesitate. No. And I got away lucky. Like, I don't know if I could have lived with that.

after that like it was a good story at the end of the day but it could have been very ugly if it if that realm would or that RPG would have hit that career we both know guys who no through no fault of their own because it's combat hesitated and that hesitation is the killer the hesitation is you know I was a section commander for two tours and so you make decisions and your decisions are affecting nine other dudes that work for you plus all the dudes around you you make a bad decision people are people might not be coming back

and that to me was worse than than if I got hit if I got nerfed that's on me you know that's the way it goes but man but that froze a lot of commanders too you got to make a decision you're not

just okay what play are we running here it's like well if I do the if I make the wrong call and we approach this position and they just start running us down with RPGs and machine gunfire I just cost a lot like people are dying so you we both know guys that yeah in those positions froze can I can I tell you something cool about this gentleman here and I can't believe but you actually use that word and pointed at him

but so me either so my like Chuck and I never saw each other for a long time right so I wasn't even supposed to be on this tour of 06 excuse yourself Chuck Anyways, so I showed up like on, let's say it was like the 11th of January and we deployed like February, mid-February. So like I did a two-by-ten. I went over and did a gunfighter with their battalion, my old battalion. And I got put into one battoon and he was in two-batoon. So I didn't really see how he worked like in the field of this section or nothing. And nobody really knew me in our company at all, except for the older guys and Chuck.

And so I end up in Kandahar, and I remember just how Chuck is with his section. Like, they were fucking tight. And it's been my experience, like, you know, from being a Croatia and such like that. Like, I was always in tight units. I was in Rekki and sniper cell and whatever else. Like you have a bond, right? But when I would see like how his men, like he would, whatever he was doing, it wasn't like he was their boss.

He was like their fucking, their like older brother. And they just, they, they were tripping over each other to fucking work with him. Right? Because he was just a great fucking. And he was a master corporal at the time. He actually, the sergeant, you kind of traded places because you're a little bit better at your job. Not saying he was bad. No, it just worked out that way.

He wasn't bad, but. But they had a fucking tight crew. And I tell you what, that really paid off in spades. Because when you were pinned down there and you guys surrounded by a company of dudes. No, saying again. Yeah, I come to their vehicle after and they were fucking laying in the dirt like out cold, like sleeping. And his sergeants in the back of the lab. And like this lab looked like it was.

was like tart and feathered. Like all the fuel cans are shot up, all the antennas are shot off. Their sleeping bags are like made out of feathers. So the feathers are stuck to the fuel and the dirt on the outside of this fucking carrier. Yeah. And Sergeant's in the back of the carrier shaking his head.

He's like, sickler. They should all be fucking dead. I don't know how he got them out of there. He's like, but you know, I've known this guy since 91 or whatever. It was just, if anybody's going to do it, fucking Chuck is going to do it. But I'll just say that. He's the kind of guy if I'm going to go fucking back to war.

I'm going to go with Chuck. Oh, you too, brother. Yeah. But I just had to say that because I don't know if you ever knew that about him or if you guys, if anybody's ever said that. And I'm saying that because he's earned that. No, thank you. No problem.

Okay. All right, next point. How much do you guys hate getting new gear? You know, and I always go from the standpoint of hockey, but I have to assume you're going into a situation where you need your tools to work as they're designed to work, and then some guy, you know, lab coat somewhere, comes up with a new thing, and how often did you guys switch out gear? Was it something that happened all the time or never happened?

New Gear, so use prepping for Afghanistan as an example. We were running these tactical vests that held four magazines. They were absolute junk. And I remember we had Colonel Hope was in charge of our unit. Thank God. Thank God. He's awesome. He's like a cross between Patton and Montgomery.

He's like, Curry. Well, yeah, but most people wouldn't even know who that is. But they'll all have seen a movie with Montgomery or Pat in it. But anyway, dude is like this iconic war leader. He was the perfect commander for this thing. Not a big, you small guy, but when you were in a room with him as leaders, like I don't mean like James said earlier, Alpha Men, like big, tough, tattooed, hard hitting bastards, everybody would lean in to hear what Colonel Hope had to say.

Like this dude just ran a room. Like he was he he he he was the guy who could walk in and you'd be like, oh, let's see what what wisdom does he have to impart? What are we doing? Like you just wanted to please this guy. And that's leadership. Like he just had it. He didn't threaten anyone. He wasn't loud.

He wasn't braggadocious. He wasn't he just had it. And you knew it. So when he came in, he knew the gear we were running. We, we were also very fortunate that he let us cross train with the 173rd that we were taking over for in uh, Kandahar. He was so good that he brought some of them over before we deployed so they could give us all their lessons learned, which is life-saving. He probably saved lives doing that for sure. Yeah.

I missed all that. I wasn't there then. It was huge for us, big time. Now, I hadn't had a lot of use for Americans to this point, like career-wise, because honestly, they're not, not as trained up as we are, as, like, peer-to-peer. typically. I might have 15 courses in the army machine gun or this, that, the other, you know, whatever courses you have, they'll get like driver or whatever the course is. And that's their job. That's it. That's all. Um, plus our leadership training. We'll take the youngest guy and give this guy tasks and be like, dude, you're, you know, we're mentoring, always mentoring.

If you see potential in a dude, it doesn't matter if he's at five minutes or five years, you're mentoring, mentoring, mentoring, mentoring. So if you get put down, you're, If you're hit overseas, the next guy can just do it. Like James said earlier, the guy with the officer went one way with a pistol and a hand grenade. His platoon went and did a whole other thing. That's just, you need that flexibility. But gear wise, Colonel Hope is like, this stuff's not going to work in a fight. Four mags is not enough.

We need M203s to perception, like the grenade launchers. We need, you know, a section across between scoped weapons and Eotech weapons, scopes. just the way he brought it all in so he let us go buy our own gear now it had to be approved like we had to do our own kit checks we couldn't just go out buy Kmart stuff you know it had to work and so we kept trialing trialing we spent I spent over a thousand bucks on my own gear for that tour like we all did everybody did we wouldn't have been able to do that except for colonel hope um we got M203 grenade launchers which we'd never used before we'd never used them until that tour got them I used ran one as the guy

in the ground. Loved it. New gear, things that fail, well, when they put the, on our C-Sep, on our battle rifles, they put an ambidextrous

mag catch on it. Because, like, what is there, like, three guys in the army are left-handed or something? Who knows? You know, like, so they put this mag catch on your rifle so that when you go to release the mag,

if you're left, a south paw, that thing is always bumping into your chest. And then dropping mags. Dropping mags. Like that happened. Dead man's gun right there. Dead man's gun.

You go to do this and you're like, where'd my mag go? We figured out a way through the gun plumbers to dial back the spring in it to basically make it inert. But Mark Morris, one of my guys, we were in a big fight, monster fight in Garmser. And he went to bring up his gun and his mag had dropped right out of it because it rubbed up against him. And he, I don't remember Mark Morris that well, but he was very, very, analytical of everything.

He was kind of a nerd that way. He loved him. He was like, I'm going to write a sternly worded email to Otto about this bullshit. This is in the middle of a gunfight and I'm like, Mark, we got other things to worry about, dude. I'll find the mag. We'll find a mag for you later.

Don't know, like you just start shooting. But those little tweaks, like some nerd somewhere sat there and said, you know what? There's probably seven guys in the army that are left handed. Let's put this gadget on the gun. Well, I think this is... I got worse than that, though.

But this is a problem that goes across a lot of different industries. Oilfield guys can certainly test that. This will make you sick. So I got there, and sniper sells full of dudes, and they want to get me a gun so I could be an art platoon and may be used within the company. But although our company did have a sniper team dedicated to it, so God bless his soul he's dead now

but Blake I's was the master sniper at the time so he's like okay Sinclair fuck and I got a C3 bolt action rifle for you you know here you go so I got I got that rifle I got C8 and a pistol and I'm in weapons debt for our pertain well the first operation I go on like you're like we're the first

actually our baton was the first on the wire So talking about equipment, I'm going to back up a bit. When we're prepping to go out the wire, none of our labs had blast blankets in them. So a blast blanket is a Kevlar blanket. So if you get blown up from an IED improvised explosive device, the steel on the inside it will fly around if there's no blast blanket on it. If the hall is actually punctured by the explosive, then that material flies around on the side, crates, death, chaos. And when I was overseas in Croatia, one of our drivers in

Rackham, too, got his ass like literally blown right off. So we used to put sandbags in them. But the problem with the sandbag, it turns into molten lava when a, if the hall gets pierced, right? So they came out with blast blankets and that saved lots of people from being wounded and saved vehicles from starting out fire at a whole bit, right? So, We, I'm there. Nobody knows me in the pituitner of the company. And I'm like, and like the lab is ready to roll out the gate. Like it's full of ammo. But it's like brand new paint in there. I'm like, what the fuck are the blast blankets? And my driver doesn't know me. He's like, what the fuck's a blast blanket? I'm like, holy fuck. So I go see DeAndre the CQ. I'm like, where's the master key? Because there's a bunch of sea containers in our compound to belong to the Americans. So I start fucking. cut and locks on these sea cans and they were in artillery in it so they got like like there's fucking 105s in them and like self-replop like artillery pieces right i open up this one fucking sea can and it's 40 feet long and it's stacked right to the roof eight feet high eight feet wide

right full of blast blankets of my fucking scores and i'm like hauling these blast blankets back and I get a couple of guys from the or my carrier to help me fucking bring more. And I'm like telling all the other guys, I'm like, fuck, go to that sea container, get all your shit out of your fucking vehicles and get these blast blankets in the vehicles and then restack your stuff because we're literally rolling out like within a couple hours. Everybody's all fucking pissed off. My driver fucking, I forget his name now, he's a good dude, but tall, skinny guy. Anyways, we go rolling out the wire. Guess whose fucking vehicle gets blown up first our fucking vehicle and that driver he fucking was so thankful because it blew up right underneath

his ass it actually pierced the hall it would have blown his fucking ass off but because there's blast blankets there that we we had to fucking steal from the americans god bless our soul but it saved him from being wounded right so anyways i got this bolt-action rifle realizing it's like holy fuck i might will have a club out here. I'm not a fucking caveman. So I go back to Blake. I'm like, hey man, like, thanks for the rifle, but I need a semi-auto like, because they're bringing them the, what the fuck is, AR-10s in, which are a 308 caliber rifle and you can have the standoff distance and as well as you can engage multiple targets with this, with this rifle. Well, they're just issued out to the snipers. But Blake goes, wait a minute, I got something in the sea can. So he goes over to

the sea can, a seat container. And inside there, they got six combat trial rifles. And he gives me one of them. It's number three. And I'm like, fuck. Like, it's got a free floating barrel. It's got an acarized trigger. The magwell's flared out.

It's got a smitten bender scope on it. This thing is awesome. Except the butt, like the pull on the butt is fucking huge. It's got a big lead weight in there. So nobody wants to. carry this fucking thing around because it's like weighs fucking the the butt alone weighs like 15 pounds so i'm like oh fuck all right i'll take it i'll see what i can do with it so i take it back to to my tent this before we rolled out the second time because we'd go out for two weeks come back for

two days and so i take the butt off my c8 and i take the butt off of this rifle and i put it on to so i got a collapsible stock because with body armor you want your plates facing the enemy it's a different type of gunfighting stance that we use but this gun was fucking awesome like I could shoot out the 1300 meters with it I was working with the French commandos because they would come out with us and I'd take their cognac and wine but I was trading it to the American SF dudes for their match ammunition for their 556 it was 77 green uh black hills ammo was fucking awesome ammo so I would run that ammo in this gun and I did did a bunch of test firing with it with standard rounds and this match stuff.

It worked awesome. Had it the whole fucking tour. That thing got blown up in another vehicle. I told my platoon commander, I said, if that thing gets blown up again, write it off because I want to steal it. I was going to fucking take it home with me somehow. He's like, St. Clair, you're going to jail after this fucking tour. That gun doesn't show up.

