Shawn Ryan Show - #214 Jay Cal - SAS Operator Charged with Murder

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Jay Cal is a former British special forces operator who served in the elite 22 Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment following a distinguished career as a Royal Marine Commando. After passing the grueling SAS selection process—known for its 90% dropout rate—Jay went on to serve in high-stakes operations including counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, and covert reconnaissance. A seasoned operator, he embedded with Delta Force and later served as a trainer for Navy Special Warfare Development Group’s Green Team. Since retiring from the military, Jay has worked in private security and consulting, applying his deep expertise in tactical operations and risk management. He now brings that experience to his current role with GBRS Group. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://americanfinancing.net/srs NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://tryarmra.com/srs https://betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://shawnlikesgold.com https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://masachips.com/srs https://paladinpower.com/srs – USE CODE SRS https://patriotmobile.com/srs https://rocketmoney.com/srs https://ROKA.com – USE CODE SRS https://trueclassic.com/srs https://USCCA.com/srs https://blackbuffalo.com Jay Cal Links: IG - https://www.instagram.com/jay_cal87  Patreon - https://patreon.com/GBRSGroupEveryday Patriot - https://everydaypatriot.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

J. Cal, welcome to the show. Thank you, Sean. Absolute pleasure to be here, honestly. Before you say anything else, it's humbling, truly humbling. I know you don't leave the United States to do these kind of things, so the luxury to be here in your presence doing this sort of stuff is fucking, it's a big deal to me. And I'm super grateful for it, for all the guys, the team, your time. Yeah, it means a great deal to me. It's kind of surreal as well. Well, I only leave the country for stuff that I feel is extremely important. And so we got connected through my friend, our mutual friend, DJ Shipley, he's a good friend of mine.

And, uh, it was interesting. He called me right before a flight. Yeah. I was almost late to the flight cause I was talking to him about you. And he was telling me about the situation that you're going through in the UK and the investigation and how it is for lack of a better

term, ruining your life and your teammates' life and demoralizing current and future SAS operators. And you know, it was interesting. I talked to DJ, I probably talked to him for about 20 minutes about this. And I was very hesitant to do it. And then I get on the flight and I'm sitting next to... This is five minutes after my conversation with DJ. I get on the flight and I'm sitting next to another mutual

friend of ours, Christian Craighead, who DJ had told me he's really good friends with Christian. You know Christian, he's a good. So, I'm sitting next to him on the flight five minutes after I just had the conversation with DJ. So, I asked Christian, I said, hey, do you know this guy? And he said, oh man, he's a very good friend of mine and told me a little more, in a little more detail about what you were going through because we had two or three hours on the flight. I was going to Austin. And right before we took off, as I'm talking to Christian about you, my producer, Jeremy, texts me, sends me your Instagram profile, and he says, hey, I think we should look into this guy, looks really interesting.

And so it's three things, bam, bam, bam. And I'm big on signals from God. And to me, I was hesitant when I talked to DJ, Ben Christian was on the flight, then Jeremy texted me, this is all within 15 minutes, all about you. And so I texted Jeremy and I said, hey, I have to do it. I feel like this is something that is beyond me that I need to do. So it's an honor to be here. DJ had amazing things to say about you.

Christian had amazing things to say about you. And so it is, it's truly an honor to have you here. And I'm glad we could make this work. And we did this, we're doing this in Dubai because of what you're going through in the UK. I thought it would be better to do it outside of the UK. Here we are in Dubai, back in the Middle East. Back in the Middle East, yeah. I was quite, I was like, don't I want to go back to the Middle East so soon?

I was like, you know. Initially no, but then when this situation happened, it's like, I don't believe in coincidence like you. And I think, I don't like the word universe. I think it gets banded around quite often, but like, there are times in life when I look at things and I'm like, there's too many of these things to have lined up in certain timeframes or in certain situations for it to be, there has to be something involved in that. There has to be, because it doesn't go that way and then all of a sudden it goes completely

the opposite side. It's quite, like I said before, it's quite a surreal moment to be here sat with you because I've been watching you for years, even when I was still serving and a lot of deeply personal things that good friends of mine have come on the show and talked about. I've seen it from both sides. I've seen how they come across on this, but I've also seen it sat having a beer and had those conversations or on the range having those conversations. So for me to take my turn and to be sat here is really important to me And it's something that I don't take lightly, you know, this is a big big deal for me, you know, I've been quite nervous

I think Not because of what I'm gonna say but just because it's like I just want to do Do it right, you know, so Yeah, humbling Slightly nerve-racking but now I'm'm sat here it doesn't feel like that. Now it just feels like two team guys having a conversation, like you're just a dude from the squadron. So, you know, that's cool.

And you've made me feel nothing but welcome. And from the minute Jeremy reached out, I was like, yes, this is a good thing to do. I don't do podcasts. I've never done a podcast. It's the first time anyone's seen my face. And I'm completely comfortable with it because I trust you because I know that you're trying to do good things and the fact that you have travelled halfway across the world and taken the time to do this makes me feel that the

conversation and the topic that I'm going to have is worth having and it makes me feel that it's in safe hands and I've got complete trust with you. Again, I'll say it now and I'll say it again, I'm thankful and I'm grateful and I just want to make sure that we take this opportunity to voice some things because there's a lot of people out there that don't get that opportunity, they don't have a platform, they don't have the luxury of sitting in this position, in this chair. So what I say, I want to make sure I get it right. We try and change a couple of things because there's some stuff going on that I don't think's right. Well, that's what we do. And so in this interview, my goals are one, to tell your life story. Yes, sir. And on top of that, UK is going through a lot right now. We see it all over the

news. I have friends over there, our mutual friends have told me about what's going on, especially within the unit, the investigations that are going on. And so when we get through your life story, I want to expose as much as possible about what's happening over there, why it's happening, who's doing it, and all that stuff.

So sit back, relax. I get nervous for all of these things too. Yeah. And again, I think it's, I mean we talked about it before, but it's like, people are very quick to hold soldiers and operators to account when we get based on judgment this and judgment that or split second decisions. But we're always looked at in a negative light and nobody gets to hold other people account. Like the people that are making these choices and these decisions and pushing these things through

and causing the trauma and the pain to all of us as individuals and our families, nobody holds them to account. And that's not right. If they want transparency, let's have transparency. So I feel like this is a good thing to do. You're doing a good thing for yourself and for all of your comrades and everybody that's serving over in UK right now.

Just before the interview, I had mentioned the quote, you perfected the quote, but it's something goes something, evil will prevail when good men do nothing. Absolutely. And you're doing something. I'm trying, I'm trying. And that means something. So everybody starts off with an introduction. So here we go. J Cal, a decorated Royal Marine and Special Forces veteran with nearly

18 years of service, 11 combat deployments in the Queens accommodation for valuable service. Mastering roles is jump master, tandem master, and lead jumper with three operational jumps. Earned your place in SAS in 2012. You deployed to hotspots like Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa, where you participated in numerous major offensives and covert actions, including work alongside Delta Force.

You're also the only SAS operator to ever become a green team instructor over a dev group. Now you are the lead instructor for GBRS group to train the next generation of operators. And so before we get into your life story, if you could give me just a brief snapshot of what these investigations are about. 2022, my last operational deployment, we deployed on the ground. I was an assault team leader with my guys, a fire team essentially.

We've been targeting known jihadis that had been responsible for multiple assassinations. They were top of the partner forces list in terms of people that they wanted to detain. So we launched a detention operation on those. I was ordered to go and do that detention operation. We planned it meticulously. We executed it professionally and during that operation, once we got off the vehicles, we were engaged from multiple firing points in the middle of enemy territory. I was with my teammates. I made the decision to return fire to protect my life and the life of my teammates.

We were effective. We neutralized two enemy fighters and then subsequently after that, they launched an investigation accusing me of murder, which is a very damaging thing. Murder. Murder. Murder. It wasn't anything else, it was just straight up murder. You know, I've seen this before with the Eddie Gallagher case. Yeah. Yeah, I spoke to Eddie about this a lot. He's helped me a lot through this and you know, Eddie's a good dude and he's coached me a little bit in terms of, you know, it's

rough. It's rough. You feel betrayed. You feel let of, you know, it's rough. It's rough. You feel betrayed. You feel let down. You know, and I'll say it before I say it again, Sean. There isn't a thing that happened that night that I wouldn't do again. And I can look you in the eye and tell you that I didn't, I did what I was supposed to do that night in the most professional manner that I could, culminating in years of experience, years of judgment, multiple deployments.

I know what it's like to be in dangerous situations and that was a hyper dangerous situation and we dealt with it, my teammates dealt with it in the most effective professional manner. I was so proud of them, those young guys next to me. Some of them have never been in a gunfight before and they did what they had to do and they did it with exceptional professionalism and then to get back off the ground and be treated the way that we did is just heartbreaking. There's no other word to say, it's heartbreaking. Yeah, it's a difficult situation. And you got a write-up, a combination for that exact operation that was revoked.

Yeah, for that whole deployment. My Sark major and my troop Sark major told me that I'd been given a citation for it, never came. They pulled it for whatever reason. Maybe it's cause I left the army, maybe it's cause I had an Instagram account, who knows, but whatever it is, you know, that kind of hurt. I don't care about medals.

I don't even wear my medals. I don't even know where my medals are, Sean. I'll never put that belt and beret on until this has been effectively resolved. I'm still extremely proud of who I am and what I've done and I love my regiment to death. That's why I'm here because there's things that need to change. But on that night, I couldn't be prouder. I couldn't be prouder of the guys around me.

It was well within rules of engagement, well within what had to be done. And quite frankly, anyone that saw the drone footage and the 50 other people on the ground that all testified to say exactly what I saw and felt all feel the same way. You know, it's as black and white as it gets. Well, you should be proud. You should be proud of what you did and you should be proud of what you're doing right now, because I know this takes a lot of courage especially with everything that you're going through so But before we get into the life story everybody gets a gift. There we go

Thank you, Sean vigilance lead gummy bears. Yeah, man in the USA. Yeah States and they're legal in the UK. So Well, thank you. You're welcome. Awesome. I've got something for you as well. I mean, we can talk about it later, but it's a everyday Patriot hat because I believe you are a Patriot and I believe you stand for the same values that I do. Um, so a small token of my appreciation. Thank you. And these won't get put on the shelf. They will get enjoyed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Me and my daughter will get into these for sure.

Thank you, Sean. What does this mean? So it's everyday patriot. So I've had a bit of a hiatus in the last 18 months or since I've not been allowed to go to the United States. And in that time I've started a company. It's about patriotism. To me, patriotism is a super important subject,

something I feel very, very deeply about. And I think that the small things that we can do to represent who we are, the culture that we come from, our belief system, our values, I think needs to be done. I think there's too much, especially it feels like in the UK, but I've traveled all across to Scandinavia, to the United States. It feels like the word patriot has been kidnapped, held hostage by either the far right or the far left. Being a patriot is not about racism. It's not about nationalism or fascism or creating a common enemy.

Those are all the things that we fought against. I don't stand for any of that stuff. It's little things with patriotism. We're very good in the UK. If it's like a football tournament, the World Cup, European Championships, or something happens with the Royal Family, everyone puts a flag up and everyone's proud to be British. But then the minute that stops, it goes away and it all comes quiet and then all you can hear is the far right or the far left and all they want to do is make noise. They're not doing it. I'm not having it.

You don't have to be in the army for 20 years or an Olympic athlete to be a patriot. It's for the builders. It's for the people that work in coffee shops, the mothers, the children, the women, all of us. We're all patriots. If you love your country, you should never ever be scared to be proud of where you're from. And I don't care if you're from Afghanistan, Argentina, Iraq, Syria, if you love your country

and have good values, I'm all for it. This is not about creating division. This is not about segregation. It's about being proud of who you are, where you come from, what you stand for. And I think people are scared to do it. I think they're only scared because people keep telling them that every time they put a flag up or every time they are proud of where they come from, people want to jump on it and say it's this or that and they want to weaponise it and it's bullshit.

And I'm not fucking having it. I don't think it's right. I've served my country. I was willing to die for my country. I've got 14 poppies on one arm from one deployment, just one deployment. I know what it's like to pay the sacrifice. I've seen it. I've watched it. I've carried those cas what it's like to pay the sacrifice. I've seen it. I've watched it.

I've carried those caskets. I've carried those letters. I've seen it. And I'm very proud of my country. Very, very proud. And I'm not going to be told or made to feel ashamed by anybody that we don't come from a good place and try and do good things. Now that's not to say that our history is perfect.

No country's is. That's not to say that we don't make mistakes. We all make mistakes. We're not perfect, far from it. I acknowledge that. But it still resonates with me to be proud of my country. And I am deeply proud of it. So Everyday Patriot is kind of a nod to that. It's not merchandise. It's something that I stand by. It's not just a clothing brand. When it says everyday patriot, I mean it. And that everyday bit of it is, we like a grand gesture, a football tournament, a coronation, you know, whatever it might be.

But it's the everyday small things that we can all do wherever you're from that really make the difference. Because if we don't pay into that culture and we don't remember who we are, then it's not gonna be long, couple of generations, it's gone. Thousands of years of history and pride and sacrifice

and service and all the stuff that we've done as nations, regardless of what flag that is, it doesn't matter what color it is, but every country's got their history. And if we start to whitewash that history or change the narrative or make it more palatable for certain demographics, then all we do is we lose our identity. And the minute you lose your identity, you lose your purpose.

And before you know it, we're in a bad, bad spot. So in a nutshell, long story long, that's kind of what I believe about patriotism. So yeah, no, it's going well. And, you know, Sean, what do I know about making baseball caps and black t-shirts? Not a great deal, but it's been an adventure for me. I've enjoyed the process. I've got good people around me, a great team. Couldn't do it by myself.

I might have had the idea, but the execution is definitely a team effort. And it seems to land with people. Most people, when I explain it to people, they're like, yeah, I get that. Yeah, I like that. And it's all different demographics. Doesn't matter where you come from. I'm selling t-shirts to people all over the world. The United States, South Korea, all over Europe, Australia.

It resonates around the thing and I think it's a good thing. I think it's positive. I'm not money-oriented. I'm not money oriented. I'm not trying to make a million bucks out of selling baseball caps. I just want to put something out there that people can put on, throw it on. Be proud of. Be proud of it, you know. Good for you.

That's what I'm trying. I love that. You do? Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. It's a fun project, you know, it keeps me busy. How did you, how did you get connected with DJ? busy. How did you get connected with DJ?

So, around 2020, I was given, in my opinion, the best job in the British Army. I was given the job of being the lead instructor, chief instructor of the CQB cell. I'd never been an instructor before in that situation. I'd been a JTAC instructor before and I know how to teach and connect with people and I love that human connection. But when they offered me that, to me that's the pinnacle. Teaching regiment guys or helping regiment guys improve their shooting, making sure the doctrine of CQB is good, making sure that we're not drifting off course, making sure

that we're not adopting fads from YouTube and the internet and making sure that we're maintaining the standard that's been set by the guys that went from YouTube and the internet and making sure that we're maintaining the standard that's been set by the guys that went before us and the hard lessons learned through combat. I mean, we lost a lot of guys. That GWAT generation learned a lot of fucking hard lessons. And I think it's only right if you become an instructor in one of those roles that you're the custodian of that information.

So I took that job extremely seriously. But like I said before, I'd never been, you don't go to CQB instructor school. They just picked me out of the squadron because I, you know, fairly high standard, personal standard, and was apparently quite competent at it and could engage with people and had enough experience to be able to give that information to people. So I was kind of looking around on like, where else do you find information open source? So I was looking at YouTube. I was watching all kinds of stuff, trying to find drills, equipment, just

little, you know, then 1% that you can try and make incremental improvement. And I like kit, dude. I love my kit. It's to me, it's important. Like I judge a guy on how his kit is, you know? Um, so I'm trying all these different types of belts. I'm like buying this belt and that belt. And I tried all of them, you know, and some of them are good.

Some of that, and I stumbled across, um, GBRS it was actually DJ setting up a weapon and it was like, damn, that's how I set my weapon up and how he explained it, I was like, yep, that works. That's exactly how I would do that. So I became interested in them. Anyway, I ordered something and I messed up. I got the wrong size or whatever. And I sent an email back saying, is it possible before you ship it to the UK?

Can you just change the size or whatever? Cole ripped me back straight away within minutes. So we had a bit of correspondence there. And I just reached out to him and I said, listen, mate, like, it's so cool. And, you know, it gases me up to see guys from the squadron that have left the squadron, that are doing something different, that aren't just going to work in the Middle East

in security or this or that, or the usual part. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not trying to degrade that, but I didn't want to do that. To see other people out there doing something different, doing something unique. So I just hit him off and said, thank you. And I told him, I said, there's guys in our squadron that are running your equipment,

both domestically and overseas. And he's, you know, he's told me a bunch of times, but that's the why. That's why they do that. That's why we do what we do. Because we want to try and help guys that are still in the fight. We're not in the fight anymore. I'm not in the fight. I'll probably never be in a gunfight ever again in my life. But it doesn't mean I'm going to turn my back on it. I still want to try and help guys that still in the fight. We're not in the fight anymore. I'm not in the fight. Probably never been a gunfight ever again in my life, but it doesn't mean

I'm going to tell my back on it. I still want to give back. So that's kind of where they were at. And I just recognized it and I acknowledged it. I sent them a squadron plaque, but didn't put a name on it or anything. And we just carried on talking. Then I deployed body body bar a couple of years later. After my last deployment, I was kind of in this weird situation, weird headspace. I don't really know what I wanted to do. I don't really feel like I wanted to stay. I don't really know if I was going to leave. Like I don't have many transferable skills, Sean.

People talk about all this, you know, Oh yeah, it sets you up for this. And that is like, there's not many, there's not many jobs in civilian street that require a good breacher or a good lead jumper or somebody that can do a good build drill. Do you understand what I mean? Like. I know exactly what you mean. So I felt. Reinvent.

Reinvent the will, you know, but it was like, the only thing I've got is the shot on my back and the skill in my hands. That's all I've got. And that's all I've ever had, you know? I don't come from a, you know, I don't come from a lot and I've worked very hard to build my skill set and try and improve my own personal ability.

And it felt like a good idea or the only idea for want of a better word to try and use those skills in the civilian market or to try and train people basically. That's what I wanted to do, but I didn't really know how to go about it. It was a very confusing period for me. I was like, yeah, head was all over the place. And then through a mutual friend, Chris Craighead, the boys, DJ and Cole, were in Hereford visiting one of their distributors. And they'd already met a bunch of times anyway, so they were already familiar with each other. And at first I was like, I don't want to just go and meet these guys and Turn up like some sort of fanboy and be like hi. Thanks for the t-shirt

So I was like at first I said no and then he was like come on just come and meet them and I treat Them and that exactly I'm treating this just meeting two guys in the squadron and as soon as we sat down in Hereford went for a cheeseburger or whatever it was me Christian Craighead, DJ Cole and a guy called Baz, we sat down and straight away we connected. It was just like that. It was like we were already on that sort of, that wavelength so to speak. And me and DJ got into it about CQB, me and Cole were talking about this and we were talking about that and you know, it just felt good. We sort of wandered around the town for a bit, had a coffee. I think it was DJ actually

said to me, he's like, so what's your plans now? I was like, well, I'm at a bit of a crossroads. I've invested everything. This is all I've got. I don't have anything else. This is it. But I'm at a point now where I'm having to walk away from it or considering walking away from it. I was like, well, what are you going to do? And I was like, I don't know. I really don't know. I want to teach people.

I want to continue instruction. I want to continue passing on the knowledge, the hard thought lessons that I've had personally and watched other people do. So he was like, well, if you ever want to come over to Virginia Beach and hang out with us, then here's my number. Let's make it happen. And I kind of sat on it for a little while. I didn't have an Instagram account, I didn't have

a social presence, all that was a big no-no to me. So this is a massive departure from my normality. I've lived in Hereford for 12 years, same house, I don't know anything other than that, the squadron, the life. So to break from that needs to be something pretty solid. I've got courage and I like to think I'm pretty bold when it comes to making decisions, but this was a different ball game.

This was not like an operational thing. This wasn't like a tactical problem that needed to be solved. I don't know the solution for this. It's not like problem, solution. It's like, this is a departure from my normality. But I did feel a level of connection and trust straight away. So fast forward a few months, I hit him up. I was like, okay, DJ, I feel like coming over to Virginia Beach. Is that still cool? He's like, absolutely. He's like, whenever you

want, here's some dates. Come over. So I booked a plane ticket, booked a hotel, hired a car, turned up in Virginia Beach with some clothes and a set of ear defenders and a range belt basically. And got to the hotel late in the evening, messaged DJ, he was like, cool do you want to do fitness in the morning? I was like, yes sir. He goes, cool, I'm in from five, we'll train at seven. I was like, cool. Turned up at half five, pitch black, Virginia beach. You know, I'm a long way from home at this point. See DJ comes walking down the stairs, gives me a big hug. He's like, welcome to the building.

Show's been around. We sit upstairs. We have coffee. We go work out for a little bit. And yeah, they were like, let's go to the range. And I think like, as far as an interview goes, I think it was done at the seven meter point on a flat range. I think that was pretty much, you know, it's easy to talk the talk, but you need to be

able to walk the walk. And as soon as they could see that I could shoot to a fairly high A standard, they're like, yeah, this could be a thing for you. And they offered me, they offered me everything that I could ever ask for. Basically it was the perfect transition, you know, still shoot guns, still teach, still mess with parachuting, still be around team guys.

Like when I walk in that building, it feels no different, you know, from walking into the, the, the ready room. It's the same conversations, the same bullshit jokes, the same shit talking, the same feeling. Comradery. Comradery. That was my biggest fear when I left the military.

It's like when you leave the military, you don't just leave the job and the role, you leave your physical and emotional infrastructure. Physical infrastructure being like, you need a dentist appointment, you go and see the dentist. You need to go and see the doctor. You go to the doctor, the gym's over there. I need a dentist appointment, you go and see the dentist, you need to go and see the doctor, you go to the doctor, the gym's over there, I need a new jacket, stores is over there.

All that goes away when you leave the military. And all of a sudden you're like, fuck, like how do I get a fucking doctor's appointment? Like all like normal problems that normal people deal with, I've never had to do any of it. So I'm like, well, 35, 36 at the time. And I feel like a, I feel like a teenager again, trying to work out how to do basic stuff, you know.

So you- Let alone making a living. Let alone trying to, yeah, let alone make a living and, you know, provide a future for, you know, a young daughter. You know, I want to, you know, I want to give her more than I got, you know. So it's a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of stress. You lose the, when you walk out of that building, you don't just lose that job, you lose your emotional infrastructure. My teammates, like that train moves so fucking fast, dude, you know what it's like. Like you're out the WhatsApp group, you're out the, you know, this, there's no information

coming on, no one's telling me where I have to be or what I have to do or what's coming on next. I'm on my own now. And yeah, it's scary as fuck. It's the most scariest thing I've ever done. DJ said to me, he goes, transitioning out of the military is the hardest thing you'll ever do. And I was like, nah, it's all right.

I've dealt with way worse than that. Legit, like no shit, it's the hardest fucking thing I've ever done, like emotionally. So when they came along, it was kind of the perfect thing, right? It was like all of the stuff that I'd been worried about losing my purpose and my identity, which I think is the biggest problem for veterans, had gone away. It was all still there. It was just the perfect job. I felt like I was valued. I felt like I could give something back to our community.

I'm around equipment. I'm around guns, more guns than I've ever seen in my life. Better kit than I've ever seen in my life. I've got enough money to keep a roof over my head. I'm landed and I'm blessed. I felt so grateful and so blessed to be in that position. And people go, oh, you're lucky you got a job with GBRS. And I'll say yes and no. It offends me when people say you're lucky. It's not luck. It's the fucking years of hard work I put on a flat range or in the CQB house or whatever it might be

perfecting my craft. You can ask anybody about me. They might say a whole bunch of stuff, but one thing they won't say is that I didn't pay into the job. That skillset, those hard skills, were the most important thing in my life for the best part of a decade. And I worked fucking hard to get as good as I could, to have somebody recognize that and go yeah, that's not luck like and that's not to sound arrogant, but it's like You ask Christian we spent

days weeks months of our lives in the freezing cold rain Shitty ranges just banging away trying to get better at our job you know just perfecting the basics, the skills, the fundamental aspects of marksmanship. And then teaching each other, showing each other new tricks, or not tricks, but like, I've seen this, what do you think about that? Just cross-referencing information and just trying to improve ourselves. I wanted to be the best version, the best operator that I could be.

And I spent years trying to do that. And then somebody recognized it and was like, this is the spot for you. So I felt very, very blessed. But it's not luck, Sean, it does. It kind of winds me up when people are like, oh yeah, it's all right for you, you got a job with GBRS.

It's like, I fucking earned that job. You understand? Well, I know DJ very well and he is only interested in working with the best, the best in the world. And I'm very similar. I have no respect for anybody that's not trying to be the best, the absolute best at what they do. And so, they saw something in you and you've surrounded yourself with some great people. So... I really have. And I'd like to just take this opportunity now to just to say a thank you to the call

and to DJ for that black trust. After that first couple of days, we went and had breakfast just before I flew out and they said, listen, we'd like, we think you're the guy and this is what we're going to do. We're going to pay for your legal fees. We're going to provide you with a home. We're going to give you a job. We're going to give you a 401k or whatever it's called, a pension system, dental, like the whole thing, like the full package, you can't, like the gold standard as I'd like to say.

And we trust you and we believe in you and to have that changed my life. It changed my life and without that, and I've said this before and I deeply mean it, if it wasn't for those guys there there I'd either wouldn't be here or I'd be in a ditch in the Ukraine somewhere. That's where I'd be because I didn't know anything else. I didn't have any other options. They gave me a lifeline and I'll never ever forget that as long as I live and I'm deeply deeply grateful not only to them individually but the whole GBRS family and how they've treated me, everyone. There's too many to name, but all of them, Davis, Manny, Jared,

they've given me so much. Patsy, they welcome me into their home. Can you imagine how that feels? Patsy's a rock star, man. She's one of the most incredible, strong women, woman I've ever met in my life. She's a fucking idol to me. She's a superstar in my eyes. To be welcomed into their home and sleep in his bedroom, spare bedroom, eat dinner with their children, same with Renee and Cole, they did exactly the same thing. The last few times I've been over to the States, I've been living with them. They welcomed me into their home. I'll never forget that. They've shown me more love and more hospitality than people I've been in gunfights with and known for 10, 15 years. Let that sink in. Great people. Good people. Good fucking people, man. And I'm deeply, deeply grateful for them.

And you know, when I put this shirt on, it means the world to me. That's my uniform. I don't have a cool sign patch anymore. I don't, I gave that up, but I didn't give up being me. So when I do that, I represent it with pride, you know, and when I deliver training or whatever it might be, I do it with a full heart and knowing that I'm trying to represent something good. And that means a lot to me, and I'll die on that hill because it's important to me. So yeah, and I digress slightly, but I just want to get that out there and say a massive

thank you. And if they watch this and see it, then they know it already. But I want everyone else to know that. Thank you. Whether you're juggling tasks or trying to stay clear headed throughout the day, Ketone IQ delivers clean brain fuel that can help you think sharper, longer and smoother. No caffeine, no crash, no overstimulation. Thanks to the folks at HVMN for sending me their Ketone IQ product to try.

I really like taking Ketone IQ before I work out. It's not an energy drink, but it gives me a ton of energy. I wish I had this when I was on active duty. When I take it, I have more endurance, but without the crash. Ketone IQ uses Ketone Dial for a fast-acting, natural, slow-release effect with no artificial sweeteners or fillers. It helps support high-focus tasks by directly powering neurons and stabilizing cognitive output and it's military tested. Originally developed to support elite cognitive performance in the field. HVMN has an amazing offer just for my listeners. Visit ketone.com slash SRS

for 30% off your subscription order. Plus receive a free gift with your second shipment. Fun surprises like a free six pack, ketone IQ merch and more. These statements and products have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. Let's move into your life story.

Yeah, here we go. Ready? Yes, sir. Where'd you grow up? So, I was born in Oxford. My mom was quite young when I was born. So, my mom and dad met, my dad, uh, just over 16, 16 and nine months. 16 years.

Yeah. 16 and nine months when I was born. So she was a, she was a child herself and that's not without its, um, difficulties. My mom's a rockstar dude. Like she didn't have, she come from a, she had five sisters. There wasn't really a strong sort of father role model in that situation.

So they grew up, it was hard for those girls. They didn't have much, they had nothing. They didn't have much, they had nothing. And she was super young, super young when I was born. They met, it was actually quite a nice story. My dad and that side of my family, they were publicans, so they owned pubs and restaurants and all that type of stuff in my hometown. She just asked for a job one day in the kitchen, washing up dishes and that sort of thing.

They kind of met and one thing led to another and I was born. They weren't together, so I've never, I don't come from a typical or what we call normal family background. My dad and my mom were never a thing, so I don't know what that looks like. But yeah, she is an incredible, incredible woman, super young. They were never together. They were never in a sort of- Relationship.

In a structured relationship. I mean, they were in a relationship, but by the time I was born, they'd kind of drifted away and all the rest of it. But, you know, yeah. So I don't know what, you know, I didn't grow up in a situation where it was like, mom, dad, dog, all that type of stuff. That's not me, dude. I didn't come from that.

My mom brought me up. She raised me. I remember very early on she wanted to become a carpenter of all things. So she did. She went and got her degree. Obviously she missed out on all the school and education because she was being a mom. But then she started to do like part-time bits and pieces and she started to learn her trade.

She's an incredible carpenter. Then she started building boats. My mum's a bit of a hippie, bit of a free spirit. My early childhood up in Oxford was up until about four, five, six, was fairly regular. I wouldn't say it was traditional or conventional, but it was stable, it was safe. I had good people around me for the most part. And yeah, it was a nice place to grow up for the most part. How was your relationship with your father?

My relationship with my father is probably one of the most important things in my life to date. I would not be here if it wasn't for him. I lost him. He died. Yeah. He had a difficult relationship with alcohol and ultimately that kind of killed him.

That's what it did. It killed him. It's hard to hear that. No, me too, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. I's hard to hear that. No, me too, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. I kind of get my head around it. 20 years later, kind of.

25 years later. But he was a kind man. He was a nice man. He wasn't a bad drunk. He just had a fucking, he had an illness, man. He just fucking couldn't fight it. We were close. We fought.

I grew up a little bit older. The last time I ever saw my dad or the last conversation that we ever had was actually in Spain. What do you mean you fought? We fought, um, physically on a couple of occasions. Physically. Yeah. And that was down to me. You know, I'm a young guy full of ego and testosterone, wanting a bit more,

you know, all that type of stuff. Just normal, regular father-son stuff. But it did get out of hand a couple of times and it's probably my fault. He never hit me or anything. It was more just bullshit. But the last time I saw my father was actually on a beach in Spain. And I'd started to look at being a Royal Marine. That was where it started to come. I was around 15 or 16 at this time. My grandfather was a Royal Marine commando

in the Second World War all the way up through Sicily and Italy. It was always something that was in my mind. I'd always loved guns. I'd always loved the military. It had always been very close to my heart. I'd always wanted to do that. And my dad used to work for a company called Brown and Root, which then later turned into Kellogg's Brown and Root, I believe, KBR. So anyone that's ever fucking deployed anywhere on the planet knows what KBR facilities is, all the dining facilities and all the logistical stuff. So he did that. He was actually involved in Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

So he worked for the US government as a, as a foreign contractor, essentially setting up the, the chow halls and the logistics and all that, that was coming from a catering background, it was, that was what he did. I remember very early on watching my dad come back from Bries Norton during the first Gulf War and in my mind, as a young child, I thought he was a soldier. It made no difference to me that, you know, I didn't understand what was going on. He gave me this cool, like, like desert DPM hat. Said Sergeant Jamie on it and I've still got it.

And it says desert storm mission accomplished and all this sort of stuff. And I used to wear it and it's cool. Like a boonie hat type thing, you know? Um, so in my mind, my dad was a soldier. He wasn't, he was just in and around it. He went on to do, um, K four and I four, which is Kosovo. Did some stuff down there, implementation force, Kosovo force, all that sort of stuff. And then later on, he started to work

for civilian companies, ExxonMobil, oil companies and onshore rigs basically. But he's been all over the place like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, all of these places, mines, oil, all that type of stuff. So I'd grown up with him thinking he was that kind of guy. So when I decided that I wanted to join the military, he said to me, I'll never forget it and it's the best thing that he's ever given me. And I look back on it now with nothing but love. And I don't want to get too sentimental about it, but I choose, I choose to believe that he said what he said to me that day because he knew what he would do.

And he said to me, he goes, I was getting bitten by mosquitoes. I'm one of those dudes that just fucking no matter where he gone, I'm the one that gets bitten. Everyone else in the room doesn't get bitten. I get bitten over. I was complaining. I was like, I keep getting bitten by mosquitoes. He's like, you want to be a Royal Marine Commando?

You'll never make it as a Royal Marine Commando if you can't take being bitten by mosquitoes. He goes, you haven't got it in you? That's what causes big argument on the beach. So yeah, probably the most powerful sentence anyone's ever told me. That drove you. Fuck yeah it did. Fuck yeah it did. Let's backtrack a little bit. Yes sir. What were you into as a kid?

Guns. Guns. Guns. In the UK? Yeah. How'd you get into guns? I don't really know where it come from, you'd have to ask my mom, I remember. Real guns or toy guns? Toy guns. Toy guns. Never shot a real gun until I joined the military, but I was obsessed with it, you know. Just plastic guns, water pistols, just guns. I was always playing with guns. I remember I went to Disneyland once and I bought this like metal, I think, Walthord PBK it was. Metal, like James Bond, right?

You know, the old school one. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I put it in my like, in my bag basically. My dad was like, don't take that to the airport. I went with my grandma, I was like, do not take that to the airport. I was like, ah, okay. I did take it to the airport, put it in the thing.

We're going through the scanner, the alarms are going off, everyone's going there. It was like, yeah, the whole, the whole thing. But I used to, you know, it'd be cool if my mom would back this up, but I used to come home from school and she was a carpenter, right? So I used to draw out these guns on wood, on bits of plywood, and I'd draw them out like to the minutest detail, like, you know, front sights, magazine wells, stocks, trigger guards, the whole thing. I'd get a picture from somewhere and I'd draw these guns out with a pen and

she'd cut it out with a jigsaw. I'd go out and I'd take these guns and all my mates would have been running around in the woods playing with these things. I was obsessed with guns for the most part of my childhood. And then kind of football came in. I started playing football a bit more and I sort of got a bit older. But football and guns was all I ever really wanted to do. Which is ironic when you look at where I ended up. There's a few things that you can look back on and be like, nah, you could kind of see that coming.

And my obsession and love and passion of firearms and weapons manipulation is still there. I was doing it. I was practising high-readies when I was six. I was doing it. I was practicing high readies when I was six. I'm not joking, I'm not high readies, but I was running around with guns from a very, very early age and they've always felt natural to me. It wasn't I wanted to kill people, it was just like, I just liked it. I just wanted to play with it. Maybe it was a sort of something to do with my old man and him being in that career and you know going out to these places like it was always something that I knew I wanted

to do. I always wanted to be in the military, I always wanted to be a soldier. That's all I ever wanted since I was an early age and I kind of got distracted for a few years and life happened and all the rest of it. Then when I lost my dad it was like right boom now's the fucking time you know let's let's let's double down on this but going back to that conversation you know I when I lost my dad it fucking broke my heart it fucking broke me mate it did and it's it still does now you know more to the fact that I just wish that he could have sinned

what I did you know I mean he would have been the proudest person on the planet to see me get a green beret, to get into the regiment. More importantly than all of that bullshit, he never got to sort of my daughter play football, not once. Never got to see it. She put on an England shirt last year. She represented a country. Wow. Three lines on her chest. How old is she? 15. 15 years old.

Yeah. She's 15. She's a fucking rock star, dude. She's going to be a professional footballer, 100%. I've never been more confident or more sure on anything than she will be a professional footballer and she will represent her country. She'll be a lioness one day. She's phenomenal. You're proud, Dad. I could, yeah. Take everything I've ever done in my career in military and swap it for that. If I could watch him watch her for five minutes, I'd swap it all. If your dad was here today.

Here. Here, alive. Yeah. If you could say anything to him, and you had 30 seconds, what would you say to him? You were wrong. Look at your granddaughter. Look at her. I tell her I love him. I miss him. And I hope he'd be proud. I think he is. I know he would be. But like, yeah.

Sounds like you were a bit of a hellion as a kid. A bit of a? A hellion. Hellion? Got into some trouble. Yeah. Oh yeah. When did that start? So I moved around a whole bunch. So in order to answer that question, you have to kind of go back to the beginning.

You lived in India for six months. Yeah, we traveled around India. So my mom's, she's the bravest woman I've ever met. And yeah, about 1994, 1995 woman I've ever met. About 1994, 1995, I was about six. She must have been, well, early 20s. Took me out of school for six months. Like, right, we're going to India.

Cool. So, six months, we traveled around India. But you have to bear in mind she just picked up and left. Done. Why India? She just wanted to go traveling. Free spirit, right? She's hippie.

Um, which is ironic because I'm not, but, yeah. Mate, she flew out to India. No iPhone, no internet, no nothing. A lonely planet guide, two backpacks. I had one, she had one, and we just went traveling around India. And I'll never forget that experience. The first, first couple of days we got there, there's speaking before us, there's a place in Delhi, I think it's called the Red Fork and it's

this big picture. I've never, ever had an experience of extreme poverty and desperation as I've seen there. And she took me out of a fairly regular, comfortable city in the UK and parachuted me, not parachute, you know what I mean, into that situation. She did that for a fucking reason. She wanted me to see what it was like, what the world is like outside of our bubble, which was the best thing she could have done.

And she hit me hard with it straight away. She was like, it will never get work. We had a lovely time in India. We saw all kinds of beautiful things and all kinds of incredible experiences. But straight off the bat, she was like, this is what it's like. And I'll always love her for that because that was an eye-opener. Imagine being a six-year-old child walking around seeing children with no arms, children with no legs, poor people that are begging for their lives.

Like literally, you're watching people sit on the side of the road, like, circling the drain, hungry as fuck, you know, like, that was like, oh, okay, cool. The world isn't a nice place. The world isn't all fucking, you know, roses. And that was good because she did it straight off the bat. So everything that I saw after that was easy, you know, but we traveled around the whole place. We spent, you know, most of it in, went up to the Himalayas. We went out to Taj Mahal. We

spent Christmas in Goa. I was playing with GI Joe figures. That's what I got for Christmas. Little GI Joe figures, you know, GI Joe. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like building little sand forts and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. So that was cool. So it's still, the obsession was still there. And in terms of education, I wrote a diary every single day. I still got them. Maybe it was a paragraph, maybe it was a bit more, maybe put a picture in there.

My reading age went through the roof. I was reading Michael Quickdon books, so Jurassic Park, Sphere, what else was there? All those types of books from a very, very early age. So when I got back to the UK and went to school again, my reading age was like 14 year old at the age of six. I was always a reader. And I could write, you know, I was writing my diary every single day. So I didn't come back academically in any worse place than any of the kids of my age. When did you start your diary? Every day when I was in India.

And it's six years old. Six years old, yeah. And you still have that. Yeah, we still got them. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, they're cool. I mean, like some of it's illegible, some of it's complete bullshit, but it's like all pictures and it's like we stick something in or, you know,

when you open up the book, you can smell it. You can smell it, you know, it's cool. You know, like incense sticks and all sorts of, all sorts of, and that's crazy. I look, I've not seen them for a few years. I spoke to my mum before I came in, I was like, have you still got them diaries? She's like, we don't have a lot,

I don't have a lot of stuff from my childhood. We moved around a lot and a lot of it get lost in the fire so to speak, but we still got them. They're still out there and hopefully I'll show them to my daughter one day. But it was a life-changing experience. It really was. And I think it set me up for my future career. I think it set me up as a person. I think it gave me a broader, more wider perspective on life to see that at such an early age. It was a lot of difficult things. The first time I ever was in proximity to somebody that got killed. I remember that happening pretty vividly. We were getting off a train and transiting to another train, but there were no bridges.

Where is this? In India. In India? Yeah. We had to cross the platform, platform to platform. And they just used to go, the trains were there and they just literally just walk across the platform when it wasn't a train and cross that to the, to the next one.

And she lifted me up. She jumped up and about two people behind us crossing the, the, the train track, the train that we were crossing shunted like that and dragged the woman underneath it and killed her out. I remember sitting there thinking fucking hell. That's quite a surreal moment as a six, seven year old, six year old kid at this time. My mom was great, she just took me away and was like, it's hard lessons, it's like life

lessons, it's like life's short and never ever take for granted what you've got. Even when I'm in the UK and it feels like I've got no money or this or that or whatever, it's a lot better than being outside that fucking fort with no arms. You get me. So that kind of give me a good education. And I would love to do the same thing with my kids or with my daughter. At some point, if I have children in the future, damn straight, we're taking them traveling. I want them to go and see the world, see what it is. Not to say that if you don't do that, you become insulated, but I think it just gives you a broader perspective on the world and how it is, the reality of it.

But yeah, it was a crazy experience. Fucking really cool. I was speaking to her last night about it. I think, again, there's a lot of what happened on that sort of, it's almost like a deployment. It's almost like a six month deployment. It's like my first deployment, you know. That's kind of how I feel about it now.

But I had my own rucksack. Nobody carried my kit. My mom would carry my kit. I had a sleeping bag in there, all my books, everything was in there. That was it. And I carried it. And we used to trek around the Himalayas, like in Thailand trekking with elephants and all kinds of mad shit. And I was like, I carried

my own fucking pack from the age of six years old and no one fucking helped me. And my mom gave that to me. And that's something I've carried on. Like I can do that. I know what it's like when your back hurts, when your feet hurt, when you're cold, hungry, tired, hot. I was experiencing that from a very young age. And as I look forward into my life, you know, I think it gave me a strength. It gave me a strength that allowed me to have a certain level of self-confidence that I could do that type of stuff, if that makes sense. So yeah, super grateful for that experience when we kind of got back from India. That's a sleeping bag.

Yeah. So are you guys sleeping out in the bush for six months? No, we were staying in hostels or hotels or beach huts or whatever, but we brought my own sleeping bag, my own mosquito net, all that stuff. We were self-sufficient. It was a snug pack, a little purple snug pack, like a Softie Seven or whatever it was, a super lightweight one. I remember she lost her mind once. I can't remember why, but we got out on a bus and the sleeping bag, I don't want to tell you this, but it just comes to my mind. The sleeping bag comes in like a little compression sack, right?

And for some reason we'd taken the sleeping bag out of the compression sack and it had fallen on the floor. And when we got off the bus, she was like, where's the sack? It had been stolen. That's what happened. Somebody had just found it because it was foreign and new. So they took it and she was so upset because it was like, we've had that sleeping bag sack for years, you know,

well not years, but months at this point. It's been every part of our journey and now it's gone. And I remember she was like, kit and equipment, kit awareness. I was like, yeah. So I, you know. Are you serious? Yeah, I'm not joking, mate.

Yeah, yeah. Sean, if you ever meet my mom, and I hope you do one day, like she'll, she'll, she'll tell you all about this. And she, she knows more detail than I do. Cause I'm, I'm not joking mate. Yeah, yeah. Sure. And if you ever meet my mum, and I hope you do one day, she'll tell you all about this. And she knows more detail than I do because I was a child. So she's got like an incredible level of insight into the whole thing. But that whole experience was great for me. It was such a cool thing to do. We came back from India and then she moved to Wales. We were sort of in the middle of mid Wales, so roughly a little town called Ryder, which is near Bilth Wales, which is in between sort of the Brecon Beacons and the Elan Valley. Now the Elan Valley is particularly disgusting place,

which I'd find out on selection a few years later, but I remember clearly all the trucks coming in and out, the four tonneurs, we call them four tonneurs, but you know, like the troop vehicles, there's a lot of military presence around there. It was in the woods and you know, from about six to about nine, ten years old, it was all guns and football, guns and football, guns and football, guns and football. But that period there was probably the most stable, happiest part of my childhood for sure. And I look back on it with nothing but fond memories. I love Wales, it's very dear to my heart. We, at some point during that period, my mother decided that she wanted to go back and get education because she didn't get the chance when she was a child, a young woman, because

she was being a mum. So she went back to her hometown Oxford and did further education. So she got, she ended up getting a first degree in international development and politics in third world countries. So basically she went on to work for Oxfam and Save the Children and other kinds of charities. Like her passport had more stamps of dodgy places in the mind than at one point she's like, you know, she's all over the place. She's a cool woman.

But this is where I sort of started to rebel a little bit because Sean, you have to, you have to, you have to realize from my perspective that I never really had a consistency and I don't blame her for this because that was just a situation, but I never had consistency. I didn't have a mom and dad at home. I never really stayed in the same place for

more than a few years. I was constantly making new friends, constantly putting down roots, constantly having to rip them up and build again. And it got to about 10 years old, we moved back to Oxford. I was like, okay, cool. We've had this whole experience in Wales, we've been traveling, we're back to my hometown. I don't know anyone.

This is my hometown, but I'm going to a new school. I've got a couple of people that I used to know when I was four or whatever, but I don't have any friends there. So I built a new network of friends and I'm there, I'm happy. I was like, football was my thing now, football, football, football, football. And then she's like, right, we're going to move. We're going to move again. We're going to go down to the South Coast because that's where the university that she was studying offered the course or the next phase of her course. And I was like, fuck dude, I don't want to fucking move again, you know?

So we did this whole thing back and forth. I stayed with my dad for a little bit while she went down there. He was in the pub, he was working in the pub. People that drink a lot of alcohol and working in pubs is not a good combination. It wasn't really the right environment for a small child to be in.

I was kind of not fending for myself because that's not fair and that's not true. But I was at a lot of time where I was just like my dad was busy and I was doing my own thing. So eventually she was like, no, you're coming. So I was like, what, 12, 13 maybe at this point. And I did not want to move again. And that's when I started to really rebel a little bit. You know, I stopped going to school, started, I still play football but not as much as I should and hanging around with the wrong people. Girls became a thing. It was like sitting in the park drinking cider was more appealing than going and playing football

because I didn't have, I didn't really have anyone to tell me no, which was my biggest problem. I didn't really have a dad to be able to be like, I didn't have a dad, that sounds terrible. But he didn't grit me for it. He wasn't around much. He wasn't around much and he was doing his own thing. He was abroad working or he was doing this or whatever. And my mom was consumed in a pursuit of her degree. She's like me, she gets upset and sends my daughter. They're exactly the same.

One thing that our bloodline has is the ability to become obsessed. When we become obsessed on something, unlocking on something, there's nothing on the planet that will stop them. So she was doing that. She's still young at this point. So I kind of didn't go off the rails completely, but I was definitely drifting. I was definitely drifting and I was definitely not going to join the military. It wasn't something I was thinking about.

I was too busy trying to be cool. I was too busy trying to be that guy, if that makes sense. It was never me. I was hanging around with kids that were from rougher states. We were going out and it was a bit fighting here and there and all that sort of stuff but I was never that kid, I thought I was but like I was a little bit, I'm not a tough guy, fucking I'm like some of these kids come from fucking nothing and they were you know violent backgrounds, violent places and you know there was a lot of violence around especially in that time in my life

and I kind of thought it was for me, but it wasn't. And it wasn't until I got to about 15 years old where I was offered a job. Again, talk about pivotal moments, things that changed the trajectory of your life. Uh, a friend of my mom was a tree surgeon. Would you have a different, it's like an arboreal. Arborist. Arborist. There you go.

But you know what I mean? He gave me 10 pounds. He came, I was, you know, he goes, I'm going to give you 10 quid and that's for a train ticket tomorrow, you're going to turn up here and I'm going to give you a job. So I left school at 15. You should leave at 16, but I left at 15.

I didn't turn up. You dropped out of school at 15 years. Yeah. 15. I didn't get a qualification, not even a school at 15 years old. Yeah, 15. I didn't get a qualification, not even a basic qualification until I was like mid-30s and the army was like, you're a sergeant now, you gotta fucking do the thing.

And I was like, fuck. I can't, you know, like I write a bit now, you know, sometimes I write a little bit and people are, you're good at writing. I'm like, fuck knows where that came from. Cause it didn't come from school. Like I'm not educated. I'm not stupid and I'm not unintelligent, but I'm not educated Hey seems to do alright so far, but yeah

He offered me that money to go and do that job I didn't spend it on whatever cigarettes probably and they fucking turned up the next day. It was a hey You 10 quid yesterday, come and work. You're not gonna go to school, you need to get out of there and work. And I was like, okay. And I'm grateful for this guy for doing that

because he could have just been like, you know, give up. Yeah, just fired me or give up on me, but he didn't. He goes, I'm gonna give you another 10 pound and you're gonna be there tomorrow. And I did. I got up and went on, got on the train, traveled to wherever the place I needed to be was, got off the train, walked to this thing.

From that moment on, I've always earned my own money. I've always provided a roof over my own head. It was hard work, man. Those are hard lessons though. I was dragging. So when they cut the branches down, I wasn't able to climb with a chainsaw. I didn't even use a chainsaw for the first few months. It was just literally just dragging, putting it in the wood chipper, splitting logs, putting

the logs on the truck, just hard graft, just manual labor from a very early age. I did that for a few months with him and then somebody else took me on and was like, I'm going to give you a full-time apprenticeship basically. So by the time I was 16, I was a fully qualified tree surgeon, MPTC, which is all the qualifications that you need. So I had medium felling, large felling, small felling, aerial rescue, use of chainsaw from rope and harness, all that bullshit, maintenance of a chainsaw. I'd learned it all.

I got all the qualifications, paid for them all myself. Had all my own equipment. I owned two chainsaws, rope, harness, silky saw, secateurs, the full thing. I was a pretty much self-employed tree surgeon at the age of 16. I did my qualifications on my 16th birthday which by, unless that's the earliest you can do it, so at one point I was probably, unless somebody done it a few minutes before me, it's probably the youngest qualified tree surgeon in the country and that was good. Dude, I was happy. I was living in a caravan on my mate's drive where I moved out home. I was living

closer to work so I had to get the train and all that other bullshit I just explained. So I bought a caravan for like 500 pounds. Tiny, you know a caravan, yeah? Like a... Like an RV? Like an RV, yeah, yeah. You see in the movie Snatch? Yes.

Yeah, like that, one of the caravan with no wheels. Okay. I only had wheels, you know what I'm talking about? So I bought this tiny little caravan, put it on my mate's driveway, and I was living in there. I was working every single day, getting up, going out, hard days, coming back. I look at it now, it's like fucking I was surviving on like noodles and chicken nuggets. Like, you know what I mean? But it was cold, it was

wet, my boss would pick me up every morning and it didn't matter what and I learned a valuable lesson there. It was like two things. Number one, you don't go to work, you don't get paid. You don't get paid, you don't eat. I was like, cool, I can live with that. The second one was the ability to crack on in terms of, it did not matter to this guy that I was, he was one of three brothers. Their dad had been in the forest for their entire lives. His hands were like shovels. He was a tree surgeon in and out. That's all he'd ever known.

Three boys, they're all tree surgeons now. He was like, he was top tier at that, but he was a hard fucking man, but a lovely man. And he took me under his wing because I guess he kind of knew that I needed it, but it didn't matter if it was snowing, didn't matter if it was raining. Like we're talking about getting picked up in the five o'clock, six o'clock in the morning, sideways rain, dark. I'm coming out of my caravan, vans there in the caravan, sorry, into the truck, drive, tree surgery work all day, come back five, six o'clock, go back, eat, sleep, repeat.

Did that for a couple of years. In my free time, probably spending it doing, you know, chasing girls and drinking beer. Like what the fuck else am I supposed to be doing? I'm 17, 18 year old. I'm just happy that I'm earning money. I'm earning 50 pounds a day, which doesn't sound a lot now, but back then that was a fucking, you know, 250 pounds a week. Dude, I'm only paying like 25 quid for rent on this caravan.

Like the rest of it's mine, all my own equipment's mine. So like I'm living the dream to a point, but it was almost like, I don't know if I want to do this forever, but right now it's good. I was seeing my dad fairly infrequently, sometimes more than others, but one thing that me and my dad always hadn't always, always, always shared and the one thing that for the most part he always showed up for was taking me to see football. We'd always go, I'm a West Ham supporter, he's a West Ham supporter, so we'd always go for football, you know. But as I started to get older, my tolerance of bullshit or what I would consider,

when you're a five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 year old kid, going to watch a football match and spending half the day in the pub is not a problem. But when you're 15, 16, 17 and you kind of need a little bit more, you start to understand these things, you start to recognise it a little bit and be like, you know, fucking hell, give me some more. I need more attention, I need more, you know? And that's kind of where that friction started that I was talking about before. So yeah. So did your mom move when you left at 15?

Did your mom continue your school? So she stayed in, she stayed where she was working and doing her degree. It's probably about half an hour away, so not far, but yeah, she stayed there doing her thing. She knows me. She was like, I can't control this, not control it, but she is a free spirit. She raised me from 16 years old. So when I'm rebelling at that age, there or thereabouts,

she's like, okay, as long as you're safe, you're working, you're providing for yourself, I'm here if you need me, go and do your thing, go and get it out of your system. And to be honest, if she hadn't have done that, it wouldn't have worked because you ain't controlling me. Do you understand what, you know, when I met John, do you understand what I mean by that? Like I was away for it, you know. But yeah, yeah, then, then the whole thing with my dad happened and yeah, that kind of changed my life. That was, that was the point where I was like, I ain't cutting trees no more.

So your dad passed before you joined the military? Yep. Yep. About a year before. What was it that triggered you to join? That. His passing? Yep. That conversation that we had on that beach when he told me that I couldn't was like, I didn't do it to prove him wrong, I did it to prove him right, if that makes sense. That sounded a bit of a contradiction, but I just wanted to show him I loved my dad. I fucking adored him. I worshiped him.

He's a fucking superhero to me, you know? So I just wanted to give him something, you know? There you go. The proudest moment of my life, mate, was when I got my green beret. Fuck the regiment. Fuck all that stuff. Not fuck them, but you know, that green beret, when I earned that from becoming a civilian, after all the shit that I've been through in my childhood, not shit, but all the stuff that I'd been through, to get to

that point, just to get to the start point in Royal Marine training, let alone finish the commando course and get that Green Beret on my head for the first time was... yeah. I gave that Green Beret to my grandma. She's still got it. Well, she's passed away now, but that Green Beret is there. And same as my regimental beret, the same one. They're both side-by-side And I remember next to my dad's ashes There was my green beret and my sandy beret and they were both there and I remember thinking yeah job fucking done, you know

But um, that was the truth. That's why I did it. I joined the Marines for my dad. I joined a regiment for my daughter Wow, but yeah, that's kind of where it all started. And how old were you when you joined? 19, I think. Yeah, 19. 19 years old. Yeah. And that was, again, I talk a lot about setbacks.

That interim period of losing my dad and joining the Marines, that was like a year or so gap. And I inherited a very small amount of money. It wasn't an inheritance. It was actually an insurance payout. My dad died in Africa in Chad from a heart attack. And yeah, you can talk about that if you want, but like, yeah, a few thousand pounds. I spent that all on football, clothes, beer and whatever the fuck

I wanted. I didn't do anything useful with it at all. But I really went into football at that point. I was going every single game home away, religiously. Because maybe on some level it made me feel closer to him a little bit. I think that was the one thing that we always had You know It's a fucking funny coincidence if we believe in coincidence, I know we don't but My football team is awful Sean. We never win fuck all we never win fuck all but that year 2006 We reached the cup final. We're never gonna win the league. It's never gonna happen But we might win the cup. It was one thing we might win.

And it was, yeah, it was that year. We fucking got there that year. No kidding. 2006, went to Cardiff, watched us play Liverpool. We lost the game, but it was like... That was the one thing that we always wanted to do together, if that made sense. It does.

And I got it. I got to see it. And, you know, I don't know why or how or where, but it felt like, yeah, do you know what I mean? It felt like he was there and he saw it. But yeah, all we ever wanted to do was go to the cup final, dude. I got there. We got there. So yeah, I'll never forget that.

Well, Jay, let's take a quick break. Yep. When we come back, we'll get into your military career. Yes, sir. Perfect. Work boots that are as comfy as sneakers, I didn't think it was possible either until I found Brunt work boots.

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ExpressVPN.com slash srs. All right, Jay, we're back from the break. You're getting ready to join the Royal Marines. But one thing we didn't cover is you had a setback. You had an arrest. Yeah. So I was that so I was a football match in Norwich of all places. Now Norwich, you've probably never heard of Norwich,

have you Sean? I haven't. For good reason, not a lot happens there. But yeah, it wasn't anything crazy. There was no, you know, it was just a little bit of, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Eventually the police were like, yep, you're drunk. You're being obnoxious, whatever.

Just football stuff. I was a kid, man. I just lost my dad. I'm not making excuses for it. It wasn't the best behavior, but it wasn't serious. It wasn't, you know, I wasn't doing anything that bad, but they did arrest me and they released me very shortly afterwards for like breach of the peace or something. You know, I can't remember what the challenges and bullshit like that. Just football stuff, basically.

What was it, a fight? There was a bit of a fight before and then we'd gone to another pub and they were like, yeah, those guys. And I was one of the ones that didn't manage to get away basically. It was, you know, handbags. We call it handbags in the UK. It was nothing serious, but. You hadn't perfected your A&E strategy yet, huh?

No, I had not. No, no, no, I definitely not. So lessons identified, but the consequence for that was that you have to run out a year, basically it has to be, it was a conditional discharge. There was no charges brought other than the fact that it had happened, but no further charges, so to speak. So it was like, cool, happened on this date. One year later, it's all gone off your record completely.

It was a minor thing, trivial minor stuff. So my dad's died. I've gone back out to Spain because my dad was living in Spain with my grandma and I didn't want my grandma going back out to Spain on her own. So I went out there and I started to think about the Marines. That kind of was a thing. I was training quite a lot. I was starting to run, starting to get on the pull-up bar,

starting to lift a few weights, just gradually doing it, still trying to process the loss of my dad. It rocked my world, I'll be honest with you. And then I came back to the UK and then the worst thing that possible could have happened is I got a little bit of money and was like, okay, I'm back to being distracted again with football and all the rest of it. So that kind of ran. And then it wasn't until basically the money ran out and the season finished at the end

of that cup final that I told you about. When the cup final finished, I was like, okay, cool. You've had a good run now. You've had like six, seven months of getting out of your system. What's next? Do I want to go back to trees? Not really. Now it's time to join the Marines.

So I went back to Spain and started training for the Marines. Training hard, started to really focus in on it. My mom was completely supportive of it. I'm her only child. I don't know how many brothers or sisters. So for her, and this was like, I think what's important to know is that when I joined the Marines, Sean, I joined the Marines to go to Afghanistan. I wasn't looking for a career.

I wanted to go to war. What year was this? 2006. 2006. Marines, Sean. I joined the Marines to go to Afghanistan. I wasn't looking for a career. I wanted to go to war. What year was this? 2006. 2006. Yeah, 2006. So the war was happening. The war was busy. I remember watching pictures of like,

there's a parachute regiment. They were in Sangin, a place where I'd go. And you could see them. They were all like, I thought it was the coolest fucking shit ever. They were all in their body armor, no T-shirts, all skinny because all they're doing is scrapping every day, eating rations. And I was like, yeah, that's where I want to be. I want to be that guy.

So I go to Korea's office, everything's good, go through the first phases. A guy called Corporal Darling was his name, I'll never forget, it's a nice name. He came up to me and he was like, have you got a criminal record? I was like, no. He's like, what have you got? And I was like, I've got a conditional discharge. And he's like, when from? And I gave him the dates. He's like, dude, you're gonna have to wait six months before you can come back.

So that was the first setback really, in terms of I was locked in. Remember I told you about that obsession thing that I've got this weird thing where if I'm obsessed on something, I'll achieve it. And I was obsessed and I'm proud of myself and I am. I don't give myself enough credit for this. I don't sound like a prick, but I am proud of myself

for this Sean, because I stuck to my guns and I was ending up picking up random jobs. I was working in this little tiny place selling ice creams to people and making coffee. Anything just to afford a gym membership and stay on track. And I did, and I stayed on track. And then I finally got the opportunity to turn up at Limston. The Commando Training Center at Limston is a hell of a place.

It's a hell of a facility. And I remember turning up on the train in a suit. I'd worn that suit three times. I'd worn it to my dad's funeral. I'd worn it to a court appearance and now I was turning up to the Royal Marines in it. So it felt connected to me, you know, the whole thing. And I remember turning up with my iron in board, shaved head, and I was ready to go. I was a true believer. You know, when you talk about there were kids, probably 60 or 70 of us joined that intake. And you can

tell the ones that aren't going to last a week. You can tell the ones that are on the fence, off the fence. I'd been fairly independent from a very early age. I'm used to hard work. I know what it's like to be cold. I know what it's like to be wet. I know what it's like to have a pack on. I've travelled. So I think all of those things put me in good position, in good stead.

And I was doing it because I wanted to do it for my dad. That was my superpower. When discipline goes, when motivation goes, when you're cold, wet, tired, hungry, those things are real. But obsession, obsession never left me and it was that obsession to do that, to get that green beret that drove me. And I never once ever felt like this is not for me or I'm going to quit. I got another setback during training, probably mid to halfway through. It's a 32 week course, I think about 17 or 18 weeks in.

I jumped off a wall on the assault course, the O course, and I basically broke my foot. Well, not basically, I broke my foot. Um, carried on for another week or so. I went on an exercise and basically broke one and fractured the other one. So that's what you get back troop then essentially. So you don't stay with that intake. They don't kick you out, but they just put you

in a holding place, rehabilitate you and then you have to go again. That was fucking hard, dude. Started all over? No. Or start where you left off? No, start where you left off. Yeah, start where you left off. But that was hard because it was like, that was my dream gone. I wanted to be an original. It doesn't mean anything,

but to me it meant I wanted to pass 32 weeks in one go. And then I'm in this indefinite period of rehabilitation. Until you're better, you can't go back in. So I remember watching my troop go. They were like six, seven weeks ahead of me, they passed out, you know, all those guys. And I remember I broke down in front of my troop sergeant, a guy called Baz Weston, he was killed in Afghanistan a few years later. But he was like a superhero to me, he was everything that you'd imagine. A Royal Marine sergeant should be, short guy from Redin, he liked football too, he was a Chelsea fan. Had a big scar on his face, he was a Mortiman, but he was hard on us. We got wet every single time we were in the field, we got smashed to bits.

Everyone on that camp knew that our troop 939 was, he was making monsters. He was turning us into commandos, fucking in quick order. And I look back on it, at the, I was like, this dude is just fucking smashing us for no reason. But when I look back on it, I respect him and love him so much for what he did. Because he fucking knew full well, like you take ownership of training people. These are kids off the street from all different backgrounds. And he knew full well, we were going to Afghanistan.

Had he been there before? Yep. He'd done his tours. Yeah. He'd done a bunch of tours. He was a senior guy and he knew he was, he's not creating camp commandos. These guys are going to go to war. And he knew that a lot of us would see it and some of us weren't coming back.

And we knew that. We got that feeling from the very fucking minute we stepped into that building that this is no joke. Like, when you leave this facility, you are going to go to war. So we were like, cool. Unfortunately he did get killed in Afghanistan, which was a massive shame and it hit us all really hard. But he provided what he did was produce good commandos, good war fighting commandos, young men that were ready to go out there and fight and do the business. And I look at some of the guys

that I passed out training through and they're fucking phenomenal. Like, you know, so much respect for the Royal Marines. What was his name? Baz Weston was his name. Sergeant Baz Weston. He got hit by an ID. Directional one. It's like a stand a chance. I remember actually going to digress slightly, but where they used to fly the bodies in, back from Afghanistan, they used to land in a place called Price Norton, which is about 10 minutes from where I lived.

And they used to take the bodies straight to Oxford, up the hill, to the John Radcliffe Hospital. And that's where they used to do the examinations of the bodies and do all the necessary medical stuff before they released them to the families. So for years, I remember every time somebody got killed, I would go and stand on that hill because everyone would come out and they'd watch the coffins come up and I'd watch that. I remember on R&R watching that and I remember the mother of my child watching that. I remember my mum watching that and we lost 450 odd people during that conflict,

which doesn't sound a lot if you talk about other conflicts, but every single one of those people had a family. Every single one of those matters. It just felt like we couldn't escape it for a long time. It was everywhere. It was consumed, everything that we did as a group and as a family. It was such an intense period of my life. It was mental. But Baz was a good guy. Baz gave skills to us that no doubt saved my life for sure and made us combat effective, combat ready Marines that went out and did the business. And people talk about this generation's doubt, that generation.

I'll always put it like this and my old sergeant major said it in the squadron. He was like, experience is a luxury. It's not a necessity. I think people are like, oh, these guys have got no experience. They haven't done this. They haven't done the GWAP. So what? Nobody had any experience when we went to Afghanistan.

Nobody had any experience when we went to the Falklands or wherever we've been like, it's okay. The training works, believe in the process, trust the system. And if you've got good instructors, and this is again, what I'm trying to carry forward, if you've got good instructors that have been there that have got the right reasons about them, they will give you the information that you need to survive. You might get unlucky, but you know, if you stick to the process, you don't have to have done 20 tours or, you know or that mission or this hostage rescue or whatever it is to be a good soldier or a good operator or a good anything.

Trust the process, trust the training. It annoys me slightly when people look down at this next generation of guys and go, oh yeah, they've got no experience. So what? Instead of saying that to them, why don't we gas them up? Because I'll tell you what's going to happen in a few years' time when we're old men sat on our sofas and couches at homes with our families, these young men that we're quick to criticize and go, oh, they're not as tough as we are, they're going to be the

ones out there losing their lives. They're going to be ones out there sacrificing. So the next generation is super important to me, but he was the one, the first one that really sort of made me think about that. I got back into training. So I finally got back into my troop and I passed out. It was the fucking proudest moment of my life. It really was. I remember the last test you do is a 30-mile across Dartmoor.

And it's like the culmination of 32 weeks. You do the commando test and the last thing is you stop and then you go over this bridge. And when you go over this bridge, you get given your green beret and it's the first time you can put it on your head and it's the whole thing. This isn't just 32 weeks or 40 weeks of training for me. This is 19 years. This has gone back. Playing with guns when I was a kid, everything I ever did for my dad, it was all in this

one moment. And there was a lad in my troop, in my section called Luke, and he'd lost his brother. And we stopped and I saw him and he had a tear coming down his face. I said, what's wrong? And he goes, oh, I wish my brother was here to see this. And I said, dude, I wish my fucking dad was here to see this. And I remember that, I'll never, ever forget it. And we sorted ourselves out, wiped our faces down, fucking tucked our pouches in, let's go, cross the bridge.

And again, I was quite emotional at this point. There's a corporal called Luke Carey, he was a particularly professional, diligent corporal, but he was hard as fucking nails, hard as woodpecker's lips. And he's like, why are you crying? I said, I'm just proud. He goes, boot necks don't cry. And he was like that. And he gave me a wink and that was it.

You know what I mean? I was like, there you go. So that was a really, really big moment for me. It was something I'll always look back on as probably one of the proudest, bothered birth of my daughter. Probably the best moment of my life. By none. So there I was.

Queen Beret, training's done and there's no pomp or ceremony about it when they tell you where you're going. There's a bunch of different commando units, okay, so there's four or five commando, 40 commando and four or two commando. Those were the fighting commando units at the time. Four or two and four or five were deploying shortly afterwards. Real quick, what did your mom think? Afterwards. Real quick, what did your mom think? She knew exactly what it meant to me and she was fully supportive of it. She knew that I was chasing a dream.

That's all I ever wanted to be. Since I was a small kid, I always wanted to be a soldier and now I was. She was proud of it. She's done 11 deployments. My She's done 11 deployments. My daughter's done 10 deployments. I count my deployments as their deployment. They've done the same thing. They've been through every single piece of that.

Never once has my mom ever done anything other than support me and back me and gas me up and have me, have my back. Never did she say, don't do it. Never did she say don't do it, never did she say you sure. She always, always, always supported it because she knew deep down that's what I wanted to do. That's love, unconditional love and support and that's what she gave me. Again, she's such an incredible woman. I was like, if you're telling me I can do it, I can do it. My dad's not going to tell me to do it.

In fact, he told me I couldn't do it. She went the other way. So it must be hard for her. It must have been, especially in that sort of timeframe between 2008 to 2012. It was like every week we were losing people. Every week. And they were coming right up the house, right up the road, right up the street. Like my hometown was where they took the bodies. And I remember like it was on my, we'll get into the second deployment,

because that's the most important one for me. But the second deployment, I remember coming back on R&R. I had a 10 day period in the UK and for five of those days, I would go and stand on that hill and watch people come up. Man. With a brand new baby in mind, you know. She was two weeks old when I deployed. in the UK and for five of those days, I would go and stand on that hill and watch people come up. With a brand new baby in my hand.

You know, she was two weeks old when I deployed. So like. She was two weeks old. Yeah. On the second deployment. Yeah. But we can, you know, I've got to cover some stuff on the first one before I get to the second one, but the second one I really do want to get into because I think that's, to me, that was the most life changing deployment I've done and nothing I've ever done in Special Forces comes anything

close to the carnage and the war that that 2010 Sangen deployment had because that was fucking total war. That was real, that was raw and it was every fucking day and we lost a lot of people. My company suffered a one in three casualty rate. One in three, imagine that. That's dead or very seriously injured, like limbs, eyes, testicles, fucking you name it. We lost a lot in that deployment and nothing I've ever done comes anywhere near that.

But that first deployment was, it was different. It was a slightly slower tempo because it was a winter deployment. Where was, it was different. It was a slightly slower tempo because it was a winter deployment. Where was it? Sangin. So I went to Sangin in Helmand province and we got called onto the landing before we just finished training.

Everyone's gasped, you know, where are we going? Where are we going? Who's going to four, five? Who's going to four, two? And it's just like, said my name. It was like, yeah, four or five commando. And I was like, yes, fucking yes, we're going finally, you know, I'm not here to be a camp commander, I want to go to war.

And they told me, so I go up to four or five commando, which is a variety of the top of Scotland in the middle of nowhere, solid unit. It's like, it's a war fighting unit. Great pedigree, loads of stuff from the four clones and you name it, four or five commandos been there and it's got a reputation for being a hard unit, a war fighting unit. So I was gassed, I was so excited to go there and we did the whole pre-deployment training and it was, we're in that kind of crossover now, Sean, and you'll understand this, where it went from like early sort of Afghan days, sort of 2005, 2006 up. It was a lot of firefights and gunfights and then it pivoted to IEDs and it went real quick.

Not to say that the gunfights weren't still happening, but the IEDs went through the roof. So we were very aware that that was what was coming, that was what was waiting for us. My company got split up. Some guys went down to Fobb Gibraltar down in Helmand province and we went to Sangin district. Now Sangin for those you're probably aware of it, Sangin was the epicentre of the Helmand conflict. We lost more troops in Sangin than anywhere else by a fucking disproportionate amount. It was urban, it was rural, it was everything in between, and it was dangerous.

A really, really dangerous place to be, especially during that time frame. But for young Marines, it was like, yes, that's where I want to go, you know? Because I was naive and I was stupid and I'd never felt the blast of an ID. I'd never seen someone get shot or bled out. I'd never seen it. I didn't know, but I wanted it, you know? That naivety was a superpower, but it was also foolish. But you grow and you learn.

But yeah, that was where I really cut my teeth. The soldering was hard there, Sean. We lived in a patrol base, mate. There was no electric for six months. People talk about, you know, there's no electric in there. There was no shower in there. The toilets was a metal, you know, oil can with a seat over it. That's what we had.

We lived on rations for six months, like legit. When it rained, the compound that we had occupied, because we'd fortified the roof so much with sandbags and guns and all kinds of other shit, would start to collapse. Like we walked around, we did Sanger patrols. So like, you know, there's four or five static positions for security. So if you weren't manning those for 24 hours, you were on patrol for 24 hours for six months. So you would do four and a half hours of stagging on sentry and then you would have three hours rest, you'd do that for 24 hours and then you would go on patrol.

And we've got multiples of 12 guys maybe. And the amount of kit that we had to carry, electric, you know, countermeasures, like the ECMs, they're fucking heavy, the batteries, the link, I was a mini-me gunner, the metal detectors, spare metal detectors, spare batteries, back breaking pain, mate. There's like hard, hard soldiering. And then you come back and live in a mud hut essentially. That's what it was for six months. All the while you're working in a minefield. Every single time you step out of that gate you're effectively in a minefield and the

enemy was never anywhere to be seen. But they'd smash you from anywhere and then we'd smash them back and then we'd go back and that was what it was. It was just that for six months. It was the first time I ever engaged anybody was on that deployment. It was the first time I got blown up by a suicide bomb was on that deployment, dealt with casualties on that deployment. It all happened, but it was quite steady tempo if that makes sense.