So anyways, at the end of the tour, the gun plumbers saw that I altered this gun. And I had to, the head weapons inspector had to fucking test my weapon and make sure it was good to go. He was an ex-airborne guy. So he didn't, he's like, don't worry, you're not getting charged. But they can charge you for altering your weapon. We'd all altered our guns so much. Even just by putting a different forestalk on it, one, you know, so you could grip it. That they eventually, they had to form us all up early in that tour and basically test all over.

guns because like James said though they can rip you a new one they can charge you over that because you've altered your gear but they don't understand that combat necessitates all these changes and that was frustrating more than the new gear because at least they were trying by giving you new gear sometimes but that was a very slow process um was that we would innovate something and it would be no you know you've seen lots of movies the the guys are all wearing like the t-shirt with the flare the arms that are like the actual shirt arms we'd seen this on the americans were like what a great idea because this t-shirt portion is underneath your plate carrier so you're never going to access the pockets on your combat shirt underneath

the plate carrier all these pockets are useless not only that they chafe on everything you're stupid idea so we we we found this so place on the big camp the big camps like the size of sherwood park 50,000 people with all these little stores, shops, it's basically a town. So we went to one of the sew shops and said, hey, can you alter our shirts, rip the pockets off, put them on these arms, basically changed our shirts. Well, we almost all got charged for that. My platoon was the first platoon that kind of did this thing. And we got in trouble, like a lot of trouble. Well, the very next tour I'm on, they're issuing these shirts. Like the new store, shirt because somebody said, well, you know, we ought to do this. You know, those kind of

innovations where you have to basically get in trouble, somebody then realizes, well, maybe it's a better idea. I was told by people who were like basically trying to endorse that four-mag tactical carrier we were issued with. So it's a mag carrier. You can't even take the mag. It's so poorly designed. You couldn't even take the mag out to use it, let alone put it back in. it was so poorly designed. And I had a guy telling me, like, you'll never need more than four mags in combat. What are you thinking? Yeah.

And I'm like, I'm thinking, well, no, I might. That might be a day where I need more than four magazines. And there were, dude, there were days I went through four mags in two minutes. Like, it was. It was insane. Like, and the people that were putting up the biggest fight were the ones that weren't even leaving the wire. No. Like, it was like literally you're not, not like we had a great certain major.

but not to throw anybody out of the bus but there was somebody above our certain major that was still a non-commissioned officer the one that shot the tarmac could be anyways that was like putting up the biggest fucking fight and it's like hey this isn't garrison shit where everybody's got to look alike and all that like the Americans are telling us

that you need minimum eight to 10 mags per man they know this because they've been fighting in here, like, way longer than we have. They've been fighting in Iraq way longer than we have. We need this ammunition. So reluctantly, thank God for Colonel Hope. And thank God for Hillier, because he was, like, supportive of us doing what we had to do.

It was these fucking grumpy old sergeant majors that had nothing better to do than fucking bitch. That guys that were doing the business. The other thing, the biggest thing that pissed me off was our medics. they wouldn't let us learn how to give each other IVs, right? Because if you're wounded, first thing you want is a tap, right? Because you don't know when you're going to get hauled out there. And as your body is bleeding out or you fucking dehydrated, it's hard to get a vein or like a tap into a guy's vein because it's fucked up.

So you want to do it right away. The other thing is they wouldn't let us fucking train on tourniquets. Like life overfirm. limb right like you learned that in boy scouts well our fucking medics are like nope you're not qualified for tourniquets you can't use it the other thing was they wouldn't let us cross train on quick clot so quick clot is like a volcanic material that sucks the water out of blood it pulls it out so violently it actually heats up and burns cauterizes the hole which which creates which creates a wound but it stops the bleeding right it stops you from fucking dying

Because if you're shot, it's the golden hour. And you've got to remember, like, we're not fucking 200 meters away from the camp. We're like in a hot spot, in the middle of the mountains, or out in fucking Padgway. Like, you might not just get a chopper within an hour. Because first of all, you got a... The day I was with the company, you know, with R2IC, Martin LaRose, and we were on that convoy and the one where Elric lost his legs.

Yeah, and that female, what was her name? I can't remember her name. She was the Cymic chick. Yeah, she did awesome, John. She was fantastic. Fucking nailed it. So we got IED, a bad IED. And there was only, it was a patrol that shouldn't have happened, but that's the way it goes.

So we did. Our company second in command's vehicle took the IED. And a good friend of ours, Elric lost both of his legs in that one. He was the gunner. And basically, imagine you're sitting in this seat, which is similar to the gunner seat. in a turret and you know how are your feet right now my feet are under my chair because it's comfortable that's where his feet were which is normal and that basically the iED smushed the floor to the seat he's got no legs left underneath the knees so we got him out um we were ambushed

during the iED by a couple dudes that didn't last long um get him out he's the most severely wounded in the vehicle, everybody else is badly wounded as well. And we, we had two tourniquets on both legs to try and slow down the bleeding. He's got no legs left. Then we were dumping bags of quick clot onto the wounds and it was working, but we had no medic. We were two hours, it took two hours for Achilo to come in because there were two other IEDs at the same time in the, in our area. So, for two hours I've got dudes laying on top of him to hold him down because he he won't knock out which is what saved him he wouldn't quit but he screamed for two hours straight waiting for the chopper yeah so we just did what we had to do to keep him going and he was the worst obviously of them all but everybody else like Martin LaRose was missing part of his foot the driver was covered in flash burned oil like two dudes in the back had broken hips legs like it was a gong show

yeah bad bad bad spot bad day but like these these things these techniques that we had to fight to be able to do and use like to learn because we did we had to fight to yeah to get they're called tactical combat casualty care courses we had to fight and do it in not like do it at their field instead of having it done in Canada, we'd do all that shit when you should be rolling out and worried about other stuff. Like it was...

These kinds of things where the Americans were like every other dude here has this course. It's basic... But I think, and I'm not blaming our medical guys. I think they thought maybe it was a threat to their profession or something.

They're badge, we call it badge protecting, like T-shirt protecting. Like, you can't... It's too special for you to do. Only I can do it. It's my T-shirt. You know, this kind of thing.

Well, the biggest thing is is what happens with the medical dead, right? And the medic, the other thing is about the fucking medic is that he's got to be as good if not better with his gun. So at the time, medics are like, no, I don't need a gun. I'm here to save lives. I don't have to take any lives. And that fucking turned around in a hurry team. We fired several medics with that attitude. I mean, it's for some of the very first footage of Canadians fighting since Korea was us in Pennsylvania. Pangeway during those early contacts and our medic John Gute absolute beauty

He's heavily featured in this early footage like going crazy shooting like just giving her because we were in close contact like dudes were 20 meters away This gets played on CTV Which is funny because we were still out in Pangeway but we got shipped back because we had to deliver a package real quick So we raided this little camp the PRT camp and where is Pangeway? I I feel like I should know this, but... Right inside Kandahar. So that's like, Pangewe to the Taliban is like Berlin. Mm-hmm.

Like when they were working against the Russians, Pajway was kind of where... It's right along the river. It's like grape vineyards everywhere. Like, it would have been a beautiful place to be at, very relaxing, lots of shade. You know, you're out of the major city of Kandahar. And it was, it's like their religious, like, center of the Taliban.

Like, that's where they, that's where they would muster out of and gather and then do operations throughout Afghan when they're fighting Russians. It's where they broke the back of the Russians. Yeah. They're still rushing gear all over the place there. So we knew every time we went into Panjway, it was going to be game on. It's like a boxing ring. Yeah. It really was.

It really was. Yeah. Even on my other tours, it was, or the other tour, it was the same, same thing. Which was great. because you're not displacing a bunch of people. You know, when you roll in there, it's fucking guns up, sides up, right? Because you know there's going to be a fight. But anyways, sorry to cut you off there. Yeah, sorry, just for context.

So we've gone back to this camp for about 20 minutes. And while we're there, of course, we're raiding the kitchen, we're just loading up our pockets with stuff to take back to the field. And there's a big screen TV in this little tent. And it's CTV Lloyd Robertson. and it's showing us it's us from like a day earlier fighting we're like oh that's us and our medic john he's like oh man i'm in so much trouble and we're like dude you're a hero look at you man you're that's you and he's he's like i told my wife i wasn't even the wire she's gonna see me on

tv you know doing stuff but he was a beauty like there were we and i'll give most of them credit the ones that we kept they were just as you know i mean yeah they're great medic yeah awesome too like so many good medics I got a funny story about mums and telling them what I was doing. So whenever I would go away, like if it was Croatia or Bosnia or going over to Africa or wherever I was going to work, I'd always take my mom and my aunt out for supper and, you know, break the news to him that I was going overseas, right? So I'd take my mom and aunt out for supper and I'm like, hey, I'm, you know, I'm deploying to Afghanistan

and they're like, what? What do you mean? I'm like, yeah, don't worry I'm going to be working with the logistics side of things. I'm going to be handing out bullets and socks. Like that's, I'm not leaving like the camp. That's what I'm doing, right? Well, I guess half of that was correct

because I was handing out bullets by just one at a time. But anyways, when I got back home, my mom saw like, you know, the videos and shit like that. She's like, handing out bullets were you? but yeah she was uh yeah they she was like anytime you ever take me out for supper i'm not gonna go because you're just gonna tell me you're leaving again she was on to me but that was to go back to your point about the new kit and we had to fight like hard or just steal or lie to get it or do it like it was just that's just the way it was and hey but that was everywhere like look at our chief

of defense staff like he realized we needed a um our chief of defense staff like he realized we needed a um our artillery piece that only the Marine Corps had at the time and somehow he got the Marines that cough up them M-Triple-7s. Like that, that's like Thor's hammer. You know, like a sandstorm rain didn't matter. You needed an accurate fire right now. They're within range like 44 kilometers. With the good ammunition, the Excalibur rounds.

They were doing a lot of good work for us. What do you guys think of the drones and everything? Well, that's changed warfare. Could you imagine if we had those in Afghanistan? It would have been so helpful. No, fuck. Like, it would have been. Game over.

Game over. I mean, I don't know if you watch the footage, you know, on telegram and that from the current war going on in Ukraine, but it's changed everything. Like, we were over there. We had a couple of drones that would stay on station for a period of time and cover a segment of an area for a little bit of that time. Every platoon over there now has their own individual. drone, they send it up, you know, they're getting instant feedback of what's in front of them. We didn't have that. The scary part is happening on both ends of that, right?

And being used as ammunition now. You can take, use an M-Triple-7 as an example because we sent a bunch. Everybody in NATO sent a bunch. There are nothing but videos on Telegram of the Russians using Lancets, which is like a cheap little drone, half the size of this table, it's ammunition, and they'll keep a drone on station for eyes and then the lancet basically zeroes in on the target so you've got call it a million dollar m triple seven i don't know what the price tag of it is but it's not cheap plus the crew plus all the ammunition and this lancet that cost them next to nothing it's just a flying

torpedo boom done they're doing it to tanks they're doing it both sides are doing this it's changed everything it's terrifying it's actually terrifying worse than that or as bad as that is china has they're really into swarm technology with drones. So they'll take, and I've seen some of the videos while they're still trialing this technology, and they'll take the AI, program 10,000 drones to go through an obstacle course and attack a target at the end. And these things are just basically told,

go here to here and figure it out. And that technology is terrifying. Oh, it is. Because they don't build things in ones and twos like we do. We're like, well, we got six of them, that's enough. You know, we have eight of these things. That should do. the Chinese and the Russians and most other countries that are developed like Iran has

probably the best drone technology in the world right now I would say the Israelis myself they probably do but numbers wise yeah don't count them out no you never can they're fantastic at developing military stuff but I mean that's where look at our best our best turnicates and quick cloth that's Israeli stuff you know yeah no it's a game changer like the like the like the military Look, Terry's got, so I've always been like, um. Sorry, I'm, I'm, for the audience member, I'm, I'm now looking at swarm drones on, because I'm like, what the hell is that?

And you can find, well, all you got to do is put in China swarm drones and all of a sudden. Well, just imagine like fighting back when there was like hundreds and hundreds of archers. And you got like a shield and a sword and you're moving forward to. make contact with the enemy and then all of a sudden the fucking the sun disappears because the sky is full of arrows yeah right so yeah you might be able to stop a couple but you're not stopping them all and that's what this swarm technology is like is basically letting loose of hundreds of archers firing arrows at the same general area at the same time and they're they're fucking there's nothing to stop them right now like warfare is

It's terrifying at the best of time. Like, I was scared the whole time I was over there. It's gotten to a point now. Like, we need to worry about negotiating our way out of Ukraine. Like, NATO needs to, somebody needs to adult this and say, figure it out and get out of it. Because we're getting drawn deeper and deeper and deeper. We just, we're sending our leopard tanks. NATO sending a bunch of leper tanks.