Unlike the next deployment where it was just straight off the bat, fucking full send, but I did learn a lot. What was your first engagement? Um, it's actually quite a funny story. I shouldn't say it, but it was quite fun. So we were given a warning basically that there was a suicide bomber, um, on a motorbike dressed in black, shaved head, and there was two

of them and we were told to stop anyone that looked or fitted that description. Now you've been to Afghanistan. That's not uncommon. The shaved head's a little bit rare, but apart from that, you see that description. Now you've been to Afghanistan. That's not uncommon. The shaved head's a little bit rare, but apart from that, you see that shit all the time, so it's very difficult. But I remember I was on a sentry position overlooking this big dust bowl. It was probably about six, 700 meters open area. And we had a patrol, a satellite patrol that had gone off. And this motorbike blew through an Afghan checkpoint

across this open ground and someone fired a pen flare, you know, the little pen flares. That was the escalator. We had an escalation process. So it was like pen flare, warning shot, lethal force, et cetera. So the guy on the bottom sanger had done that whole thing. He fired the pen flare, fired a warning shot and this dude was driving across. And it was the right people.

So I'm up there with a mini me. So it's like a saw, right? So I'm like, fuck it. Like a belt fed machine. It was a fucking belt fed machine gun. Yeah. And I was good with it. That was my weapon system.

Like I'm pretty good at dishing out the shit with a belt fed weapon system and that was my gun and I knew what to do with it. So I'm out, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I see it's like something out of a film. Like you just see the rounds coming up, all this dust, dust bowl coming up, all this dust was going and the bike would keep going. I'm like, fuck dude, I'm not even hitting this dude. I'm like, so I unloaded the belt.

It was a 50 round belt. And you can just see it was like something out of a cartoon. It was like every time the rounds would hit the ground and the dust would come up, the bike would come out of the end of it. And I'm like, I'm there. So I'm like leading it. I'm trying, I can't be missing.

There's no chance I'm not hit this. And it drives off, goes through the thing. And I'm like, I can't be missing. There's no chance I'm not hit this. And it drives off, goes through the thing and I'm like, fuck. This is my moment. I've been waiting for this. Not waiting for it, but this is what I've been preparing for. I'm training for this. And I fucking missed the dudes. I didn't fucking get them.

So I'm like, I'm fucking embarrassed. My patrol or the other half of the patrol comes in and they're all laughing. They're like, fucking hell, what the fuck were you doing on that Sanger with that machine gun? And I'm like, fucking hell, dude, I'm trying to hit, this is about 400 meters of moving target. It's not an easy shot, but I have got a belt fed weapon that I do not have to use.

And I'm like, fuck dude, I don't know. I was trying, like, I was leading it. I had it on my sight. It was on iron sights, but I was like, I had it. I just can't believe that. I'm sorry. He goes, no, we did see some blood when they came through this little gate, this little entrance where the bike went.

He's like, yeah, there's blood there. You might have got something. It wasn't until that night we went out and did a patrol, Overwatch patrol for these convoys that used to come in. And we just have to basically picket the line. It was a pain in the ass, but we had to go and do it. Six hours just sat on a roof sometime. And the ANA commander came up and he was like, yeah, you killed two Taliban commanders.

What do you mean? He was like, yeah, they turned up at the local mosque and they'd been fucking riddled all up the side and on the legs. Fair play to the dude on the bike, he kept going. But like, yeah, we got them, I got them. And it felt like a bit of a weird one for me because I was like, you expect to see the results of that? Does that make sense?

Do you know what I mean by that? I know exactly what you mean. It's a weird one, huh? What caliber was it? I'm just curious. Five, five, six. See, that's something we learned in, I think it was 2006, is we would be hitting guys and we wouldn't realize that we were hitting them because the velocity and the green tip rounds,

arm repersing rounds, would just fly right through. And then you would see them and they had the little, little bitty pinholes. Yep. It's not what you think. You know, and then, and then we, we started stacking our magazines and doing two green tip, one 77 grain, two green tip, one 77 grain. And once we switched to 77 grain, a whole nother ball game. Yeah. And once we switched to 77 grain, a whole other ball game. But it's interesting that it took so long for those lessons

learned to kind of percolate throughout all of the military. I had no idea. All of it. And it's like nobody was communicating that. No. We shouldn't have been using green tip. No. We weren't fighting guys with body armor.

No. And so, actually I think we were doing two 77s and one green tip. That way we could punch through a car easier. Yeah. But, so how long was it until you found out that you had killed him? That night. It was that night, yeah, yeah. Which, for me, it was more a sense of relief.

I'll be honest, I don't attach much, certainly no empathy for them. But it was kind of a bit of, it was anti-climatic in a weird way. But it was more relief that the guys in the rest of my platoon didn't think I was no good with that machine gun. It was like, I fucking told you. I knew I did. And they're like, yeah, no, good effort. But yeah, it was a bit of a surreal moment.

They're like, yeah, they went to the mosque and they bled out. And I was like, okay, cool. I'll take it. But it didn't feel real because I didn't, later on in my career. You didn't see it. Didn't career. You didn't see it. Didn't see it. Didn't feel it. Now I've been as close as you and me are, multiple times with live engagements.

That's a different fucking feeling. You can fucking see the rounds rip through a human being that way. But like in this case, it was distance. I don't know if you've ever read that book, On Killing. If you've ever read it, it's about proximity. A lot of it isn't in the different natures and types. It's like artillery guys and mortar guys don't bat an eyelid. But if you're this close, it's slightly different. That came later.

There was a couple of other engagements I had on that deployment. I dropped a couple of people that were engaging us or manoeuvring around us. But again, the rules of engagement were very strict and professional. It was like we had an escalation process. Now, I don't want to talk about this too much, but what I will say is that coin theory shit about winning the population to win the war and courageous restraint, it cost people's lives because it was not understood and it was not employed and you're fighting an enemy that does not give a fuck. So whoever came up with that, well done.

Because I think they've got blood on their hands in my opinion, because what you did was you restricted a bunch of young Marines, paratroopers, infantrymen from all over the coalition and you put their stuff in their head, which caused them to have doubt, which then caused them to lose their lives. And I'll stand by that. It slows the decision-making process. It slows the decision-making process. And we'll talk about this later on, but you

cannot put doubt in people's minds. You've got to trust people to make the right decision, like the Commando Training Center is exemplary as a center of excellence for producing professional soldiers. Do not, do not start to limit them or put their hands behind their backs and send them into these situations with that doubt in the back of their head that if they do something wrong they're going to go to prison.

This is some real stuff and we'll talk about it later, but this is some real bullshit that needs to be addressed because it costs people's lives. It was a hard tour. It was a hard tour. Um, it was a long tour. It was the first time I got blown up with a suicide bomber on that one. It was right towards the end of it. We were coming down.

I don't, do you ever go to fob Jackson in San Diego, did you ever make it up there? No. So there's this bridge basically, I won't bore you with the details, but we were on a long patrol, we were coming back and it was towards the end. Usually we're very good at keeping distances between people, but this kid walked out, he must have been 13, 14.

I walked past him, I walked right past him and he looked like he was some sort of disability. He didn't look full ticket, if you know what I mean. I kind of watched him walk past and I remember it going bang behind me. I'm going to be honest with you, the first thing I thought was fucking hell, I'm glad that whatever it is, I'm glad it bang behind me. And I'm going to be honest with you, the first thing I thought was fucking hell, I'm glad that whatever it is, I'm glad it wasn't me. That's my first thought and I don't care what anyone says and I've suffered with this for a long time. Like I've been in a bunch of IED blasts now.

I've been blown up with suicide bombers on three occasions, four or five IED blasts in close proximity. And it took me a long time to get over the fact that the first thing I ever thought was fucking hell, I'm glad it's not me. And I hate that. I hate that about me. I hate that I felt like that.

You know what I'm like. But it was. I'll be honest, it's what I felt. Luckily we were all right. The suicide vest was of shit quality. It was, it did more damage to him than it did to anyone else. But we took some fragmentation and some injuries but nothing catastrophic. Everyone walking wounded for the most part.

Well I mean a lot of times they would use people with disabilities for that. Oh yeah. But the three times I've been blown up with suicide bombers I think they're all under the age of 15. Yeah, I remember in 2005 they would line bicycle tires with explosives and have a kid ride up and try to blow it. When you're dealing with an enemy that's got that mentality, it's so, so difficult. Especially when your hands are tied. Especially when your hands are tied, you know?

Like, as my career progressed, the proximity between me and enemy forces is a fucking hard line for me. Like you'll get a warning if there's time and it's appropriate. But if you come within proximity of me in those situations, then you can stand by because I know what's coming. Like I don't need to be blown up again to learn those lessons. And that's what I'm talking about. You have to transfer experience, hard earned experience into learning.

Sometimes that takes a little bit of adjustment in the mindset and the mentality that you had or have. But yeah, I certainly learned a lot. That was a good deployment for me, a good deployment in terms of learning my trade, cutting my teeth so to speak. And I got back from that and I just wanted more. I wanted more. I wanted more of it.

I loved it. I was like that's exactly where I'm supposed to be. Right at the end of the deployment, a guy called Steph Moran, who was our SART major at the time, put out a thing for recce troop. Recce troop in the Marines, especially four or five recce, is considered to be like the top level of Marines. There was a course, normally you have to go and do some horrific two week like pre-course to get on it, but because we were deployed he was like, do you want to go to recce troop? And I was like, yes sir. And he was like, okay cool. He goes, I'm going

to put your name forward. I'd had a good deployment, I recce treatment? I was like, yes, sir. He was like, okay, cool. He goes, I'm going to put your name forward. I'd had a good deployment. I'd worked hard. I was a good Marine, all the rest of it. So I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to just put you on the course. So I came home from that deployment. I had about six weeks off leave, post-operational tour leave, and I spent all of that training.

I did not, I didn't go to Thailand. I didn't do any of the other stuff that everyone else was doing. I just trained and trained and trained because I wanted to be a recce operator. I just ran and I ran and I lifted and I ran and I lifted and I just kept doing that until it got to the point where I was ready to go on the recce course. It was probably about midway through. I came back one weekend, I disappeared. I came back and stayed with my mum at the time and she's like, have you spoken to my girlfriend at the time?

I was like, no, I've not spoken to her. She goes, you need to speak to her. I said, why? She's not pregnant is she? She just looked at me and she went, speak to her. And I was like, so I speak to her and she's like, I'm pregnant. So I was like, well that fucking changes things a little bit, you know? But it didn't. And again, I regret this about myself because I just absorbed it and dealt with it. If I was as good a father as I was a Marine, I'd be perfect. But I wasn't. I was a better Marine than I was a father. And quite frankly, it came as a fucking shock. We did the whole thing, we were like, okay cool, let's make this work, let's build a

family, all the rest of it. My whole time I'm like, I need to get to Wreck-It-Troop, I need to deploy, I need to deploy. The war's still going, the bodies are still coming up the hill, I need to be back out there. And then right towards the end of the course they were like, right, we need volunteers. And you know what it's like, Sean, nobody volunteers for anything in the military, nothing good happens for it. But what's it for?

Who wants to go to 40 Commando and deploy? Boom. I do. Cool. There you go. 40 Commando, you're going to go and deploy. Let's backtrack for a minute. What's the recce platoon?

So the recce platoon, yes, go and deploy. Let's backtrack for a minute. What's the recce platoon? So the recce platoon, yes and no. It's not primarily snipers, it's, well not exclusively snipers, it's half snipers, half recce operators. So the recce operator course covers all kinds of things from OP, so observation posts, subsurface, not so much technical stuff as it is probably these days. It was very rural, digging in, like green green army field soldiering, high levels of physical fitness, small team tactics operating in front of the main commando units to set up lines of departure. We did a lot of work with ropes and aerial access to, you know, cliff faces, etc. Commando stuff

basically like they are the epitome of and that's all run by Royal Marine Mountain Leaders. I don't know if you've ever come across Royal Marine Mountain Leaders, but it's a nine-month course and I would argue that it's probably the fucking hardest course in the British military, even more so than selection. It's ridiculously hard. They spend months in Norway, they spend months climbing, they go to Scotland, they do mountain training. The Bergens are OP Bergens, so they're heavy.

But unlike selection, so on my selection of course, 220 people started and we've roughly finished with 20. 15 people might start that ML's course and probably 13 people will pass because it's a course. They want you to pass, if that makes sense. Whereas selection, they don't give a shit if you pass or not until the end. So although it's harder and longer in aspects, it's easier to pass because they want you to be there, if that makes sense.

Does that kind of- Forgiving. Yeah, it's more forgiving. It is more forgiving. Yeah. Whereas selection isn't, it's very cut and dry. But you're talking about the best field green army soldiers that I've ever seen or worked with from any country, bar none.

These guys are impressive. So they're like the corporals and the sergeants. Then underneath that you've got all the sniper guys and then you've got the recce operators. So recce operators natural progression is to be a mountain leader. So that was my next step. But I never went that way. I went on the selection route itself. So it's a small platoon, maybe 30 guys there or thereabouts, but they are the top 1% in that unit. They're the fittest, they've got the best skill set. We'd spend a lot of time doing map reading, navigation, military knowledge, you name it,

we were all over it. But these are your true believers, if you will. Everybody in that platoon or that troop really wants to be there and have had to have gone through some selection courses inside of the Marines to get there. So for me, I thought I was like, I thought I was like SEAL Team Six, you know what I mean? It's like we're recce operators, slightly different kit. Whenever we walked around campus, I was like, are they the recce guys?

Like, it felt good, you know, it felt like we were in a good spot. And what was good about that troop is that every single individual there was all pulling in the same direction. Like, you know what it's like in a company, you might be in a company with a hundred people, like some people it's like a nine to five for them. For these guys, every single guy in that troop was, you know, dialed in. So when we were about to receive orders for the second deployment, it was like, we're going to be doing some cool shit. We're a recce troop, right? We must be

doing like driving around in the desert and advanced to ambushes and all this cool stuff. Negative. They were like, you're going back to Sangen, you're going back to a patrol base, and it's just regular stuff. So I was like, dude, why the fuck have I just put myself through all this bullshit to get here, to do a different job, and now I'm just doing the same fucking job that I was doing a year ago. And literally you could see from the patrol base that I was in, you could see my old patrol base, which was a good thing for me because I had ground knowledge, I had experience of

the terrain, but things had taken a shift. 2008, 2009, I think we lost nine guys on that deployment. Nine Royal Marine Commandos died on that deployment, nine Royal Marine Commandos died on that deployment, which is nine too many and it fucking affected all of us. But what happened in the second deployment was this, yeah no joke, it was a fucking no joke summer tour. So when we got into that patrol base the guys that we'd taken from over were the rifles infantry unit.

When they'd got there, they'd written all of the names of the guys in the sections, one section, two section, HQ. And when we got there, half of those names had aligned through them. They'd all been dead, fucking got smashed to bits in those patrol bases. They were getting killed regularly. When we got there, you could just see in their eyes the relief that this is done and they were going home and we were going out on familiarization patrols where like they would take us and show us the thing and you could just see that there was just a nervousness that they were

not broken because their infantry and their fucking, but they were hurt and they were suffering. So I already knew, okay, cool, this is not going to be like the last one. And sure as hell, within a few days of being there, we started to take casualties and it pretty much ramped up from there. The first one we took was a guy called Jase. We were building fortifying or rebuilding a position on the roof in the day. Question but we had to I was behind the GMG Automatic grenade launcher thing so I'm behind that 40 mic mic We're just starting in building the sandbags just about to come off

And go back down and sort of last light and I just hear one round And I hear a scream and then I hear a man down and I just hear one round of chhh and I hear a scream and then I hear a man down and I'm like fuck and then it was like medic. So what happened again this is super fortunate, basically what had happened is that people say he couldn't have been the only guy in that troop that wore side plates, the only fucking dude. It hit the top of his side plate and then ricocheted up underneath his tricep and blew him off the roof. He survived, he came back. He went back to Camp Bastion for a few weeks and then got back in the fight.

And I look back at that now and I'm like, that's fucking hardcore. I didn't get shot like that off a roof by a sniper. And then two, three weeks later you're back on patrol. That's commando. That's what being a commando is about. But unfortunately for the guys that had engaged my mate, they didn't realise that I was still up there because there was a cam net and I was underneath the cam net. So I'm just like, cool, rack it and fucking start sending it with this 40-mike mic. And I fucking, every

firing point, every position that could have been there, I was just sending it. One two shot, boom boom, boom boom, good mate. And after about a box and a half, the troop commander came up and he's like, remember courageous restraint, courageous restraint, I'm at, yeah, Roger, I PID'd the firing point, which they are, they're likely firing points, suppression of enemy likely firing points, it's doctrinal, it's what you're supposed to do. So we did, and then there was a whole gunfight that went on, they started to attack our patrol base from multiple firing points to second patrol base down the road, they started getting

smashed this whole thing on for about an hour. And we'd only been there a few days, this was like within the first week, and I'm up on the roof getting it. I'm just fucking sending it, you know? And everyone else is. The patrol base has become a porcupine. Barrels everywhere, you know, just sending it. And eventually, this is funny, eventually the Kazavac came in, right?

So the Kazavacs come in. Everyone's new in theatre, so we're all still trying to figure it out and all the rest of it. So they drive these vehicles down, because you couldn't put a helicopter where we were. There was no place safe to land it, so you'd have to do it by road then get in the helicopter so the Sark Major and everyone else comes back in these vehicles we call them Jackals and they come driving downhill and you know into the patrol base and as soon as they get in a patrol base you know only the

dispensers of flares you know for the FOSS smoke so they can smoke the... somehow he pressed the wrong button he disarmed it or armed it whatever he'd done but he fired out FOSS all over the patrol base so you've got this scene right I'm on the roof in just a pair of shorts and body armour everyone's shooting everything everywhere there's a dude down there who's a casualty the cavalry comes and then FOSS is the entire patrol base like this is a small patrol base okay and I'm in the cabinets on fire. This is a small patrol base, okay? And I'm in the, the cam nets on fire, like everything's going on. And my mate who ended up being in the squadron, a different squadron to me, but he went on

selection as well. This is his first deployment. He's like belly crawling up to me with another box of ammunition. And I looked at him and I was like, I told you it was going to be like this. He looked at me and goes, I don't fucking like it. And I was like, I know, I'm carried on sending it, but I'll never forget that, like the whole, everyone's just fucking, it was good. It was good because it was like, bang, alright fellas, reality check, this is what it's going to be like. And it didn't slow down. It really didn't. And yeah, it

wasn't that long after that the, our troop sergeant, guy called Lee, he got hit. Again this is quite another funny story. They went out to patrol a place called Cemetery Hill. They went out, got caught out on a forward facing slope and got ambushed. And he was pinned down. He got shot through the face, shot through the arm, shot through the leg and was basically in the open and couldn't move. And the guys were trying to get to him.

It wasn't my half's patrol day. I was back in the patrol base on Century but I was the designated quad driver so it was my responsibility to go and pick up this casualty. So I go tearing out the gate on this quad, troop commanders screaming at me to stop that and slow down and do the metal detector thing and I'm like fuck that let's go do you know what I mean and eventually I did stop and we got there and we had a litter on the back of the quad trailer and I drove up to the collection point and they put him on a stretcher and then they put that stretcher on the back of the trailer on top of another stretcher.

Does that make sense? So it's not what you should be doing. And obviously they're like, Jay, go. So I'm at copy. So I'm now driving this quad as fast as I can. I remember going over this bump like that and thinking, oh shit, I forgot there's a casualty on the back. It's my troop sergeant and he's like a gnarly old dude. Do you know what I mean? And I stopped, slammed the brakes on and looked around and he stood vertically at this point. He's fallen

off, he's bumped off the thing. He stood vertically, still strapped to the litter, like ankles, like thighs and chest check he's just stood there looking at me going you dickhead slow down and I was like fuck yeah I'm sorry I was embarrassed I was sorry I was like fuck I'm so sorry mate like please like and the medics on the floor and it's just a whole fucking shit show and he was like you did more damage to me throwing me off the back of that quad than that geezer with the PKM did and I was like I never left and left. And I felt we've, we've addressed this afterwards because I did feel really bad for a long time, but yeah, funny.

And I've been this deployment you did, you experienced 160 gun fights in three months. Am I correct? No, 160 gunfights in one day on election day. That was in one 24 hour period period our company group and satellite and call Signs 160 contacts recorded in one day the elections one day one day Which sounds impossible, but it wasn't and we were handed so when Holy shit back into that torsion. We handed over to the US Marine Corps and when that three seven

Combat team combat team three seven or three five camera which one it was but when the US Marine Corps and when that 3-7 combat team, combat team 3-7 or 3-5, I can't remember which one it was, but when the US Marine Corps came in, those boys were not fucking playing games and it was good to see because they were like, we ain't doing courageous restraint, we're doing fucking extreme violence and we were like, fuck yeah. But yeah, that- 160- Recorded contacts within a 24-hour period on election day. So the right of the back, it was literally the last thing that we did on deployment. It was, they were having local elections and it was the first time that they had local

elections in Sangin for, since the Taliban took over I imagine. How do you even have enough ammo for that? It was everywhere, all day. Just all different. There was probably about five or six platoons on the ground plus the patrol base itself plus the main fob and it was just all day, just sporadic all day. Were you getting resupplied? So we were out in a field, so check this out, right?

So they put recce platoon out as a blocking force. So we were like 400 meters away from the actual main patrol base itself. And again, when people talk about what it means to serve and what it means to serve the United States of America and the bond that I've got, we fucking told them, dude, we said, do not go in that compound. We went out together. There's a US Marine Corps patrol and our patrol. Our job was to literally go out and provide a blocking service or a blocking screening service.

And we fucking told them, do not fucking go, a a 10, don't go in that compound, it's a known firing point, it's fucking rigged, do not go there. And they were like, we got orders brother, and we was like, do your thing. And they went out there and sure as fuck they fucking got blown up dude. There was like fucking two dead I think, and three or four lost limbs. And initially we were just helping out on the Kazavac, I'll never forget it, it was just like an endless supply of just fucking people. Just coming back on stretchers and we were just taking, just doing what we could.

Like, I fucking carried Marines off the battlefield and they fucking come and got me when I really needed it on multiple occasions. Like that US flag, when I had the fucking privilege of wearing that to war means the world to me, Sean. And I'd fucking die for that as soon as I die for my flag, you know. But those young lads, mate, they were fucking, those young lads, I was one too. That was a fucking hard day. That was just the morning. That was before the whole thing fucking got going. I'll never forget it as well. We were in these cornfields, in these blocking positions.

And it was like, you just see like twos and threes. The whole platoon had just been fucking decimated. It was like an IED went off, killed a bunch of dudes. Then the fucking Kasavac, the guys that went in to get them, they got fucking blown up. Then all hell broke loose. And it was just like, once we'd started to ferry the stretchers back, we went back to man our positions and it was like something out of Jurassic Park. You see these fucking cornfields and it was just like you could see the fucking, the leaves moving, you know? And we're on the guns like, I need to fucking light something's getting shot in a minute. I'm fucking scared.

Do you know what I mean? And a fucking squad would come out or two or three guys and just be like, have you seen like this guy or that platoon? And we're like, where the fuck have you been bro? And he's like, your guys are back there and I was like, okay cool. And they just run out. 10 minutes later there'd be like a lone Marine just coming out the fucking cornfield. You're like, I don't know what the fuck's going on over there,

but this is not a good spot for him to be in. And yeah, we just fucking hunkered down. That was the first time I've got properly mortared as well. Like people talk about, oh, you know, I watched... I think you'll find a generational difference between gee-what guys that didn't do conventional tours and guys that did do conventional tours. Like, I know the difference between being mortared

and properly being mortared, like in front of you like 50 metres, 60 metres, which is fucking close for an 81 or whatever they're using. Then one comes behind you, you're like, okay, cool, we're being bracketed. The next one's fucking coming into our position and sure as fuck we're in this field getting mortared. And it's like, that's no joke. We're in a fucking field, there is no cover andop Troop sergeants like fucking digging and we're like what what is this the fucking you know I mean It's Iwo Jima. I didn't think war fucking fighting was like this. Do you know I mean? This was not what we were fucking used to doing So sure as fuck we dug shell scrapes and I've got some great pictures of it all the boys in shell scrapes and we fucking dug

shell scrapes and I'm gonna start getting more... What do you mean shell scrapes? Like a small hole in the ground to lie into basically, just below subsurface so that if it does detonate it goes at ground level and you're just underneath it. The first ones we did were quite shallow but when we started to get incoming accurate mortifier we were like, oh shit we need to fucking dig these in a bit deeper. I'll never forget me and this guy Gaz, we were sat in this shell scrape line and they're just laughing. We're going home in two days.

The election day, this whole day that I'm talking about, was literally the last thing that we did. And it was like, I cannot fucking believe after six months we're in this fucking hole in this field, getting fucking watered. It's like, come on. Do you know what I mean? This is no joke. But I'll remember it again again goes back to the thing of

respecting the US military we had a cowboy call sign it was it was a Cobra and a Huey pair and they were fucking smashing the mortar point and We're in this shell scraping this cornfield just fucking hunkered down getting mortared and this fucking helicopter comes over with its partner And they're just fucking strafing just like rockets with his partner and they're just fucking strafing, just like rockets, 12.7 millimeter rockets or whatever they are, fucking 30 mic, whatever they've got on there. And the fucking shells are landing all around opposite, and we're just laughing at each other at this point, we're just like, fuck me, this is fucking cool.

But it's not cool if you know what I mean. It's like, but we liked it. We're Marines, this is what we're supposed to be doing, you know? But yeah, if it went for those dudes turning up that day, fuck knows what would have happened. But that was the end of a really, really severe tour. And I'll tell you what the worst thing I don't want you to know. The worst thing for us, mate, was that every single time an ID went off, it was a fucking good chance it was somebody you knew.

That radio never fucking... In 80 days, I think it was something like 82 days or whatever it was, we lost 14 people. And they were all the same guys, we knew everybody. We're a recce troupe, we knew everyone. And it was like, you hear the fucking blast, man. They're so close, you feel it, you hear that fucking awful sound and you're just like, okay, cool. And then the radio, it's like, yeah, contact ID.

And then it's like the state of the casualties, like what tier they are. You hear the missed reports coming on and it's like, you're just listening out for that zap number. You're like, I know a guy in Sixth Troop. You're just listening for that zap number. You're just listening for that fucking name and just being like, is it him? It might not affect you that day because it might not be somebody, but then you see a guy in the corner of the patrol base and he's just fucking in floods of tears because that was his best mate, you know? That was his fucking mate. So yeah, we were surrounded, man.

We were fucking in a bad spot. It was heartbreaking to watch and feel and listen to it and that fucking radio never stopped, man. It never stopped. I just wanted to go home. Before I deployed my door was two weeks old. Two weeks old. I remember just as we got to Camp Bastion, before we flew out to that patrol base there

were two guys that were from 4 or 5 Commando that had done exactly what I did. And they went to 40 Commando too. And I remember, I didn't even know these guys man, and we were sat eating our fucking lunch during the pre-deployment training that you do in theatre, like zeroing weapons and fucking all this bullshit, getting briefs and all this fucking stuff, ROE briefs, whatever. And there was just three of us in this like, basically in this like fucking shell of a compound having lunch. And it was like, oh I was at four or five.

And I was like, oh fuck I was at four or five. And there was three of us. I'm the only one that came home. They fucking both died, you know? It's like fuck. Brownie baby, two weeks old, like the writing's on the wall. I'm like, I'm not coming back from this deployment. I'd given up. I knew it was coming. Like, I'm not a super religious man, sure. But every time I left that fucking patrol base, I prayed because it doesn't matter how good you are, we were getting fucking ripped apart. And it was fucking dangerous and it was scary. And I was fucking scared. I was scared for six months.

And then it's like, one of the most significant things that's ever happened to me in my military career is I was about from me to that wall away when an IED blast went off my troop commander, lost both his legs on an arm. I was the first guy to get to him. And there's a protocol for this, you're supposed to do the metal detector shit and go up to it and make sure there's no, I just fucking ran straight to him and just started putting tourniquets on him and I was just like, I remember his eyes, I was up at his head, Tom, the medic, was working on him and I was just holding him. I had a flashlight on him. It was early on in the morning. It was a fucking 400-metre patrol, Sean. We were down at 400 metres. Do you know what we were doing?

Do you know what they made us do? They made us go and fucking hand out a radio. He lost both his legs and an arm to hand out a fucking wind-up radio to a local that we thought was friendly. Hearts and minds, they said. So we go out at fucking five o'clock in the morning, near pitch back in a fucking minefield and he loses arms and legs We're fucking radio, you know, I was so angry mate. I was so fucking angry and I Remember looking at I remember him trying to close his eyes and I said John just fucking look at me. I put this fucking

Flashlight on his face and I'm just like do not fucking close your eyes Do not fucking close your eyes and we got him out and he he's still He's like fucking incredible he's got kids he's got a fucking life He's a fucking incredible kayaker. He's represented his country in that he's got this fucking incredible story he goes around the country motivating people like What a fucking hero what a fucking rock star, but I'll never forgive them for putting us in those positions Because it's like we know this is bullshit. Why the fuck are we going out there, you know, and yeah

But that there made me fucking angry. I was like, no, I'm not I'm coming back like a lot of people went the other way. Most people left the Marines after that deployment. I was like, no, I'm not, I'm coming back. Like a lot of people went the other way. Most people left the Marines after that deployment. I didn't. Maybe there's something fucking wrong with me, but I was like, no, I'm fucking joining the special forces. I want to be fucking part of that. And one of the main reasons for that was halfway through because we were getting smashed. The squadron, the regiment squadron, D Squadron, sent a guy out to our position to give us fire support, to bring the assets, so he embedded himself with our troop. And this guy was like an older guy, super wiry, northern, not what you'd expect a regiment

guy to look like, but fuck me, he was the most impressive fucking person I'd ever met. He was like a fucking superstar. You don't come across regiment guys, especially not if you're in the Marines. It's not something that you don't operate together. And he came into those patrol bases and he wore the same fucking kit that we wore with no airs and graces. You'd be like, ah, he's a sergeant in the fucking regiment and I'm a Marine, a two IC of of a troop and I'm doing lists for who has to go on sentry and he's like, what time do you want me on? And I'm like, what?

You don't have to do this. He's like, no, put me on there, two to three. Two o'clock in the morning, he's out there in the fucking sentry position doing it. Came on every patrol, he's like, give me some link, give me a battery. And I was like, fuck you know, he did not need to do that. He did not have to do that, but I was like,

that's the gold standard. That's the fucking epitome of what I think a fucking regiment guy should be like. And he actually, it's quite a nice story. He gave me a recruitment brief in the main patrol base back in Sangen. And it was for Hereford. And typically, Royal Marines don't go to Hereford. They go to Poole, the SBS. So they don't go to the SES, they go to SBS.

Typically, not always. But I don't go to the SES, they go to SBS. Typically, not always. But I always wanted to join the regiment. I'd always been fascinated by the regiment since I watched the VHS copy of the Iranian embassy siege from my dad actually. When I was about 10 years old, that was the first time I'd ever seen it. I was like, what the fuck? The dudes on the balcony with the gas masks. I was like, whatever that is, I want that.

But it's the first time I've ever met one in the flesh. And he's a fucking rock star, you know. And he gave me the recruitment brief and I remember I went back to my chew on my accommodation I packed a Bergen with 55 pounds, which is test weight and I did a CFT This is an eight miler basically just perimeter the thing just kept doing that and doing that from that moment on I was like I'm going on selection And I've heard somebody else say this and it must be a fairly common thing But I remember sitting one night on one of those century positions and it was fucking super late and I hear two

47s go into the green zone. And you know what a 47 sounds like. And I was like, well, that's not us. And that's our fucking AO. So what the fuck is it? And then all hell breaks loose. You hear the fucking gunship going and all kinds of bullshit. And then two, three hours, fucking two 47s come in and they fly away. And I was like, got back off and I was like, yeah, that's just one of the squadrons gone and done a fucking, an offensive action on a target. Just for everybody listening, 47s are dual rotor helicopters. Yeah, the Chinooks, the CH-47s, you know,

the big fat ones, you know, with the double thing. Sorry, yeah, but yeah. So I was like, okay, these people are getting after it. Do you know what I felt in that deployment one there? Fucking helpless. I felt helpless. I was like, just fucking wandering around in my field, just fucking watching people get blown off.

It's like, I wanted to affect it. And the only place that I could affect it was, what it felt like was to go on selection and join the squadron. How did you adjust your mindset from the beginning of that deployment to the end, to deal with all that? I didn't deal with it. I just boxed it up.

Just fucking compartmentalize it. That's all I could do. And it wasn't. Ten years down the line, it fucking blew up. I got blown up again. Another suicide bomber. And I was actually with C Squadron at the time from the unit. I was attached to them for a year. I remember getting blown up one night

side of a building and watching my whole team basically just get fucking... Whole building went on top of them and I was fucking for sure everyone was dead. Turns out that everyone survived it was one of those fucking pulp fiction moments. I mean talk about that in a bit more detail later but that blew the lid off the fucking box basically like that after that I just unraveled slowly but surely unraveled to the point of yeah to a fucking dark place but for 10 years I just didn't look forgot about it it's carried on But for 10 years I just didn't look, forgot about it, just carried on, just keep going. One more deployment, one more deployment, one more deployment, just keep putting it in the box, put it in the box, put it in the box. Box gets full, box breaks, I broke.

But yeah, to answer your question, I didn't deal with it. I just fucking carried on. What else got to do? I kept running. I kept running because I knew if I stopped and looked back I wouldn't fucking ... I'd never start again. I came back from that deployment and it's like... even coming back on R&R man, I went back to the main patrol base and a dear friend of mine who I was in training with, a recruit, we were recruits together, a guy called Ryan, everyone calls him Tweed, dead skinny guy, but he was a machine gunner, he was a fucking, you know what I mean, a good machine gunner. I remember our patrol base, you had to go back to the big base because that's where

the helicopters were and that's how you flew back and went on R&R. So I was out of my patrol base and into the big base, relieved as fuck, four months into the deployment, handed in all the fucking necessary equipment. I've just got basic ammunition, my rifle, about to fly and in 24 hours I'm home in the UK with my brand new daughter that I've fucking spent two weeks with, right? And they go out on patrol and we're sat in the sort of chow hall which was a tent and the first one goes off. Boom.

And you're like, yep, that's a fucking IED. And then everyone's up, QRF are out, the whole place is going and we're on R&R so we've not really got a job to do at this point. And I was with a couple of other guys and we're like, fuck it, let's get our body armour on and get on the wall. Everyone's on the wall now. Everyone's shooting from the wall, we're trying to provide fire support. About a couple of minutes later, later Boom second one goes off. This was a joint patrol US Marine Corps and guys from Charlie Company

And they went out first ID struck command command wire They wait for the guys to come in and try and recover the casualties and then they fucking pulled the next one so we lost two guys that day US Marine and a guy called Jonathan Crooks and So we lost two guys that day, a US Marine and a guy called Jonathan Crooks. And initially we started fighting from the wall. Like dude, I'm going home in fucking 24 hours. I'm on the wall now fighting. And then it was like we need fucking people to help bring the casualties in. And I again, I feel guilty for it.

I was like, I hope it's not fucking Twiggy. And I knew it wasn't because I could hear his fucking machine gun going. I was like, yeah, he's all right. He's fucking sending it. So I was like yeah he's alright he's fucking sending it so I'm like fuck yeah and then we go to the back gate and we're just carrying the bodies we're just carrying these fucking dudes back into the back into the med bay basically where they're getting treated and there's four or five different casualties different categories of categories you've got like ones that are clearly no longer with us and then other guys that are all fucking fragged up and all the rest

of it. And I remember clearly, I still can't get my fucking head around this. We put the guys in stretchers and in the bags and the fucking dude in the med center, I don't know what his problem was, but he's like, they've got to go on head first. And I'm like, dude, it don't fucking matter. And he's like, they got to go on head first. That's the way the helicopters are set up to deal with casualties. And I'm like, I fucking get it. I know, but it doesn't make a difference.

Do you understand what I'm saying? And he's like, they've got, and I'm fucking this fucking, I'm, I don't know what, what, I don't know what fucking, what ends the head and what's not fucking head. You know what I mean? How the fuck am I supposed to do? You know what ends the head and what's not the fucking head. You know what I mean? What the fuck am I supposed to do? When we're open, I have this fucking to and fro. And we put the guys on the fucking helicopter, everyone goes away, we go and sit back down. And they're like, R&R flight's coming in in two hours.

And they're like, now what the fuck do you do? 24 hours later I'm at fucking Bries Norton with a brand new hours and you're like, now what the fuck do you do? 24 hours later, I'm at fucking Bryce Norton with a brand new baby and I'm like, I was not ready. I was not ready to be a fucking dad. I was not ready to deal with that. I just wasn't ready. And I fucking isolated myself

because the only place I felt like I could have any control was being on operation, which is a weird one because I was helpless there, if that makes sense. But it was a pain that I knew. Do you know what I mean? It became home. It became home. It became home. It became what I knew. It was so intense for me that I gravitated towards it. It was easier to be a fucking Marine in that field than it was to

try and learn how to be a dad. I got no template on how to be a dad. How the fuck do I know how to do that? You know what I mean? You're talking to me about washing machines. Like, how the fuck do I care if the washing machine's not broken? We've got to go grocery shopping. What the fuck? Like, that's where I'm at with it. I didn't fuck, I was un- incapable or incapable of acting like a fucking normal human being because my brain was not there it was in that fucking field. And it took years to fucking, to sort that out, you know, and I'm not, I don't think I'm ever over it, but I'm at peace with it now to a point.

But that deployment there. Was your mind, was your mind, did you have any emotional connection to your daughter after, after experiencing that? Other than the fact I loved her. Not really. And I hate, I hate myself, fuck no, I do. It was really hard to build that bond, you know. I was a shitty fucking dad for a long time, you know. I just didn't know how to do it.

I didn't. If I was as fucking good a dad as I was an operator, I'd be fucking perfect. But I wasn't and I'm not. And that fucking young girl did 10 deployments. 10 fucking deployments she did. And I look at her now and I'm so fucking proud of her. I'm so impressed. She's got such grace and kindness about her. And that's why when some of the stuff that's happened to me recently, I look at it and I'm like, you know what? Fuck you for putting me in this position for her.

She deserves better than that. She does. There's still a piece of me in that field. There's a piece of my soul that will never come out of that fucking field. And I'm sorry for her that she had to miss that. But I hope she sees this and grows up. I did that for her. I want to miss that. But I hope, you know, she sees this and grows up. I did that for her. I wanted to protect her, you know?

And she was fucking, she kept me going, dude. Do you want to mention her name? No, for some reasons that we've talked about before. I understand that. Yeah. But honestly- What changed? When did you start your bond with your daughter? It took a couple of years. It took a couple of years to start to build back up but...

Did you feel guilt? Yeah, still do. A lot. You know, for guys like us there's a prescription, right? It's like, there's the problem, there's the solution. When it comes to emotional stuff and you know that, I don't have a template. I don't have a reference point. I don't know what being a good dad looks like. Not to say I didn't have a good dad, I just didn't really have that in my life. I just hope, pray that one day she'll grow up and go, okay cool, that's what my dad was about. That's why he was there, that's why I missed the birthday, that's why I missed the football

match, the Christmas, whatever it might be. Because I felt like I was trying to do something good. I was trying to make sense of a fucking hopeless chaotic situation and the only thing I could do to stop myself from drowning was go back to war because that's the only thing I knew. And it's just, yeah, it's a shame that she's had to do that, but I just, and I think, you know, she's, her mother's fantastic with her. Like she's, I've never had any problems with my mother, my daughter's mother in terms of like when I'm away, I always know my daughter's mother in terms of like when I'm away I always know that home's being taken care of and I'll always be fucking grateful

to those women for that. My daughter's mother is a fucking exceptional mother and she's had to deal with a shit ton. It can't be easy watching your daughter with her father on R&R staring at fucking bodies coming up the hill. And I was there for every one of them when I was on R&R. That's a fucking intense place to be and she's fucking ridden that sawn. And I want to say this, and I want that hundreds, thousands of families have been through that from the British Army. So when people say we didn't fight this or we do that, that fucking upsets me, Sean, because we fucking paid in blood in those fields and we fought side by side with

the US military and we'll always continue to do that. And if it wasn't for them I wouldn't be here. And if it wasn't for the support and the coalition and the brotherhood that British and US soldiers have, I wouldn't be here. And I fucking damn sure know a lot of other people wouldn't too, you know. But there's a lot of families, you know, the Afghan generation has fucking paid a heavy, heavy price. And they don't get enough credit. Everyone wants to see Special Forces dudes with night vision and panavision doing fucking

fast rope and all the sexy stuff. I'm here for it. I fucking love that shit, trust me. But what about that fucking young Marine who got shot off a wall? What about him? They deserve more credit. Like, I'm going to be honest with you right now. Like, nothing I did in Special Forces was anything like as dangerous as that.

Imagine going on a 10-hour patrol in the day with no assets, no fucking dedicated JTAC, no ISR, no Gucci weapon systems, no night vision, no tactical advantage and fucking back breaking loads in 45 degree heat for six months in a minefield with a shitty ROE and fucking no experience for the most part. That's harder. Those guys deserve more credit. All right, it's not sexy. Everyone wants to know about the big fucking mesh

and all the cool shit, but what about those fucking dudes, you know? So I try and talk to that more because it's like... I think about that all the time. You do? I do. And I remember I interviewed this guy, friend of mine, Cody Alford, who was a Marine.

Yeah. Is he a dude with a tail on his neck? Is that him? He's got tattoos everywhere. That's the dude. I do know the dude, yeah. I don't know him, but I know who he means. But when he described his experience in Fallujah, Very, very similar. And I think you would say the same thing that you just said about conventional guys. And they don't get enough credit. No. And they don't get the recognition they deserve. No.

And they have it harder than everybody. Fuck yeah they do. With less gear. With less training. Everything. Yeah man. I see some of these guys now and I'm just like... I'm so fucking proud of them. I am. I'm so fucking proud of them. Such strength those guys had, you know? You're looking at 19-year-old kids dealing with that shit. And that deployment isn't the end of it. You've got to go and live 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years after that.

And nothing, nothing can take that away. And people will go, you were all Marines, you joined to go to war. Fuck yeah we did. And we did a fucking good job at doing it. And we were fucking impressive. But there is a price to it. There is a consequence to it, you know. Most guys left after that deployment. I didn't and I'm glad I didn't because if I had, then I probably would have ended up taking my own life like my friend did and a bunch of other people, you know. Because that's what happens,

Sean. They stay in those fields and they don't they don't ever deal with it and then all of a sudden they just put their uniforms on put the medals on and they fucking hang themselves so what your friend did yeah Ash he did that yeah there's there's too many of them man so fucking feels like one a week at some point. These fucking guys aren't getting no support, bro. They're just fucking not getting enough support. And it's...

Wow. Is that the first one that you lost for suicide? The first one, I allowed myself to feel any pain for, yeah. If that makes sense. I've lost a bunch. And again, it goes back to the same patrol base. Like, mentality, it was like, it might not be somebody that I know well,

but I know somebody that does. And it echoes through our community. Like, it reverberates. And they're fucking still doing it, dude. They're fucking, they're still doing it. They're fucking killing themselves, and it's like, fuck. I don't know how to get my head around that.

Me and my best friend, my best friend was way closer to Ash than I was, but we were all recruits together. And it fucking nearly killed him because he felt guilty about it. He was phoning him that day. They were fine, everything was all good. Checking up on him, everything's good. He goes home, puts his uniform on, puts his medals on, puts his beret on, hangs himself in the garage. That nearly fucking killed my friend.

You know? I'm sorry. Me too, I'm sorry. But that's the reality of it. And I don't know what to say. We went to his grave not long ago. It's Sonsa. How the fuck do you expect me to have that conversation? It's fucking difficult. Those young marines deserve more credit, I think. They deserve more support from our government, from our veterans minister, from all of it.

That war's not done. Still going. They're just fighting it in their own heads now. But it's across the board, isn't it? It's not done. It's still going. They're just fighting it in their own heads now. But it's across the board, isn't it? It's not just us. It's not just the Marines. It's not just the Brits or the Americans or Swedes or Norwegians or the Danish or the Estonians or everyone else that paid into that thing.

I mean, obviously the Brits and the Americans, Canadians. It's everybody that had to experience that. It's everyone that experienced it. Not just the fucking cool guys with Panavision and fucking BlackWalks. I think we should do better and we should pay more credit to these guys because it's fucking real. That's my opinion. Thank you for saying that. Don't thank me, Sean. I thank them.

That deployment galvanized me. It didn't break me at the time. I thank me Sean, I thank them. That deployment galvanized me. It didn't break me at the time. It's not broken me now. It fucking set a foundation of solid concrete that I built a fucking mansion on. You understand? I fucking wanted it. It didn't deter me.

It motivated me. I was like, no, I'm never going to fucking feel helpless again. Next time it's on my terms. I'm coming to your house at night. I'm going to be in your fucking bedroom and you'll never have a clue that I'm there. That's the kind of mentality that I took from him. I don't know if that's a positive thing. The psychiatrist would probably go, yeah, we need a fucking chat. But it worked for me. That's what I did. I put it all in a fucking box and was like, cool, I'm gonna use that for fuel.

I'm gonna use that for motivation. That's my reactor, you know? And that's why I decided to go on selection. I wanted to have an impact and effect. And I think it's very important that this is said, UKSF's primary objective, as far as I read it, and we were briefed, in Afghanistan was to provide security and to fucking stop these people killing British troops.

I've been in those fields, I know what it's like. So now I'm motivated for it. We were trying to protect the British Army. Every single one of those guys in those squadrons knew somebody in the Marines, knew somebody in the Parachute Regiment, was affected by it. They're watching their mates get killed, mutilated, you know. We fucking wanted to have an effect. That's what we did.

We had an effect. And we were professional as fuck when we did it. And it was such a cool thing to be a part of because it really did feel like you were making a difference there. So when I see all this bullshit, these fucking allegations unfounded about this and that question and professionalism, it fucking upsets me, Sean. I saw nothing but professionalism. I saw nothing but dedicated professionals doing the right thing for the right reasons and it's

disgusting how people are trying to turn that and make that look like it's something else because it wasn't that you know but again yeah that's I mean digressed slightly but yeah I think that does need to be said and that was a massive motivator for me there's a difference between revenge and retribution isn't there revenge is and retribution, isn't there? Revenge is revenge. Retribution is the rightful and lawful action towards something that's been done. It's not revenge, it's retribution. That's the difference. And we were out there in the squadrons trying to do what we could to protect those fucking guys in the patrol

bases. That 19 year old, we're trying to fucking do whatever we can and yes we are going to bring all the fucking toys to the party. All our gunships, all our fucking sexy night vision, all of our fucking ISR assets, our jets, our dogs, our charges, our experience. Fuck yeah we are and we're coming for you. We're coming to get you, you know? And that was the only thing that kept me sane. That's how I dealt with it. I doubled

down. I didn't go the other way, you know? But yeah. I talk a lot about that 2010 tour on this because it fucking affected me more than anything else I've ever done. And it changed my life. And it still does. I told John, the guy who stepped on the ID, that I was coming on in, and I said, can I mention you? And he said, yeah. He said he was fucking proud. He does speak in engagement.

He goes on, country, my friend bumped into him randomly. He said he mentioned me by name. That's my proudest minute shit shit. Playing a small part in saving that man's life that day. No one's ever taken that away from me, you know? How's he doing? He's fucking thriving. He's doing really, really well.

Yeah. He's like a, I think he's representing Great Britain in the kayaking. He's a mad kayaker. I'll show you afterwards, mate. He's such an incredible fucking dude. Positive. He's got kids since that happened.

Wow. Yeah. He's fucking living life to the full, man. I'm not a fucking good person, man. I could be better, but I made every mistake a guy my age can make, probably more than once. There's a lot of shit I've done in my life I'm not fucking proud of, but I'm proud of that.

There's a person out there that's living, there's a person out there that's a father, there's a person out there that's enjoying their life, and I had a very, very small part to playing that and I like to remind myself of that sometimes when I feel a bit shit or whatever because I think war's fucking ugly but that was a good thing, right? Yeah. You know? But yeah. After that tour, it was full steam ahead. Then it was just fucking deployment, deployment, selection, deployment, deployment, deployment, deployment, deployment, and that carried on for 10 years. How was it getting into selection?

For me, I came back off that deployment and most people would have been like, did you just chill out and bond with your daughter? I didn't. I put my fucking rucksack on and went to the Brecon Beacons and climbed up a mountain. That's what I did to get away from it. I didn't deal with it. And I ran away from trying to be a dad because I didn't understand it. But what I did know how to do was fucking move from A to B with weight on my back because

that's all I wanted. Again, I became obsessed with passing selection and I threw everything to the side because the only thing that mattered was getting back out there. The only thing that mattered to me was getting a seat on that helicopter. I told you about that helicopter that went in. I wanted to be on that helicopter more than anything. I'm not proud of that but that's what I had to do. That's why I'm not fucking hanging up in a garage somewhere with my e-medals on.

That's what I did. But selection was... anybody that sits there and goes, selection wasn't that bad, or this is fucking bullshit, this line, it's hard. It's very, very hard. But one thing I did have was the ability to know that I will never, ever quit. That was, you know what I mean? I'm not quitting on this. So you're going to have to pull me off or tell me I'm not good enough, but I'm not quitting.

And I think that kind of mindset, that mentality, that burn the ship's mentality that we talk about, I was obsessed. There was no going back. I'm not going back into that patrol base. I'm not going back in that field. This is what I need to do to get to where I need to be. And you have to understand, Sean, that during those deployment times, do you know how much money a Marine makes?

Do you know how much money a Marine makes a month in those deployments? Have a guess. A month? A month in Sangin, do you know how much they pay you for dealing with all that? Four thousand. USD, less than that. One thousand six hundred pounds. One thousand six hundred.

Which is about two and a half, yeah, two thousand two hundred dollars a month. That's what we get paid. Now I come back and I'm trying to raise a family. Trying. I've got fucking washing machines to buy. You understand? Like, I have to go on selection, I have to pass. My wage doubles. You understand? Like, to go on selection, I have to pass, my wage doubles.

You understand, that's a motivator. It didn't come from a lot. It's important to me that I'm trying to give my daughter a better life. That's what I'm trying to do. More opportunity, a better standard of living. That motivated me for sure. I'm not going to quit in the jungle because I'm a little bit hot or a little bit tired. There's too much at stake, you know?

Way too much at stake. What was the sentiment of the citizens in the UK while this was all going on? At the time, Sean, the whole country was behind it. Health for Heroes was a big charity. People were behind it. Everyone was pro-forces, supporting everyone. And, you know, it felt like everyone was in the same situation together. But then the war stopped and everyone went quiet, which is when we need it.

I arguably, we need it more now. We need more of it now than we did then, you know? And it's all good for people to wear the Help for Heroes band or go and do an expedition to Everest. Good. You should be doing shit like that. But at the same time, you need to do more and it needs to happen. It needs to happen now.

We need to do more as a, I'm a civilian. I'm a civilian now. Do you understand? I'm trying to do what I can to train the next civilian. I'm a civilian now, do you understand? I'm trying to do what I can to train the next generation. I don't have a lot of money. If I was a millionaire, Sean, I'd fucking give as much money if I could to charity, but I ain't. What I can do is I can train the next generation.

That's what I'm trying to do. That's how I like to give back, you know? But again, it's not about money or anything like that, but we do need to do more. We need to recognise it. That war's not done. And it's not cool money or anything like that, but we do need to do more. We need to recognise it. That war's not done. And it's not cool and trendy to be like pro-troops, pro-Afghanistan generation. It's an old war.

It's a very British mentality, isn't it? But I think we need to do more. Because everyone wanted to fucking jump on the bandwagon a few years ago. And now you never see anything about it. There are good people out there doing good things. There are plenty of good charities out there. There is a lot, but it's not enough. It's generally the community serving the community, if that makes sense. Yes, it does.

Do you understand what I mean by that? Yes. Yeah. It's a shame. I mean, it sounds like the people want to help? But you know, as we discussed at the beginning and we'll get into more detail, at the end the government's doing the opposite. They're making it worse. They're making it harder for us. Yeah. Let's take a quick break.

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We're getting into Tier 1 operations. Yeah. So yeah, I went on selection 2012. As soon as I'd completed selection, it was like the perfect thing for me. Finished on like a Friday. Belt, beret, end of the process. Couldn't have been prouder. Like honestly, it was such a... It felt...

Some kids wanted to grow up and be an astronaut. Some guys wanted to be soccer players or play in the NFL or be a quarterback, whatever it might be. I just wanted to be in a regiment. From a very early age, I was aware of it and it was always seen as the pinnacle, in my opinion. I think there's something to be said for achieving a lifetime goal at the age of 24. It's great, but then when that wears off, you're like,

oh, what do I do? There was a little bit of that, but it wasn't an anti-climax at all. I finished, I then went out to the States. The first time I'd ever been to the States, flew into LA and then went down to El Centro and did a bunch of jumping out there because we couldn't finish the jumps course in the UK because of the weather. It's fucking shit. So we went out to. Oh, you had to go to California.

Yeah, we do that quite often. I've probably done maybe, I don't know, 20, 20 or 30 odd trips to California. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Go jumping. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. Very jumping. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Real quick. I actually do have a question.

Go. We don't have to go into SAS training and all of that, but I do want to ask, I mean, with that deployment that you just described, you know, 180 contacts in one day. Yeah. Did they know you were a part of that? Yeah, you make, it's a very good question, Sean. It was interesting because when we turned up on selection, that sort of generation of guys, the cadre that we call them DS, the directing staff, who are obviously, you know, paid up members of the regiment, Hereford and Poole, that oversee the selection process. They've all got a wealth

of knowledge and experience and they, I look up to them like gods, still do, all super impressive guys. And they're there to do a job. They're there to select people to get into that. They're the gatekeepers of this regiment and what it's about. They're looking at everything from skill set to character. But it was only a little bit further on, a couple of years actually down the line when I was speaking to one of them as a friend, they're no longer an instructor, now they're friends, the people in the same squadrons or whatever. And they said they were very wary of our generation because they knew that we'd been in the same squadrons or whatever. And they said they were very wary of our generation

because they knew that we'd been in the fucking mixer and they, we'd done stuff that they hadn't done. You know, I think if you got to the, I think if you miss that conventional period, not to discredit anything that they'd have done, but we, we, we never, we weren't kicking in doors in Baghdad in 06, that wasn't our, that wasn't our war, you know, but you're now dealing with a bunch of guys that have got serious decorations, guys that have

done serious operational deployments, that have been in gunfights, that have been blown up, that have dealt with all of that stuff as Marines, paratroopers, infanteers. Like we're not green soldiers. We're, we're, we're, we're not blooded, but we're professional and we're experienced. So although they still have to treat you a certain

way on selection because it's selection, they were very cautious that the guys that they were training were serious dudes and they've done some serious shit and they were respectful for that. They were. They were, they were respectful for it, yeah. What did you mean serious shit and they were respectful for that. They were. They were. They were respectful for it, yeah.

What did you mean when you said they were weary? As in wary, as in like they didn't want to, what often happens on courses is, and I've seen this myself, the people that are in that unit, don't look down on people that aren't in that unit, but it's like, well, we've done this, we've done that. But it wasn't too much of that. If that makes sense, they were like, you can't treat people like shit because these people have fucking done a lot, you know, and they've

been around and it just wouldn't, it wouldn't have been right. So they were, they were cautious that they didn't want to be disrespectful. They've still got to be the way that they are. And the line has to be towed and the standard is the standard, but they were still, you know, aware that you need to treat these guys with

respect because some of them have given a shit to their country. Some of them have been through a hell of a lot of stuff and just because that guy might not fit them old or pass the standard, don't disrespect them to the point where it's like belittling them or undervaluing their previous experiences. I think they navigated it quite well, if I'm honest. I think they did. It's almost... There are not many people on the planet that have experienced war.

And out of the people that have experienced war, there is a small, small fraction of those that have experienced what you just described. even though the experiences is radically different, they could have treated you with a ton of respect or it could have become a jealousy issue. Yeah. An inferior complex. Yeah, There is a little bit. There was, I wouldn't say a little bit of that creeping in, but there were certainly some people that just didn't acknowledge it or didn't want to acknowledge it because that wasn't their situation. That wasn't their war.

Because you had done more. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. That you'd been humble. Well. This is me telling the fucking truth. I think I've done quite a bit.

I've done my part, I think. I don't know how. See, it's a weird one for me, Sean. I know it sounds like it. I still don't feel like I did anything, and I still don't. People will look at my career or you could do a bullet point on my resume and the CV and all the rest of it, but there's still an emptiness to it as in it didn't feel like I actually did anything, if that makes sense. It was like I was there and it all happened,

but it doesn't feel like that. But it's experience. It's experience that carries you to the next level. Absolutely. 100%. Having been in that experience. Nobody's been in that fucking experience. Yeah. I mean, I think it helped me. It gave me confidence. When I checked in, I felt like, and again, this might sound arrogant, but I felt like I could sit at the table with any one of them, depending on, you know, my squadron had just done a hostage rescue. That first four weeks of their deployment, they knocked out a hostage rescue and were

cooking on gas. We're talking about guys that have done multiple, you know, Afghans, Iraq. So you're talking about some serious operators that have done some serious stuff and are highly professional. But I still felt like I could sit at the table with them because ultimately we're all serving. We're all trying to do the right thing. We're all part of our nation's military. And I feel like although I missed

out on the big miss maybe, or I wasn't on that 06 Tour in Baghdad when this or that, or I didn't do the host, but I felt like what I had done was enough in my opinion. I felt like it validated me. And I think that was a good thing and it's a hard line to tread without coming across as a know it all or arrogant. But I did feel like, and I think that was a good thing and it's a hard line to tread without coming across as a know-it-all or arrogant, but I did feel like, and I saw it later on in my career, I definitely did. When we started doing more conventional stuff on the flop, big offensives into places like Sinjar in Iraq and all kinds of places like that, the guys that had done it, you could tell were comfortable operating at reach.

Other people before, it's like being in a small team and in the day and no gun shit, that's not a big deal to me. I'm used to that shit. I walk around in a fucking field and sang in for eight hours with a fucking hundred pounds on my back and a belt-fed machine gun. I'm good. I'm good, right? I've been, I've lived that, you know? So to me, I never really felt like that. And it was interesting to me to watch people that hadn't done that, although they were very

senior now and, you know, in big command positions, you look around and you're like, you're not comfortable with this. You're not, you're not, this is new to you, isn't it? There's no, there's no night vision now, dude. There's no AC 130 up there. There's no, you know, there's no QRF. You know, there's all this stuff. I think it helped me because I was used to not having it. So it was interesting to me when you see those guys that are like very specific skill set,

extremely experienced, very, very professional, really good at what they did, but they hadn't done that. They hadn't done that thing. I know the difference between having mortals fired at me and being mortaled. I know the difference between when rounds are close or when you're under contact. There's a difference. Firefights generally don't last that long in tier one operations

and they're not always, I don't care what I say here, but if you do it right it should be one way for the most part or it should be very short lived. You've got so much to bring to bear and so much skill and talent there that we generally get used to winning. All I'd ever known was losing. All I ever did before we got to the regiment was be on the receiving end of stuff. So I'm comfortable with that. I'm comfortable in that situation and I think that kind of helped me. I think it definitely did. I think it was definitely a good thing. But I do think that that conventional side of life is important. I think it pays out when you do a very, if you do a generalist role, like, you know, crew serve, weapons, I can operate a 50 cal, I can operate a GMG, I can be a JTAC, I can

do this, I can do that. I'm not saying I can do everything, but I'm comfortable doing things that aren't just assault and building at night with night vision on. We didn't have night vision. I'm asking because even, I mean I only had six years in the SEAL team, actually a little less than that. And even as a young guy, before 9-11 happened, there was a, obviously a long stretch in between Vietnam and 9-11 where there was a very few

things, or, you know, there was Columbia, there was Panama, Somalia. There was very few people that participated in that. And so, you know, what happened, and I'll probably get blasted for saying this, but I don't care because it's the fucking truth, is my generation, you know, when I joined the SEAL because it's the fucking truth, is my generation.

When I joined the SEAL teams, I was 18, or went to BUDS, I was 18, I showed up at, I think, 19. And the war had kicked off already, the very beginning of it. And so you got guys that are coming right out of BUDS, going straight to war, and it created this kind of, like I said, inferior complex. And instead of embracing the younger generation that's getting that experience and that's able to pass it on, it demoralized a lot of guys, you know, because they would not acknowledge what you've done. And then it became the one-up game.

And a lot of the good guys left because of that. And the guys that had no experience just kept rising through the ranks, and it has created this fucking rot inside of the SEAL teams. And now you have, and I'm not saying everybody, I'm not saying everybody, but you have, you have brass at the very top who have never done a fucking thing, never been on an operation. They've commanded operations from the talk. They haven't been there.

And then, and then they judge you and then they put you under investigation and they want to know about how the op went down. It's almost, it's almost, it's not almost, it is. They are fucking working against you because they never had those experiences and they feel inferior because they are. Yeah.

No, you're bang on, mate. You make a good point and I think it's something that I've seen before. I said to you before, then I said experiences, it's a luxury. It's not a necessity. But there's definitely an element of command that if they don't have it, they'll lean into it when they need something or when they want an opinion on something, but then they'll sort of shy away from it a little bit and it's almost like you become punished because you've got experience or you're over-experienced or you're over-qualified or these types of

things. It's like everyone's entitled to an opinion, but when it comes to a lot of what we do, experience is useful and it should be tapped into. I do think that you don't see it too much on the non-commission level, but when you've got especially certain elements of the officer type, the officer class, if you will, I think they find that quite difficult, especially in conventional forms, it's not that noticeable, but when you get into higher levels, I'm now putting forward a TAP plan based off experience, based off having done this for over a decade at

this point on my last deployment, or I'm coming up with a course of action in order to effectively execute an operation. And yet the points that you're bringing back to me are nonsense and you're just showing your inexperience there. Now it's fine that you haven't done all the stuff that other guys have done, but I think it would be, you know, very naive sometimes to not tap into that and listen to it. You might outrank me, but you definitely haven't done this as much as I have. And it might pay for you to listen to what we're saying, not just me, but the collective, because what we're saying is experience based.

We're not making this shit up. Like that's important. Like if there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and we're trying to select the right way, then just because you haven't done it or seen it doesn't mean it's not going to work. Does that make sense? I think especially certain types of offers, depending on the personality, they want control of it and it wants to be their idea and it has to be done their way.

That's fine if it's the right way and it's the good option, or if it isn't, then you're going to get challenged on it. But then there's almost this like, well, I'm in charge type mentality and it's quite frustrating. It's quite frustrating. Well, it's detrimental to the country as well. Yeah, it's detrimental to the outlook. You have, for your country and for my country, you have this wealth of knowledge and all this experience and then they become demoralized because of the inferior complex

and they leave. And then when they leave, you lose all of that experience that could be passed on to the next generation. 100%. Which lessens our capabilities, which it's sad. It's frustrating. It's sad. It's frustrating. It's sad. It's a fucking bureaucracy that needs to change. And so anybody that's listening to this from UK government, American government, any, any

government, anybody who wants to have an effective military, you know, you'd need that experience. I mean, I could, I could go on forever. I mean, we've interviewed Captain Brad Geary, who was an amazing human being. Dallas Alexander, you know, the Canadian, the Canadian soft guy that was on the sniper team that took a 2.1 mile fucking shot.

It was the world record shot. And they kicked him out. They kicked him off the fucking team some bullshit world record sniper kill and they just took that experience and Brushed it off. Yep Nobody in the world is taking a shot like I don't want to one One of one and that experience is gone. Yeah, I Felt that I felt that towards the end.

Yeah, there was a few things that happened in my career that I got punished for that I was like, what the fuck are we talking about here? Like, this is bullshit. This is like minor things, right? Like, do you want me to be good at being an operator? Do you want me to be effective on the battlefield? Do you want me to have the ability to change something? Do you want me to provide solutions to problems? Do you want me to go and be effective

and do my job? But if you do, then you have to know that it comes with the whole package. The reason that I'm able to do that is because of these things. So if, for example, I'm slightly digressed, but like, yeah, no shit, I'm fucking drinking too much. No shit, I'm probably spending too much time, you know, doing whatever. Or maybe I'm not, you know, maybe I should have had a bit more respect for somebody or shouldn't have said that. But like, if you want me to be, if you employed me to be this person, you've selected me because

of the character traits that I've got and my ability to be effective on the battlefield. But you can't have it both ways. Like, do you want me to be a camp commando or do you want me to be a commando? Which one do you want? Because they very seldomly link up. The best operators that I know and have worked with and seen, like none of those are those squeaky clean white knight types. And those types of characters very seldomly have the experience to back it.

I don't believe in white knights. I think everybody's got something going on at some point, but those that try and take the moral high ground on staff or, you know, give us a cultural review or this or that, or try and pull like the moral high ground. It's like, we're out there trying to have an impact.

We're out there trying to have an effect on the enemy. That's what the British Army's for. That's what any army is for. It doesn't matter what unit you're at. It's about having an effect against the enemy. And I think it's worse in peacetime. I think in peacetime, the army doesn't know what to do with itself, so it just creates bullshit. It's all this or it's that, or it's trivial stuff. Don't wear those shoes. You've got to wear that. Shave your face. That's how they hide behind the inexperience. A good leader will take that experience from their subordinates. They'll embrace it. They'll utilize it. They'll acknowledge it and then

become a phenomenal leader. But the ego gets in the way. You took the word out of my mouth and it's something that I definitely have learned to come to terms with and something that I was fucking not aware of. Ego management would be my number one thing that I would say to a new guy checking into a squadron. I'd say, you need to manage that shit because it will fucking take you down a path that you don't want to go down. And if you're not even aware of it, I haven't got an ego.

Dude, we've all got egos. We've all got one. Male, female, doesn't make a difference. But if you're not aware of it and you don't keep it in check, then it's going to be a problem. And my ego management was nonexistent for a long time and I wasn't arrogant. I wasn't, I try not to be arrogant. I was very sure of myself, but it gets to a point where you realise that you are capable,

you realise that you do have that experience, you realise that you are quite able to, you're able to do a whole bunch of different skill sets. You get comfortable with it. And at that point there, that's when you really need to keep it in check because it can be quite easy to let that run away with you. And then you can come across as arrogant or overhyped or all these things. And I think ego management is something I've definitely learned the hard way through and I'm still not perfect.

Far from it. I'm just trying to manage it a little bit better these days. Well, I think you're doing a damn good job. I mean, you know, at the beginning of this, you were hesitant to talk about these type of experiences and I'm the one that's pressing you. I'm the one that's pulling it out of you. I know you don't want to talk about this shit, but it's important. Yeah, it is important.

You know, like I said to you before, Sean, like I'm no, people will look at it. I'm no fucking poster boy, dude. I've fucked up so much stuff in my career. I fucked up loads of stuff professionally, emotionally. Um, yeah. What's the biggest fuck up you think you've done? That's a good question. That is a good question.

I think I got carried away in the life and the status of being that guy for a little bit longer than I should have. I think I went through a period of being over the moon to have been in the squadron and the first six months, two years was the best start. I could have got lots of deployments, lots of gunfights, lots of everything and it was all good. And then I think I kind have got lots of deployments, lots of gunfights, lots of everything and it was all good. And then I think I kind of got a little bit comfortable with that and rested on my laurels a little bit. And I think I spent probably between two years to probably about four or five years not being as professional as I could be because I was always at the standard that I needed to be and I wasn't trying to really get that 1% out, really trying to squeeze

it. And it's not to say that I was lazy or complacent because I was far from lazy and complacent, but I was probably a bit more interested in driving a nice car or having a nice watch or a pretty girlfriend, then I probably was about making sure that my fucking CQB was the best it could be or my jumping was the best it could be. My CQB was good enough. My jumping was good enough.

That kind of good enough mentality, I think I had that for too long. And then when I really did ramp it up, it was because I decided not to drink alcohol for a thousand days. I decided one day, that's it. I've had enough. It makes me feel like shit, I don't want to live that life anymore. I need to make some changes. I'm hurting people.

It's having a detrimental effect on my career. I'm making bad decisions. I was a fucking loose cannon for a while in the squadron for sure. And no matter how good you are, how effective you are, you've still got to be in harmony with the group. And I don't think I was necessarily. I think I was, I think I had a mentality of I'm fucking doing it my way because that's the only way I know and I think I should have slowed down a little bit on that. And just, yeah, I mean, I got in fucking, I was reduced in rank once, I had a couple

of three month warnings, like I was a handful and I got to the point and this is not making excuses but I just didn't want to fucking listen to people. Listen to people that I knew to be less experienced or of a different mindset to me. And I should have been more accommodating to that. And I should have had more emotional intelligence to be able to navigate that better. Where it was like, if you didn't agree with my philosophy or my sort of my ethics, I suppose, then it was, you know, it was a kind of a fuck you type mentality. It didn't serve me well.

I don't regret anything I've ever done in the military. I don't. And when I look back retrospectively, yeah, I could have done some stuff differently, but I also know that's part of who I am and why I did it. And if I hadn't have done those things or behaved in certain ways or been reckless maybe, then I wouldn't be the person I am today. And I'm good with the person I am today. We've talked a lot about stuff that's happened in the past, but bottom line is I can look myself in a mirror and I'm far from fucking perfect, dude. If I practiced

what I preached, I'd be perfect, but I don't. I'm human and I'm trying to relearn how to be an actual human being. I'm not an operator anymore. It's a difficult thing to do. So I'm more in touch with that, if that makes sense. I'm more connected to my own process and to my own sort of emotions, if you will. But for a very long time, I was just trying to be that dude, you know, and it didn't really serve me. Did you come to a realization that you needed to change? Yeah.

What triggered that? Um, if you want me to be honest, I put a pistol in my mouth a couple of times and that fucking changed my life. It got to a point after a bunch of deployments, a whole bunch of shit had happened. My grandma, I lost my grandma. Matt got killed, a close family friend got killed in a weird accident. I fucking went to a helicopter crash. I'm fucking blown up.

The whole box just, and I was just at the lowest point I'd ever been and it was almost like the one thing, the one thing that I had that kept me, kept me going had stopped working. The deployments, the combat, all that shit was what kept me alive and I started to become immune to it. And I just didn't fucking feel anything and I didn't look forward to anything. I didn't really see a way out of it, if I'm honest. It just seemed hopeless for a long time. And I fought it, and I fought it, and I fought it.

And then one day I nearly gave up fighting it. And I didn't, thank God. But that sobers you up pretty fucking quickly because that was ready to go. I remember at Clearance Day I was at the end of a range. I'd been punished for some bullshit at work. That doesn't even grant a conversation with you. It doesn't even warrant it. But I'd basically been told that promotion prospects were fucking zero. I was probably looking to get out of the squadron.

I didn't feel valued. I was made to feel like shit basically. And I was fucking heartbroken about it. And I was like, well, if I can't do this, the one thing I dedicated my entire life to, the only thing, the only thing that I really truly loved at that point, it felt like it was all gone. It was all been thrown away. So I nearly fucking did it. I nearly went there on two occasions. Two times you had a pistol in your mouth.

Yeah. Once it was in my mouth and once it was just sat in my lap. Both loaded, made ready, one in the chamber. Both times in the same situation. Once the first time I got a phone call. That was the closest time I think. Which time was that? The first time I got a phone call. That was the closest time I think. Which time was that? The first time.

Was that in the mouth? Uh, yeah. You got a phone call. While you had a gun in your mouth. Yeah. Who was it? Who called you? He was a good friend of mine at the time.

He later went on to betray me. There was a good friend of mine at the time, he later went on to betray me. There was a girl involved. I'd come off the range. I was going back to my house. I was going to drink, like I did, a lot, to feel something. I was like, you know what? I don't want to keep fucking doing this. So I'm sat there, I'm in the car. Closed up the range, signed the book, about to go

and hand the guns in. And I just did it, I just fucking made it ready. Put it down a little bit. Thought about it. Put it in my mouth. Thought about it. I didn't have the fucking balls to do it. I wanted to. I fucking wanted to, you know. And yeah, I got to get the phone call. What time are we shooting tomorrow? You want to come to the range? Cool. I'll see you in the morning. Live the fight another day, right? Stay in the fight. I don't know what would have happened if that phone call hadn't come.