Americans are sending 31 Abrams in like a year. You know. You go on certain telegram channels and watch the Russian reaction to this. I mean, they get it. They're getting pushed with all kinds of NATO equipment. The thing that's galvanizing them right now is seeing German tanks heading to the eastern front again. Their mindset just went click. Like, we're already fighting.

Their mindset is we're fighting the world anyway. But that, that changing things, who, I don't know what we're opening up here. Now, I'm not saying appease Putin. I'm no Chamberlain in war. I like a good war. But we didn't approach this war properly. We took it as like a half measure, half step. And instead of going all the way in where we might have made a difference on like instead of February 24th when Putin rolled through and on February 25th, NATO said no.

And we pushed in. Okay, I don't know what would have happened there either. But we wouldn't be during doing what we're doing now. NATO was drained of stock. Britain just announced they have no heavy artillery left and no shells. They're buying shells from somewhere in Asia to send to Ukraine. We don't even have the gear that we're sending to Ukraine. We have 50 functioning tanks out of a fleet of 100.

We sent them, we're sending them four. And by the pictures of the one that we sent on that cargo plane, it's a junkie. The tracks are falling off of it. The pads are worn out. I didn't see it. It's horrible. We sent them like a hanger queen. Like this tank was probably, I hope it's running.

Like they got it on the plane But we don't have the gear That we're sending people I'm not saying they don't deserve to defend themselves Clearly they do Everybody does But unless we What's the end point?

I've never seen a war where there wasn't We were negotiating with the Taliban The whole time we were fighting them That's the bloody Taliban That's a different deal And I I don't know I do you want to hear my fucking thing on that?

Naturally Okay so Maybe Before going to Afghanistan Actually it was after 9-11. I was in the Regina Rifles, and the colonel at the time was actually in Afghanistan

when the Russians pulled out. He was part of the United Nations transition from the Russia to it being the Taliban. So you got to remember how important Afghanistan is to that part of the world, right? because, and this is a long story, but India, I'm going, it actually starts with India. So when the English were in India and they needed a trade route to get to Europe, they negotiated with the Afghan national government at the time to lease a portion of their land for 100 years, just like they did with Hong Kong.

So it's roughly the same time frame. So they have this land lease with Afghanistan, which now is Pakistan. So the Indians don't like the Muslims in their country. So the Hindus and the Pashtuns, they take all the Muslims that are on the west side of India. They push him into this new rented area, which belongs to Afghanistan, and they call it Pakistan. They take all the Muslims from the east side of India, push them into Bangladesh, southern part of India down in Sri Lanka. So now they've got Hindus and Hindus and what's the other religion in India? Pashtuns.

The Buddhists? Well, whatever. So basically they pushed all the Muslims out of India. So now Pakistan is a nuclear power. We used Pakistan back in the fight the Russians. And more or less what I got out of this was like, okay, if Afghanistan's always in, turmoil, the land lease that they've got will never go back to Afghanistan. So Pakistan will exist forever as long as Afghanistan's in turmoil. So going over to Afghanistan, my mindset wasn't

that we're going to win a war there because we were never allowed to win a war there because there's too much at risk with having a nuclear state of Pakistan losing a country. They weren't going to let that happen either. So the whole idea of what was going on in Afghanistan in my mind, why I want the fight, was number one, we're taking away money from the opium trade that was being used to fund terrorist activities throughout the world. That was, that was it. The other thing that I always fall back to is at the end of day, there's people that are in this war that don't want to be there. Little kids, ladies, women, like they just want to live a free life. So that was the humanitarian side of it, like at least for 20 years that we were there. These kids were born and had somewhat of a

stable lifestyle, although there was a war going on. But there was food, there was calmers, and these kids could get educated and hope the fuck. I hope a ton of them got out of the country before the Taliban took over and they're actually living better lives throughout the world wherever they immigrated to. So to anybody that fought over there and they asked themselves why, that's the two reasons. For 20 years, we kept money out of terrorist pockets. Number two, the people that were there had a chance to get the fuck out of that country because now it's just horrific like droughts, no food. They're starving to death. The Taliban's brutal way of Sharia law. Like it's, you It's, it's, you couldn't imagine, like it was shitty when we're there.

Like, what it'd be now would be unfathomable. Yeah, we might have, like to Jamie's or James' point, we might have won, been the only war where we won every single battle. And NATO essentially figured out a way to lose it or just prolong it to the point. But that's what I mean. Yeah. We never, we never would have been allowed to win it anyway. No, no, no. I mean, after 06, it apparently took the Taliban almost two years of restructuring and re-recruiting.

to get their numbers back up from what I've read in some intelligence AAR type things. Well, they figured they're going to push us out of Afghanistan in 06. Yeah. So when we first got there, we were up in a place called Gone Bad. And our job was, apparently the belly button is where the Taliban, I think it was a big ploy by the Taliban just to disperse the soldiers out of Kandahar. I really feel that it was just a fate like there was no real contact up there but everywhere we went

we got fucking blowing up like it was and imagine walking around and always being punched in the face and you can never punch anybody back that's what it was like every fucking day and you like you just you knew something was going to fucking happen

there's nothing you can do about it you just got to go do it right so when we had the chance to go to Pangeway and fight We're in, back in Canada, we're prepping our gear, the head general of Afghanistan comes. He pulls us all in.

He's like, all right, there's 750 bad guys in this killbox. We're giving you guys three days to kill everybody. You know, use all your supports that you can. You've got air power. You've got artillery. And literally, at the time, there's maybe 400 or 500 Canadians fighters

out of the 2,000 people. there. So this killbox is two kilometers wide, six kilometers long. Recan batons on the west or east flank, B company is on the right flank and they got a C company along the bottom just to contain the bad guys in this killbox. Our company, we're on Highway 1, believe it or not. And one platoon, that's my platoon, we're on the left, Chuck's on the right. And we were, we started at midnight and it was over by the next day. But it was like being in a disco. Like it started at midnight.

There was nothing but trace or fire and RPGs flying everywhere. And we push through that killbox in 12 hours. Kill everybody that we could kill in that 12 hours in that time frame. That general, like the head general of all of Afghanistan was like

he couldn't fucking believe it. But it felt so fucking good that we could actually like, because you got to all this frustration built up for like two months by this time of driving around, getting blown up and not being able to fucking do anything about it. Now we can do shit about it. Yeah, they couldn't contain us, I think, at that point.

Once they said go, it was it was complete go. And that was General Freakley. He was a two star. He liked how we operated so much because we're much more aggressive. I think than I compare us more to the Brits than the Americans. The British will close distance, whereas I don't find the Americans would close the gap so quickly. The Marines were fighting in Fallujah at the time,

and that reporter you guys had on your, whatever his name was, he's like, how long you guys have been fighting for? And we're like, well, this is our first real fight. He couldn't fucking believe it. Because he was just in Fallujah with the Marines. And he's like, you guys fucking kicked ass.

Like, we pushed through that killbox literally in 12 hours. Yeah. Like it was. And then this seemed general he's sending us to like, well, there's some bad guys here. You want to go figure with them? So we just went out and put out fires. After that, he just kept fucking. It was just like being in a big cavalry unit.

We just kept rolling around. And funny story. So the Brits, twice in history, the British Airborne had been cut off and going to be overrun and annihilated. So this happened in World War II, which I got a story about after I tell this story. But when we're in Afghanistan, the Brits are calling for help because they can't get any of the wounded out, can't get any ammunition in. They're pinned down in a small little holdup that they got left, like the Alamo. And they're calling for support, like we need somebody to come and save us. So the American Army is going to send the 10 Mountain Division.

and the Brits are like, no, don't send the Canadians. So General or Colonel Hope gets us out in the middle of the desert. This was right after we're in Passway. And we're out in the middle of this desert. And all of a sudden, fucking every different type of truck or something would show up with supplies on it. And our convoy just kept getting longer and longer and longer. And then we had to move up to where was that?

Garmskir. Garmsker. and on the way up there, Taliban's doing everything they can do to stop us. So we would just like bump around them so we could get to Garmsar.

So resupply the Brits. We stayed there for like two weeks. Or maybe a week. I don't know. 10 days. These British, this was a British three pair of unit. And they'd been cut off at this point

for three or four days. No water, no resupply, wounded and dead everywhere. These guys were holding on. They're tough. The British, these three pair of dudes are tough. They're holding on, but they're surrounded by like over 500 Taliban. Yeah, they were going to get wiped out.

So we thought we were actually going back to the main camp this morning that we got redeployed and we're like going back to camp, refitting. We're war here with boys. We've done it, you know, kind of deal. And Colonel Hope was like, no, calls all the leadership in. And he's like, boys, we're going to go down this highway and we're going to engage the Taliban and save the British. We're like, that's cool too. We can do that.

Get ice cream later. So, but I remember, I forget who asked the question, but we didn't have maps. We had maps for our area, but you kind of really need a map where you're going. You need to know where you are, need to know where the enemy is, you need to call in artillery and error and resupply and all this stuff. So a map is real handy. It's kind of like the thing. So I forget who asked it. I didn't even think of it, but somebody was like, sir, we don't have maps.

And he's like, I'll tell you what, you're going to drive down this highway. And when they start shooting at you, you're there. And like, fair enough, let's go. That was literally it. Like, go down this road until they shoot at you and you're there. Yeah. I'm like, okay. It's, this is so cool, though, because this happened all the way up there.

Like the Taliban's literally trying to stop us from getting to help the British, right? Because they want to finish the job. So we keep bumping around these contacts. Like, we're not really getting engaged into the fight. So we get up there, we're there for 10 days. So now we're in the carriers and we're rolling out. there. And I remember the radios were like the speakers are on in there. And he's giving orders over the radio of what our fighting group of like basically our, it was everybody that could

fight in Canada in our vehicles like what would there be 40 or 50 labs. And we're rolling back, right? But he goes, we're going to stop and pay a visit to everybody and shot us on the way up here. So it took us like two or three days to get up there. About a long day to get up there, about two or three days to get home. Yeah, I thought it was closer to two weeks. Because we went all the way down. We were almost in fucking Pakistan for fuck sakes by the time we stopped. Yeah, it's true.

We were. Maybe it was 10 days. We stopped at every spot that hit us and we let them know where we were now. So that we got interpreters in our vehicles that can hear the Taliban on the, I call them, right, on their radio systems. And their fucking Taliban leadership are actually fighting with each other. They're like, okay, the Canadians are leaving my area of responsibility. It's your turn to fight them.

And the other guy is like, well, I'm not ready yet. You got to keep fighting them. And he's like, have nobody left to fight him with. You got to fucking fight them. They're literally fighting each other to relieve, like, responsibility, right? I think the first fight we were in in Pange, you know that killbox we were going through and our interpreters beside us um and this is like this is scary times right we're in a it's a battle it's there's only a couple hundred of us and

there's like close to a thousand of these guys in here there's only 60 of us going through that killbox yeah through the killbox yeah like only 60 of us fighting them the rest of the guys were containing everybody containing them in so they couldn't escape so as we're doing this our interpreters kind of relaying what he's hearing about the guys immediately facing us like 80 meters across from us. Like the dudes were currently engaged with. And he's laughing. I'm like, dude, what's so funny? And he's like, well, at first they thought you're American,

so they weren't really worried. But now they know you're not American, so they're really worried. And dude's calling for reinforcements. And he keeps saying he's fighting like hundreds of Canadians and there's eight tanks over here. And I'm like, we don't have tanks. We have a couple vehicles. And there's like 20 of us on the ground where I am. So he's, the interpreter's like, yeah, it's getting bad.

You've killed like half his dude. I you know, you know, it's not, he's not having a good time. He's telling off and now, oh, the radio's gone dead, because our big guns were hammering them, you know, like, and we kept lying to our own artillery because you can't, when you call in a mission, you have to be danger close. Like, there's a parameter for how close you can call it. Well, I remember our platoon commander,

my platoon commander was a replacement platoon commander, young guy. Our other one, Johnny Croucher, had been blown up earlier in the tour. Great guy. So this young fella, he's like, well, what do I do? The target's like 100 meters away. We're supposed to be 300 meters standoff. They're like, just lie.