I'd like to sit there and tell you that I would have talked myself down. I don't know if I would have talked myself down. I don't know if I would have or not. Maybe. Yeah, I was dealing with a fucking lot of shit and I was dealing with it really, really badly and I was throwing alcohol at the problem and the one thing that made me feel good about myself was my job and my job was no longer making me feel good about myself. So at that point there, I'm like, what is the point? What is the fucking point in all of this? You know?

You know, it's interesting, you had mentioned earlier that you don't have a strong relationship with God. There's no atheist in a trench, I know that. What do you think there was? I mean the timing. You think there was a coincidence? Of that phone call? No.

I don't think so. What do you think it was? I don't know. I don't know. It's a very difficult one to... This is a conversation I've not even had with myself for a very long time. So if I'm stumbling through you have to apologize. I don't know why that happened that day the way it did, but it did. I don't believe in coincidences. And the more I look at it the more there must have been, so there has to be, you know.

And the more I look at it the more there must have been so there has to be you know Things happen for a reason don't know you don't always understand it or even acknowledge it or recognize it sometimes The timing of that is a miracle it's a fucking nothing short of a miracle, mate. That came from up there. Came from somewhere, brother. It brought you here today. I would not be fucking sat here if that phone didn't ring. That's a fucking fact.

You know, and what you're about to get into, you know, after we get through your SAS career. It brought you to this point. You're the one that's supposed to fucking do this. You're the one that has the courage to have the voice to stand up for all of your teammates, all the people that passed, everything that's going on, all the investigations. Brought you here? It feels like it's for something. It really does.

And who knows what else is to come? Yeah, who knows, brother? I said before, it feels like for the first time in a long time, there is no black cloud on the horizon and I feel truly free. I'm a little hurt as they say, but I'm a lot more free than I was. And I think sometimes you have to fight through. And I think to myself how lucky and how fortunate I am to have good people around me, people that help me. And if I can in some small insignificant way help somebody else or do something that has a positive effect on our community or an

individual then that's worth staying in the fight for. That's worth going up, that's a hill I will die on you know. What was the gentleman's name that called you? Ben. Does he know? No. No, he doesn't. He does now?

Now he does, yeah. Do you think you'll have a conversation with him? No. Never. No. Never. No. No, I don't think I will. I probably should, but... Ego management, right? That's what he's fucking talked about, isn't it?

He fucking hurt me, dude He also saved you. Yeah he did. Indirectly. Indirectly for sure yeah. It's funny isn't it how things go like that. Yeah we were fucking super tight at the time man I was like fucking hell. Yeah that was just us you know. I feel like, fuck no. That was just a... I feel like I was one thing away from fucking breaking at all times. I felt like that for a long period of time and then when they took, it felt like they took it away from me. They took the one thing that fucking gave me purpose and I felt lonely and I felt fucking scared and I didn't know what to do and I just didn't want to fucking be there anymore. I didn't want to be there.

You know, I don't know what happened between you and Ben and I don't want to go into it, but I can tell you one thing that I've learned in life you want to be free you have to learn forgiveness because it probably affects you a lot more than it affects him and when you let that shit go it's gone. I need to work on that. That's something that I'm, you know, I don't know what it is. I've got a very unique capability to be able to shock people out of my life that have been close to me in a fucking heartbeat. We all have that. Yeah.

Oh, I'm world class at it. I'm a pro have that. Yeah. Oh, I'm world class at it. I'm a pro at that. I look back at relationships and friendships and people. I don't know whether it's because I moved around quite a bit. I did move around quite a lot. I don't know whether it's because, fuck, is it because I'm an only child? Is it because I fucking went to a whole bunch of different schools, but my ability to detach emotionally from something, regardless of whether it's after five minutes, five years

or whatever, I can do that very, very quickly and capable and it's a fucking toxic trick that I've got and I hate it about myself because I can do it. And it's running away. It's fucking being a coward is what it is. I won't deal with it. I'll just fucking block it, deal with it later, move on. And it's fucking hurt. It hurts people. And I fucking don't like that about myself. It's necessary to be able to do that.

I learned to fucking do that really well because that was the only thing that I could do to cope. I don't have time to deal with that. It's like when John got here it goes back to that doesn't it? I came back into the patrol base, I washed the blood out of the quad and I went and sat on that sanger over watching the exact position that it happened. And I remember feeling that I can't, I can't fucking, I can't stop. And I remember looking and watching. It's a very fucking dark thing when you can see a pack of wild fucking dogs up there and you know what they're doing and you know why they're fucking there and you see people up there, you know, picking stuff up. Like that's within fucking minutes of this happening.

Certainly within an hour. Like that was my reality. There ain't no fucking time for this. You ain't got hour. That was my reality. There ain't no fucking time for this. You ain't got time to sit there and cry. You ain't got to sit there and fucking mourn. I don't give a fuck about people's feelings sometimes because that was a coping mechanism. Emotion was not a fucking good thing. I'm quite an emotional person

But I'm either one or the other it's like no emotion completely indifferent or I'm all in You know, mm-hmm, and I fucking hate that about myself. I do But at the same time it's been a fucking necessary tool, you know, right? We're going out on patrol tomorrow. That's what we're doing. And that's fine until you're not going out on patrol anymore. And now you've got to fucking deal with it. And again, I'm just trying to improve, man. That's all I'm trying to do. And I'm trying

to be a fucking better person. I'm trying to learn how to be a human being. I've not been a fucking human being for the best part of 20 years. I've been a fucking warrior. That's what I've been doing. But that's not an excuse. That's not an excuse to be a shitty dad. That's not an excuse to be a shitty boyfriend. It's not good enough. It's not good enough.

I've got high standards, but when it comes to emotional stuff or boyfriend. It's not good enough. It's not good enough. I've got high standards, but when it comes to emotional stuff or empathy or people's feelings, I need to be better. I know that. I recognise it, but it's fucking not easy, dude. It's a hard, hard thing to do. But you are right. Forgiveness is fucking important. I don't pay it too much mind, if I'm honest. I'm kind of dealt with it Mentally, I think I've gotten over and got past it I

Hope you call them Or text them or write them or email them then mean you had to be buddies with them But then you could put it behind you, truly put it behind you. It serves as a reminder to me. You're right, I should. Maybe. I will. I can't promise what I'll do, but what I can do for you is I promise that I'll think about that.

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Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And if you go to ziprecruiter.com slash srs right now, you can try it for free. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Sign up for the four-day free trial to begin your paid subscription. For restrictions, terms, and conditions go to ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. So let's talk about checking into the unit. Yeah. So, two weeks after, I finished to get my beret, go to America, I start jumping. Everything's good. I check into the squadron. I turn up, arrive in the middle of the night, squadron's out.

They're on a job. So I go. The storeman picks me up there's four of us four of us checked into my squadron for my course all in different troops I got air troop which I fucking didn't really want initially I'll be honest with you because I fucking had a horrific time on my basic jumps course and I was like I don't really want to start getting into this like fucking freefall stuff and all the rest of it but they were like you're going to start getting into this like fucking freefall stuff and all the rest of it but they were like you're going on a trip so I was like cool I fucking

guess I better go freefall you know. But I checked in, went into the building we were in Kandahar at the time and I was fucking blown away from day one. I was in love with that job, that place, that fucking it felt like I'd landed. It felt like finally that I was where I needed to be, you know? The guys came back in the next day and it's a weird fucking sensation because I want to say nobody spoke to you because you're the new guy or nobody did that, but that's not the case. Everyone was so fucking good to me. Like, and they were like that because they knew that they had to be. We were going on operations regularly. We were out most nights. Day VIs, night VIs, detention operations, raid, you name it. We were going in all directions and new guys were on everything. So I had a lot of time

to gain respect and gain trust and that's exactly what I tried to do. What was most impressive actually was how slick that whole operation was. Everybody knew what was going on, but nobody was asking any questions, if that makes sense. Everyone just knew. But I was always made to feel welcome. It was like, you know that old saying, there's no such thing as a stupid question. It genuinely did feel like that. And I just had so many people to look around and learn from.

It was just an incredibly intense experience and I think you gain trust quite quickly in an operational environment. Once people knew that I was a professional and I was there for the right reasons, people like you, you know, you start to feel part of it and once I felt part of it and felt loved and felt part of the team, which happened pretty quickly, I felt head over heels in love with the whole thing. I didn't want to do anything for the rest of my life. There was a long period of my time, if you could have just left me in that compound in

Kandahar just hitting targets every night, going to the gym, I would have done that for the rest of my life. I was actually happy. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be. There was nowhere else that I needed to go and chase. I was exactly doing what I was supposed to be doing and I'm surrounded by people that all felt and did exactly the same thing as me. One of the first guys that I met the morning after the night that I arrived, we had a bunch of welcoming briefs basically.

Chris Craighead sat me down, he was running the partner force at the time and he told me everything about the partner force, how it works, what his job was, where I would fit in, you know, do's and don'ts, things that make them work well, things that don't make them work well, things that don't make them work well. It was just so impressive to me. All of the team leaders were fucking rock stars to me. I looked up at those guys, I still do for the most part. For most of them, they were gods. I was just like, wow, there are levels to this stuff. I'd come from a fairly high level of soldiering, but when I got to this position and these guys, I was like, okay, there are levels here that I didn't even know fucking existed.

And it was just a pleasure to be around. It was a happy time in my life. Come back from that first deployment, we'd done a whole bunch of cool shit. Loads of VIs, fucking loads of gunfights. It was good. It was so, so impressive to see the level of professionalism and efficiency being executed by so many people, not just the guys on the ground, but the special forces support group, the Marines and paras on the cordon, the helicopter pilots, the targeteers, the signalers, fuck dude, even the cooks, even the chefs, man, the whole thing was just well oiled.

And it was a strange feeling because you're now sat in a one man air conditioned room with wifi, hot showers, three square meals a day, good gym, secure location, no sentry, very little ID risk. Like I was like, fuck for that. This is exactly what I wanted. It was everything that I thought it would be and more. And I just wanted to be good. I just wanted to be as best as I could. And I think I did that for a little while and then I got comfortable after a couple of years and then I kind of didn't stop trying. I just

stopped trying so hard. I just let it roll then. Do you think the fact that there's nowhere else to go, there's no level up, you're at the pinnacle, correct? That's the problem. That was a problem that I suffered with because it was like, well, what the fuck else do I do now? I'm 24 years old, I've fucking got my dream job. It's not a job, it's a fucking way of life. And I kind of, not took my foot off the gas a little bit, but I kind of enjoyed it a little

bit too much and I did, you know. I was drinking too much, going out, fucking, you know, chasing girls and trying to be that fucking dude, man. And it just didn't really, I thought I had it. I thought I had everything that I could ever want. I'm 25 years old, 24 years old, whatever, driving around in a fancy BMW, got multiple Rolexes, I look in good shape. But all that shit and all that stuff that I thought would make me happy didn't make me happy. It didn't. It was poison. It was fucking toxic. And it took me a long time to fucking realise that. A long time.

So if I was to look back on that career, I would just say, just have a bit more. I should have been more humble with it, I think. A bit more humility and a bit more intelligence when it comes to And a bit more intelligence when it comes to diet. And I don't mean fucking carbs and fats. I mean everything that you consume is diet. The music that you listen to, the people that you hang around with, the decisions you make, the drinks you have, the drinks you don't have, the clubs you go to, the ones you don't, the time you go to the range, the time you don't. My diet wasn't good. On the outside it looked like I had

it all. On the inside I was fucking just hollow. And it was just about deployments. For a long time it was just about how many fucking bombs can I drop? How many fucking bad guys can I get? How many fucking jumps can I do? How quick can I put a charge on a door? Like, that was it. That was, you know, that was the only thing that I fucking valued. That was the only thing that mattered. And that's all good and well, but it does wear off. And when it does, you need to have something else. You know, I don't like the person I was back then. I don't. I feel like I was a fucking good soldier, a good operator, but I was a fucking shitty

dad. I wasn't there, not always because there were times where I was too preoccupied in my own existence than I was and I should have done more. I missed out on a lot of those years I think by being too consumed in my own fucking hype man. That's what it was. I was too fucking too consumed in it and I drink in the Kool-Aid too much you know. And I don't know if that's just part of growing up or what it is. And I see it now. I see it in the young guys, not young guys, but the guys that have come through. They do the first two years where they're panicking that they're not at the standard, then they get comfortable, and then they take the foot off the gas, and all of a sudden it becomes more about all the

other bullshit than it does about being a fucking good dude and a good soldier. It's a weird one. I think it's because, I mean, people that are as driven as you are, or anybody that operates at that level, I mean, where does the drive go? Where does the drive go when there's no next step? Yeah. There's nothing left to work for. All you can do is, and I'm not saying this lightly when I say all you can do, but and I'm not saying this lightly when I say all you can do, but is

work on perfecting your craft more. And so, you know, when you reach the pinnacle of whatever you're doing, I think there's an aspect to everybody that becomes boring. And then you have to reinvent because the drive never goes away. It doesn't. I think for me it was... It becomes confusing. Confusing is exactly what I was about to say. It's very difficult to see the wood from the

trees. I didn't see it. Now when I look back retrospectively, it's easy to go, fucking hell. Of course, if your diet was shit, if your input is shit, the output is going to be shit, right? But when you're in it, it's very difficult and I was very confused about what priorities were. It was like a boom or bust period of my life. Everything was disposable. Life was disposable. Relationships were disposable. I was living to go on deployments. I was coming back from deployment just to get ready to work up on the next cycle to go again. When that stopped working and it stopped making me feel good about myself, it's like you become dependent on this drug, this fucking thing, this chemical reaction that you get to doing that job.

When that wears off, you channel it in other ways. You channel it in other ways. I used to drink a lot to feel something, not to drown out the pain or to numb myself or any of that. It was just to feel something. I'd just become indifferent. It was like nothing really fucking mad and it was depressing man. It was fucking dark and I didn't really care what people thought. If I didn't

like someone's opinion I'd tell them. You know I wasn't a fucking decent person for a long time and I wasn't I wasn't that bad but I was pretty fucking far from being the person that I want to be at that point. I think that's sort of middle period of my life or my military career. I was an exceptional soldier but I was a fucking shitty dude I think. I might be being a bit harsh on myself but I definitely do things a little bit differently. So when you asked me what my biggest fuck up was, it was not managing my ego and not channeling my drive and taking things for granted and not prioritising the right things. I think that was what I did.

Sounds like you've found it now. I'm trying. I'm trying, Sean. I'm fucking trying real hard, mate, to, to, to, to be better and I get dragged back there sometimes. Well, just talking to you before the interview, I mean, it sounds like you're really trying to figure out how to be a better father for your daughter.

I'm trying. That's, that's all there is left to do now. There's, there's no selection courses. There's no selection courses. There's no more operations. There's no more. It's gone. It's not there. And I'm just trying to build and be better. And it's fucking hard. Like it's the one thing I don't know how to do. And I'm trying to navigate it the best I can. And it's fucking hard. And it makes it even harder when I'm trying to shield her from all this fucking bullshit in the newspapers and all these types of things. These people that don't care about me, don't care about my family and I'm trying to rebuild

that and I want her to see stuff like this. One of the reasons that I do this or I put stuff on my Instagram account is because I want her to know who I am and I want her to see all of it and I want her to know exactly what it is that I've been doing and why I've been doing it. And she hopefully, when she grows up as a young woman, will see that and she'll go, I'm not perfect but I fucking love her to death.

And I hope she sees that, I think she will. I hope she will, I pray. That's all I need to do now is just that. That's the only thing left to achieve. Is there anything you would say to her right now? I love her. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the fucking birthdays and Christmas here.

And I'm proud. I'm so fucking proud of her, man. She's gorgeous, smart, a fucking athlete, you know? And I just look at her and I just think, that's why I didn't press that trigger That's why I did it And I'm ashamed myself for almost being that fucking selfish because I was selfish for a long time and It fucking breaks my heart it does But I'm still in the fight and I'm not fucking stopping. Okay? I'm going to try and keep going and improve. And be better. I'm going to fuck it up again. I know I am at some point. It's natural. I'm not perfect.

I just want to be better. You know? So I'd say that. I'm sorry and I'm proud. You're off to a damn good start. Let's talk about your first operation, kinetic operation in SAS in Afghanistan. I remember it very clearly. We was, I was in salt three, different salt teams, but my job was basically to run out if there there were any, we call them squirters, but essentially that's people, for people that don't know, that's people that run away when the helicopters land, move to fighting positions or try and escape capture or whatever it might be.

So we were runner control, call it runner control, squirter control, whatever you want to call it. I remember getting out of the back of the CH-47 and running towards target. When those birds landed, we were on the X. And for those that don't understand what on the X means, it means we were landing on the target and running straight to where our assault positions were and we were locking down the compound and whatever the enemy decided to do then, we were going to have our say. But I remember getting off in the first, I wasn't even out of the brownout and I can

hear suppressed rounds being fired. And this was in seconds of me being boots on the ground for the first time. I walk out of the brown out, still a bit more of a gunfight going on just up above from where my position was, probably about 50 metres in front of me. And I fan out like we do in the jungle, there's a very specific drill that you do in the jungle. And that's what I'm going back on my jungle training. And the guy behind me just like basically grabbed me and just like, stay in the line. And I was like, oh, okay, cool.

Don't fan out. Basically, I was like, oh, things are slightly different here. I moved to my position, a step over a dude. He's got a long barrel weapon system face down. He'd been brassed up. There was another gunfight going on in another compound around the corner and I basically just went to the position I was supposed to be in and waited for the fucking direction basically. There were no

runners, that guy didn't get the chance to run, he was trying to fight, he'd fired some rounds, I didn't hear that as I landed because of the fucking brownout and the rotor wash, but he'd engaged the task force on infill as they were coming out and as he went down the lead guy just dropped him in place. And that was the first real time, and I don't mind saying this, that was the first real time I was like up close to a dude. This is not Afghanistan 2010 where they're ghosts and you don't often get to see them. I mean I'd seen plenty of dead bodies before but not guys guys that are armed and ready to fight there and then, you know what I mean? That was the proximity of what it was was completely new to me in that, you know, I'd been in a lot of gunfights till then and you know I'd made a lot of engagements, I say a lot, half a dozen or so live engagements

with people that I know for a fact I've hit, but it was all at range. Whereas this was fucking super close. I was like, that's kind of what I was looking for. I was like, yeah, we've landed. This is exactly where I'm supposed to be. And again, everyone's just so calm about it. Everyone's just like, yeah, he shot us, we shot him back. That's just the way it does business.

And I know that sounds super basic. Of course, that's what you're there to do. But when you see it for the first time, you're like, ah, fuck, this is fucking, this is cool. This is cool. This is why I went through this whole process to get to this situation, to get that seat on that helicopter. And then you're into like SSE and I don't really want to do it. And I'm like, it was a strange one because I was like we're doing SSC so SSC for those that don't know is basically making sure that we

get all of the right information you know whether it's in documents, hard drives, USBs, anything that we can take off target that will then feed into the targeting cycle so it's a super important job and it's down to the new guys basically because it's hard work important job and it's down to the new guys basically because it's hard work. I look around and helmets off, dudes have got helmets off, assault weapons, rifles are just leant against the wall, dudes are smoking, talking, all the new guys are running around like crazy trying to bag everything up and all the rest of it. And I'm like, how have

we gone from being super hyper professional to being standing around smoking with the helmets off? I was like, do you understand what I'm saying? It was a bit of a strange experience, but that was just what feeling out the squadron was like. And then you get used to like, I'm trying to pull century and pull garden. I'm like, you don't need to do that. Is that why?

Is that gunships up there? And I'm like, oh, oh, okay. Do you understand? So it was a bit of a shift in that way. But yeah, that was the first, within literally within seconds of stepping off the bird, shots were fired, enemy engaged, gummed up. I was like, yeah, it was exactly what it's supposed to be. And it just carried on.

It just carried on like that. Do you remember the first time that you killed Sibylde for close range? Yeah, I do. Yeah. It was on a nighttime carried on like that. Do you remember the first time that you killed somebody for close range? Yeah, I do, yeah. It was on a night time vehicle interdiction. We were hitting the Narco, so basically they were taking heroin, opium and all kinds of other shit from Helmand province down to the border in Pakistan and then they were swapping it for guns and then bringing those guns back up to use against the British army. So we were just smashing those as best we could. We were doing them day and night.

It was a dog actually that fucking saved me on this occasion. We got off, so there's multiple birds but the bird that I was on was in charge of again runner control basically so we had to stop a bird and then a bird that would essentially, anyone that ran we would then vector towards that and then the 47s at the back would be the sort of assault force that would essentially anyone that ran we would then vector towards that. And then the 47s at the back would be the sort of assault force that would then go up and clear the vehicle. So I was like on, you know, what's the word, reserve basically. But these guys had run out, they were gummed up and they'd gone off into the desert. Bird goes down, it was on the 60s, so the Blackhawks, American cruise.

And I get off, my team leader's just like that and I'm like, cool. So you see this sparkle, so it's like this IR pulse in the desert, which the drones have captured this guy running and maneuvering away. So they're vectoring me towards this location, but it's not specific to the point where it's like I know exactly where this dude is. It's a general area and it was all sort of shrubs and bushes and I'm just sort of closing down. I've got a couple of guys behind me, the dog handler's there and it's a bush about sort of this high.

And I'm coming around and I'm starting to clear it, I'm starting to clear it and all of a sudden the dog comes from my position over to the right and goes right across my front and hits the bush on the left and he fucking locks on to this dude and I could see him straight away. He's got the gun in one hand and he's got a fucking dog on the other arm and I just swing round. And it's almost as if we had that, it was like, I'm not going to say it was super professional. I was like, holy fuck. Like I nearly just got lit up there. I need to slow down. It was more shock and panic than it was anything else, but we're pretty much as close as we are now. I don't remember a sight picture, I don't

remember anything. I just put a late-bred laser on his chest and dumped four, five, six rounds into it and that was it. I'm just like, fucking hell. Thank God for that dog. You know? Mm-hmm. Anything, those were dicey. Those VIs were dicey, especially when you're closing down with people in those situations. Because they've got the drop on you for the most part. Obviously we've got night vision,

and all the dogs and all the tools to get it, but it only takes one burst, you know? But that is close, that is proximity. Like, you can see the dude, like from me to you. And it was like, yeah, over and done with. No one bats an eyelid, no one's like, well done or you're right. It's just like, yeah, one time's EKIA. Weapons found, search him, take a picture, DNA, gone.

That's it, on to the next operation. Yeah, surreal. But I'm not going to say it didn't feel good. I was indifferent to it. There was no emotional attachment to it whatsoever. It was like, that's exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. It wasn't like, I didn't feel good about it. I didn't feel bad about it. I didn't feel anything about it really, if I'm honest with you. It was like, well, if you're going to smuggle drugs and kill British soldiers and then you're going to run around the desert with a gun in your hand, then

what the fuck do you expect? You bought a ticket, you voted. That's the outcome. But it was... You could feel a sense of accomplishment. Yeah, 100%. I felt like I was proud of myself because I did what I was supposed to do. And it wasn't an ego thing. It wasn't like, yeah, I've done this, I've done that. It was just like, oh good, I reacted the way that I'm supposed to react and I didn't hesitate and I did exactly what was supposed to happen. And the end result was right. This guy would have fucking killed me if I had given him the chance. I learned some lessons to it, slowed the fuck down, like be careful, be a bit more cautious.

I did feel bulletproof for a long time. I did have that sense of, I've done two tours of Sangen, like that carried me on for a long time. I was like, I can't die. I'm bombproof. I'm literally bombproof. I've been blown up a bunch of times, shot a bunch of times. I thought I was fucking indestructible. And that was a little bit of an early warning there just to be like, Jay, just fucking chill out a little bit. Hold your horses because it only takes one round, right?

And they don't have to be surgical. The application of violence that we do in those squadrons is surgical application and it's extremely detailed in terms of the level of proficiency and the application of it. It's hyper professional. Whereas these guys don't need to be like that. They're just one round, two round here, there and you don't... I've learned that lesson before the hard way. It doesn't matter if you're the best operator in the world. It doesn't matter if you're the best Royal Marine in the world. If you

step on something or you move two inches to the left or two inches to the right, you don't get the chance to be good. You're just going to get hurt. So that was a gentle reminder to myself that you're not indestructible and always fucking clear your corner, right? So yeah, it was a strange one, but it's real. I'm grateful for the dog. I'm grateful for the dog, Andalus. But yeah, I learned a lot of lessons on that. But yeah, I don't feel any empathy for it, no. What were you guys doing in North Africa? So I was on a small team, a six-man team.

We were operating at Richmond. People talk about our med timelines. There was like 24 hours. There was nobody else there. But I flew into the airport on a British Airways flight. And we were gathering information. We were working out which militias that we could potentially look to use partner forces for for further operations down the line. We were trying to find and recover potential chemical weapons that had been left after

the fall of the regime. We were on a fact-finding mission essentially. It was a low-vis operation, no camouflage. Everything that we needed was already there. They'd taken it out there. So you didn't fly into country with guns. You didn't fly in with Nod's. It was already there. They'd taken it out there. So you didn't fly into country with guns. You didn't fly in with nods. It was all there.

And when I flew in, it was on a British Airways flight and it was all good for about 10 days. And then the country imploded. Two militias, one from the East, one from the West, that just basically went to war with each other and everyone fled the country. What year is this? 2014. Yeah, 2014. I think if I'm right, we are probably, if not the only team that's ever had to deny

a safe house in time, in in situ, like real time. We got rolled up by pure luck, bad luck depending on how you look at it. Basically, our compound was situated in the middle of a long road, about a kilometer in length. And on one side of the road, you had one militia. On the other side of the road, you had another militia and they were just going at it, but they were going at it with everything

from Grad rockets to ZSU-234s I've never seen weapons like that, you know, that was that was all out scrapping and we just happened By pure bad luck to have a safe house in the middle of that location. It wasn't targeted at us It wasn't something that they knew about But half the team are in, you know, the other side of the country doing a meeting three hours away And I'm in the safe house with one other side of the country doing a meeting three hours away. And I'm in the safe house with one other guy, one other operator, a signaller, a pool boy called Ali, who's a local national, and another sort of expat guy who was probably late 60s,

early 70s that we used to employ to like paint stuff and odd jobs basically. He was a Brit. So we've got this mix match of people inside of this house when all this is going off. And it started off quite gentle, just a bit of gunfire here and there. It wasn't normal but it wasn't anything to be worried about. But then throughout the day it just ramped up and up and up and the guys were racing back as far as they can, as fast as they can to come and help us out basically. It's a fucking funny story like we're dressed as diplomats. Now these safe houses, you know what they're like, they're supposed to be low low viz but after each team comes in they're like oh we need this now we need that and now we need this. So basically before you know it you've got a room full of machine guns and suppressors,

you've got Dems charges, you've got maps, you've got fucking secret equipment, you know there's a whole bunch of shit in there that we cannot afford to let be stolen or give to the enemy you know. So it wasn't that low-viz at this point and I'll never forget this. There was like an armored personnel carrier that was like sat, there was an outer gate and an inner gate. And it was sat at the outer gate. And we made the phone call back to HQ in Hereford. And we were like, this is on top.

There were rounds hitting the building at this point. It's like, what do you want us to do? And they're like, well, don't do the destruction plan yet. Just wait out and see if it goes away. And we were like, thanks, that's great advice. Give me an asset. And they were like, oh, we haven't got any assets. So it's like, you just ride it out, the team's on the way back.

And then they're like, are the rounds in and around your position? And I'm like that holding up the phone like, yeah, you can hear them smashing the side of our building. Said that, well, okay, cool. Speak with the guy who's the team leader and on your call, if you need to do the destruction plan, do the destruction plan. The destruction plan was a fucking chisel, a metal tin with some fuel and a lighter. That was it.

Completely, we learned so many lessons there. We got it completely wrong. But there was a whole bunch of equipment there, secret equipment, secret terminals, computers, never mind all the fucking machine guns. I'm trying to be, we're trying to pretend we're diplomats, Sean, right? So I've got a fucking double-breasted jacket on, do you know what I mean? And a shirt and I'm pretending I'm a diplomat. I'm covered in tattoos and there's a room full of machine guns.

Like, you make that make sense. It's not a good look, is it? And we don't want them people coming into the house to find that because they're going to think we're up to no good. So they breach the outer wall and now it's like, okay, cool. We need to start this destruction because there's one more gate basically. And if they get into that gate, they're into our compound. Worst case, they'll kill you.

Then it's like a sliding scale back up. The best case is they'll steal everything in the house. They'll fucking probably capture you and hopefully give you a cross to some sort of friendly unit. Maybe they'll fucking hurt you a bit. Maybe they won't. Or they'll sell you to some extremist group. You don't even know who these dudes are.

They're all high, they're all fucking full of adrenaline. They've got a bunch of dudes that are clearly military with a bunch of military equipment in a house. Yeah, it was a very dicey situation. There was the teams driving back as quickly as they can. And then we were like, we've got to do the destruction plan. So it's funny, you've got like the pool boy, Ali the pool boy with a chisel, doesn't speak a word of

English, smashing up like top secret hard drives and all this sort of stuff. And we're trying to like work out what's got a serial number on it. What can we leave? What can't we leave? The guy next to me, he's like on the loudspeaker now. He's broken, speaks broken Arabic. He's like, we're diplomats this, we're diplomats that. These guys are outside like that. And it really hit home. We had like a ring doorbell, you know, like the camera. And this guy turns up and if you were to draw like a radical Islamist terrorist,

you'd draw this guy like British DPM trousers, chest rig, AK-47, big beard and a football shirt, like a red and white football shirt. And he's ringing the doorbell because our compound looks different from everyone else's compound. It's got high walls, it's got security on it, it's got barbed wire on it. He's now ringing the doorbell, ringing the doorbell. And you just see him look up and he sees the camera and he just shoots the camera. But it was about as close as that front door is over there. Not only did the camera go black, I could hear the weapon report and I'm like, we're in a fucking serious situation here because if these guys come through that gate, we're going to have to, we've got a couple of options. One of them is you fight to the

death, which is my preferred course of action. I had a machine gun by the door and I was like, I'll fucking, I'll barricade myself here if I have to. Rather than get captured I'd made that decision. In my head I was like, no, I'm not fucking letting these dudes take me, no fucking way. I'll die on my sword. They're not going to expect the level of violence that I'm going to give them when they come through that door. They just won't expect it. And I might get away with it for a while and hopefully somebody will come and help me, but I was fully prepared to go the whole way there. I resigned myself to that was going to happen.

Another course of action we contemplated was breaching a hole out of the back door basically and running across some open ground which again was not a great option. Not a great option. Luckily for us they kind of gave up on trying to get in that compound right then, but they got into the other compounds that had less fortification. So now we've got three houses, we're the middle one. Houses either side have now got guys on the roof. I remember looking out the window and there's a dude with a dragon off up there. And I'm like, that's not good because at some point the guys that he's shooting at are going to realise he's on that roof and they're going to start smashing all these buildings. So I was like, fuck me, this

is not ideal. Meanwhile, the guys are driving back as fast as they can, trying to navigate through all the checkpoints and all the rest of it. But how they do it is they've just got lines basically. The first line will come up, they'll expend all their ammunition, then the next line will come up and they just do that all day. And then they build the berm and then they get behind the berm, so on and so forth. So this is not going away. This is a very, very, this is the first time I felt helpless. I genuinely felt like there's no one coming to get you now. This is it. If they come through that door, you're going to fight or you're going to die. So it was dicey and yeah, we're carrying on with the destruction plan. Then on the J-Tac

it's on that we're going to throw you an asset, Africom, they're going to send you an asset. And I'm like, thank God for that, something, you know? And they sent me a P3 Orion. Do you know what a P3 Orion is? A dog. It's like a surveillance bird, but it's not armed, Sean. So I'm like, fucking yeah, cool. Check this fucking dude in. At least I've got some hell fires or something, or do a show of force. And it's like, yeah, we have to stay at this altitude and we've got no munitions. I'm like, fuck, no good to man the beast and meet that. I want jets, not coming.

So anyway, long story short, the guys finally make it back through the turps. The fixers basically negotiate through the militias. The militias then give us a guide. They take the guys all the way to the front door and they pull in through the gate basically. They've spoken to the guys that are outside. They were fairly friendly. They were a little bit pissed off. They had to stop their gunfight to get us brits out of the situation. But they sort of come in through the gate and the team leader's like, we've got two minutes. So we have to fucking empty that house in two minutes. Anything with a serial number on it. Dems, charges, fucking rockets, fucking belt-fed

weapons, rifles, NVGs, suppressors, comms kit. It's a lot. This is a fucking established safe house. So we're just fucking throwing everything in the back of these Land Cruisers and then the fucking, the old guy, he's like fucking having a heart attack almost. He's not in a good way. He's panicking. Ali the pool boy's running around with a chisel still, you know, the signal is losing his mind because he's the one that signed for all this equipment. So we're all bundling it in and just as we're about to go the two-eyed city guy called George comes running back, we had this Alsatian, he bought this Alsatian from somewhere and had a bad leg, his name is Ricks.

So he comes back and now we've got this fucking stupid dog in his hand, he's throwing the dog in the car and it was just such a weird, surreal moment, but it was like, that was my first taste of like low-vis operations. And they're not really my thing, if I'm honest, Sean. It wasn't really something that I was excited about. If I couldn't put a plate carrier on and run around at night, you know, assaulting buildings, I wasn't really interested in it. But it was definitely a good education for me. We conducted a NEO, which is like the evacuation of entitled personnel. So we had to do all of that.

Interesting story on that one. Completely not our fault and random, but we, one of the people that we brought off and put onto a British warship that had docked up, HMS Enterprise it was called, he ended up being the bomber of the Manchester Arena. No shit. Yeah. He was the guy. This was probably a few years before, but we fucking got him out.

I don't feel bad about it because I can't. If I let my fucking head go down there it'll fucking... It's just mental isn't it that like, he escaped that country because he had an entitlement to do so. We put him on a fucking British warship, sailed him back to the UK and then a few years later he fucking clacked himself off and killed a bunch of kids at a fucking Ariana Grande concert. That's the mentality of these fucking people you know.

But yeah, it was a really, really interesting deployment. A lot of good lessons I learned from it. I know exactly where this was at. Yeah. There was US personnel there as well, right? Yep, there was. They left, in fact, we secured the- This is when the CIA evacuated.

Yeah, yeah. Two friends that led that evacuation. Yeah, so yeah, it was exactly around that same timeframe. We actually secured the embassy, the US embassy. When they decided that the country's imploded, they withdrew from the embassy basically. And the US Marine Corps led that and they took everyone out and they basically said, if you're the only remaining team in country, we were the only guys. It was like everybody had fucking gone at this point. Are you serious? Yeah. And they said to us, can you secure the embassy for us? country. We were the only guys that was like, everybody had fucking gone at this point. Are you serious?

Yeah. And they said to us, can you secure the embassy for us? And we were like, fucking hell, there's like five guys and a dog. Do you know what I mean? What do you want us to do? And they were like, you know, just go down there and speak to them through the fixes.

Cause there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but thousands of people were like outside the embassy. As soon as the dudes had left, as soon as the staff had been evacuated, they were like this big building, there was ISO containers or connexes, connexes full of equipment, like everything from black or, not good equipment, but everything from black or knee pads to fucking head torches

or flashlights to medical kit, like shitty plate carriers. But like there was a lot of kit there and they didn't want to just get in fucking, what's the word, looted basically. So our team leader went down there and, you know, they were about to jump over the fence, basically, and he was like, who's in charge? And he spoke to this guy, he was quite pissed off at being, you know, who's this fucking, you know, westerner turning up in a blazer and a fucking pair of deck shoes, telling me not to raid this embassy and, you know, fair play to him.

He navigated the situation quite well. He was like, we're watching. If anyone crosses this thing, we're going to kill you all. It worked for a period of time. The guys actually did go in there. I've got a US ambassador to the city. I've got a coin that he left in his desk that one of the lads gave me, which is pretty cool. It was a super interesting time. It was the country imploded. Shit. Yeah.

I talk about it because it's different from a kinetic operation, but as far as low-vis operations go, that one was probably the most kinetic one for a while. And like I said before, it's the first time I think we've ever, or first time in a long time that we've actively had to fucking deny a safe house, like under fire in, in fucking quick order. Um, but I did, I learned a lot about, you know, moving around in those sorts of situations. You know, I was always had a, always had a pistol on me, always, you know, covert carry, all of

that type of stuff. We're under the guise of diplomats with diplomatic plates. We're not doing traditional operations, you know. But I got back from that deployment. Well, hold on. How the fuck did you get out of there? Me personally, or that house. You personally, how did you get out of that country?

I flew out about four months later when they opened up the airport in the city. I flew out on an African. You were there for four months while that shit was going on? Yeah, four months. Five people and a dog dog five people and a fucking lame dog. Yeah It's cool It was cool. Oh, yeah I flew out by Malta. So I thought on a They opened up the commercial airline fuck dude. That was probably the most diciest thing I've ever done, an Afrikea flight from the city to Malta landed. We'd actually recovered a hostage,

so there was a guy that had been captured, David Boland was his name, by militants. He was like an expat teacher. They told him to leave a bunch of times and eventually somebody captured him and was holding him ransom. They figured out that situation. Through a third party, they released him and organized us to go and pick this guy up. So the guys we picked him up from weren't the militants. They weren't the guys that had held him captive. They were somebody else, basically, like a third party,

and like a mediator type sketch, you know? So we drive up, we get this fucking dude in the back of the car, and he's like, he's an older guy, you know, he's in a shit state, his body's fucked. We've got a medic there. So one of the guys was a medic. So he's like looking after him, but they flew us. They flew us a jet from Malta and it was, it was a, it was a government jet. It was one that the Royal family had used. It's like a small private jet basically to recover this dude for UK government and the guys went back to Malta with him to escort him back and the ambassador there was like this is the best thing ever. We're so grateful and basically gave him keys to the city but we used that jet a few more

times to do. We took a guy called Jonathan Powell who broke at the Northern Island ceasefire. He was like a big political guy that was good at negotiating trucees and ceasefires. So we were chaperoning him around whilst we were going to these meetings and all this type of stuff. So the boys flew out on that, but I didn't. I flew out early, two weeks early, before the rest of the guys did because I had to go back for a course, the JTAC course. I needed to do a refresher or whatever it was. So yeah, I flew back out. But when I landed in Malta, they were at his... I think it's a Marriott

down there by the sea. They were down by the port. I don't know if you've ever been to Malta, but it was like a room like this. It was like, there you go. Everything's on the house, complimentary. So it's surreal. One minute you're in North Africa dealing with all that stuff. The next minute you're in Malta, which is a holiday destination this, and then five, six hours later you're on a civilian flight back into London Heathrow with a bag, straight down back to Hereford in the pub with the boys for a few days and then onto it. No time to process or absorb what's just gone on. It's just constant, constant, constant.

And then it's like, yeah, I was off to the fire cell. So this is where I started to become a JTAC. So I did, yeah, started doing back to back tours of JTAC and this was all 2014, 15, 16. So like the war was popping in Iraq and Syria, those places there, and we were just fucking smashing, smashing ISIS on the floor basically. This is where you worked with Delta?

This was prior to that. So I did three deployments of those and we can talk about them, but it was just a lot of bombing. It was just a lot of kinetic stuff. One of them is quite interesting. We were the first guys to cross the border from Iraq to another country and we drove all the way along the Turkish border. We left on Christmas morning. We woke up, we had a champagne breakfast in Erbil and then we packed our vehicles up and we drove for three days, land move, and we set up a patrol base basically in a cement factory. But when we got there, there was nobody there. I went back a couple of years

later and the whole thing was like the US military got hold of it. There was CV-22s, med bays, Marines, all kinds of shit. When we got there, there was our six-man team, a bunch of unit guys, probably about 20, 30 of those. About 10 of them were operators, the rest were support guys. CBs building all the infrastructure up, the comms guys. A bunch of local militia that were our security force or partner force. And a bunch of random French dudes. And these random French dudes were fucking nuts dude. Really cool guys, but they were so industrious.

They're building shit all the time. Like we turn up with like two Land Cruisers, one of which has got a gun on the top, so it's essentially, it's a fucking technical, let's call it what it is. A bunch of Javelin missiles, thousands of rounds of ammunition and a green box full of booze, that's what we had and the French are in there like building all kinds of stuff you know. a green box full of booze, that's what we had. And the French are in there building all kinds of stuff. We wasn't laid back but we were comfortable with it. I remember on New Year's Eve we were

all sat around, we had a little fire pit outside. The whole team was in a room this big and we were outside drinking rum and shooting the ship and this guy comes out of the dark. They were full body armour, nods down and he's like, he walks up and he goes, is it safe? And we're like, it is now. If you're patrolling around like that, you crack on mate. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, yeah.

New Year's Eve, have a drink. But yeah, no, it was a cool, cool experience to do that. I was J-Tacking for them as well. So I was J-Tacking for the unit prior to that. Was working in the Ciflic, which is a big two-star strike cell basically. And you're operating in a room with a hundred, 150 people, red card holders. You've got coalition jets from all over the world, dismantling targets all over Iraq and targets in Syria. And you're just basically controlling all day. You do an eight hour shift and you might drop thousands of pounds worth of ordnance.

Wow. Yeah, I dropped a shit ton of bombs in those deployments, a fucking shit ton, metric shit tons, and that's not an exaggeration. I Winchestered B-1 bombers on a couple of occasions down at Sinjar. They just give me like a A4 piece of paper with a bunch of grids on it. You send them to the plane and then as the plane's checking in, it will give you a system read back on the bomb to make sure that that coordinate's been put in the bomb. You get them read back of 20 desired mean impact points, DNPI's, whatever you want to

call them. And yeah, they're just like, yeah, cool. That's eight away. Go back for a re-attack. Just doing that. F-15s, just laying waste to all these positions, serious amounts of ordnance. It was a really good education for me but then I started working for a strike cell for the unit which I can't go into a lot of detail about but it was a completely different ballgame.

We were operating, we had all of Syria and it was just us and we were just hunting basically and we were getting a lot of information coming from the partner force and then we'd verify it with a drone and then we'd strike it and And it was all going back to brag where the sort of red card holder was. So every time we'd do a strike, we'd have to get it approved. We'd have to go to all the CDE and all the modeling and make sure the partner force was happy. Then we'd drop the ordinance and then we'd go on to the next one. And I was just shadowing watching how they did business.

These 24 STS JTAX, so they're like dedicated professional, all they do is JTAX. Whereas I'm an operator, but I can also JTAXAC, so they're at a different level and I'm trying to learn. But I was just going in there and hanging out with this guy for a while and we were just learning. He was a B-squadron guy and one day the J-TAC was like, do you want to get on the mic? And I was like, it was a quiet night, nothing going on. Everything was good, legal, permissions-wise.

I'd done all the spins and stuff, so I was, you know, it was completely above board and they trusted me, you know, and I was like, yeah, cool, I'll jump on the net. And he was like, yeah, cool, just have a look around this area, see if there's anything, you know, this is where the forward line of enemy troops is, this is where the forward line of own troops is, or friendly forces, and like basically anything south of that line is bad. And I was like, ah, cool. So I'm just like scanning around with the drones and all of a sudden I see like this fucking minibus basically, well it's a flatbed bongo truck but it's got like 30 dudes on the back of it and it's just driving up the road, driving up the road, it stops. And all these dudes get out and they start fanning out and I'm now checking now, I'm

speaking to the strike director, I'm speaking to him and I'm like these aren't our guys are we? Is that right? Go for the part and four so let's make sure these are not our guys because this is looking nefarious as fuck right? So these dudes are now lining up and it's almost a textbook ambush So they've got like a main killing group and they've got cut-offs and then they've got like a rear element to it it's all down the side of this one MSR that the the Whatever they were called with a peshmerga SDF or peshmerga were going up and down this road basically and they were waiting for them

To come up and they were gonna light them up. So I'm there spinning up a strike I've got what did I have I had a 10s side pair A-10s and as I'm about to start spinning the strike up I'm starting to read them the nine line and get them to do all this J-Tackery shit. Gunship checks in. So I'm like, yeah, fuck yeah. He's like, we want to do a coordinated attack. So what that means is like basically the jets will come in or the A-10s will come in and drop bombs. And as soon as those bombs have hit the ground they'll disappear in a different direction and the gunship just goes in an orbit and just cleans up basically. So that's what we did.

This is my first control that I've ever done for these guys. This is like a unicorn control, right? You've got like 30 troops in the open, you've got an AC-130 gunship and you've got two A-10s and it doesn't get much better than that, you know. So I start to spin up this strike and I'm in the zone, like I am now, just talking away. And before I look at it, there's a whole bunch of dudes behind me that are from the command Sark majors there and all kinds of people. And they're just watching.

They're just watching the JTACs are making sure that I'm doing it all properly. And I'm like, are we doing this? And they're like, yeah, I fucking send it. So we did. We fucking smashed them all to bits, mate. It was brilliant. Two bombs went in, took the main body out and then it was just gunship after that. It was just like boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. Send it. It was like, yeah, I've got runners away. Yep. Do it again. We ended up putting a GB 31 which

is 2000 pounder straight through. They were like a culvert underneath the road. There's about six of them that had squirted away underneath there. So it was like, yeah, put a 2000 pounder in that and that was like, boom, job done. And it's weird because you do that on the 25 EKA, 30 EKA, EKIA, whatever it was. And then you get back into a Land Cruiser and you drive back through Herbal to your accommodation because we weren't co-located with them. It was a separate location. You know, past the coffee shops, downtown, back into the thing, go to bed. It's like, we talked about that book on killing. That's extreme violence at distance and at reach.

And I did that for fucking three deployments. Wow. Pretty much. And I didn't pay enough attention to how much that affected my fucking headspace. Because it was, dude, I've shot people from here to you away. I've been in all that stuff, like we all have. And that was different because it was on an industrial scale.

Like I got a Queen's Commendation for valuable service on one of those deployments just for sheer volume of fucking people. That we were taking companies, battalions off the fucking battlefield. But you're doing it from reach, you know, you're doing it from a fucking telephone or a fucking computer or a radio in an ops room.

Like weird. How did that affect you? Um, I got fucking blasé about it really. It didn't really, it didn't really, I think it didn't affect me. It didn't do it really. I didn't really... It didn't really... I think it didn't affect me. It didn't do me any good. I know that.

I kind of became immune to it, which wasn't a good thing to do. I never had a CivCAD allegation once. I was super diligent. I don't fuck about when it comes to making sure that those bombs are going on the right places and neither do the units that I was working for. It's extreme professionalism at all times. The pilots are on board, the targeteers are on board, the CD modelers are on board, the league ads are on board, like red card holders. We're not just bombing shit for the sake of it. It's extremely precise, accurate fires. So you get really good at it. You do. You get

really fucking dialed into it and it just became a process really. But then I look back on it as like I've literally watched thousands of people die on fucking TV. Like, and sometimes you'd get given a list of paper, like I mentioned before, bomb that and you're like, cool. Or you'd go out like the other incident I talked with a gunship, like you're hunting, like that doesn't happen unless you put the jets where they need to be. But I don't get any satisfaction from it because it's like, that doesn't count.

It's like drone warfare now, like all this drone warfare shit. I don't like it. Drones are that doesn't count. It's like drone warfare now. All this drone warfare shit, I don't like it. Drones are IEDs and I fucking hate IEDs. I don't care what anyone says. It's a shitty fucking way to fight a war. There's no honour in that. And I kind of feel a bit like that with the JTAC and stuff. I don't take any satisfaction from it other than the fact that we did a lot of good for

partner forces and we did shape the battlefield and and ultimately it fucking got got rid of a lot of bad people But it's quite um, it's quite an intense job you'd be doing that for three four months intense, and then you come back and you're back in Hereford and You're in the pub and you're drinking And then all of a sudden you're back out and then you're back in here food in the pub drinking Trying to manage being a dad, being a soldier, doing that. I did that for a year pretty much, back to back to back. It's a lot, mate. It was a very intense period of my life. And then right at the back end of that, they were like, there's a posting coming up to the unit for one year. Do you want to go?" I was like, of course I do.

So I did. They sent me over to Bragg. I lived in Pinehurst. Southern Pinehurst, sorry, not Pinehurst. Lived in a house there, embedded myself with the squadron. I was made to feel super welcome. Those guys were fucking rock stars. Honestly, I have never been so impressed by a team as I have with those guys there. As assaulters, and I say this with the utmost respect to everyone else, the best assault teams that I've ever worked with, just primarily on shooting and CQB and assaulting, there's nothing on earth that compares to those fucking guys in that unit. And in my team, I had like four first draft picks from OTC. So they were fucking rock stars.

Yeah, it was super impressive. I remember being humbled the first day I got there. It was like we went and shot a Bianchi cup pistol shoot and I was okay with a pistol. With a long gun, I'm holding my own one, hold my own. But at the time, pistol shooting wasn't really something that we did that much. We didn't have red dots. Like, it was there if you needed it. It was very much a secondary mentality,

whereas these guys are shooting pistol all the time. They shoot more pistol than they do rifle. So five meters, 10 meters, 15 starts to fall off a little bit, now I'm back at 20, and guys, it's comedy, but they're like handing me magazines. I'm trying to knock these plate racks over, trigger discipline, shit, fucking all over the place. And I was like, fuck, every day we'd have a shooting competition for the most part.

Half the day would be CQB, half the day we'd be shooting or we'd do some climbing or some fitness stuff in between. But for the most part, shooting in CQB is what we did every day, which is why they're so good at assaulting. They're not fucking around training guys to be JTAX or surveillance operators or any of that stuff. They're just thoroughbred assaulters. And they are, in my opinion, the best guys

that I worked with hands down. So it was a fucking pleasure because I love that. I love being an assaulter. When people ask you, I'm an assaulter, that's what I do. I'm a CQB instructor. That was my bread and butter. So I realised very quickly that I had to up the game. So for the first four months I used to turn up early at work. I used to go on the ranges on my own. I used to stay after work on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday. I up early at work. I used to go on the ranges on my own. I used to stay after work. On the weekends, Saturday and Sunday, I'd take a thousand rounds and I'd go on the range and I'd just press that trigger, press that trigger and just learn how to press

the trigger and hold the gun properly and just pistol, pistol, pistol. I stopped finishing sixth and then I finished fifth. After a while I might finish fourth. Some days, fuck it, I might even come second or I might even win one. It was just that constant having to improve. That's where I really started to dial into the craft. That's where it really happened because my pistol shooting was not where I needed to be and I felt a lot of responsibility going over there representing my regiment in front of the unit in a team of all

stars. It's a lot of pressure. So I threw myself at it and I think that gained a lot of trust and respect in the squadron because they knew that I sucked at pistol and I think that gained a lot of trust and respect in the squadron because they knew that I sucked at pistol but I was out there fucking working to get better and none of them made me feel like a dick. None of them, there was no ego, no bullshit. They adopted me as a brother straight away. They treated me like one of their own, invited me to their homes, met their families. I was part of their team and I am deeply grateful and deeply impressed

by the organisation as a whole but the individuals and the level of compassion that they showed me was second to none and I'm deeply, deeply proud of my time with the guys at the unit. Fast forward a few months, it's coming up to deployment time and I'm like, I remember one of the guys came over to me and he gave me a US flag. He's like, you're going to wear that? And I said, am I allowed to wear that? And he was like, fuck yeah, you are. So I put my fucking US flag on my chest and I wore that with fucking pride. It goes back to my fucking association with the United States military.

I've been in those fucking fields with those Marines. I've been in those positions with them helicopters. If they don't come, your casualties don't get out. They're putting in those Pedro's. They're putting in those fucking call signs on our fucking tiny little hot landing zone. The RAF won't come in to get us. US pilots come and get us every single time. The assets that they gave us, standing side by side with US Marines fighting, watching

each other bleed and die. I fucking respect that flag to death and I'd die for it. So to be asked if I would wear it was one of the proudest moments of my military career and I fucking wore that with absolute pride and I took that flag to war and yeah, I'm proud that I did that. I've got some fucking cool pictures from it as well. It really did mean a lot to me that I got to wear that flag. And initially my deployment was kind of strange because my team went to Syria and I didn't have permissions to go to Syria, which was a weird situation to be in.

But they were looking at a different target set than the one that the UK had permissions for. Bullshit bureaucracy, all bad guys, what's the fucking difference? Kind of was how I looked at it. So I spent all of that time working up with that same team, like for months, as tight as we could be. Those teams are way tighter than our troops for sure. We eat together, we train together, we shoot together, we lift together, like everything together, together. Six man team, six man team. I'm Bravo Six, right? So I'm Bravo Six. And they all go and

I don't get to go with them. I have to go somewhere else. So I go to Iraq. So I'm in Iraq now. My team's over there and I'm dislocated from them. So I'm out there doing a job down in Suleymanir. We're doing bits and pieces with a partner force down there, CTD, CTG, all those guys. Great time. And then the troops art major comes and he's like, do you want to go to the ETF, which is the task force? They're the ones doing the real sexy missions, right? The raids, the fucking high value targets, not the stuff this different from what the team in Syria was doing. This was different, different troop, different task, different mission set.

But it was really what I wanted to be doing. And he was like, I said to him to have permission He's like there's helicopter coming in tonight I suggest you get on the helicopter get up there and we'll figure it out. I did I got welcomed into the team Like a fucking brother They put me in that chew and I became just one of them and again, we ate together Trained together watch fucking Netflix for hours together. And then we went on operations and we fucking tore it up together.

It was a really, really, it was probably the best deployment I've ever done. We were flying around in fucking Blackhawks smashing people up and it was fucking great. And it was everything that I wanted and thought that that unit would be about the level of professionalism, not only from the operators, but from the 160th guys all the way down to the target tiers. Those aviation pilots are incredible. Those night stalker dudes are so, so impressive. And it felt really, really close.

It did. I remember on one, it was the second one. It was the second job that I did with them. The troops are, maybe we've been looking at this compound and the troops are, sorry, the TL of the team was like, I need you to be off the Black Hawk and I need you to secure that window on the western side of this compound.

And I'm like, Roger that Sarge. I've been in the regiment for about seven, eight years now. Like you want me to run off a Blackc and just cover down on that one window? I can do that. You understand? I'm like, fuck yeah. So I do, I get out. We landed, as we're going on an infield, sorry, an infield, the dapps are lighting up this

guest house. They're like, literally as we're coming in, doors are open. We're fucking on the ramp, sorry, on the tailgate, essentially. It wasn't a little bird, it was a black orb. We're sat on the edge of the bird like this, the doors are open and you can just see the whole thing. Daps are coming in shooting shit with rockets. I was like, this is fucking cool. If you can take a snapshot that you do with an iPhone and just have that picture in your head, it would be like, yeah, this is cool. I come straight off the bird, straight to where I need to be. What we thought was a

window was not a window. It would just look like that from the IR signature. It was actually a piece of polystyrene and there was a heat source coming out of it. So my aperture is not a fucking aperture. It's a fucking... So I'm now redundant, so I need to get in the fight here. Soon as we're off, there's a gunfight happening. People are getting engaged on two-way gunfight, unsuppressed weapons going back towards the assault force and yeah I sort of poke my muzzle through the through this piece of polystyrene

styrofoam right you call it you know I mean they make cups out of it you know I'm talking about so I like punch this through it was a winter time so they used it for insulation in the summer I think they pop it out for air but I punched it through and the guy that we're after pops up like this out of his bed from no different, from me to your way, three, four meters. And it's our guy, clear as fucking day. He's got the same shitty haircut, same scraggly beard,

like, and he's got this, you can see his weapons right next to him. He's got a chest rig right next to him. And he's kind of like this, between helicopters landing and me being at that aperture seconds, it's that fast. And I there and I see him and he comes up bolt upright like that and I can see him just about to do that. So I just dump three or four rounds into him straight away. Soon as I do that, somebody else in the room pops up and he's now trying to get to that

weapon system. So I lit this dude up as well. So this is like within the first minute of basically being there. Then a fucking huge explosion goes off in the, in the, um, the front of the building. This guy had brought his family into the room that he was in. He called his family out. So they ran across the frontage of the building where all the guys were stacked up. Um, a wife and two kids, he brought them in, called them into the room that he

was in and then clacked himself off. So the guys are dealing with that on the front side of the building. I'm now maneuvering around the backside of the building where the rest of my teammates are locking down the back side. And then it happens, the fucking explosion happens and I'm just like, fuck me, the whole wall just goes out and goes back in. It's like, you know, the slow motion surreal moments, it was really like that. It was almost silent, but my whole team was stacked up on that.

And I literally walk around the corner and it just goes and there's a fucking whole bunch of dust and smoke. I get hit on the head with this fucking big rock. My ears are ringing. This is a crazy fucking two minutes. I've just jumped off the back of a helicopter, shot a couple of dudes. Now my team's been blown up. Like this is fucking nuts. Yeah, it's crazy, mate. And what had happened is somebody in that building had clacked themselves off. There was a whole bunch of S-Vest in this building. But because of the thickness of the walls, it had absorbed

most of the blast and instead of crushing on the guys or blowing the guys up, what happened is it actually just blown them out, if that makes sense. But I didn't know that. So the team leader's looking at me and I'm going, where's the fucking boys? And I'm like, I don't know where the fucking boys are. They've got to be under there. So I'm now

trying to fucking dig out this rubble. There's tons of rubble here now and I'm like my fucking the dudes are underneath there my team is under there and I'm fucking I'm like this trying to dig out and I just see one of them come wandering around out of the dust completely the wrong way. No helmet on, no rifle, no fuck all. And I'm like I grab him and I'm like are you good? And he's like I fucking think so. He's like where's my gun? Where's my helmet? And I'm like, dude, don't fucking worry. I'll then send them over to the team leader. And then then where's the other two guys, right? There's a five man team and the team leader is accounted for, I'm accounted for, he's accounted for, two more guys are accounted for. And again, one of them's just like when the dust cell was just lying there, he was, he didn't have

anything blown off. He was all his, his all his intact he was just in shock pick him up send him out find the other dude we recover all the equipment it's just a fucking carnage for a couple of minutes but it was like because of that evening and because of those events what happened the squadron or that troop in particular really respected me i think i think i earned their trust because they knew that i would do the right thing at the right time and I would fucking perform when it really mattered, you know. We had a whole bunch of fucking gnarly fucking jobs like that. I remember one particular one where we were closing up on a compound, again lessons identified. This is where experience comes into play.

Although I was in a team of rock stars, most of those guys had only done three or four years or maybe five. I'd done eight and a whole bunch of more deployments. I was more experienced than, I was as experienced as the team leader, but I was still Bravo Six and I was happy to be Bravo Six. So yeah, this one fucking job we did, same thing. It's like we try calling them out, we get engaged on infill, we're not committing assault force to the building because we keep getting blown up.

Every single time we go near these buildings, they clap themselves off without fail. You could almost set your watch by it. It's that predictable. So we're going to change our TTPs and tactics. We're just going to stand off and just call these fucking dudes out. We don't need to get close on the building, we learned our lesson the hard way. Luckily no one got hurt the first time so we backed off. But then it's like, come out, they're like that. They start firing guns at us, it's like that, cool, hit it with the daps. So the fucking daps will light it up. So same

again, come out, no, they fire back, cool, get the Ranger platoon up here, they'll fire Carl Gustaf at it, boom. And you just do this cat and mouse game until either the building's destroyed or there's no more fire. We need to get the SSC. We can't just kill these people, blow the building up and leave. Ultimately, the minute you fire a shot at us or you don't come up with your hands out, you bought a ticket, you voted, it's only going to end one way. These guys are not fucking around.

You understand, but we don't want to just destroy the building. Cause otherwise what's the point in us being there? We might as well have done that with a fucking 500 pounder, you know? So we need to get this fucking information. So anyway, we were going up the closing and we think we're clearing this building. There's like a row of, it's all burnt out at this point, but like there's a row of rooms and we're working sequentially now. So it's my team.

We're going from room to room to room, working up to this end one. And we're fragging every room now. So it's hand grenades are going into every single room. Then we put the dog in it, then we clear it, right? So this is kinetic. And I can start to hear praying. I can start to hear it and I'm like, am I fucking losing my mind here?

And I've got these peltors, over the ear peltors. So I pop my little thing out and sure as fuck I can hear this dude praying. And that's never a good sign, because he's gonna fucking clack himself off in a minute. So I'm like, and I tell him, I was like, dude, there's somebody in there. You know, peltor lands up, what?

And I'm like, there's somebody in that room. And he's like, is there? And I'm like, I can hear the fuck, I can hear him, dude. Like, that's how close we are at this point. And he's like, fuck, all right, cool. So we put the dog in. In fact, we didn't put the dog in. The dog got wind of it and fucking was in there straight away.

So now we're in a bad situation because we've got a dude in there that's definitely going to try and crack himself off and he's 100% armed. And we've got a dog, which is part of our team in there. So now we can't just put grenades in there. We can't just put a T bomb or whatever it is that we want to do to it. We can't fire a hell fire at it. We don't want to lose the dog, obviously. Luckily, because they don't normally come off the bite, we got the dog off the bite. Dog comes off the bite and then it's like, now it's posting grenades.

That's how intimate that is. Now to the point where it's like, we're fucking having grenades fucking thrown at this geezer to neutralize the threat, you know But it was extremely violent those deployments like those those raids there was I've it was all or nothing with those with those raids and that Target set it was either Yeah, they come out with their hands up. They get detained No shots fired all good or it was like they are fighting to the fucking bit of death and it is going to go on all night, you know to the point where

It almost becomes not worth going because we know that that's going to happen. So it's like, let's just fucking cut the comedy and just smash it with a 500 pounder and give up on this because how many operators do we need to risk to get that hard drive or whatever it might be? But we always did it and we made it work. But the level of professionalism that those guys had, second to none. So impressive, that unit. I came back from that deployment.

There was some other stuff with... So, Matt, Matt Tomorow is a good friend of mine. He was out in Syria working his job for the regiment. He was a B-Squadron guy. And he was hanging around with my team and my team was over there, my six-man team. So he used to phone me up and the TL used to phone me up and be like, you know, I've got a new Bravo 6, you're not Bravo 6 anymore. Matt is taking your spot. And I'm like, fuck, you Bravo 6 anymore, Matty's taking your spot and I'm like, fuck, you know, like, what the fuck's going on? It's just shit talking, it's all good fun. But when I got out there, he wasn't going on the ground.

They were just, he was training them to do sniper shit, whatever he was doing, and the partner force. And he didn't really have that connection with Matty until I turned up and So there's two Matts, one's the team leader and one's Matt Tomrower So I kind of sat down with Matt Tomrower and I was like, why the fuck aren't you not going on the ground? He was like, oh well I just haven't really asked, you know, I didn't really, you know, I didn't want to step on anyone's toes, you know, they're doing their own thing I said, fuck that dude, you're an awesome operator, why the fuck would they not want to have an extra pair of eyes on the ground? So I speak to Matt and I'm like,

do you mind if Matt goes on the ground with you? Like, can you do that? He's like, yeah, fuck no. If you vouch for him, I'm like, yeah dude, I fucking trust him. I'd go through the door with him. Like, that's the biggest compliment an operator can tell anyone.

It's like, I'd fucking go through the door with him any day of the week. So he's like that, yeah, cool. So he starts going out on the ground. And I was there for a little while and we did some jobs together. Then the deployment finishes for us. He stays.

He's on a six month rotation and we've come halfway through his so we do our four months and we go home. New squadron, A squadron come out. And it's only a couple of weeks of being back in Bragg trying to fucking get your head around that mad deployment and I get a phone call and they're like, Matt's been killed. And I was like, what do you mean Matt's been killed? And they're like, Matt's been killed. Something's happened. John Dunbar's been killed as well.

I fucking couldn't shake it for so long. I felt so fucking guilty. If I hadn't introduced him, he wouldn't have been on that fucking job. That's how I felt about it. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with that. And I know it's not that. And he wanted to be on that. He wanted to be on that fucking job.

But I don't know. That's a hard one for me. I fucking love that dude. I'm fucking so sorry for him and John and their families. And that fucking broke my heart man, it really did. That caused me a lot of fucking problems for a long time. I started to drink a lot.

I couldn't shake that feeling of guilt. I still feel it, some days more than others. And it was just so hard, man. We had funerals on both sides of the Atlantic. The guys from the unit flew over for Mats, we had guys fly over for Johns. It ripped our community in half man, and I know I know you know It's what we do, but it fucking this This was when I stopped running Sean That explosion and that the explosion blew the lid off that box that I told you about before That was real time for me. I Thought all my teammates were dead that day. They weren't I was lucky But then when Matt died I fucking that was it That was what fucking tipped me. And that was 10 years

of constant warfare at this time. And it all just fucking came out. And I just fucking lost it. I lost my fucking mind, dude. I finished that deployment with those guys. We buried Matt. We buried John. And then about two weeks after that, I went back to the UK. And then very shortly after that, I deployed back out with my own squadron. It was our squadron's time to go out, so I had no time to process that. And I got to theatre and they were like, you're going to go and be the LNO with the unit.

So I was back with the unit for another four months, which I was fucking happy about. A little bit with A squadron and then with B Squadron, with Kyle Morgan actually. We said we shared a team, we were in the same team. And I was just straight back into the fight and I was fucking drinking hard. I was fucking getting after it. I was taking testosterone, I was drinking whiskey, I was getting in gunfights, I was fucking all of it and I was just fucking hurting. I was fucking dying inside, you know. And yeah, I did a lot of damage to myself during that period. I lost my grandma as well. My grandma was as close to me as, you know, she's the one consistent factor in my life growing up. I lost her. I had to go back on R&R the last time I ever saw her. So I had to go back on my R&R to do that funeral.

Matt obviously, a very close family friend, lost their daughter who was exactly the same age as my daughter. A freak accident. A rock fell off a cliff and hit her in the head. Beautiful baby girl. You know, used to play with my daughter. So that hit home. There was a fucking bunch of other shit. There was a helicopter crash. We lost one of the 160th guys. I watched that bird go guys. I watched that bird go down. I watched that team get fucking smashed to bits.

I came off the back of the, we were four birds landing and I was on three. Judge three, three and they were on judge four, four and I'm on the left side port side door as we're going in they fire the IR rocket to the DZ. It's a really dark night. As I go off the left side port side door as we're going in they fire the IR rocket to the DZ It's a really dark night as I go off the bird the last thing I do is I let look over and there's load of like What looks like sometimes when the dust and the sand from the helicopters? It's like a little white light you can see it's like you know what I mean It's like it like glistens in like so I see that and I'm okay cool judge for falls down And as I get off the bird, iron clip, running towards target, and I just see this fucking debris field everywhere.

I'm like, this is fucking weird. I'm like, what is that? And then I look over and I just see the rotor gear, the top gear, you know, the bit that sticks out the top of the helicopter where the blades are attached. And it's just on the side, it's on the floor. And I'm like, fuck. And I look over, I'm like literally the closest guy to it at this point. And I look over and the fucking bird the closest guy to it at this point, and I look over and

the fucking bird is down and it's on its side and it's like, fuck, the fucking, but that's not hard landing, that's a fucking crash. And there's fucking dudes all over the place. It fucking hit the deck basically and it'd gone like that. And as it went, the guys were getting ready to jump out the bird, so some of them are unclipped now. So they're getting thrown out. Some of them are clipped.

There was guys clipped onto the bird as it's like two or three feet across the ground underneath it basically being dragged along anyway we lost the pilot the pilot was killed all the boys were fucked up and it was just a fucking shit show fucking dudes wandering around like dudes dudes like where's mys? Like fucking never mind your nods bro. It's fucking bigger fish stuff right here, you know. And I remember running back to it and then being told, no, go and lock down your position. And that professionalism then, I know it doesn't sound callous, but that was fucking impressive. We've just had a helicopter crash. Continue. Fucking Charlie Mike, go to your position,

lock down the compound and we did. We fucking dealt with that Moscow situation and then we got right back to work. That fucking impressed me deeply and we fucked those dudes up that night and we got everything we needed. And that was another cat and mouse game of going in and going back out, throwing grenades, all right, cool, we're not playing this game anymore. We ended up smashing it with a GBU-39, which is a 250 pound bomb coming off the gunship. That was the end of it.

We were like, nah, we're done playing games with you, dude. We've given you multiple chances. We've got fallen angels and we are not fucking around tonight. We smashed those dudes up pretty fucking good. We got to the morning and we were like, we all thought they were just going to take us back and they were like, no, you're staying on the ground. Why don't we deny the helicopters? No, we are not having another fucking Mogadishu here.

We are not leaving that fucking bird here. We've lost people here and there's no fucking way on God's earth. Are we going to stand by and watch people jump up and down on that helicopter? We ain't doing that. We're staying and we're recovering every single fucking piece of it. And that's what we did We stayed on the ground all day all night 36 hours we were on the ground. We caught on that helicopter. The teams came in we recovered it They did a land convoy. They drove in they low-loaded that bird and they took it back to where it needed to be. And we did not leave a fucking single piece of US material on that fucking battlefield. And rightly so, you know? Like, fuck those dudes,

you don't get that from us. They don't give you nothing. They take everything and give you nothing, you know? And I was impressed by that too. You know, just the whole mindset and mentality of that. I've said this before and I'll say it again, British officers are built and bred to be politicians. US officers are built to be war fighters. I fucking firmly believe that. Some of the command decisions that were being made on the ground that night by those leaders is deeply fucking impressive. And I can only say how proud I am to have been part of it and that's why that flag means so much to me. That's why. Moments like that. But yeah, that

was a fucking bad time in my life dude. There was a lot going on. After that, I went, I'm still deployed now. I'm still, I'm still in theater. And I finished my four months with that squadron and I go back to finish off the remaining two months with my own squadron and I am fucking drinking. And I am not giving a fuck about anything. Life, I didn't care. I just didn't care. I was just trying fuck about anything. Life, I didn't care. I just didn't care. I was just trying to be

anything. And it all came to a head one night and I had to go home. I said, Elijah, you need to fucking go home, bro. You need to go home and you need to fucking rest. I did. I was burnt the fuck out and I had nothing to give I was I was done man and for the first time ever I had to take a knee I drove so hard and so fast for so long and never stopped that the wheels came off and that's exactly what happened and I went back and took some time out of the squadron and tried I tried to process it all. Tried to process 10, 15 years of fucking continuous combat. Continuous fucking combat. And I just couldn't do it. I didn't have the strength.

I didn't have the tools. And all the fucking body armour and gunships in the world can't save you in those fights, you know? And I didn't do very well at it. I really didn't. And I'm resentful for the fact that when you put your hand up and say, I need a fucking break, you get labelled. There's a stigma that comes with that. I don't care what anyone says. You get downgraded. They take you off the orbit. You're not deploying. You're not allowed to even fucking play with guns. So the one thing that I had, my fucking safety net,

they took that away from me. And they put me in some fucking shitty job. And they were just like, yeah, you go and do your thing. I said, I fucking help, I need help. And they fucking didn't give me enough. And when they did give it to me, they made me feel like shit for taking it and I fucking hate them for that. But um I took some time out I did and I was like right I need a new hobby and so

I took up boxing and I fought in the regimental boxing show which is thousands of people and normally operators don't do it. They bring in the army team or the navy team and they'll box each other and it's a money spinning exercise. People come and donate, celebrities and all this bullshit and Tom Hardy and all these kind of people come to it. But I was like no, if it's an R fucking building then there should be operators fighting. So I took up boxing and they're like Jay this fight's in three months. I was like, I know. Have you ever boxed before?

And I'm like, no. This is no joke. These are legit. You're going to be in there with a legit boxer that's probably been doing this a long time. I was like, fuck it. It can't be that hard. I'll learn. So I went and lived in London, took some time off work and just trained, trained, trained

for three months. My friend's a pro boxing coach so I lived like a fighter. I lived in a tiny little one bedroom flat. I trained three times a day. I didn't drink. I did everything I could to get my mind right. And eventually the fight comes along. I feel like I'm finally back on track. I feel like I've regained some control. I had to have something to focus on, Sean. That's why I took up boxing. I was like, well well these motherfuckers ain't gonna let me shoot anymore and I damn sure ain't gonna be able to go back to to to theatre so I need something so I'm training for this fight like a professional I put my heart and soul into it mate and the night

after I go out for a couple of celebration drinks with my friends, you know. I've got two black eyes. I didn't win the fight, unsurprisingly. I've got two black eyes and some woman comes up to me. She starts talking to me like I'm a piece of shit. Oh, whatever you've been doing, what have you been doing? She's come up to me and I'm like, sorry what? She goes, oh, have you been boxing? I was like, yeah, I was in the show yesterday.

She goes, oh, it doesn't look like you won. She completely tried to humiliate me in front of my friends basically. So I said, sorry, who the fuck are you? And she's like, oh, don't you know who I am? My husband's a SART major. And I was like, I don't give a fuck who your husband is. I'm sure he wouldn't be that impressed with you coming up to dudes on the fucking, you know, talking the way you were doing.