Fudge it. You fudge the number. You tell them we're here and they're there. Like make sure their number's good, like the Taliban number's good. So he does. He calls it. And there's footage, not in the documentary, but there's more footage where basically he's like, get your head down, boys.

And those air bursts are popping like right next to us taking out the Taliban. and it's the kind of stuff that I mean what do they expect we're going to back up 200 meters like we're going to give up ground we just paid the price to get and so those kinds of things are they happen a lot where you kind of have to fudge it on the radio but yeah it was one of those things where to go back to what James was saying way earlier and all this about the the culture and that mentality of you you don't want to disappoint your history for us like you you're wearing it's like wearing that jersey Like think of all the guys who've had that jersey on and you're like man those names are up in the rafters and for us that's how we view it right like we have legends like so for us it's like now we're doing it we're not going to disappoint and that was it was also interesting for us too um we were always like fairly looked down upon by the British and American forces my whole career I did 21 years and up until that period in Afghanistan we were like no good the Canadian

are here. Oh, joy. Oh, they did not take it seriously. They had tons of combat veterans in both armies from different conflicts. We had guys who, you know, did, we had none of that, not for 70 years. So we also, I believe, or at least for me, I fought a little extra hard and dirty because I wanted them to say, like you said with three pair, they called for us specifically. Like send them. I also want to like so it built us up ourselves like the Americans were always happy to have us 10th Mountain was like we'll take them any time that was a great feeling to have final acknowledgement that we're real at least for a short period of time taken seriously it was also very nice every time you heard on the the icom scanner that the interpreters had that the Taliban

hated fighting us they didn't like it at all it was a beauty you know you go into some rink and you're like oh i hate playing these guys i just don't know what it is i just don't like it I wanted that we're in their rink all day long but I wanted them to hate it every time we were there and I did everything I could to make sure they hated it yeah no that's that's in going but going back in history remember we're talking about how they asked for the canines to come save them right so the first time this ever happened was in World War II so it's a it was called a market garden operation it was to stop the war and they get 44 like they want to like being in

Berlin. So they jump in, 30,000 Brits jump into Market Garden and they take this place in Arnhem. And there's a bridge there. It's the last bridge that they need to get into Germany. So there's about four or five other bridges before that that the British would jump into and, or sorry, the Americans jumped into and took these smaller bridges and then the British Army was rolling up, crossing all these bridges. And at the very last bridge was at Arnhem to get into Germany. Well, they were told that don't do this operation because there's a German Panzer Division on leave right there, like they're going to slaughter you. But they did it anyway. So out of 30,000 that were there, 2,000 of them get out. And the only reason they got

out is because a Canadian engineer corps snuck their way behind enemy lines with trucks and boats and all that shit, which is amazing that they did it because, and, and I'm I was very lucky as a kid. I had great World War II veterans in our community. And one of them was Lauren Mack, which actually helped save the British out of Arnhem. So they would keep their truck and like second gear rod to clutch. The colonel of the outfit had a little light on his back and he would walk ahead of the guys. And when he heard the German patrol, he'd cover the light.

They would like, they wouldn't hit the brakes. they were just like, like, use the clutch to stop themselves, but not roll back, but not roll forward. This is all at night, and there's artillery and shit going everywhere. Anyways, they pull these Brits out. So it wasn't until later, because we did this thing at my camp, or at my campground, where we have people come in every July, and it's just a place to get together and be amongst soldiers, right? And it doesn't matter if you're in the Navy or the Air Force or artillery, but we, do that, but it was brought up. It was like, so you're telling me that Lord

Mac from Regina Beach was part of saving the British paras back in World War II. And then the second time in history that it happened, another guy from Regina Beach was part of saving the British paras in Afghanistan. I'm like, fuck, I should, I should write them a letter and see they'll buy me a beer. It's very poetic. Yeah, it's. No, it's kind of cool. like really if you think about it but uh yeah it's just it's just weird how history kind of sometimes the lines back up right i'm curious you know i um one of the things i i hope to try and do with you too as kind of like a trial i don't know like an idea of sean's head i i'm always curious what military guys think about you know if we pull it to where we're at today you know

like uh the stories have been fascinating i think is is a light statement and I'm always one for history. Like, I love it. But, you know, I'm curious, what do you two stare at in the world today? You know, we talk about Ukraine, Russia, you talk about China, you talk about a whole bunch of different things going on, like whether we're getting pulled back into another World War has been talked about a lot. Or we just go light and talk about Daniel Smith and Trudeau's handshake from the other day,

which was like the most hilarious thing I've seen in a long time. I don't know. What do you boys stare at these days? I stare at a lot. Like you just said, take that one. That's a great example of something recent that really sticks. I mean, I think Daniel Smith has her flaws. Like every politician, and everybody does, not just politicians.

Theirs are just more on display. Speak for yourselves. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're wearing the bulletproof shirt there, yeah. Besides, I'm made out of solid steel and sex appeal. That's true. But I like her because I think for the most part, she owns her flaws.

I think she does. Obviously, there's some things where I wish she'd, you know, say a little bit more of this or that. But that's fine. You're never going to please everybody. And I'm certainly not. Well, the only, I'll hop in quick on this. The thing I give it, Danielle, a little bit of grace on is people want me to be like the, I don't even know how to put it into words. They want me to be this certain host.

It does all these things right all the time. That's possible. You can't. I just, it's impossible. That's boring. Maybe that's it too. No, really. Why paint yourself into a corner like that?

Well, but what they, I think what they want, what half the population wants, maybe not half, I don't know what the portion is, is they want a prize fighter. They want a person who walks in with you two fucks and is ready to fucking drop the mitts and let's go. And when you say things, it's full out attack because the world is on fire and like we either acknowledge that or we don't and, you know, kind of the consequences or what. And then the other side is like they want you to interview Wayne Grexky and, I don't know, and stay safe, you know. And somewhere along the line is just like, well, I'm going to do what I'm going to do. Well, you're going to have a segment of your audience. Like I watched your one with Daniel Smith a couple weeks ago and I thought it was great. Like, I like that she speaks fairly off the cuff, I think.

She did not feel like she was reading off a script. She just kind of went with it. You guys had a very easy flow. She's comfortable with it. I think she's comfortable in most settings. And I like that about her. She doesn't, I don't think she kind of changes tune to that.

You're going to have a segment of your audience that just wants you to talk to ex-hockey players or hockey players or this side of. You're going to have a sex in the population, or audience that hated the interview with Daniel. Absolutely. Didn't think I was hard enough on him. And then I had other people reach out and say I was too hard. It's just like there's no winning.

Here's the thing, though, guys. Like when you're researching something, right? If you just look at one side of like a problem, you'll never, you'll never figure out the real solution, right? So, and Chuck, I think you might be the same way as me. So are you, Sean. But when you listen to news, you got to listen to like the left and the right and then somewhere in the middle is something close. to truth or reality. Yeah.

And if you just always on the right, then you're not ever going to be able to come up with a solution or a way of getting around a problem because you've got to know how the left thinks. And at the end of the day, that's what makes our country what it is too is that somehow, some way we're going to actually have to sit down on a table and communicate. And if you're so dug into your position, there's never going to be any moving forward. No. It seems strange, though, these days, you know, you think of, well, from a media standpoint, C-11, and then, what's the second one, I can't think of it off the top of my head, which is terrible, but you, you, censorship, one word, censorship. That's worse than taking away our guns.

Well, and then you got the gun grab. Yeah. No, that gun grab was just a fake. Like, that was just to make us get all worked up over here. They're always going to give that back. it was them taking away our ability to have DS scores by being able to have access to the internet.

Well, you guys have been all around the world, right? You fought in different wars, different... How dangerous is censorship? And I don't know if you know the answer to this. Just, you know, your experience looking at the problem. When a population doesn't get to actually hear what's going on. They just get given this is what it is and you either fall in line with this or we go off. I got I got asked while we were in Afghanistan in 06 by some some big echelon weenie,

some general from something or other. We're doing a dog and pony on the camp for whatever reason and all these high-end nerds from NATO came around to look at our gear. And this dude said to me, the general, he's like, well, what do you think it will take for us to win this war? I'm like, Well, if you gave every woman here access to the internet, you'd change this place. And that's the only way you're going to do it. Empower these women, give them access to information. He's like, thinking combat-wise, and like, we're winning every fight. We're not going to win the war, though, because we're not changing that culture.

The only way to do that is if everybody's got the access to information. Back that up to my time in Bosnia, before there was really widespread Internet and widespread but that kind of thing that we have access to now. But Lazi in 94 when I was there, it was really interesting to me to see how people had gone from hosting the Olympics a few years earlier because they did to exterminating each other. I don't just mean a war.

They were lining up women, children, old people in a ditch, shooting them, shooting their neighbors. So for me, every time I ran into the people that I could talk to, which was daily because we were on observation posts for that entire tour, I'd be like, how did what got this going it's like well they just weren't the same as us anymore and I'm like where did that start and like how did they just not they were your neighbor nobody cared if you're

a serb croat or Muslim and now all of a sudden you do care that they're Serb croat or Muslim you're all intermarried you know I saw how many families torn apart because so-and-so-and-so is married to so-and-so and they would kill each other's kids yeah they'd kill each other's kids so if you're a serbian you're married to a croat and you went to the fight with the a Serb army, but your wife's a Croat? Somebody in that Croatian part of the family, because now they're helping her survive, they'd kill the kids because they got Serb in them. And it was like, how did this start?

Where did this, where did that come from? They're like just the way we started talking about each other. And I'm like, where did that come from? From the top, somebody in a political movement somewhere at some echelon of that, some layer of that. So we essentially face that danger at all. all time. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Right. That's very real. You just changed the language enough where you have two groups. Yeah. You create an us and them, a they and them. You

create that and we did that. Look at how easily that was done with the vaccine talk. People were ratting out their neighbors if they saw an unknown car over there. You might have two people in your house. They were ratting out. Look, I don't care what you did with the Vax. If you got it or not, I don't care. Nor should I care. But you shouldn't care if I did or not either. And I shouldn't have to carry papers around in my own country that I've spilled blood for and been written off as dead for twice for. I'm surprised there was a religious symbol on top of that paper that you had to carry around. You know what I mean?

You know. So, but great point. And here's the thing. And there's a book called The Art of War. I forget what the Chinese college is she or whatever. It's by Sung-Zo. Yeah. So if you just step back, like just step back and look what's going. going on in the world like every western or modern nation everybody in those nations the people are at each other's throats yeah just wanting to fucking kill each other right so who has everything to gain the nation not not doing that it's just sit back laughing right now like like there's

shit at play going on and our government um there's there's not a there's not a political group in this country or in the united states doesn't have some tie to China in one form or another. Like if it's for paying for politicians campaign. So you chalk it up to China. Oh yeah, guaranteed. I'm not going to

pull any punches about it. And I don't mean Chinese people. No, no, no. The Chinese people are the ones that are in the worst off situation. But the Chinese government itself, which is like pushing all this bullshit, it's the first

thing they do is divide conquer. So what do you, what do you think then? There's a lot of people out there today. They're like, you know, maybe we just need to burn it down. You know, like the system needs to burn it down and start anew and all these things. When I hear you tell the story of Croatia, I'm like, burn it down sounds awfully fucking scary. Burning it down while a great, you know, I love those movies, you know. I even like starting fire sometimes. But when it's actually burning down, it's your wife, your kids, your, I don't know if you've got it. lady anymore if anybody can put up with you but if you if like true but it becomes very

personal very quickly I didn't mind going to war wherever I had to go because my family was safe here I didn't go to war all the time because I thought well I'm going to keep people home safe that's always a part of it but I don't want to do that here that's been our nation's policy from day one fighting somebody else's back here it's a much better policy people might not like it, they may, like the population might, why are we doing that? Well, it's not happening here, but you see this divide that we had with the vaccine stuff and all that. And how it's not over yet, it's not over. It's how we separated out. And people who were, I have normal friends, believe it or not, but some normal of my friends were like, they're all about this separation of

this, this tearing of our society now. Like, and the fun and the weird part about it is is that we you know the liberals will try and say well it's a racial thing or it's a it's a it's a social status thing where you're a working class guy and you're not educated and all the convoy proved that completely different it was everybody of every background of every every every walk of life in Canada said this isn't good when you when you talk about um Croatia and you talk about like trying to okay but what started that and then what started that okay and then what started the thing going on in the Western world is really strange because it not only was it you know like I mean look at our political scene right now very at each other's throats the vaccine unvaxed whether you're

waxed or not unvaxed at one point it was very like I can't fit for the life of me I just that was a lot of fear but that was against each other the climate ideology is like on another stratosphere of how like you know how deep an ideology runs. The thing that all of them have in lockstep in my mind is media, maybe even government. Like it's such a mind virus that, you know, like you want to talk about, well, it just takes Sean Newman. If tomorrow they deem Sean Newman bad, this is bad what you're doing, it'd probably show up on like every newscast across Canada. And they would, they painted in a light and whatever else. In fairness, I hope that doesn't happen.