She's like, I know the commanding officer. I'll get you fired. And at this point here, I'm like, you fucking don't talk to me like that. Never fucking come up to me. I don't care who you are at this point. Like you're so disrespectful and like you are not your husband when it comes to rank. Do not try and pull that shit with me. You know, anyway, she goes off and then writes up some bullshit story. I get pulled in, they give me a three month warning. I get punished. It's just like the fucking hypocrisy of it.

I gave my heart and fucking soul to train for that fight and she comes up to me like that and I get punished after everything that I've just fucking done there. That was the start of it, man. That was when I started to lose the fucking will to live, literally. I was like, I can't win. I can't win if I do. I can't win if I don't. I dedicate my life.

I don't train. I don't drink. I train. I can't win if I don't. I dedicate my life, I don't train, I don't drink, I train, pick up a sport. I represent my regiment in the boxing ring in front of a thousand people. It's quite a scary thing to do, get up in front of all of your peers under them lights and get in the ring with somebody and box, especially if you don't know how to do it. So I was fucking angry about that, dude. Really fucking angry.

And yeah, it was that that was like, no, you're not going to be in the squadron any longer, you've got to go and do another job. So then I was given the job of being the CQB instructor and that was great. That was fucking great because I had something to fucking focus on again. That's when I started coming up with looking, found GBRS, and was looking across, and I had people that looked up to me, and I had purpose, and I became a subject matter expert in the thing that I love. Being a chief instructor of the CQB cell in the regiment is the best fucking job in the world by none, period, in my mind. I was winning again. But I just couldn't shake that fucking feeling. I just couldn't

fucking shake it. I'm just hopeless. There's nothing I can do that's going to make me feel any better. So I'm like, fuck, I can't win. And I felt like that. And I stopped going to see the nurses, like the therapists, because every single time I walked into that office she'd make me fill out a form that said PTSD on the top of it. And it's fucking degrading. Like, don't talk to me like there's something wrong with me. Look at my military history, look at all the shit that I've been through and put myself through.

No one's accountable for that but me. Stop asking me if I'm going to kill myself. Do you understand? Like do better." And she admitted it. And again, I want to bring this up because it was fucking woeful the support that we got. And I know my friends have been through similar experiences and they'll say the same thing. And it might seem a little bit unfair me saying this on here because they can't defend themselves. So I'm not going to name people because I've got more class and dignity than that. But what I would say is if they are

watching this they need to do fucking better because these operators need it and they deserve it and I've felt that personally. And I felt let down, I did. And to be punished for some bullshit that didn't even happen. No one asked for my side of the story, you know. It just sent me spiralling. It just sent me spiraling and spiraling to the point where I just fucking ended up in a car with a fucking pistol. That's how I got there. I did too many deployments too quickly without processing it is my learning point from that. And I thought, my ego thought that I could handle it and that I would be alright.

And I was until I wasn't. And then I really wasn't. And it was too late. And I couldn't stop it. And the only way I could stop it was to do that. That's what I thought. And yeah, I'm not fucking proud of it. But now I know what that looks like.

I know what rock bottom is. And I'm never fucking going there again. Never. Never, never, never. And I'm grateful for that, you know? Now I've got a superpower. Now I know what the bottom really looks like. And I'm nowhere near that, you know?

But that was a fucking crazy, crazy period of my life. That was like 2018. Basically from 2000, well, if you really want to go back from my first deployment, 2008, all the way up to 2018, which at that point it was, that was 10 deployments, 10 years, fucking multiple different jobs, selection, trying to be a fucking dad, Afghanistan four times, fucking God knows where else, North Africa, Iraq,

whole bunch of fucking, whole bunch of shit's happened in that time and I just, just didn't deal with it. I couldn't, didn't know how. And I hope, you know, if fucking some person sees what I'm saying and goes, if you sound like me, you've got to fucking address it boys. I'm telling you, there's too many fucking dudes putting their fucking uniforms on and hanging themselves in garages. We've got to stop it and the only way to do it is to face it and it's the scariest thing I ever fucking did. It terrifies me because I don't know the answer.

I don't know how to solve it. It's not a CQB problem. There's no doctrine for it. You know, it's hard. It's fucking difficult. And I'm grateful and I truly, truly, truly am grateful for the support that I've been shown by people. And I mentioned, truly, truly am grateful for the support that I've been shown by people. And I mentioned it before, if it wasn't for DJ and Cole giving me that lifeline, I'd

be lying in a ditch in the Ukraine somewhere or I'd be won't be sat here. I can say that with certainty. So again, truly grateful and truly thankful to have good people around me. You know, I'm blessed and I am still in the fight and I ain't ever going back there. And I'm only going one way now and I'm getting stronger and I'm getting wiser and I'm getting more emotionally intelligent. I'm getting more in touch with myself and I'm being kinder to myself. I don't, I give myself a bit more slack these days than I used to. But yeah, it's not fucking easy to do.

That CQB job did help me though, it did. How are you doing now? I'm good. I don't know, I look a mess don't I? But I'm good, I'm really good. I'm happy, there's no dark clouds on the horizon. My relationship with my daughter is not perfect. I can do more but it's the best it's ever been. We went on vacation recently together, she's so cool. We hang out.

I'm happy. Does she know any other stuff? Mm-mm. Nope. I can't. I'm not strong enough to tell her face to face. I can't. I'm weak when it comes to that, you know? Is she gonna watch this? She will.

Maybe we'll watch it together. It's very difficult to have that conversation with a 15 year old. But in some way, on some level, I hope that when she does see this, maybe me not showing up for that birthday party makes a bit more sense now. There were times out there I couldn't be a dad. I just couldn't. I didn't. I couldn't.

I would have been. It would have been. It would have been a bad fucking idea. You know. So if I didn't turn up that day it was because there was some stuff going on. I had to kind of figure out, you know. I don't want to see me like that. What?

No. How do you think she'll handle this? Well. like that. What now? How do you think she'll handle this? Well, she's level headed. She'll see it and it's important to me because I need her to know who I am. And I need her to know that I am never, ever going back to that place. I've already been there. It's not like I need to see it. I've already seen it. I know what it's like. And I hope she takes some strength from that because I am fully focused on trying to be better in every way I can. And I've got to get this out of my system. This helps for sure. But I don't want to have to lie to her anymore. I don't want to have to pretend that I'm okay or I've been alright. I am now, I'm good,

but I just want her to know who I am. You know? That's all I want. I'm really happy you're doing this. Huh? I'm really happy you're doing this. I am. I'm trying my hardest. I think she will be too. I hope so. She's a level-headed girl, man. She'll get it.

That's why when people put pressure on my family or they start to do things that hurt my family especially if it's my own people my tolerance for it is fucking less own people. My tolerance for it is fucking less than zero. My empathy for you is zero. And I'll be ruthless in my pursuit of getting what's right and what's right for not only for my family, but for the other

families because there's a million stories just like mine. I'm not alone. I know I'm not. There's a million other guys out there. There's a squadron full of them on both sides of the Atlantic. It doesn't matter what colour that flag is, what shape that patch is. Swat team guys, law enforcement guys, firefighters. It's not even just military guys. Young men all across. There's an epidemic of mental health issues and people don't like saying mental health issues, but let's fucking call it what it is. Because if we don't, then guess what happens. And if by actually saying it and actually addressing it, it gives somebody maybe a little bit of confidence to go and talk to somebody or just even acknowledge it, personally. And it's fucking worth it. So, I'm glad we're doing this too.

Good. Take a break. Sure. I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source

It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan show is we are developing our newsletter and here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign super bad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show.

And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind-blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. This is going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not going to spam you.

It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two if we release two shows. The only other thing that's going to be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that. But like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up, links in the description or in the comments. We'll see in the newsletter. Want more from The Sean Ryan Show? Join our Patreon today for more clips and exclusive content. You'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode.

Plus, unlock bonus content like our extra intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions, our new SRS on-site specials, and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. In the best part, Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission, and become part of the Sean Ryan Show story. All right, Jay.

We're getting ready to talk about what you originally came here for. But before we do, I just want to say thank you for being so open and talking about all that stuff. I know it's not easy to revisit that kind of stuff, but no Orton I bounced out. Thank you right back to you and say thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that And I think it is important it's important For me for lots of personal reasons, but I also think it's important that you don't waste an opportunity like this

and that you have to be a bit brave sometimes and if you don't then you can't affect anything. You know, I want... there's good that comes from this situation. I'm in a good spot now. I'm in a good spot because I have had to and I'm willing to acknowledge everything I've just talked about and be aware of it and have that level of emotional awareness. It's helped me out an untold amount by just being able to look in the mirror and understand where it is I've been and how far I've come and how lucky I am and how much good stuff I've got going on in my life and how grateful and thankful for it I am because I really truly am and I'm in a really really good spot now and long may it continue. But you got to air that stuff out. You got to do it.

You can't keep it in. Like, trust me, you know the drill. It doesn't work. And I've been a test case for that myself and I know it doesn't work. I'm never doing it again. So thank you. Sure. My honor.

And you're welcome. Thank you, brother. Let's get into it. Yeah. Let's talk into it. Yeah. Let's talk about your last operation. Yep. 2022. I was an assault team leader, so not troop sergeant major, but an assault team leader.

So I was in charge of a fire team essentially, but I was also a target here. And we'd been watching this guy. Conduct attacks, he was the partner force's number one target that they wanted. He was an assassination cell leader. He'd done a whole bunch of nefarious stuff. We'd watch him opening carry weapons, which was very rare. It shows one of two things, naivety or full radicalism because they don't open carry, because they know we can see it. So if they do, then it means that they're serious, they're true believers.

So anyway, after weeks at this point of gathering information, intelligence, watching these guys do all kinds of bad stuff basically. We was ordered to conduct a detention operation on this target, which I planned or was involved in the planning with heavily and we did everything we could to mitigate risk to force and mitigate risk to mission by our planning process and our professionalism in terms of trying to put ourselves in a most advantageous position in order to capture and detain this individual, which was the main goal. The objective of this operation was to detain this individual as we had done successfully dozens of times before on that deployment and we were in a good spot with it. We understood the

human terrain, we understood the location, we had spent hundreds of hours at this time of manpower, ISR and we had a good handle on the situation so the order was given, signed off from the highest level from my regiment to go down and attempt to capture this individual. So on the night of the operation, July 3rd, 4th, we went down and that morning he'd conducted an assassination on a local checkpoint and we observed him wearing a suicide vest. And I remember coming in that morning and being like, damn, looks like he's got a vest on. And then we get reports, human reports telling us that, yeah, that's exactly what's been

going on. And he's now driving around this town with that vest on as a status thing to say, you know, this is what I'm about. Doesn't change a thing for us. We approach the same operation as we would do anything. You know, there's no more or less diligence put into it. Due diligence is always applied and we try our very, very best as professionals to make sure that we are not putting ourselves in unnecessary risk and that we're dealing with the situation in a professional manner. So it doesn't make any difference to us.

It doesn't change how we look at it. It doesn't change our mindset. Doesn't change our approach to this target. It's just another target and we would consider all people to be of high threat. This one was just active at that time. So anyway, for a series of events, we moved out on vehicle and the primary location that we had planned to do the operation

had changed last minute because he's now hiding in a rural location, which we know and have observed before to be a hideout location where they go. To cage weapons, which we've seen there, to plan attacks and to basically hide out when they think the local partner force is probably going to come and try and do a raid. He was right, but unfortunately for him we'd been watching him for weeks so we knew exactly where he was going to go and sure enough that's where he was. Anyway, as we move closer towards the target he

gets spooked he then moves off into a different location and we go from where we are and the decision is made to pursue into an urban area which we don't take lightly because we've planned meticulously and in detail for a very long period of time, executing the operation on a specific place on the ground. So we understand it. We've got all the positions are there and all the cordons and all the rest of it. Now we're having to take a little bit of time to just reevaluate the plan, do a risk assessment

and understand the situation that we are potentially walking into and does it merit the risk versus reward conversation, which to us it did. We were comfortable with what we did, comfortable with the decisions that we were making at this point. So we get off the initial target and we start moving into the urban area where this guy has gone back to his original location, his original house. He's picked up a couple of other individuals that we know to be assassination cell members and now moving to a third location which is a known weapons cache and we know it's there because we've got the intelligence reports

and the ISR footage to back that up. So it's all matching in line with pattern of life. It's all nefarious. And he's already tried to avoid capture one time when he heard our vehicles. So now he's effectively moved to another position and then a further position to avoid capture. So our intention never changes. We are there to conduct a detention operation. We get out of the vehicles. As soon as we get out of the vehicles we're engaged multiple times from different firing points. Very difficult to PID those firing points at night and in that time frame. You've got multiple radios

going off. There was no aviation. The JTAC couldn't get the the Apaches overhead quick enough. So we were basically on our own and now we're in a very dangerous situation. You have to understand Sean that we are not on the original target that we planned. We are now in a place of his choosing in the night against guys that are armed. We know them to be armed and are now engaging us actively. I'm not going to go as far as to say troops in contact because that has a different connotation in my brain. That's a different thing, but we are under fire for sure. And everybody in the task force acknowledges that

it's like 50 people on the ground and everyone's seeing what we're seeing. This is not just my opinion, this is fact. There's been backed up by dozens of witness statements at this point, ISR footage, et cetera, et cetera. We get out, we move into an L-shape formation, which is exactly what we would employ to do a detention operation. At this point here, there is absolutely zero doubt in my mind that this is a very dangerous situation, but we are making every single attempt we can to capture this guy, detain

him. We're still taking incoming rounds into the team. Now I see people manoeuvring and he's not manoeuvring away. He's not manoeuvring in a way that's peaceful. He's not goting away. He's not move maneuvering in a way that's Peaceful, he's not got his hands up He's not he is moving in an aggressive manner and he is moving tactically and when I mean tactically I mean up down like soldiers move when they're moving into position now I know that there's weapon caches around it and we're under fire So I have to be you know, I have to make decisions on what I'm seeing in front of me

So I make the decision to engage the target. It's hostile intent to me all day long. It's a threat to my teammates and it's a threat to myself. And the rules of engagement are there to help us and this is, you know, well within our rules of engagement for the most part. But we are there to detain this guy but he is now trying to fight us basically. So my team and I, we return fire and we start to manoeuvre up on this element. So we know that there's four people, right?

And we are getting closer towards the target and I engage one of the targets, roughly 130 metres, and get effective hits on target essentially. And we're still manoe maneuvering up towards the thing. So in my mind there's four people out there and this is highly dangerous. So we're moving with extreme caution and due diligence, making sure that we've always got one foot on the ground, making sure that we're communicating to our satellite and call signs and making sure that everyone is aware of what we're doing. There are no fracture side issues and we're now closing up on the enemy as per good doctrine.

As we start to get closer, you can start to see this individual moving, still moving away from us and across our path, not backwards, not forward, not surrendering and not putting his hands up. And this is immediate threat. Now we're in a farmland basically, it's undulating ground, it's dark and it's a high risk position. I'm now committing my teammates and myself towards these enemy combatants that we have already established are hostile and there should be four and we're only tracking two at this point.

This is an extremely dangerous position for me and my guys to be in. Due to the professionalism, the courage and the extraordinary level of boldness from those guys next to me to my right and left, we managed to close down these enemy combatants and neutralise the threat times two. I'm still concerned about where the other people are, so we then withdraw back to the vehicles and everything's okay. We then go and conduct SSE on the two bodies, confirm what we need to know. The partner force are absolutely ecstatic at this point.

Their number one target has been taken off the deck. So all in all, there is a level of satisfaction that we executed a good operation. We were planned to do it and the fact that he bought a ticket and voted was his option. He did that. We gave them multiple, multiple chances to be detained and they wanted to fight us. They wanted to kill us. And it just turns out that we were better than they were. It's that simple. So I didn't really think too much of it.

It's what we were there to do. We were ordered to go and do that and we demonstrated our professionalism to the highest level in my opinion. And at the time I thought that would have been okay. Our commanding officer at the time signed it off and was happy with what had happened and had no issue with it. And then it got pushed up to the director of special forces. You got put in for a citation for this, correct?

Yeah, I was given a citation for that whole deployment, yeah, but it never came through. It disappeared somewhere in the mail, you know. But yeah, I was told by multiple people, including my SART major, you know, well done, basically. We've written you up. I'm not here for medals. It's nice to get recognition. It would have been nice for my daughter for sure. It would have been a nice way to end my military career.

Well, bringing that up because of what you're about to say. Yeah. Before I go into what we're about to say, it's really important for context that people understand why this has happened. About three days before that, there was a BBC panorama documentary making allegations against the regiment for alleged misconduct in Afghanistan, 10 years previous to this. Now the guy that was front and centre in the crosshairs for this investigation is a guy called Gwyn Jenkins.

He is now the first Sea Lord at the time. He was the director of special forces, so in charge of all special forces. He is under the crosshairs for his mismanagement and unprofessionalism in dealing with these alleged incidences, you know, 10 years previous. So it goes through my regiment, it goes all the way up to his level and he decides to launch an investigation into this, in his words, to show transparency, even though there's probably nothing wrong. And if there was anything wrong, they wouldn't have launched an investigation on it.

Does that make sense? So he's done this and he admitted to doing this on a VTC. And I stand by this because there's a whole room of people that saw it. He basically said, it's more important that we be seen to be doing the right thing than it is for this incident to go away. What does that mean? It means he threw us under the bus, knowing full well what would happen

because he wanted to be seen to show transparency without any care in the world for how that would affect us and our lives. No well done, congratulations on being professional and doing a good job. The thing that we ordered you and trained you to do. He sent us down the river and he did that of his own admission to make it seem to the world that they are doing due diligence and that does not sit well because that is not what being a good leader is about. You do not

throw your own guys under the bus for your own personal gain. And that's exactly what happened. And that was acknowledged by my commanding officer. It was even acknowledged by the policeman that came and arrested me in theater. They knew and said- They arrested you in theater. They arrested me. Wait, yeah. Oh, the plot thickens on that one. Yeah. But it's widely known and acknowledged that the

reason for this was so that he could be seen to show that he does do investigations because he'd failed in the past to do it properly. Does that make sense? So at the time- So he's holding somebody accountable to save his own ass? 100%. Well, not holding somebody accountable because there's nothing to be held accountable for.

No, because it's all been cleared because funny old thing, three years later down the line they've realized that there is absolutely no wrongdoing in what we did and it was all completely within our rules of engagement. It was not an excessive use of force and it was professional. Like there is there's no other way of saying it. What specifically instigated this specific incident? From which perspective, mate? Why did he pick this, of all the combat, through all SAS? why is he honing in on this specific incident? Because it was one that happened underneath his watch and it was one that happened three

days after a BBC interview naming him that he'd been involved in this. That's why. And everybody knows that. And it's disgusting, in my opinion, to do that. And it's disgusting in my opinion to do that. And it shows a complete lack of moral courage, a lack of a spine and it's cowardice. It's sending people down the river to save your own skin for your own political and your own personal gain. And I'm not having it. Has he ever been in a position like this on the ground?

Probably not. and I'm not having it. Has he ever been in a position like this on the ground? Probably not. I asked his league ad, his lawyer that he had, they went down the line of it's excessive force, which exactly what it says on the tin is, how can you quantify excessive force? He said there was a high round count. I would then argue that by doctrine and standards that we set ourselves accountable for in UKSF

in order to be able to deploy on operations overseas or domestically, we reach a level of standards when it comes to firearms and manipulation of weapon systems. And one of the drills, one of many drills is essentially a six round from the high ready in 2.5 seconds. We fired about that between three guys. So he doesn't even understand his own doctrine because it isn't excessive force. Now I'd like anybody, can you explain to me how much force is excessive? Is one round too many?

It's two? Or are we engaging targets until the threat is neutralized? Where is it? Or is it subjective? So, they took a subjective opinion on what we did and they basically launched a full investigation into it. They opened up the door to the RMP, who themselves under scrutiny for their unprofessional conduct, not only in this operation, which regiments launched a formal complaint against them for the handling of how they've done it in their overzealous

activities which I'll go into in detail in a minute, but they're also under the cross says for their, their unprofessionalism in Afghanistan and not doing their jobs properly. So you've got two forces operating against us now. You've got RMPs that have got, you have got a chip on their shoulder and are fully going in on this. What are RMPs? Royal Military Police. Royal Military Police. And then you've got a general who is using us as a test case to better his own political

and personal career, essentially. Now all of these things I've said are factual. And he's even admitted that that's exactly what it was, but he didn't understand the ramifications of it or where it would go. And what's ironic to me is that when he left that position, which is the head position in UK Special Forces, his next guy in came and spoke to us in theatre and said, quote, a witness, a room full of people, this would have never happened under my watch. That's never excesses force and you did the right thing. That's what he said. He's changed his tone on that a little bit now. He's gone

back on it, but he forgets that we were all there when he said it. The outgoing guys- Who is this? Who was it? What was his name? It'll come to me. Nick. I think his name's Nick. He'll come to me, but he's the current director of Special Forces, so the guy that replaced Gwyn Jenkins. does that make sense? Everybody understands why this has happened, but nobody's doing anything about it. So this is where it starts to unravel.

And this is where the real consequences of people's actions of throwing good guys under the bus. Not only does it undermine the confidence in the chain of command, not only does it undermine the individual operator's confidence in the chain of command. Not only does it undermine the individual operators confidence to the point where team leaders coming in to replace us were telling us we're not putting our guys on the ground because if they do what they're supposed to do they're going to get this treatment. We had guys in the squadron that didn't want a soldier, we had guys that have

left the military out of the four guys in my team. Two of us left, one of them tried to leave but couldn't for visa issues, which I'll explain, and one of them is still serving. Still serving his country after what they've done. What a fucking hero. What a fucking good dude that is. It was just how the whole thing was handled. Now I'm not going to get into the specifics of pointing the finger at every single person that's been unprofessionalist because the blame solely lands at Gwen Jenkins' door. He's been recently promoted to the first Sea Lord, which is an extremely high position

within the military. He was the military intelligence advisor to the former prime minister. When the new government got in, he lost that job and then he got given the first sea lord job and everyone's there going, oh, what a great guy, what a great guy. No, he's not. And for anyone watching this, you need to be careful because that man only cares about himself. He doesn't care about protecting the reputation of the regiment.

He cares about himself because he knows that he's under the crosshairs for this Afghanistan stuff. So we were sent down a river. We were told, ordered to write witness statements with no legal representation in theater. I voiced my concerns about that and I think I was right to do so because all the Royal Military Police did was they took witness statements that we were made to write and by made to write we were given a document that said if you do not do this you will be charged etc etc etc. So we weren't given an option basically and I said okay we'll do

the witness statements but I think we should have legal representation. No, you don't need it. Don't worry about it. The first thing that the Royal Military Police used against us was our own witness statements that we told them we should have legal representation for this. So without any context or no evidence, they were using our own words against us, even though we'd said, hang on a minute, can we have some protection here? So they were caught out with that, which obviously impacted us. They trapped you.

They trapped us. Yeah. And you know, I'll read you some of the impact statements from the individual shortly. I'll give you a broad brush and then I'll get into some details. This happened three years ago, Sean, and it's only last week that they've concluded that

there was no wrongdoing and we've been acquitted of all charges. No sorry, no compensation, emotional compensation, no nothing. And it's ruined people's lives. And it's something that needs to be addressed because this can't happen again. And it's not okay. And it's not fine to just wash it under the carpet and carry on. That's not in my nature. This isn't about anything other than having our perspective put across. And I've spoken to all the guys involved,

and they fully support what I'm doing, because they know, hopefully, this might prevent it from happening in the future. I've already won the battle in terms of I've been acquitted, I've been vindicated that I did the right action after three years, three years, to a point where I was even questioning my own self. That's a dark place to be.

And it's a very stressful situation to be under investigation for double murder, something you know isn't true and something that doesn't read well. Can you imagine having that conversation with a 15-year-old? Can you imagine having that conversation with your mother? Can you imagine having that conversation with a 15 year old? Can you imagine having that conversation with your mother? Can you imagine having that conversation with your loved ones, your friends, your girlfriend, it's a heavy thing to carry. And we have done it. We've carried it for three years. And now it's finally gone away.

And. And all the media picked this up. And all, again, all of the media picked this up. We didn't get a voice. We didn't get a voice. We didn't get our opinion. We've not said a word. We've been professional. We've been dignified and we've carried on essentially just trying to maintain

some sort of level of sanity and try and rebuild our lives. But the level of accuracy of the media reports has to have been from a leak. It has to have been. There's no way on earth they could, they've got the picture completely wrong and there's no context in it. But the level of accuracy of the media reports has to have been from a leak. It has to have been. There's no way on earth they could, they've got the picture completely wrong and there's no context in it, but the broad brush, the main details are roughly fairly accurate to a point. So it has to have come from inside the organization itself.

And it's incredibly difficult when people keep putting stuff in the newspapers, on the news, and family members are reading it and it's always murder. You can't look past the word murder. I've never murdered anyone in my life. I'm a professional soldier that does exactly what I'm supposed to do, with inside the confines of my rules of engagement, to neutralise the threat if need be. I've been trained to the highest level. I've operated next to some of the most professional operators on the planet. Professionalism is something that we take extremely seriously. And it's insulting to me that

people would think that we were unprofessional. And it's shameful that they can band us with accusations in order to save their own personal careers. That's disgusting. That should never happen ever again. But it just kept going and going and going and they tried to arrest us all at the same time but they failed miserably because of the RMP, the Military Police's Incompetence. I'll tell you my personal situation first. They flew out to theatre. They came to our operation station, our command post. They arrested me. They searched my room. They confiscated my me. They searched my room. They confiscated my tablets and my phones so I couldn't contact my family. I don't know what they were looking for. I don't know what they were looking for

on there. Their argument was, well, we have to arrest you so we can seize your personal electronic devices. I was like, they're in a bag. There you go. You can take them. I was like, yeah, well, we need to search your room. The keys are there. Do it. They still did it. So technically, I've been arrested for murder at this point. Now when people look at investigations in the past, oh, we've done this before, yes and yes and no, nobody's been arrested for it. One of the guys was arrested in front of his mother, in front of his sister, and the RMP told him, we're arresting your son for murdering two civilians.

I've got it all written down. I've got it all here, everything documented. One of the guys was arrested at his home in front of his wife where the policeman told his wife squarely in the eyes, we're arresting your husband for murdering two civilians. You can't unsee that. Family members will never ever be able to unsee that. Family members will never ever be able to unsee that. One guy was tricked by the RMPs of coming for an interview under caution. They got him in a room. They basically locked the room and said, bang, you're under arrest. So they could search him. Whilst we're deployed,

whilst we're out there serving our country, still operational, still trying to do the right thing, and we have to deal with this not only at home, but also overseas. So it's a lot for people to deal with. We were offered next to no support when it comes to legal aid. It was 60, 65 days, I think I've got the detail. I'm going to read all this stuff out in a minute, but it was over two months of limbo where we had no legal support because they couldn't be read on to the specifics of the operation, which we're not talking

about for legal reasons and disclosure reasons, but we couldn't even get lawyers. They wouldn't even provide us with lawyers and the ones that they did provide us with initially wouldn't do it because they weren't getting paid enough money by the MOD. It's disgraceful. So a lot of the guys felt very isolated. Fast forward till 14 months ago, I'd left the military. I was trying to put everything behind me, move on and try and give something back. I took a job for GBRS as their lead

instructor. I went out to Virginia Beach and I was staying with DJ and Patsy at the time. Lived in their house for the best part of three months. I was granted an O1 visa for extraordinary ability. That O1 visa was a pull, not a push. What I mean by that, I was written commendations from SWAT team guys. I'd also spent some time at the unit. I trained guys from green team as a guest instructor. I deployed with the US flag on my chest. The United States asked me effectively to come out and help train law enforcement officers, SWAT teams,

military units, et cetera, et cetera. That was, military units, etc. etc. That was what I was going to go and do. That was my future. I come back to the UK to collect my visa. And one of the things that you need to provide is a sheet which states whether you've got a criminal record or not. I don't have a criminal record because I've been in the military for the best part of 20 years serving my country. But on this piece of paper, it says wanted for investigation, under investigation for murder. Now, I'm at the US Embassy with this sheet and I have to show this to that lady, at which point they'll add negative, we are not giving you a visa because it says you're under investigation

for murder, which has been vindicated that is obviously not correct. So it's impacted my life. I came back from Virginia Beach for three days. I was supposed to be there for three days with a small bag to collect my visa from the US Embassy in London and then go on with the rest of my life. And it's been a heavy few years. And for the first time I felt positive and I felt like I could get on with my life and I could change direction and it was all good until that moment.

One of the other guys tried to do exactly the same. He was that broken by this whole process that he decided to leave. He was an A-stream operator. He was selected to be a troop sergeant major and he turned it down. He was like, no, I don't want anything to do with this because of the way that we've been treated by this individual and by the RMP. This is all about how he treated us and how the RMP treated my teammates. It's very difficult for guys to move on with their life when you've got this thing hanging

over them in the back of your mind. It only feels like I left the army last week. I've been a civilian for coming up to two years, but it only feels like I left the army last week. And it's had a fucking significant effect on my life, how I feel, my teammates' lives, my teammates' families' lives. It's caused the breakdown of two relationships. Guys that have given everything and love that regiment to death,

and I still do, have had to walk away from it because of what Gwen Jenkins did to us and our team. I just want to be able to sit there here and put my side across, our side across because nobody's asked us for our narrative and yet it keeps coming out in the press and now everyone's jumping on the bandwagon saying this and saying that. I want to clear a few things up and I want to get the truth out there so that people should be held accountable and this, my primary goal for this is nothing more than this should never, ever happen again to anyone because it's absolutely disgusting.

It's a disgrace and it's something that we need to address because we can't just turn a blind eye to this, which is exactly what he wants, okay? So if he does watch this and feels uncomfortable about it, good, that's a good thing because you should do, you know, he really should feel uncomfortable. And I want him to know the impact because he's too arrogant to reach out

after multiple times. And this really is a last resort because I've written, and I'll tell you in detail, multiple letters from my solicitor, my lawyer, to the Royal Military Police, to the Serious Investigation Board, to Director Special Forces, to basically anyone and everyone we've written letters saying hurry the process up, or at

least allow people that are under investigation for military, you know, incidents in the military, how can I be blocked from traveling? Make that make sense, like I'm innocent until proven guilty anywhere in the world, but yet we're being treated as guilty until proven innocent, which is not only morally wrong, but how can we treat service personnel like that? Where's the level of respect or compassion for us and our families? There is none, so it needs to change. That's the reason we're doing this.

And I want to highlight the actual emotional effect it's had on people and we've never been able to have our say and yet we have to sit there and watch the whole world read about this and read about that in all the press and we're supposed to just sit there and do nothing. They destroyed your name. They destroyed it, yeah. They destroyed it. Yeah. They destroyed us. They tried to destroy us, but we're still in the fight for sure.

Um, I wrote a letter to my MP, which is a member of parliament, so a politician essentially, who wrote a letter to the veterans minister who basically, and I'll read you his response, said, yeah, there's a charity out there somewhere, that's what we're supposed to be doing. If he needs help, ring this hotline, basically. No empathy there. Bearing in mind this guy was, used to be in the special forces.

What's significant about him is everyone knows how unfair and how poorly we've been treated. Do you remember I told you the guy who was blown up in Afghanistan, John, he lost two legs and an arm. He's a close friend of that veterans minister and he wrote him a personal message and basically he got the same short shift reply of, yeah, process is process, just wait out. So I've tried everything. I literally could not have tried more. I wrote in letters to lawyers. I wrote in letters to lawyers.

I wrote in letters to politicians. Years of trying to get some resolution on this. Years of trying to get some sort of clarity on it, of trying to be able to move on with our lives. It's significant to the point it's affected me. For nine months, Sean, I couldn't earn a penny. So when I left the military, I didn't leave with much. I'm not a rich man, but I spent all my pension, all of my savings, maxed out credit cards. I was living in Airbnbs.

There were times where I didn't even have enough money to get that and I was sleeping in my truck. Like, I'm not joking, Sean. It's been a fucking nightmare for the last 14 months. Three days I was supposed to come back for. No way to live. no source of income. I couldn't earn money from GBRS because I didn't have a visa and we wanted to protect the integrity of what we were doing because we're professional.

So I'm using everything I can at this point. I'm getting no support. The only support that I got was from the regimental association and they threw me some money in order for me to basically put a roof over my head in an Airbnb and do some laundry. That was basically what we got. So I'm thankful for those guys for doing that, but they're not part of MOD. They're a regimental association, an old boy's network. But that's not good enough. That's not enough. The loss of income, not being able to earn money, let alone having to spend all of my own just to keep a roof over my head essentially.

Tens, hundreds of thousands probably at this point is loss of income and expenditure from my own personal accounts. Just trying to survive day to day. I'm not after a fucking penny and I want to get that out. I don't care about money. I don't care. I just want this to never happen again. And I want people that are involved in this to be able to look themselves in the mirror and go, yeah,

we need to do better in the future. That's what this is about. This is not me spitting my dummy out or having a Prince Harry pity party situation. It's not that. I don't want. You're not here to victimize yourself. I'm not here to do that. I'm here. dummy out or, you know, having a Prince Harry pity party situation. It's not that. I don't want- You're not here to victimize yourself.

I'm not here to do that. I'm here- Looking out for the future of SAS operators. Yeah, a hundred percent. This can't happen again. And it's all good and well saying it won't, but it won't, it will, sorry, if we don't change it or if it doesn't get voiced. And it's, it's my time now.

It's my time to have my say because for three years I've had to sit by and watch people destroy the integrity of what we were doing, attack my team and drag my regiment's name through the mud for no reason other than personal gain, political gain and that's not right. The regiment is a fantastic organization. It's an incredible asset to the nation and it provides an incredible layer of security across the world for not only our civilians and citizens, but our coalition as well. The regiment is a fantastic thing and dragging it down like this is disgraceful, it's disgusting and I'm not having that. So these people need to be held accountable.

I want to touch on a couple of the points from the guys because without that, the context is important on this. So we've got everything from the very start to the very end. So first thing I'll read out is from the Colonel Prosecuting Officer. Again, I'm going to leave him out of it name-wise because I've got class and I've got dignity. But I'm going to read this to you. The first word, you, Soldier C, are notified that charges will not be brought against you under Section 121-2 of the Armed Forces Act 2006 in respect to the case referred to this authority arising

out of the allegations of murder during a deliberate detention operation 3rd 4th July 2022. The position may change however if for example further evidence comes to light or a further allegation is made or there is an appropriate request for the decision to be reviewed in accordance with the service prosecuting authority's victim's right to review policy. That's what we got after three years, Sean. That's what we got. So no name, you, soldier C, not very personal.

And then at the end of it, it's a warning. It's not a sorry, it's not congratulations, you didn't do anything wrong. It's a you, soldier C. How degrading is that? You can't even... it's disgusting. And then at the bottom of it, well this might change. No acknowledgement of any wrongdoing there whatsoever. No empathy, nothing. So that's what we got after three years. You can check that out and you can have a look at that. That's some bullshit right there. So they're still digging in? Essentially yes. For example further evidence comes

to light or a further allegation is made or there is an appropriate request for the decision to be reviewed in accordance with service prosecuting authority's victims rights to review policy. What that means is it's not over, it's just they haven't got what they need right now. It doesn't tell me, I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling that I'm going to get left alone here. Why would they even send this? So why would they even, exactly. It makes no sense, right?

Does that make sense to you? It makes no sense. Good. It's not just me then. So you're not clear. You're clear for the time being. I'm clear for the time being. And I was speaking to the lawyer again, recently, last couple of days,

about trying to get my form redacted so it doesn't say under investigation for murder, so I can go and get my visa, so I can go and get on with my life. And there's this whole bullshit process and they're like, no, it's going to take some time. You've got to do this and that. So I'm either innocent or I'm not. You just told me I am, so give me my form and let me get on with my life. That's it. How long does this go on for? For the rest of my life? I've given enough for my country,

Sean. I just want to get on with it, mate. I just want to have a nice life. You know what I mean? I feel like I've earned that. I feel like all my teammates have. This one here, this is from the Ministry of Defence from the Veterans Minister. I was sorry to learn that Mr. Kelly has financial hardship and homelessness. I would encourage him to seek assistance from the Veterans Gateway which offers support to veterans 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on a range of issues, including housing and finances. The veterans gateway can be contacted on a free phone number and there's a website that you can go and look at. That's from the veterans minister,

the guy that used to be in the SBS, the guy that used to be one of the squadron. That's what you get. That was in direct response to a letter that I had written, drafted by somebody that is very close to the Prime Minister, who actually wrote his autobiography, via my local politician, a guy who was supposed to help me. We wrote that letter to that local politician, who then forwarded it to this guy, the veterans minister and that is the response I got.

A free phone number. And you know what really winds me up about stuff like that is just the sheer cowardness of it because it's like we've reached out to that dude twice. Once from a guy whose life I was there to try and help save, so a personal touch and one through a completely professional touch and get nothing, nothing from these people. Not okay, let me look into it, let me do this. It's just due course way out. That's not good enough. And yet, I look around and you're doing expeditions to Mount Everest and they're saying that you're

for the... No, you're not. You're for yourself. And if any of these people have got anything to say, I'm more than welcome to sit down and have this conversation with them, but I've tried to reach out to them on multiple occasions through multiple sources, through every official channel possible and get nothing. So if they feel like this is unfair, then they need a reality check. Let me start working through some of these personal issues that the geezers have faced. So personal issues, RMP searching of my personal home that I just moved into after telling

me they would not search my property, arriving unannounced with multiple cars and cops late in the evening. Telling my girlfriend directly I'd murdered two people. Turning a house upside down during their search. Taking personal items from me and my partner, family photos on USB devices that I've still not received back. This one breaks me. Searching my one-year-old son's nursery bedroom while he was sleeping in his cot.

I want them to think about that. Imagine being at home with your new wife and a brand new baby and all of a sudden, military police come knocking at the door. They tell your wife to her face that you're being arrested for murder, and then they turn your house upside down, including the baby's bedroom with the baby asleep.

That's what the RMP did to us. How does that make you feel? It pisses me off. It pisses me the fuck off, mate. That's what it does. It's wrong. Part of having counseling because of it and put her in a terrible mental state for years, almost a breakdown in our relationship.

That's one guy. I was arrested on the 28th of July 2022 in front of my mother and sister while home at R&R. During the arrest, the R&P told my family that I was arrested for murdering two civilians which has caused irreparable damage to my relationship with my sister. These people are destroying lives. Two weeks after being arrested, I was back in theatre when all our weapons were seized. So get this, this is the professionalism of the guys that I'm talking about. They came, they seized all of our guns whilst we were

in theatre on combat operations. They take all of our guns, all of our rifles, pistols, optics. Do you know what we did? We went down to stores, got new guns, re-zeroed and cracked on because we're professional. That's what we're about. I was unable to speak to my lawyer about the case as disclosure cell. It took 69 days to read him on. So for 69 days, we had no legal support because the people that are supposed to be dealing with this to read these people on didn't do it. We were offered £2,500 for a holiday. That's what we were given. That's what they offered.

Obviously, we turned that down. I feel that there was an irreparable mental distress caused to me and my family by the fear and anxiety which generated by the investigation. My confidence, self-esteem and personal relationships feel permanently damaged. I had a breakdown in January 2025 and was close to taking my own life. I've been undergoing professional mental health treatment since early 2024. This guy flew out to Colombia to go and do psychedelic treatments because he was on the verge of killing himself.

And he didn't get any support from the military. There was no program for it. So he's gone off his own back and done that because he was at his last phase. He had nowhere else to go and I could see it in him. Next guy, being instructed, ordered to fill in witness statements with no legal advice for the serious investigation reports which were then used against us. You were the only one who questioned it, you being me. SIR signed off by headquarters, but then referred to the RMP by DSF Gwyn Jenkins. So what that means is the regiment, the commanding officer of the regiment signed that off and said that is the correct use

of force, everything's good, I've got no problem with it. They then refer it up and guess who gets it? Gwyn Jenkins and he's the one personally who referred it to the Royal Military Police. He did that. He was only protecting himself because he wanted the CDS job, but he didn't get it. We were tricked under the premise of an interview under caution. The RMP tried and failed miserably to arrest us all at the same time. So they tried to do us all across the world at the same time, failed miserably.

I arrived at the right time and the right place to conduct the interview. Then they arrested me, read me my rights, fingerprints, swabs, DNA, then physically marched me to my accommodation so they could confiscate and seize my phones. That's exactly what they did to me. This also coincided with the botched search of the guys' houses and the home addresses in the UK. Handing over weapons, including pistols and MVGs. We went and got new ones, zeroed them in and was good to go to deploy again. Looking back, our professionalism and ability to crack on probably wasn't the best idea.

Sean, what you must understand about this is they flew us back from theatre. They got us all in a room and conducted a no comment interview under caution in a police station with two SIB investigators that went on for hours and then they flew us back to theater. Two weeks later I jumped out the back of an aircraft and led my team to target. So all this is going on and we're still having to do this. How the fuck are you supposed to think? Put it in the box, don't you? Put it in the box and you crack on. That's what we do. VTC stating that RHQ would get us the best lawyers, money no object.

I rang one, explained the situation, reading a pre-prepared script with a number on it for the lawyer to call. Then we were told they were too expensive, had to choose basic legal aid lawyers. So what that means is they promised us the world, Sean. They said, we're going to give you the best representation, money can buy, no object. There's a big fund for this type of stuff with millions of pounds in it, and yet they wouldn't pay for legal aid. We had to get basic lawyers.

Now, the one that I've got is incredible, and I'm very grateful for him, but they gave us a whole list of these high flying lawyers and not one of them would touch it because they weren't willing to pay the price for it. 62 pound an hour was the cap. 62 pounds an hour is what we were worth for these guys. Now this might sound like I'm digging in on people, but if you don't talk about this, then it goes

away and it doesn't get rectified. So there's. It doesn't sound like you're digging in on people. It just sounds like you're telling the truth. That's all it is. To come out. These are from the guys. Having to tell my wife, our families about the

investigation, there was no help, advice or support on how to deliver such news. Then they, the wives, families, et cetera, had loads of questions that couldn't be answered because we didn't have any information. i.e. how long will this take? General Nick, on his handover takeover, coming out to theatre and standing next to me stated, that's hostile intent all day, there's nothing to worry about. That's the incoming director special forces that I mentioned a second ago. Owners changed the tune years later saying

that he would have done the same thing as Gwyn Jenkins. These people are spineless. He completely reversed his statement. Completely reversed his statement 180 degrees after standing there in a rooftop with all of us, my entire team, drinking a beer, telling us how fantastic a job we'd done and it would have never happened under his watch. Those exact words and that you've got nothing to worry about. I don't understand this at all. So they arrest you and your teammates for murder. Fly you back to the UK.

Investigate for an interview. Interrogate. Yup. Interrogate you. Four hours. We sat in that office. Four hours. Under caution.

And then they deem you fit for duty again while you're under investigation to go continue doing the job Yeah, I conducted two free fall exercise operations combat operations in a week Shortly after that. I led my stick to target twice. Why why would they I? Know you don't know the answer to this, but I'm just gonna ask the question anyway If you guys are loose cannons out there murdering innocent civilians, why would they fly you back into country to do it again? Because they knew it was all bullshit and they knew we didn't do anything wrong. If they thought we'd done something wrong, if they really thought we'd done something

wrong, they wouldn't let us do that, right? And there's drone footage. It's all out. It's exact. 100%. Yep. It's all out. This exact. 100%. Operation. Yep. It's all there. Fifth New Witness Statement.

What makes it even more of a bit of pill to swallow is the two police officers that came and rest me in theater and they came out the first time, said to me, we've seen the drone footage. We don't even know why this is a thing, but we've got to do our jobs. And it was almost like they wanted me to have sympathy for them. It's like, sorry, mate, I'm just doing my job. Well, sorry, mate, doesn't quite cut it in this situation. This isn't a sorry, mate situation.

When you've got the two people that are arresting you, telling you that they know this is bullshit and that it's political, and they admit that to my face, it's a hard thing to get your head around, Sean. It really is mate. RHQ decided to give a Charlie Charlie one, which means an all hands basically. They briefed everybody about an ongoing investigation, an invite that wasn't extended to ourselves. I heard the news from my wife. So basically for damage limitation and reputation control, because they knew that the guys in the squadrons were fucking outraged and were questioning whether they could be deployed and trust the chain of command, not the regiment so much, but above that, they invite everyone

in and explain the situation, but they didn't invite us. Make that make sense. What would be your take on that? I know what I think. I think they know they fucked up and they were trying to fight fires and they didn't want us in there because if we were we would have told everybody what actually happened. How can you have an all hands without the people that are involved? And why is he finding out by his wife who another wife said, oh yeah, my boyfriend

was at this brief. Did you go to it? What brief? No. See, he said he was being almost accused of potentially leaking the story to the press. All the scrutiny he was asked for. I was accused of leaking the story to the press. Two days after my visa got returned, I got a phone call from one of the guys saying that the adjutant had phoned him up personally because the story had leaked into the papers. And he said, I think Jay's gone and done this. Or do you think Jay, how fucking dare you? How dare you have the audacity to accuse me of leaking this to the press. And I know you might be sitting here going, well, you're on the shoreline talking about,

yeah, because it's done and I want my say. Can you imagine how offensive that is to me? Do you think I would leak that to the press? No. And if I was going to do it, I'd do it with accurate details. I'm not leaking this shit to the press. Somebody's leaking it to the press. And I'm setting the record straight because I'm sick and tired of reading about bullshit stories in the newspapers that my family see. It's not correct, it's

not right and quite frankly it needs to be addressed. So that's what I'm doing. My wife and other people's families rightly having enough of this bullshit after seeing me us going through a hard time, speaking to the welfare and being basically dismissed. There's nothing that can be done. And then this upsets me, receiving a phone call from the next day telling him to, quote, get a grip of my wife. So basically she's phoned up.

She wants to know answers. There's a protocol for this. There's people that if you ever have any dramas, whether you're deployed or whether it's this or whether the kids need picking up from school or the car breaks down or your husband's been accused of murder, then phone this number and we'll try and help you. She phoned that number, got nothing. And then to take the piss, that dude phones the guy up the next day and goes, hey, tell your wife to get a grip.

Get a grip. Depression, fear, anger, and a complete loss of self. All the negative effects it's had individually and the family friendship level. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't want to leave the house without panic attacks. You're talking about one of the finest operators I've ever met. Panic attacks. Seeing the mental health nurse at work and being told if I want to go on medication I would be downgraded. Not allowed to access weapons and my chain of command would be informed. So he's reached out and they've basically said cool we could help you but it means that we're going to have to report it and that you are no longer allowed to do your job

how can you be in the SES but not be allowed to play with guns the fuck are we talking about here I didn't do that for pride reasons and worried about my reputation so we sucked it up basically he tried to get help they bounced him and he sucked it up and carried on having to leave home and start divorce proceedings because I was unsafe. It's destroying families. It's destroying people's lives mate. It's destroying families. Big drinking issues. Multiple jobs falling through because of the Arco form, same situation I'm in, when looking for employment outside of the wire. Basically it makes it nearly impossible to get a visa to go anywhere.

So what are guys supposed to do? How long does this go on for? How long are we going to be punished for indefinitely? Bearing in mind, we've done nothing wrong and everybody knows that this is a test case by Gwyn Jenkins to show transparency. If you want transparency, here it is. This is transparency. You reap what you sow, you know? Again, you know? Again I know there's more and there is, there's pages of this. These are just the ones I've highlighted. There's pages of it. This is the archo form. This is the form that caused the dramas. Read that. Let's see what that says.

This personal data is provided to you by ACRO, Criminal Records Office, for the purpose of an immigration, consular, visa or citizenship related to applications made to a foreign government. Keep the data secure, protected against loss or unauthorized access. Having the word under investigation for murder on that form is not a good look. I felt sorry for the girl at the embassy. She was loving it. She was like, yeah, awesome. You're exactly the kind of person we want to give an O1 visa to. Thank you for your services, what she actually said to me until she saw that.

And she was, she didn't know how to circumnavigate it. She had to get a superior in. Then another one came, this whole thing. It's embarrassing to me, Sean. I'm stood in the freezing cold rain for four hours queuing up to get into the US embassy, a nation which I'm deeply proud of and will die to protect. I'm stood in that line and I get humiliated. I'm made to feel that fucking big by my own government. I've already had a U.S. visa, Sean. I had a NATO visa. I lived there for a year. I've been to America over 50 times.

I've been to war for that country. What recourse do you have now? In terms of what's next? I mean, when this first letter came out that you read. Yep. The position may change however, well just to read it again. You, soldier C, are notified that charges will not be brought against you under section 121-2 of the Armed Forces Act 2006 and respect of the case referred to This authority arising out of the allegations of murder during deliberate detention operation on 3 4 July 22

The position may change how I just we've already read this the position the position may change However, for example further evidence comes to light or further allegations are made. Or there is an appropriate request for the decision to be reviewed in accordance with the service prosecuting authority's victims rights to review policy. It means it's not over Sean, it means it's just on ice and that we have to go on with the rest of our lives with this. What happens one day? What in 10 years time are they going to call me back?

Are they going to arrest me again? Because they don't leave this stuff alone. There are guys from... Part of what we're doing here is shedding the light on this. There are guys from Northern Ireland. There are guys from the Falklands. There are guys from all sorts of conflicts that have been going on for decades that are still fighting this. I sent, you know, there's a partition. I sent it to Jeremy.

Over a hundred thousand people have signed that petition in the UK because of what they're doing. They're reversing it and making it, the government are making it possible for people to just keep revisiting these things. It's disgusting. It's got to stop. It's undermining.

And this doesn't undermine it. What do the attorneys say? It's disgusting. It's got to stop. It's undermining. And this doesn't undermine it. What do the attorneys say? They don't say much, to be honest. Do they care? It doesn't feel like it. Doesn't feel like it to me. My personal one does. Gwyn Jenkins certainly doesn't care.

Who else could they? Apparently the veterans minister doesn't care. Who could get involved to solve this? I don't know. Whose attention do you need to get? I doesn't care. Who else could be? The veterans minister does care. Who could get involved to solve this? Who's attention do you need to get? I don't know. I don't know. I'm at a loss, Sean. Like I'm just a dude from the squadron, bro.

I don't know. I'm lost in this. Like I've had to stand by and watch for three years how this has just destroyed people's lives, like destroyed it. How many different investigations are going on throughout the military right now? Dozens. Countless, man. I don't know.

I can't give you an accurate detail, but a lot. Have you seen any come to completion? They very rarely do. They just rumble on for years and years and years and years until the guys under investigation die. There are guys that are dealing with stuff from Ireland from like the 70s, 80s. It's 2025. The fuck are we doing here? So they never close a case?

Sometimes. How does that make you feel? And it's all good and well saying it's all good to go. All I want is my form. Let me go and get on with my life. That's all I want. I want that. And I want this to never happen again. And before people start throwing people under the bus for their own political gain, maybe have a little think about it. I know I'm not going to change your world. They'll probably throw the book at me, I don't care. I'll die on this hill.

I'll fight to the death on this one. I've got nothing to lose. I know I'm in the right. I'm armed by the fact that I'm in the right. You've already admitted in that piece of paper there that I've done nothing wrong. There's no evidence. There's no crime. This is bullshit.

Everyone knows it. Make it go away. How big of a story is this in UK right now? Depends what day of the week it is. It's in all of the major tabloids. All of them. Is it in media? Yep. All of the major tabloids, all of them. Is it in media? Yep.

All of the newspapers, all of the digital newspapers. It's in all of them. The Times, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, like legitimate newspapers. Everything. Everything. And none of them have reached out to you? Nope. And every single one of them, the information that's in there just keeps getting thicker

and thicker and thicker. Somebody's talking to them. Somebody's explaining it to them. And yet they have the audacity to try and accuse us. Nah, I'm not having that. It's not fair. And you know what? The worst thing about it is like the silence is deafening.

If you know about this and you don't do anything about it, to me you're just as guilty. You're just as guilty as Gwen Jenkins and those RMP that did that. We had an incident recently where an armed police officer shot a guy, lethal force, a guy that had been involved in a shooting the night before, he was into drugs, he was a gangster. And multiple attempts to detain him, very similar story, eventually had to use lethal force. He's subsequently been vindicated that that lethal force was just and righteous and proportionate, but they had him up in court on a murder charge.

And do you know what the police did? They put their guns down and said, we're not going out, we're not going to do it because this is how you treat our people. Do you know who stepped up when those armed police stepped down? Who? We did.

Our regiment. The irony isn't lost on me. The police are not having it. They're like, nah, fuck this. Why should we? We don't do that because we're the military. And you know what? There's guys that are like, if that happened to our squadron, we'd all do the same thing. No, you fucking wouldn't. You didn't. And I'm not, I'm not, you didn't. I'm not attacking that, I'm not saying it, everyone's got to get on with their own thing. I don't want this to damage anybody, but it can't fucking happen again. And people should know about this and feel uncomfortable about it, that's what this is about. And if they don't, maybe they're too arrogant to care, maybe they are. I'm pretty sure Gwyn Jenkins won't reach out, I'm pretty sure Gwyn Jenkins won't reach out.

I'm pretty sure he'll come up with some bullshit or he'll try and come after me in some way or whatever. Cool. I'm good with it. I've done nothing wrong. I defended my country. I defended my teammates. And I was put in a position ordered to be in that position. Took fire from enemy combatants, re-engaged, neutralised the threat. It's that simple. And it's on drone footage. It's all there. It's a difficult one, mate.

It's so frustrating, like so, so frustrating. And I feel like the last few days, I mean, again, I don't know how many times we're going to say this today, but I don't believe in coincidence. I think it's very ironic that a couple of days before this that happens People are not people are aware of it. I was coming to talk to you Laura where that I think so a couple close people But like anything once one person knows you've got to assume everybody knows right? I didn't like it. No, no, I trust you here but um Everybody knows, right? I didn't like it. No, no, I trust you.

Here you go. But it's just heartbreaking, man. I just love that. I love, love, still do that organization, that cat badge with my whole fucking heart, dude. I'd die for it. I'd still die for it. Loving it nearly killed me.

And I feel like it's. Who do we need to reach? How can I help you? I wish. Other than doing this interview, who do we need to reach? Who does this, who does this conversation need to get to? Do you need somebody wealthy over there to back you? Do you need to reach a certain politician? It's a strange one because I've exhausted every single aspect that I can. I don't think we can

throw money at the problem and it will go away. I don't know, Sean, how this doesn't happen again to people. And I'm fairly confident that within a period of time, I will be able to get my form because that's only right. But at the same time, I don't trust them to be able to do the right thing. What is the form that you need? It's the ARCO form, so that criminal record form. So as soon as that form comes back with, I'm no longer under investigation and it doesn't say murder on it, I can now go to the embassy, I can give it to that lady and she can give me a visa and

I can get on with my life. And they're still dragging their heels. Have you brought the notice of non-direction? Have you brought that to the embassy? Not yet, no. So what we've done is we've sent that to my legal team. So I've got an immigration lawyer that GBRS have paid for, tens of thousands of dollars at this point, trying to help me out.

They paid for all of that, couldn't be more grateful, and they've held my hand essentially through this whole process. So she's got all the information. I've reached out through my lawyer in the last couple of days to reach out directly to the Royal Military Police and to get this situation unfucked so that they can get that off my record and I can get on with it. And then we got some bullshit army response saying, yeah, there's a step down process. Basically it's like, it's completely unhelpful. It's like, there's a step down process. What does that mean?

Who knows? Not even my lawyer knows. He said, I'm going to go back and work out what that actually means. Like it shouldn't take more than a second for them to be able to go, is he under investigation for murder? No, he's been cleared. Cool. We'll take that off the sheet then and give him a new sheet and let him go to the embassy. It's not hard, but it's still like they want to have some sort of... This whole thing has felt like they were looking for something. They were looking to try and find it. And I guarantee you Sean, if they could

have and they'd have found something or some angle to come at us and put us stood there in a trial, they would have done it. But there isn't anything there because there's no wrongdoing. That's the most frustrating thing. And I'm glad that they've written that and said that we've done nothing wrong because otherwise you can come and hear and people are still going to have that in their minds. I've lost close relationships with family members because they wanted to distance themselves from me and this allegation. That's a fucking hard thing to deal with, man.

It's ongoing for all of us. And when we all got the news, it was an incredible moment, but it was a very bittersweet moment. It doesn't feel like it's a hollow victory. It's because it's not. No. What's the appetite of the UK citizen on this? What do you think they'll do when they hear this? Will they be pissed? I think so. Every single person I've spoke to in the last three years is outraged by

it from all demographics, military, non-military, law enforcement, civilian. You can't look at any of these facts. Everything I'm saying is not subjective. It's not an opinion. These are facts backed by the data. And you can see it's all in black and white there. Those letterheads have got army letterheads, Ministry of Defence letterheads. You can see it, it's all black and white. There's an outpouring of disgust in the UK for this. We shouldn't be treating our soldiers like that. That is the general feeling across the nation.

Hence the reason 100,000 people have signed a petition to get these guys from Northern Ireland left alone. What is Jenkins doing now? So he's the first Sea Lord. So he now has the highest position in the Royal Navy that you can get. Does he have political aspirations? 100%. Does he have political aspirations? 100%.

You can sit up there in Whitehall in your ivory tower making these decisions that affect guys like me, guys like my teammates. And yeah, we don't have the political horsepower I don't have the government or some fancy title but I have got my truth and I have got a voice and I've served my country for a long time and I think my voice should be heard and when I speak I speak for all of us. With the full backing and support of my teammates. Have you thought about getting a publicist?

What is a publicist, Sean? A publicist can get this into the media. A publicist can connect you to the right connections to put public pressure on him? I haven't thought about it, no, but I'm something I'm not adverse to. Listen, I'm better than him. I've got more integrity, more class than him. I don't want to destroy his career. It's not worth it for me. I don't care about him. He's worthless.

He's a coward. I don't even expect an apology. He hasn't got the spine or the moral courage to do that. These kind of people never give apologies. No, he won't. I just want him to know. Maybe his wife can read that. Maybe his wife can watch this. And when they have that conversation and they look each other in the eyes, maybe they can see

how it's affected us. I would have died for my teammates that night, and I'd die for him again. That's the difference. Pete Slauson There's a lot of people in UK that are not happy with the way things are going. Chris No. There's a lot of people in UK that are not happy with the way things are going. Not. For a multitude of reasons. In fact, we had a group of extremely wealthy people that want to talk to me about it and want me to bring it to light.

And so maybe we can connect you with them. Maybe they have some type of pull. I wish I had more connections over there for you, but I think this is a damn good start. I hope so. I hope good comes out of this. Again, I don't want to come across like I'm whining or bitching or, you know, that's not what this is about. You're not coming across like that. You're coming across like you just want your life back.

Yeah. You're not coming across like that. You're coming across like you just want your life back. You want your teammates to have their life back. That's it. And you want future operators to not have to worry about this shit. So they can serve their country without this type of stress. That's the way it comes across. Good. Well, I hope it does. And that's genuinely a hand on heart. That is all I want from this. And I don't know, maybe can we, can we make a change? Can we not put that stuff on forms? Can we not, can we not do that in the future?

Like. Can we just not put it in the press? And that. Yeah. I don't want my family, I hate this from my family for a long time to the point where it was untenable, I couldn't. I had my mom phone me up on New Year's Eve, everyone else celebrating. Oh, this is going to be, you know, happy new year and all this other bullshit.

She phones me up and she's like, this is you, isn't it? She's not stupid. Smart woman. She puts it together. That's a fucking conversation you don't want to have with your mother, you know? How's your daughter handling this? She doesn't know, Sean. She doesn't know? Not the extent of it, no.

I can't hide it from her for any longer. That's one of the reasons this is useful. I need to get it done. And I've had to hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. She hasn't seen the press? She got a phone. What did happen? It's little things like one minute

I'm watching her play soccer, right? Mom stood there watching her play soccer. All those parents all know what I did for a living. And there's a fucking documentary coming out by the BBC telling us that we've done this or done that, or there's some newspaper story. There's fucking documentary coming out by the BBC telling us that we've done this or done that, or there's some newspaper story. There's a documentary coming out. On the panorama here about the Afghan stuff, the Afghan stuff.

So this whole thing, this whole thing is because of the Afghan inquiry and he's under pressure from it. So he threw us under the bus to show transparency because of that. That's what this is about. And the BBC, like, make this make sense. How can the BBC commission investigative journalists to go ambulance chasing around Afghanistan about stuff that happened a decade ago, allegedly, with no real valuable sources of information other than people in farmers and people saying

they're all getting paid. They're all getting paid to give those testimonies. So on one hand, the BBC are doing that. And on the other hand, they're spending tens of millions of pounds per episode to commission Rogue Heroes, a documentary about the SAS called Rogue Heroes. So you either like the SAS or you don't like the SAS. How can you do both? Which one is it? Hypocrisy of the British media when it comes to this stuff is it's not even shocking anymore.

It really isn't. It's a shame, but it doesn't surprise me anymore whatsoever. And again, for these journalists out there that are writing these stories to get clicks for a bit of clout or whatever it might be, just think about it. I hope they see this and think about how that affects all of the good people. What about all of the people? What about my friend Matt's family?

A guy that lost his life serving his country, couldn't be prouder to have been in that regimen. How the fuck do you think it makes his family feel reading that? You know? There's just no empathy whatsoever. People need to be really careful and that's why I want to come here and say this so I can set the record straight a little bit. I can look you in the eye and tell you that I didn't do anything wrong, Sean. I stand by what I did and I do the same thing again, again, and again again and again. I felt that at the time and I feel it now. I wouldn't

have done it. How can you question my professionalism? What would have you rather us do? Not return fire and take a casualty in the middle of a field? Just let them run away? Is that what we do? What would you propose that I, you know, what course of action would have you suggested that I take? No, it's fucking bullshit. I'm sure the drum footage has never been released. No. You have access to it? No. Does your attorney have access to it?

I can ask him, potentially. I don't think so. I think they're very careful and very, not sneaky is probably not the right word, but they keep it all under lock and key. A lot of this stuff needs clearances, this and clearances, that to be released. I mean, I've seen this before. I interviewed the Blackwater guys from Nasur Square. I don't know if you're familiar with that incident, but the US government actually deleted the 10-minute section of drone footage that proved their innocence. Yeah. And then they were pardoned. I'm not too concerned about...

As that piece of paper says, it's not completely done, but I am confident in the fact that at least not in the meantime, there's going to be a knock at the door, but it's still there. It doesn't feel like it's gone away. And I've been given assurances that the form will come, it might take a little bit of time, and there's some process to go through. But three years is a fucking process. How much process do you want? Don't keep saying process to me. I've been through the process. It's nearly fucking destroyed my teammates' lives. It's had a negative impact on mine, completely turned my future upside down.

It's not right and it needs to be addressed and that's what we're doing and I think hopefully people will see this and go, we need to do better. We need to treat our service personnel better because they deserve better. They deserve better. I don't know. There's not a person that I've spoke to about this that doesn't look at it and go, yeah, that's not good enough. You talk to us about exacting standards.

You talk to us about judgment. You talk to us about leadership and all these other buzzwords that these people want to throw down our necks and throw in our faces. Let's see some. People don't get involved in this because they haven't got the moral courage to stick their head above the parapet and they're happy just staying there and being ignorant to it. To me, that's complicit. You're part of the problem if you don't do anything about it. If I was to just go now, get my visa and disappear off and not address it, I feel like I'm letting myself down. I

feel like I'm letting the dudes down. And I also feel like I'm letting the fucking next generation of dudes. Like we need to address this and make sure this shit doesn't ever happen again because it's wrong and the guys deserve better. That's it. This is my goal for this, you know. it's my end state is that I'm not after money. I'm not after a thank you All I want is for this to never happen again and for people to look at this and go we need to make fundamental changes to the way we do business and if that happens, it's a win and

That's why it's worth flying fucking halfway across the world and having this conversation with you that will get seen by some people. It'll get seen. Can guarantee you that. And I don't want to go to war with anyone. I'm done. I'm tired of it, Sean. I'm exhausted with the whole thing.

Honestly, it's exhausting. I don't feel like there's a silver lining at times when it comes to this. I'm grateful that I'm quite resilient. I'm grateful to myself for being quite robust. I mean, I don't appear like that sometimes. I'm grateful that I'm quite resilient. I'm grateful to myself for being quite robust. I mean, I don't appear like that sometimes, but the fucking tactical patience and the amount of times when I see pictures of his face being promoted, being awarded stuff, smiling as if nothing's happened, it makes me angry is not the right word, it makes me fucking furious.

You understand how angry this situation makes me feel. And I've been nothing but patient, reserved, dignified, and I'm not out here screaming and shouting saying, I want this, I want that. I just want it to go away and I want it to never happen again. And I don't think that's unreasonable. And if they'd have answered my requests and they hadn't just fobbed me off with some free phone number or ignored me or made me feel like a piece of shit for three years and they'd have done their jobs with the same level of professionalism that my teammates had done, then I wouldn't

be sat here. So they can have no complaints. And those RMP officers that did that, they should be ashamed of themselves. I'm sure they are. Good. There's no sympathy for me on that. Zero. And there's a whole bunch of names I could bring out there, but I'm not going to.

I'm not going to do that unless I have to. And this isn't a passive aggressive threat. These are facts. That's only the tip of the iceberg. We've got it all. We've got every single failure, every single unprofessional action from the fucking minute those rounds left our rifles to the fucking second that I'm sat here now. So we've got more if we need it.

If you put it all out on a piece of paper, you'd look at it and go, this has to be some sort of joke. This can't be real. But it's not very fucking funny if you're sat where I am. I don't think you find it's very funny either do you, Sean? No, I don't. I can see in your eyes, you know. I know, I trust you, you know.

But you know, DJ Cole backed me from day one. They knew about all of this situation. I told them straight away and they still decided to give me a contract. They still decided to pay for my legal fees. They still backed me. They still gave me the opportunity to have a career from the day one. I'm so grateful for that and thank you for them for doing that. And what's been really nice about this in a weird way is that I've lost a lot of people

in the fire over this. There's been a lot of casualties. Friends that I thought were close to me are not. People I feel like are manipulating my situation for their own means. I feel like it's cost me multiple relationships with people, including family members. Hopefully we can rebuild. I hope we can. including family members. Hopefully we can rebuild. I hope we can. But what it's done has left me with a core circle of people I know genuinely care about me. The people that I've got in my life now and the small circle that I remain with are my people. They're important to me and I know I can trust them and I love

them all dearly and that is a blessing. There are good things that have come out of this but it doesn't excuse it. You know, it doesn't. And I say this, if you don't know the code to my wife, you know, if you don't know the code to my Wi-Fi at my house you are not my friend. There are people now reaching out after 18 months, three years. All right, Jay, good news. How's it going, mate? Nah, not interested, dude. The people that were in the trenches with me, the people that got down and actually backed me, trusted me, believed in me when I said I didn't do anything wrong.

They're my people. And if you haven't heard from me for three years, there's a reason why. And if I haven't heard from you in three years, don't bother. I'm done. You know? It's a reason why. And if I haven't heard from you in three years, don't bother, I'm done. You know? Damn. It's a shame. Well, Jay, I'm sorry, man.

I am sorry this is happening to you, and it's killing me right now that I can't think of a solution, but I'll be thinking on it, and we'll do right now that I can't think of a solution, but I'll be thinking on it and we'll do the best that we can to get this out there as wide as we possibly can to as many people as we possibly can. And I'll be thinking of people that I can connect say thank you enough and again it's almost like it hurts me that I'm in this position and the people feel like they have to help me. I'm a proud man you know and

I don't want to ask people for help but I don't know what to do. I don't want to ask people for help, but I don't know what to do. I don't know how this gets solved or how we rectify it and it doesn't happen again. I am fucking so grateful for the opportunity to sit here and say this. I'm so, so thankful for all of you guys. It's not lost on me that you are thousands of miles away from your home and that you've taken this and I can see it. I understand that this resonates with you and I know it resonates with a lot of people. It's humbling to see there are good people out there that want to see good things happen to good people. That's a lifeline for me.

That's something that gives me a lot of strength and a lot of confidence. There are times I really need to draw on that and remember that there's good people out there. The Regiment's a fantastic organisation. It shouldn't be put in this position by top brass. It shouldn't be. Its people should be looked after by these politicians and these generals. Like I said before, I love it.

I loved it to death. I still do. I'm very proud of it. But the people that organize and run that shit need to change. They're destroying the organization. If they don't address it, it's not positive. that organize and run that shit need to change. They're destroying the organization. If they don't address it, it's not positive. Nobody can do their job if this is looming. No. You can't.

We talked about that at the beginning. We've been through a lot. Yeah. It's been a rough go for you. You definitely don't need to be dealing with this shit. I'd rather not. I'm sorry. It's not you, brother, but I appreciate that. Thank you. I genuinely do appreciate that,

Sean. Hopefully some good will come out of this. I'm an optimist. I am. I'm an optimist and I think with my background and my life, I wouldn't be sad if I wasn't. I'm an eternal optimist to a point, but at the same time, acutely aware of how fucked up this whole situation is and it needs to be changed. One of the things, I won't keep talking about it, it's unnerving to see the level that these people were willing to go to show transparency to the point where for the longest time I genuinely thought I would end up standing in a dock and there was going to be a moment in my future where 12 people would disappear and come back and someone would say, are you

guilty? Yes or no? Sitting in a cage felt like a very, very real possibility for me for a long time and people will go, no, it's never going to go that far. Was that, well, it's gone this far for that long what else is coming you know. That's a bad place to be and I'm grateful that I'm not in that position anymore. So let's just hope good comes from this. People look at it and go yeah we need to fucking make some fundamental changes how we treat our soldiers. Not just now

but in the past guys dealing with legacy stuff. I spoke to DJ about this. And to Cole. And I'm sitting there thinking, what about the guy that lives in Hereford, that has been involved in this for 20, 30 years from something that happened in Northern Ireland, and he made a split second decision. He's not coming on the Sean Ryan show. He can write all the fucking letters he wants to, whoever he wants. No one's going to hear him. Or hear me. Because I'm blessed I'm in a position where I've got friends that do have a platform. And I'm damn sure I'm not going to waste that opportunity. I'm not trying to sound like I'm some sort of white knight or I'm a martyr. Far from that. My life's far from

perfect as we've just found out. But if we can weaponize the ability to get this scene and broadcast and that message out there to the point where it becomes loud and people cannot do this again, then that's it, that's worth it. And if I didn't do that, then I don't think I'd be able to look myself in the mirror properly. If I just ride off into the sunset, that's not who I am. I didn't leave my teammates in the fight that day and I fucking damn sure ain't going to leave my teammates in the fight now. I'm here to the fucking bitter end of whatever this looks like and I'm willing. I'm willing to go all the way.

And I know I've got a team of people behind me that are a little back, all the way. So let's just hope that the message lands and that some good comes out of it, you know? Well Jay, like I said, we'll do everything we can to get this out as big as possible, as wide as possible to as many people as possible. And I'll be thinking. Jim Roam takes on sports. Why? Because you're not playing me.

With rapid fire takes. Ain't a lot to get to and I'm not sure you're gonna like all of it. Honestly, I don't even care if you like all of it or not. I have a job to do. Scorching debates. On any given week you have lots to beef about. Ticket manager, get up in here. He's the Spitfire of sports smack.

This is not my fault. We will get to all of that. The Jim Rome Show podcast. Get up in here, and we'll beef later on. What's your beef? Follow and listen on your favorite platform. You've been warned. There are ways that that we can help you further and if something comes to me, I'll let you know. Awesome Sean. Thank you. Stay in touch and

Just want you to know thank you for being here and and it was an honor to interview you. It was a real honor and I fucking hate that this is happening. So thank you. It's reciprocated. I've watched you interview some of my heroes. I've watched your voice help people directly. I've seen the impact that DJs have had on people first hand on dozens of occasions and

you do a good thing. So to be sat here in front of you is a little bit surreal but also extremely humbling. So thank you again. I probably won't do another one of these, certainly not for a long period of time and certainly not for these reasons. I didn't do anything before because this platform is where this needed to be heard. I'm grateful that we had the patience to wait and we did it properly. And we've come here to Dubai and we've done it properly and I'm glad for it. So thank you. And same to you, Jeremy. Thank you for reaching out and that weird set of circumstances.

Well, I told you that I don't believe in coincidences and to get your name brought to my face three times in 15 minutes, totally fucking random. Yeah. I got a feeling something's going to happen because I'm here because that happened and I don't believe in coincidences. So have faith. I've got faith. All right, brother.

Thank you. God bless. Thank've got faith. Alright brother. Thank you. God bless. Thank you brother.