But that's, that's the ability one side has right now. Of the censorship law that they're, they've pushed through. This is a real possibility. I mean, when we, when we grew up as, we're almost all the same age, roughly give or take, but in that same generational period, growing up, I remember reporters and media only hammering the government. Like, I mean. Yeah.

And yet. holding them to account. And we don't do that. No, they'll hold Pover. Well, I mean, look at Daniel Smith with the CBC running the story and then not having the emails. Not having the emails. You're like, so the thing is, though, guys, we've got to remember this nation's at 170 years old, right? Like my grandfather was a settler, came over here.

The thing that's different between us and them is that they came from nothing. They moved to a new world where the world was at their feet to do with what they wanted. Christianity was our main religion. Bedrock. Yeah, it was. But there was sex, like different, like you're united, you're Catholic, you're Protestant. But at the end of the day, back in Europe, they would fight each other over that. When they came to Canada, they put that shit aside.

They said, we're here to develop a new way of life where we want our children to be educated and we want to be able to just live a peaceful life. So now that that generation has moved on and is dead now, the people moving into our country don't have the same Christianity. They're different religions. So they didn't leave those fights behind them that they came from their country. They're still carrying that on here. They're following their ways of life in our country. didn't align with our ethics and our morals back in the day. So when it came to our society moving forward, we at the original settlers that came here, we're generally trying to do something good. Now that we're the second generation Canadians here, we're spoiled. We never knew what it was

like to go through the famine in Poland or in Ireland. We never knew it was like to be, you know, persecuted by by the English when we're Scottish. Like I actually know people that are Welsh and when they would speak Welsh in school they'd get camed by their English school teacher.

They couldn't even speak their own language in their country. Like it was like the things that those people have gone through for us we take it to granted and we we didn't learn those lessons. We didn't have to live through those days. So it's easy to

for us to like slip down that mountain a little bit because we don't know any better. But now that we're trying to look back up and where we slip from, it's like, holy fuck, how do we get back up there? So how do we get back up there? Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you right now. I'm not putting all my faith or chickens in one basket or eggs in a basket because eggs are expensive now. But if you, with Poliver, if he doesn't make it in when they call the next election, there's no recovering this. country there just isn't like we are now passing laws being pushed through that are dismantling the country if if he isn't able to get in and actually hold a few of his promises

true like getting rid of the CBC would be a monster start stop funding the media when we look at other countries like you look at RT news in Russia or or or in North Korea or any or China and the government is funding that media what do we call it. We call it. State funded media. It's propaganda. Well, we do it here. But here it's like, well, we're just subsidizing them. No, they are, no wonder they don't attack the government. We've paid the government to give those little things that this mindset in Canada needs to wake up from. It needs to happen quick. A lot of people have woken up about the, I hate using that word, but they're, they're seeing it a little bit more clearly now with the COVID stuff, even if you got vaxed. Nobody I

know is in favor of like segregation but yet people are pushing it. People are pushing this two-tiered society. If he doesn't make it in we're going to have to look at the West real hard. See and I go a step further or a step quicker I guess maybe

is Daniel Smith if she doesn't become Premier of Alberta again and you have a Rachel Motley You guys are in trouble. Well no no no But here's the thing. We are the wild west of, I always thought it was Saskatchewan, but the truth of the matter is, Scott Moe ain't the guy pushing the envelope. The person pushing the envelope is Daniel Smith.

Yes, she is, yeah. And so if Canada has- Well, Mo started it. Now he's sitting back, he's going to see what Alberta does. I don't think so. You guys have bigger teeth. I disagree. I think Moe started pushing it because he could feel he's a politician.

Oh, yeah. He could see what was going on. Oh, this Daniel Smith is on the run. Oh, maybe I can. And maybe all these people yelling at me for the last two years, maybe there's something there. And he started talking about it, and all of a sudden,

when you know, people are like giving Scott Moe a free ride? Now, I'm not sitting here saying I've got to run them through the mud. I'm not saying you don't have to run them through the mud. All I'm saying is the first person that, wow, I'll go back to it. If Daniel Smith doesn't win, that impacts all of Canada. Because Scott Moe will not, Scott Moe ain't going to stand up for it. he won't and i haven't seen a single politician do it until daniel smith and you might be able to give

pier and there's a lot of things being written about pier right now but regardless i would way to rather have pier than trudeau i think anyone can agree with that how many conservative governments are there been in canada's history not many i mean comparatively speaking but but even if there was only one right they didn't do what that what was needed to do to make sure that we had to say out here okay so So it's like the definition of insanity. We keep trying to vote these guys in when they get voted in. They don't change it. So what do you think then?

Well. So what do you think? My thing is north of number one highway in B.C. Right around to Manitoba and we create our own nation. And I hate to say that. I tell you what, if there was a crystal ball that the vets that went to World War I or World War II could have looked in and see. where we're at now, they never would have got on the boat.

Yeah. Our morals and ethics that we believe dearly in in which this nation was founded upon are not there anymore. And if we could, at the end of the day, if we could have our own nation where we could align our laws up with our morals and ethics and live, I don't care what color or skin you got, you could live here and be a productive part of our society

and raise your family in peace, that's all we want. And we want to be able to not have to be raped for our resources and given to the rest of the world when we have communities in our country that don't even have drinking water. Like at what point do we not worry about our own backyard before we try fixing somebody else's backyard? I get it all the time too. I'll say basically that.

like the West needs to look after itself. We're too big of a country now. Not that we've grown. It's just that the size. The size. There's nowhere else in the world that functions at this size. There just isn't. It worked for a long time, sort of kind of.

But the West, especially Alberta, we are funding this country. We're underrepresented as far as population bases in parli-like for seats. We don't get the right seats. They do that on purpose. And I get it all the time where they're like, well, you, you, you just want Canada to go down. I'm Canada first. I'm like, well, if you were Canada, I didn't see you serve and I didn't see you overseas. Like, I didn't see, I did all that.

And I'm still willing to say, like, this country needs a revamp. It needs a big fix, you know. And we're also the guys that when we're supposed to call VAC for help for our friends, the guys that we know, and we know a lot of the same, all the same dudes, they call VAC or they call the government for help. And the government is saying, well, have you tried suicide? side yet like offering them made well you know what at that point it's okay I feel bad about giving up on this country like I just don't you know I've done everything are we are we

given up on the country I'm giving up on the notion of this big this province like Alberta's or this big country that Alberta's funding and getting shit on for doing it I I honestly believe that this country isn't a name it's a it's a people and it's and the and the and the what this country was based upon is certain principles education for our kids and the ability to live free and and not be persecuted by our government and that's what the people that left europe were they were being persecuted by their own people their own government they didn't have a way to raise their families uh without you know going through horrific ordeals and they wanted a place to do that and that's what built this country.

It wasn't, they didn't build it for the name of Canada. They didn't build it for Ottawa. I was going to say this is your thought on Canada not being just a name but more of an ideal is a very interesting thought on separation.

I've, like I think lots of people out in Alberta, certainly in Alberta, but like out west have, you know, they've had all these conversations about, you know, separating and separating and separating and whether it's a good idea, whether it's not, why we would ever leave Canada, why we wouldn't, and they go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And Canada's this really interesting spot because, like, I don't know, maybe the United States,

different states talk about that all the time. I would think Texas always sticks out as one, but like here's Alberta and Saskatcham that seemed to fit this bill of like, we should just start a nation anyways. And so that in itself is a really odd thought to just. break away from a country. Except what you just said there really is interesting in that if you want to protect your ideals, maybe you do. Because one of the things that you're talking about is a lot of people are feeling very

alienated of like my beliefs are no longer appreciated in this country. My views on XYZ. And I don't think they're extreme at all. I think they're actually pretty healthy views, but they're all labeled a certain way. And so I was, you know, if you go back to the COVID thing, we were just waiting for a province. It felt like it was going to be Saskatchewan at one point. It turned out to be Alberta. They were going to stand up and say, hey, listen, we got it wrong. You should come here and whatever. And what happens is a huge...

There's a huge influx of people that just want to be in a place that understands them. And what you're talking about with Canada is there's a huge portion of the population. They listen to this show. They're just like, we just want a place to make sense again. You know, like I want that to be Canada. I really do. But so do we. But it's such a big diverse country that if they want to go and, you know, like teach their kids at six years old, they can be whatever they want to be. And I say that with a wink and a smile because it's like, you know, I think everybody knows what I'm getting at. It's like, sure. I just don't want my kids to be in that school. Like I But it shouldn't be jammed down our throats either.

Well, that too. So it's like if you want a place that is just free to be who you are, but under some structure that protects freedom of speech, that protects the kids, that protects freedom of choice, that protects a whole bunch of things, it's like all of a sudden that actually makes a lot of sense to me because everything under attack in this country is everything that doesn't make a sense. I don't agree with it.

I'm just like, I don't even understand how we got here. We talked about it before Christmas when you were out on that show, and we talked about sort of the same thing. And you look at that map of Canada where 50% of the population of this country lives under that very bottom line in Ontario. Like it's, and then you look at the entire rest of our landmass and spread out population. We have no say. Like, so when you see the immigration one way or the other in this country,

none of it's going to Ontario or very little of it. There's record numbers coming west because there's a mindset out here. We talked with a pioneering mindset before. You've kind of talked with it too. This, you know, I, we grew up in a generation where in the military where nobody cared. Like we were maybe some people did. There's always, like we said, there's an idiot in every organization. We just didn't care as long as you could do the job.

Yeah, but right now we're, we're, we're, we're, andering to the idiot in the organization. And that's the difference. But here's the reason why. And like 25 years ago or whatever, you could be in a group of people and you could speak openly about your political thoughts and you could disagree with each other. And now, and myself included, because I sometimes speak out when I shouldn't be saying things. Like I'll say things that are other people find offensive. and I'm talking when I'm speaking when I when I'm speaking about things that people find offensive it's not because I'm being racist or anything else but I'm talking about ways of thinking

that that I was taught from my father and mother and like how we used to be nowadays you can't talk about, you know, hunting, gathering, you know, shooting a deer and harvesting it and being in a public setting. But the fact that that's extreme. Yeah. Like, it's upsetting to people. I bet you 50 years ago they argued about politics and it was an uncomfortable. Politics has been one and religion have been two topics that have been very polarizing.

Since the beginning of time. But we talked about this two last time was I remember. Being at my, if my family had a, my parents growing up on the farm had all the other farmers over for a barbecue and a drink, you know, they would all get into politics once the bottles got going and they'd all meet in the middle somewhere. And even if one was a liberal and one was a conservative, it was like they could talk. If they joke about it, make fun of each other. But at the end of the day, they were still all buddies. You can't, I don't have a liberal friend to speak of right now because I'm an extremist. Well, that's the thing that I was going to say is like right now, what's,

What's odd is like my way of life is under attack. Mm-hmm. Yep. Essentially. And you haven't. And I'm about as, and I'm about as mainstream as it gets our main. Anyways.

But this is why it is, is because we've stopped, because we're Canadians, we've stopped, we've stopped talking the way we used to talk because we don't want to offend anybody. But if we, if we stop talking about things that are. important to us that other people might find offensive, then we lose that ability to talk about it. Like, hey, a spade's a spade.

If you got a problem with something, you've got to be able to talk about it. If you just don't talk about it like we've done for the last 25 years, now we're like, oh, fuck, we've lost that ability to talk about it. How do we get back to that spot? Well, this is why Jordan Peterson is so important right now and so under. attack. He has an ability much better than us to dinosaurs to verbalize something cogently in an argument where you're like, he makes sense and he's not trying to be offensive to anyone. He just wants people to live and let live. He calls out what he sees is insanity. And I would agree with most

of what he calls out is insanity. And that's why he's so attacked. They want him to be shut up. If they can shut up that voice, no one else will speak. Your show will be gone. That show over there will be gone. That'll be gone. Because if they can shut up him, he's our canary in the bird, or canary in the coal mine right now. If he's gone, and that's why they push so hard to get rid of him,

there's no more conversation left. He's like kind of it right now. And I think Joe Rogan. Oh, Joe Rogan. I'm talking Canada. Yeah. Everybody always asks, oh, you know, I had this moment on Spotify where my show disappeared for like,

I forget what that was, eight hours. It was, all of a sudden it was just gone. Everybody freaked out, including myself. I'm like, I haven't, but I've had the moment on YouTube, and tonight when we go watch Chris Barber, it was me and him having this harmless conversation, which I thought was harmless, and my entire YouTube channel overnight just gone, right?

And so you go back to Spotify, and so my entire channel disappeared. You couldn't find it. And I sent off a couple of emails, and found out that it was a technical glitch. Oh, I'm sure. Well, I know. That's what I do. I'm like, technical glitch.

I wonder if I just got put on a list somewhere, you know, and now they're wondering. Sending a message to you. Maybe. But it did come back on, and it was fine, and you just carry on. But there was a moment on Spotify, and I just always go back to Joe. Like, as long as Joe is talking the way he's talking,

talking to the people he's talking, and they continue to allow it. And I mean, allow it in the most, like, you know as long as he can continue to do that and Spotify doesn't distance himself i think we're all we're all safe that's my like that's my he's he's he's the brick wall change if that c21 goes through because that's states compared to canada anything that's canadian controlled that's the bill i was trying to spit out earlier was c21 yeah and that's the danger of losing just have not it's just having the conversation like you said we're not really even allowed to have the conversation

Everything that Pauliver does now, he's labeled to some sort of extremist racist. Yeah, and that's what they go back to every time. Every time. And it's-oh, that's firearms. But 21's firearms. Oh, it's C-11. C-11. No, C-11's the one on Canadian content.

And then there's another bill. Why the hell can't I think of it? Fuck, I'm having a terrible time this morning. Anyways, thank God. I'm blaming it on. I'm blaming it on, James, bringing in the case of Bud Light. That's what I'm blaming it. Hey, they had no great Western light here.

Communist. No lucky beer. Actually, in Alberta, they call it the brewhouse light. Brewhouse light, that's right. When it crosses border. Get old Saskatchewan beer. I don't know that we're fixable at this point, even with Poliver. He might be fixable.

See, and I argue we are. I think we are at all times, but that might be my optimism. If Polymer gets in, the western province have to do a night, get rid of the transfer taxes. Yes. fix our own problems within our country before we help anybody else and give equal representation throughout the country. Yeah, that electoral reform

that everybody campaigns on and never happens well, it needs to happen. Like we need some actual representation. I hate to sound like pre-revolutionary war, but Alberta especially is being taxed into oblivion with no representation. presentation. Well, Chris Sims, who would have come out just before you guys.

Oh, yeah. I mean, her, we're Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We were talking about just a simple thing, which isn't that simple, but carbon tax. And how much it's set to rise over the next seven years, like, everybody would buckle up. If that all goes through, like, there goes our farming. Again, here's the deal, though. Again, we're talking about, we're talking about the things that really. They're important, but they're not the root.

Like, again, we're talking about carbon tax, this, that anything. So what is the root? So if we get a conservative government back into power, the laws of this land that our ancestors came and settled here, it's, you know, two genders. There's a man and a woman, right? If you by yourself want to do your own thing behind your own closed doors, as law as you're not involving a minor,

you do whatever the hell you want. Okay, that's your business. I don't want to know about it, and I don't want to see it on my TV, and I don't want my kids to see it. Number two is that we have to be able to have an education system where I have a say in what our kids are learning. Not some woke person that's saying,

this is what is going to be taught to your kids without your consent. Like these are the important things that we have to change. Although we have to change other laws, like when a criminal goes to jail, he doesn't get the change of gender and be put into a female jail. Like, we got to get back to the reality of life

and all these things that are like the flavor of the day, we've got to get rid of that shit. Is that possible? But that's what I'm getting at. If we vote in a conservative government, we can't go that way, our only option to go to laws that represent our morals and ethics is to create our own country. So what do we do? We keep going down this dark hole where things just get worse, worse and worse.

Or do we cut clean and say, okay, we're creating a country built on these morals and ethics and these are going to be the laws of the land? And that's our reset to getting it back to where it should be. And I don't think we're ever going to slide that pendulum back on some of those issues you're talking about. Unfortunately, regardless of the government we, you know, put in there. The PPC will claim that, you know, we're the ones that they'll never get a seat. They're going to parachute Bernie into God knows where, which riding to try and get them a seat. They'll never get a seat. They're just distraction.

They're helping keep Trudeau in power. Yeah, yeah. But I get all that and I understand all that. I just, we need this government out as quick as possible for any chance. And I don't know that even if Paul ever gets in there, he's going to fix everything. What drove? I might not know the answer to this. I might know.

Well, ask us we know everything. Well, let's look at some history here. Right? We're tackling a very tough, a tough problem. It's like where we're at, fire away, James. No, no, because the answer's in here. The answer's in there? Yeah, ask the question, I'll let it out. I'm going, why did the Americans do what they did with coming across and fighting Britain?

What? Are you talking about the war of 1812? No, I'm talking like, why did they buck their masters? Oh, because they were taxed. They were over-taxed. Right? So aren't we getting close to that? That's coming out of here.

The difference is media. The difference is the media now. So, but you say that, but is because of taxation. No, but the reason it's not happening now. So why aren't we all, like, or were the Americans not united? Maybe they weren't. That's why there's the big famous term three percenter, because only three percent of Americans actually took part in overthrowing their government.

You know how that started? And this is just my gut feeling, obviously, I was not there. But you know when you're like sitting around the bar and everybody's all pissed off, they're taxing the shit out of us, right? That boat is in a harbor. there's a pub probably within a stone's throw that boat and they're like well what are we going to do about it they fucking they burnt down they just started burning boats it was probably they were drunk and hey this seems like the right thing to do and it got the attention in the entire world and it started

a revolution there's probably like two guys in the bar figure we're going to do something about nobody wants to be the first right like nobody you going first in the door is a terrifying thing thing. It's one thing when it's combat, you're first in the door, the repercussion is you. When it's, you hear, it's your whole life, it's your family. It's you, they can take it all, look at, look at what's going on with Jeremy McKenzie. I mean, we talk about her. I mean, I'll give you a name that you probably haven't heard. Meg Garland. She's, I was just at, um, uh, what do they call it? Apologies ladies. I just spoke at their, their sovereignty, weekend workshop at

Sylvan Lake and they use PayPal and because of what she does which is like honestly being off the grid that's like the simplest way and not from the sense of like we're saving the planet more of like we're saving yourself from government overreach right and because of her views

PayPal gone it's like anyways I digress no it's this is the thing you ask why we're not up in arms doing something like we as a country to they take it by an inch and they dumb it down in the media

by an inch and then before you know it we're seven years into this with having formed a debt that's more than every other prime minister in history combined this country so underwater we have the most extremist corrupt government we've ever had in this nation is in power right now

how many scandals have they gone through that would have crippled and torn apart any of the government being propped up by the NDP because he wants a six-year pension. So as long as there's no, no election here in the next couple of years, he gets his six-year pension old. So all these things, nobody wants to be the first. I mean, look at what happened to the convoires. If you donated, well, now we know what your bank account is. If you speak out, we're going to take away your ability to bank. Oh, if you, if you helped lead the damn thing,

you, you've had a gag order on yourself now for a year, right? Like it's, And they do it. They expose that one person or element or group. And everybody's like, man. And yet everybody, you know, I shouldn't say everybody because it's not true. But a large majority, I think, really appreciated what the convoy did. Oh, which means if you're the first through the door on something like this, there's probably a surge behind you that you just don't even understand us there. Well, you saw it trickle around the world.

I mean, it started a thing around the world and it scared those powers. that be whatever you want to call them whatever label you want to put on the global thing I mean they don't even hide the fact that there is a global thing like they're quite now that it's exposed it's no longer like being on Alex Jones 20 years ago where he's ranting about the lizard people they've they're out in the open now you know so it's like huh that one came true like they fully admit like this W. W.EF stuff and all these organizations co-linked trying to make one unipoleon government around the world.

It's crazy. It's terrifying. And they're winning right now. And the funny thing is it's led by a German from like that's like following in Hitler's footsteps and everybody's just fucking following his grandfather was. I mean, you look who Krista Freeland's grandfather was. I mean. Yeah, they're just following right in the footsteps.

It's crazy. Like to think about it. It's something right out of James Bond. There were rumors she was leaving government to go work for names. How scary would that be? I mean, you're gonna have the granddaughter of one of the leading You know Nazis in the regime You know in on the propaganda side of it at least now running or working at a high echelon in NATO like that's terrifying It's terrifying on another level that Germany is basically the biggest voice in NATO. I mean they're well

America's puppet but I mean every that you can't even build your own tank or buy a tank unless Germany says 999 you're buying our tank Like, why do you think leopards took so long to get to Ukraine? Not because they're an inferior tank. I mean, they're a decent tank. The problem is that they wanted to use up all the old Soviet gear first from all these countries. Use all that up first. They don't want the propaganda when the Russians are going to have when they're standing in front of a burnt-out leopard or Abrams.

Like, that's a bad optic. It's a horrible optic for West. I've got to bring something up about that. And I'm for winning the war in Ukraine. like I just for my own like I'm anti-communists and these guys are in it to win it and we're too far down that hole now to back out

and it never should have happened but Obama dangled the carrot of NATO to Ukraine when they should have been just allowed into the European Union demilitarized zone down the Russia border so they don't go bananas like we did at the Cuban missile crisis when they're going to put nukes in Cuba

like I get why Russia is doing what they're doing they have only one warm seaport and 70% of their population is contained to that part of Russia where they need to bring goods in. Like I understand where they're fighting. But now we've got to win it. Secondly, the tanks are second where the tanks that we're sending, you get out of the best fucking tank in the world.

But if you don't have a guy that can drive that tank and gun that gun and maneuver that turret and work as a crew in that tank, you might as well be fucking driving around on a cardboard box out there. So I don't care when these tanks get there. They shouldn't be put into line or into service until their crews are like fully trained and able to use what they got to 110% of it. Do you think that war is winnable without NATO intervention? And I mean direct force intervention, not this sending over all of our.

I think if we economically Russia is stronger economically now than any country in Europe Yes because China's buying all the oil And China, everybody's buying their oil Yep So economically if we could put the rope around their neck Not happening Yeah well it isn't happening

It's been a year of sanctions The most sanctioned government place in the world No you're asking me I was just saying if economically So that's that's off the table the table because Russia is now stronger economically than they were at the start of this. Yeah. No, you're asking me. I don't know, that'd be the only way.

So if you don't, if you don't double down on China and you don't double down on India, which India actually is an enemy to China. So if we don't start producing oil, natural gas, sending it to our allies so that they don't have to deal with Russia, then no. But if all of a sudden Trudeau gets off, it gets the fuck out of the way so we can start building pipelines

east west and up to the huts of bay and producing oil and natural gas and making India and China buy from us, then yeah, it's winnable. It could be at that point, but now that we've not doing that. Well, because...

You know what? I apologize your ass, but before you got here me and Chuck I showed him I interviewed a 97 year old who was a Holland man who grew up and then

got you know saw all the Nazis had to offer and everything else and had some beautiful stories but he kept saying it over and over the Nazis lost the war not because of inferior anything because they didn't have gasoline anymore or diesel

they ran out of he said it was just evident he's like he kind of mirrored what you just said Jamie he he basically said you know like it's great you got all this great stuff but if you can't power it it doesn't move

and you're saying it you can have all the great stuff and the power to move but if you don't have demand power to even like to figure it out that's great here's here's what would happen to Russia though so Russia can't export their energy because now China's got to buy from us in India, they would drown in their oil because they wouldn't be able to burn

it in their tanks because they can't build the fucking tanks. They can't, uh, the tanks can't survive on the battlefields. True. But if, if, if they would drown in their own resources. But if you go back to, but if you go back to what you initially said, you think one of the biggest infiltrators of Western society is China, why would China do that? Because they want us to fail. They want the Western world to fail. No, no, no, no. I get that part. But why would they, why would they sink Russia then to help the states? Well, I don't think they will. But China would have to sink Russia because if we stop trade with, so what China is doing

right now is they're bracing their economy for sanctions. So they're already doing like stuff to their own economy to, to fortify its ability to succeed or to be to survive by any sanctions we'd put on them. So China's biggest weakness is their people. So they got a huge army, not just for fighting whoever they got to fight, but they also have to control their people. So like when they're running Chinaman over in Channelman Square, is because the people will stand up to China if we're in a World War

and they have no way of feeding their kids. They're going to stand up to them. So their biggest fears, they've got to have an army big enough to control a billion people. Plus, India is right there. They're in competition with China. They've got to deal about their next-door neighbor. Plus, they've got to fight the world, like Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, United States, England, Canada, all of European nations. So they've got a big task on their hand, but they've got to control their own people first and foremost, or it'll all be over.

See, I think what's happening with Russia and Ukraine, has just embolded in China. We did nothing. NATO, you know as well as I do, having been on CAF and overseas a bunch. NATO isn't some standing wonderful force that you break the glass and you're like, oh, go get them, boys. It's a bunch of hodgepodge European countries with shitty soldiers, more generally conscripted junk.

They're horribly led. They're not good. Who left the wire to fight? Yeah, us, us the Brits and the Americans. That's it. So you got all these, you know, loud at the table European countries with absolute junk militaries. They're not even loud at the table. Like they paid off the Taliban.

They'll allow the Dutch to move to their to their forward operating base, which they never left. No, it was, but my point to that is, is we, Putin has now exposed how weak NATO is. It's going to take NATO, the countries that produce javelins, five years to get back up to the pre-war marker. They've used all their javelins. 155 shells. We produce something like 15,000. The Americans produce like 15,000 a month. They want to get up to 90,000 a month.

We don't have any shells left. But that's because we've got rid of all of our industry to China. Well, I know. This is my point. China has all the cards. So why wouldn't they do what they want to do? So, but that's the thing. So China is doing all this like, you know,

testing all their systems to make sure that if they're sanctioned, and how they can survive. They're preparing for this. Like our way of life, like when Trump was in power, he was bringing those jobs back to the United States to be able to do that kind of stuff. We're going to have to follow suit. And when China's like our hardware store

and then all of a sudden we go to war with them, we don't have nothing to be able to survive with. You know, it's too late by then. And we are doing it as a Western world ever since COVID, people are realizing that we can't rely on the Chinese to supply us with everything we need. We've got to start doing that ourselves, right? And it's going to take some time. Like, but things are happening now that are advancing everything. And I think China might have thought of taking Taiwan in 10 to 15 years. They're going to do it in two to three years, I think.

Well, it's because their leaders getting older. The leader's getting older. He wants to do it on his terms. Yeah. But what Putin has done to NATO, he's exposed the weakness, utter weakness. He's exposed his own weakness, too. He's got his own issues 100%. Absolutely.

They're not a perfect thing by any means. But if every country in Europe, including the U.S. over here, isn't able to subdue Russia. Subdu Russia. I mean, Russia is producing some of the best battle tanks in the world. several a day. They have warehouses full of 10,000 old out of dated tanks. They haven't even broke into that yet. They can break into that warehouse,

start shuffling crap tanks to the front, and just swarm us at some point. The difference in the Russian soldiers, the Russians that are going to the front compared to the Ukrainians or night and day. Like, and that, that's, that speaks a lot for... I don't know, man. I'm watching a lot of footage,

and I'm seeing a bit of both from both sides, but you look at Wagner Group, that PMC is over 60,000 troops right now. They're fighting, they're the stormtroopers right now. Have you ever been to a Russian jail? Well, that's why they're getting these guys. Yeah, I mean. But like when you're in a Russian-

Have you been to a Russian jail? No, but a Russian jail, like, when you go from room to room, there's two guards on you, they put you in a stress position, they walk you, like with your hands are cuffed always and they got their hands underneath your wrists

with their hand on your shoulder and they push up with their elbow on your wrist as you walk everywhere bent over like Russian jails are They're hardcore They're like So the head of Wagner PMC The guy who runs Wagner

It's a private military contracting group Was given permission to go to Russian jails And pull whoever he wanted So if these guys volunteer to work for him as mercenaries in Ukraine, six months on the front, they get a pardon. Yeah, they get walking away free. He's taking some hard, hard dudes, dudes with 20 years or life over their head.

They're fighting their asses off. Now, they're not always winning everything, but, I mean, you're taking these guys into a meat grinder anyway, so who cares? I'm not pro-Russian. Just to be clear, I'm not pro-Russian, but I'm also pro-winning the war. If you're going to fight a war, win it. And we're not, we are not going to win this war.

We're not. And we're not. I bet you don't. we do. I'll bet you a dollar we don't. We're not. And worse than that, we've shown China how weak the West is. Oh yeah, totally. They knew that in Afghanistan. They knew that then too. When I was over there doing private security, I was in Bello in the Bull Province, and the Chinese SF were coming in because they were developing new weapon systems and shit, and they would try them on us. the the yank s-up the delta guys killed five of these chinamen and they brought them to our camp

for DNA samples and all that shit but um yeah like they're they're right in there like uh the funny strange and twist in history right now is russia is friends with the taliban and so was china they're negotiating out like you know resources they're negotiating out rights of passage like right ways through the country. Yeah, because China's building a highway through the. The script is completely flipped. And, of course, we in the West don't know why, why did Biden pull out so suddenly? Well, he left them.

That's a whole other rabbit hole. But the whole point of it is, is we left Russia and China, Afghanistan. Yeah. So this highway, they're building from China to Europe. Well, is that for bringing goods? Or is that so the army, like the Romans, built roads for their armies so they could just walk to

where they got to go. Like, why would they build a fucking highway through the... Oh, there'll be some trade for sure, but it's a road road, like a real road now. And I'm having been all over after, because there's not a lot of real roads. It's like highway one. Yeah. It's like highway number one. Like from China right to Europe.

Yeah. It's, we've emboldened them so much. And I mean, you have a Biden president. right now where their armies in a shambles and he's a shambles. But that goes back to the art of war. Like they got the same shit going on in their military as we got in ours. Why?

Why is it like that? It's pushing everybody away. Nobody wants to be part of it. You know? No, I know. It's all the, look at this hand. Well, this hand's coming in for the soccer punch, right? I just think that we gave up an opportunity to actually win the war and push Putin back.

Or at least hold him to a certain region. we're not going to push him out. The worst case scenario here is that we, that NATO actually puts forces in there. The U.S. actually puts boots on the ground. That's the worst, that's a really bad scenario, by the way. If we do that, what's Russia's option?

He's going to go straight to nuke. The Ukrainian army is already being accused of using chemical weapons. Don't be surprised. I'd like to know what their nuclear capability is. Who Russia? Yep. 6,000 nukes. Yeah, but here's the thing.

So my theory is their ground forces are shit because they put their money into their nuclear defense. So does that mean they've upgraded all their nuclear weapons so they're actually nuclear? Not just because they lose like three to five percent per warhead every year in their nuclear capability in their yield. They don't. Because it gases off. But don't even think about old school nuclear warfare. Take this the balloon that China let float over. Canada and the US had that been a low yield nuclear device fired off as an EMP you track

where that balloon track went you look at the map of where that went if they put 10 of those balloons up and just floated them and nobody noticed the bloody thing in Canada like it's a balloon nobody noticed it and in the US they didn't even notice it right away either so they say so they say so even if it's a low yield nuclear device fired off as an EMP and that's all you need at a certain height, you've knocked out all the electronics. All the cars are dead.

All our power grids down. They wait a year and come over. They don't have to do a, they don't have to do nuclear strikes the way we think about them. In fact, they don't want to do them. They want the land mass after. Well, that's the thing.

So where are they in their capability? They're as advanced as we are. But that's the thing. They might be more advanced than us. Their hypersonic missile system? are better than what the guys have. So that's what I'm getting at. So I think that's why their army's drunk

is because they've been putting the money into their nuclear weapons systems. Our weapon systems can't counter it right now. Although we have hypersonic shit ourselves, but our deterrence to be able to shoot it down isn't there. Like I said to Gormley, Gormley was talking about nuclear weapons crashing, crash landing in Saskatchewan.

And I was losing my shit. I had to phone them up. I'm like, You're scared the hell out of me. First of all, I've never seen a nuclear missile with a set of landing gear on it. So when it gets shot down, it's going to explode no matter where the fuck it is. If it's up in the air or if it's hitting the ground, it's going to blow up. Secondly, you're thinking the Russians are going to come over the pole and take over Canada?

They can't even drive 200 miles into Kiev without fucking running out of gas, let alone fucking coming over the pole. So like stop all this fucking bullshit about we should. be like fighting in NATO against against Russia right now because we just don't know all the answers yet. We've got to figure this shit out. See, and this, like, the West has this arrogance about how they view

Russia and being simple or shitty troops and simple gear and bad gear. And that's simply not, it just isn't the case right now. Like, it just is. Like, people look at, like, why did Russia only advance so far into Ukraine? Ukraine spent eight years building defenses from 2014 till this war kicked off. They've been building the Sigfried line.

Like it's been, this isn't, this wasn't an overnight happening. China fucked them up because they had the Olympics. They didn't want Russia to launch while the Olympics were on, but the fields are frozen in. And when they brought in that plasma for the wounded, that was the indicator that Russia was going to have a war. The Ukrainians flooded all the fields. So the fucking Russians couldn't use them.

come in from the north to get the... Norwich I made a bunch of tactical blunders, too. I mean, sending resupply convoys in before the combat troops sometimes. They made a whole bunch of areas. I'm not saying they made the tactical geniuses that they think they are. I'm just saying NATO isn't going to win against them. We are maybe, at best, going to push them out of there. We got a dollar on it.

I don't know. I don't know. Hey, what about this... You were in this documentary thing for Vaughn. Oh, yeah. Oh, this is cool. So did you ever get a hold of Robert? Me and Robert talked.

We're still working on it. All right. Well, fuck, you better hurry up because that's happening in like April. So anyways, the Patricias have the museum and they got these guys. They're recording shit that went on throughout, you know, Afghanistan and shit. So they wanted to interview me based on, remember when our General Fraser's convoy We got blown up and all those dudes got killed. And I found the detonation spot and I tracked down the guy that fucking blew him up.

And then we raided their village the next day and we actually caught the guy. Anyway, so I went to do this interview because they want to talk about this and maybe do it into a documentary or whatever they decided to do. But while I was there, Willie's doing the thing about. the yellow school and and uh going through the whole thing and and willy's like they're like well who's going to be von ingram and will he goes well fucking sincler looks like him and he knows them so like i all of a sudden i fucking get in army gear and we we went through the battle of the yellow school the white school yeah or was it the white school yeah was it the yellow school where we took all the dead guys in and dropped them off or

Like, where did we take the dead? I don't remember. But the white school is the one we fought at on the third. Okay. Oh, then, yeah. Anyways, fucking, I got the schools mixed up. So, yeah, it was the white school. And so, yeah, anyways, I ended up being fucking Bonn Ingram, which is kind of cool.

And this guy, like, Von is just, like, he's a new fee from, like, small town, Newfoundland, like, fishing town. but just a great soldier so the first time Vaughn got wounded I was out in Gombad we come back and he got wounded that day I went and saw him in the hospital I took a bottle of wine that I got from the French but you could buy fake wine at the PX in Canterar and the bottles are all wet from the moisture

in the in the fucking fringes and I gently peeled the label off of it and I slapped it over the fucking French wine bottle to make it look like fake wine. I bought a sports illustrated magazine tore the cover off and threw it over a porn bag so it looked like a sports illustrated mag and I went to roll one or whatever the fuck they call the hospital and I'm here to see bond and I brought him some fake wine and uh sports illustrated mag and the nurse is like yeah he's over here come this way so go in there and Vaughn was like You know, he's all, like, he had an RPG blow up, like, a foot away from his head. And, like, so he's got shrapnel in his face.

And he's sitting on the edge of his bed and we sat there, drank wine. And fucking, I left the book with him so he could have it for later. But anyways, we were talking about why he, because I'm like, hey, you're going to be able to go home. Like, you're done. Yeah. No, no, no, I'm staying. Yeah. Like, I'm here to fight.

Like, that was how he was. he was like, no, I'm staying. Because at the time they had those guys that they caught in Toronto. They were going to blow up that nuclear reactor outside of Toronto. He's like, this is why we're here. Like, the information that we're gathering and they're following the money trail, like it's exposing these guys throughout the world. And we're stopping terrorism.

And I'm like, you know, like, fucking look at the balls on this guy, right? So, Vaughn, he. He's like, no, I'm not going to stay and he kept fighting. And he eventually died in that tour, but there's a movie coming out or documentary coming out sometime in April. It's going to be on Netflix apparently. But it's unfortunately, Canada doesn't support these type of historical, like, recreations of battle events. We don't have a holy one. It was a low budget thing.

But the guys running it like this rock. Robert guy, like, they do amazing stuff with what they got. And just the historical accuracy is what he's going for. And it'd be nice to see Ottawa get off the wallet and actually put some money into this stuff. Because, you know, for a veteran to watch it, it's something that you want to see it accurate. Like, not with hodgepodge equipment and not the right. Like we didn't we had to use civilian people as extras when it should be army guys. You know what I mean?

That we're there because they've actually, they know how to move and walk and look like a fighting force, right? So. Von, yeah, he's, he, uh, I'd known him my whole career at that point, most of my career at that point. That tour, I'd seen him twice because, I mean, we were different companies, different areas. Yeah.

Never in camp to see each other anyway if we were. but I saw him shortly after he was wounded at the mess hall at the one of the defects there. And he was still recovering from the shrapnel on his face from the RPG. And I said the same thing you did. I'm like, oh man, you got your ticket out of here, dude. Like get out of here, go home. And Vaughn's like, no, man. He goes, I'm not going to be a model anymore.

But, you know, I'm going to keep fighting. You know, he was a funny guy. It looked like somebody took a cheese grater to his face. But the next time I saw him was pulling him into a back of it. the lav at the school me and pat tower and a couple of the boys but even then he was still smiling you know like just a just a beast you know well when he was dying like uh they were going to be overrun and everybody in there was going to get killed and there was no quit in him like he was he was trying to patch up his machine gunner machine gunner's head was fucking blowing off like uh from

explosive charge of the RPG but he was you know he was still in the fight to the very second he died. Yeah. Yeah, pretty powerful. It's a super powerful moment that puts terror standing up, I'm sure, on Chuck's head and myself, just to think about like that and that way to die. But if you're going to fucking die as a man, so can I just run into this?

So when people cry or get upset about a soldier's, death. I kind of get a little upset about that. Number one, if I ever got killed in battle and somebody fucking cried about my death, I would be so offended because you're taking away my sacrifice that I willingly put myself into to die for what I believed in. So when all of a sudden you fucking start crying and I'm dead that, that really that in my soul and my fiber

that makes me mad. Because I am dying for probably the guy to the right or the left of me. I'm not dying because I want to die but I'm there and I'm going to face whatever happens. And if a man dies in battle, his life should be celebrated

and you should be joyful for him to make that decision to do that for whatever he believed in at that time. So people get wound up in all this and they get worked up about the death of a soldier. The soldier's death should be celebrated and looked at as a positive, not a negative. And when people think about Vaughn's death, he'll never grow old. He'll never die alone in a hospital bed. His name's in the Peace Tower in Ottawa, and every year his name shows up, and he is recorded in history forever.

And he won't have cancer. He won't die in him. He died surrounded by buddies, and there's other guys that died at the same time. And he died proudly. And there's no better way to go. maybe a jealous husband but there's no better way to go not just getting anyways no that but the thing is like we should be proud of those advances and you were you were there to help his body be repatriated and brought out of the battlefield that's huge yeah we were we were fighting up to get

their first casualty but then they hit us with the RPGs and it wasn't a couple of RPGs they sent 50 or 60 of Mattis, like in five minutes. Just a swarm. Like it's brutal. And that's what, you know, we were getting pounded trying to cross.

So can we go into the real thing about that battle? It should never went down that way. No, it shouldn't have. Fucking NATO they changed the rules of engagements. Our officers didn't read the rules of engagement right. A guy on the battle

field called the school a school, which it was that was fortified by the enemy, but it should have been called a enemy position so they couldn't support it with supporting fire. Like all this political bullshit is the reason why four guys got killed that day and another 10 or 12 wounded. 16 wounded. Yeah. Like if you call a fucking school school, because it is a school and there's bad guys in it, you still blow up the fucking school because that's where the fucking bad guys are.

but our officers back in the talk they were like oh he called it a school we can't fucking blow it up it's because of that bullshit that we actually got people killed when that was a winnable fight with the proper supports that we usually have but they were they fucking handcuffed those guys

and we fought for half a day 60 of us against 400 of them you know with no support with nothing. But here's the thing though too though Chuck they weren't just them that was a tier one outfit. Like they were the best of their best and and that was a prepared position for you guys to walk into. Yeah. Well you could tell we could tell like it was when we relieved the guys at the school and all of our vehicles pushed back with you know the dead and wounded we got stranded there for 25 minutes trying to hold on and I've never I was in some greasy fights like some

greasy fights but that was they never stopped they just kept coming and you we were almost over to ammunition by the time we got the word to pull back it was uh and even then we had to pull back through 200 meters of open ground being chased the whole way like it was I've never the weight of them is what you know the talent they had the aggression they had the, you know, we counter-attack them at one point, like me, me, Ben, maybe Mike Gabry got into it to, a couple guys got up and pushed with me. You know, normally you'd put them off balance with a little push on them. Man, we walked into like 20 of them 15 feet away and we're like, you know, backpedaling, crawling

backwards because they were still coming. There was no stopping them. You know who you got to have here is a legendary dude Willie McDonald put up for the VC, twice, but because he's a Patricia, the royals and the Vanduze won't let him have it. Do you know what the Victoria Cross is? Victoria

Cross is the Commonwealth's most highly decorated thing you could ever achieve. Most people are dead to get the Victoria Cross. So Willie was put up for the Victoria Cross, but because the Vandis

don't have anybody to match them or need to do the RCR. they won't give it to Willie. And there's another, I think there's another Patricia that's up for it. There's a couple of Patricias, and there hasn't been one giving out since World War II. Yeah.

I don't even think they gave any out in Korea. No, I don't think they did. They might have. I don't think they did. Willie Mac should have one, though. Yeah. So you... I tell you what, isn't that a fitting way to leave the podcast?

Willie, if you're listening... I could tell them. I'm going to see him to the more. I know you are. I mean, you've had this chat. I guess we know who we should be sitting in. here next. Yeah.

Boys. Get this guy back here, too. This is, we're going on three hours of sitting here. And I haven't even had a piss yet. Yeah. It's funny, I sit here and I go, I had an idea. I don't know if it's worked out exactly. You know, you never know it.

You throw an idea out and you see what happens. I mean, freaking, he drives all the way, leaves an hour. James, he's, you know, he thinks, didn't remember the time change. Didn't remember the time change. Then shows up early, but doesn't show up until like 50 minutes after you because he's waiting for a case of beer. I know. And I'm like, this is the only thing that can happen. Yeah, two weeks get some fucking beer. That's the fuck sakes. Man, I appreciate this. I appreciate you guys coming in doing this. There's been a lot here. And I'm sure we'll sit and chat for some time more. But appreciate you guys coming to Lloyd. down and doing the first ever, I don't know, is it military roundtable?

I don't know what we're going to call this sucker, but regardless, it's sparked something, and I look forward to seeing where it goes to. I appreciate you having us here, Sean. There's not many venues or opportunities and you're a unique one in this world, that's for sure. Thank you. Yeah, Chuck said it all. Thank you very much, Sean. Hey, thanks for tuning in to G.

That's how it's going to go at the end of this thing, you know? Thanks. No mistakes at the end shot either, you know? We're just going to roll with it. I got told that the podcast stops abruptly and that it'd be nice if I went back to once upon a time I did this, you know? I used to pop on at the end and say a couple things. So here it goes. March 18th, if you skimmed through the beginning of the show and you weren't paying attention,

anything I said, which is totally cool if you did. March 18th in Eminton, Wayne Peters, Kid Carson, Byron Christopher, and Chris Sims, all going to be there at the next SMP Presents, Legacy Media. We're going to be talking about censorship, some of the bills coming down the pipe, what we can do about it, solutions for the future. It's going to be a fun, fun, interesting night. This will be the third installment of the SMP Presents Solutions for the Future. And they've been fantastic every time. So a new venue this time, Eminton. So looking forward to that. Also, people will be wondering how you go about supporting the podcast.

There's multiple ways, okay? So one is make sure to leave a review, like the podcast, give it a five-star or whatever star you want to give it. Share a ton. You know, I was saying to somebody the other day, I have spent like 150 bucks, I think, over the course of four years, advertising this sucker. So that means all you find people have grown it to what it is. And I appreciate that. And so if you want to support, that's an easy way. Cost you nothing.

Just share it with your friends, family, you know, your Twitter following, your Facebook, your Instagram, whatever it is. Appreciate all the help. And make sure you tag me in it. Because I always love seeing some of that stuff. And I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. So if you tag me, I'll do my best to kind of give you the tip of the cap, that type of thing. thing. The next thing is, is Vance Crowe's got me working on this fountain app. So I'm about to butcher this, but essentially, if you love the podcast, you can download the fountain app, then you can pull your podcast you listen to. So if you're listening to me, over to it. It does it all on Wi-Fi, so you don't have to worry about that. But as you listen to me to it, it earns me

Satoshes, which is like the smallest form of Bitcoin. And so it's a way where you listening to me actually earns me things. So if you're listening to me every single day anyways, instead of going on Spotify or Apple or whatever app you have, download Fountain. And essentially, if you start listening today, it just starts earning me like this incremental amount of Satoshes, which is a Bitcoin thing. And believe me, I'm probably butchering this right now. just started doing it myself. And so I'm staring at it right now. It seems like it's very straightforward,

even though I'm not 100% sure. We're going to grow on this. Me and Vance are already talking about doing a podcast on it because I've had different listeners reaching out, talking about value for value and different things like that. And so, yeah, there's that. And then finally, I do have a Patreon account. I talked about it last week,

and I just had a new Patreon. I apologize. I should have had it pulled up. A new Patreon supporter. And my biggest fear with it is, you know, as I continue to do what I'm doing, you know, Patreon's removed people. And I can't see down the road how if this continues to grow where I don't get to and where they just take you off there and you can't support that way.

So although it is still there, I don't talk about it a whole lot because, you know, it's kind of like, oh, eventually it just gets pulled and that's pain, you know? So I would say right now, if you're a business and you're looking to support, or you're an individual, maybe you're looking to support. We have some opportunities on the Tuesday mashup where we've been doing week by week. So that's been interesting. That's filling up real fast. And then, of course, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. And I don't know.

I've been releasing a ton of, like the start of this year, I did not plan on releasing five a week. But it's been every day. So who knows, maybe there'll be some advertising opportunities on Thursday as well. Either way, I'm just saying if you're a company and you're looking to support the podcast, you think, think there's maybe a relationship where we can grow together. In the show notes is my phone number. And also in the show notes, of course, is March 18th. S&P Presents Link.

Either way, here, that's what I'm doing. Happy Monday. Wherever you at, we'll catch up with you tomorrow. I mean, you know, Tuesday mashup right around the corner. I know everybody's favorite day of the week. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for supporting. Thanks for listening.

And if you're still listening at this point, we'll catch up to you tomorrow.